“Oh?” Verrochio looked at her. “What would those be, Brigadier?”
“Ms. Xydis’ dispatches from Mobius.” Yucel’s voice was flat, and Verrochio was conscious of a distinct sinking sensation.
“I realize President Lombroso’s concerned about the situation,” he said, “but, let’s be honest, Francisca, he’s always concerned about the situation.”
“I’m aware of that, Sir.” Yucel’s tone carried a hint of frost. “But ‘the situation’s’ changed significantly, given the sophistication of the weapons used against the Presidential Guard this time around. Nobody cooked those up in some backwoods workshop, Sir, and nobody bought them for hunting or even self-defense, either. Someone damned well sent them in from the outside specifically to be used exactly the way they were used.”
“I think we want to be a little careful about leaping to conclusions about those weapons reports, Brigadier,” Junyan Hongbo said coolly. He and Yucel saw eye-to-eye on very few subjects, and especially not on her theory that there was no such thing as “excessive force.” In her view, there was no problem she couldn’t solve by killing enough people, and the two of them seldom found themselves on the same side of any policy debate.
“Lombroso, Yardley, and Mátyás are scarcely disinterested observers,” the vice commissioner added, “and they’ve been trying for years to get an official OFS presence to back up the local régime.”
Verrochio felt himself nodding slowly in agreement. Given the way Svein Lombroso had become steadily more hated by the Mobius System’s citizens, virtually from the first day he’d taken power, it wasn’t surprising he saw clearly visible OFS backing for his régime as the only way to stave off disaster. A smarter (and less brutal) president might have reflected that inviting Frontier Security in was like a farmer inviting a fox to a slumber party in his henhouse, but Lombroso was obviously feeling the strain.
“Yes, I’m aware of that, too, Mr. Vice Commissioner,” Yucel said. “I’d just like to point out, though, that according to Xydis’ messages, President Lombroso definitely isn’t fabricating this. It really happened, he’s got a lot of civilian casualties, and the terrorists opposed to his administration are clearly better organized—and one hell of a lot better armed—than they’ve ever been before. There are signs Mobius isn’t the only place this is happening, too. In fact, he’s scarcely the only local reporting evidence of Manty involvement in providing both weapons and financial support.”
Verrocchio managed not to roll his eyes. It wasn’t easy, given how persistently Yucel, despite her firm belief that Manticore wouldn’t dare confront the League openly, seemed to be finding Manty plots under her bed every night. Apparently she had no problem at all with believing Manticore would resort to any clandestine means of opposing OFS it could come up with, regardless of the risk of Solarian retaliation, which struck him as more than a bit inconsistent. Maybe she’d spent so long arranging “deniable” operations of her own that she was simply programmed to assume everyone else thought the same way she did? Now that was a frightening concept. At the same time, however, she had a point about Lombroso’s reports.
“I realize we’re all under a lot of strain,” Hongbo said, “and I fully agree that we need to be more safe than sorry about the Manties, but I also think it would be a mistake to rely too heavily on those reports, Brigadier.” Yucel glowered at him, and he shrugged. “The unrest in Mobius started well before Admiral Byng’s deployment, and I fail to see any reason for the Star Empire to have invested in the considerable effort and expense to foment general unrest in our vicinity before they even knew he was coming!”
“Someone’s providing modern weapons, and not just to Lombroso,” Yucel said stubbornly. “If it’s happening on anything like the scale our reports indicate, that same someone is obviously willing to invest the effort and expense you’ve just mentioned. And at the moment, I don’t see anyone with a better reason than the Manties to be doing that.”
Her gray eyes challenged him coldly across the conference table, but he didn’t back down.
“Neither do I,” he said. “Which, I’m afraid, suggests to me that the reports you’re referring to are exaggerated. Understandably, I’m sure,” he added, not trying to sound any more sincere than she or Thurgood had, “given all the unrest that’s been swirling around since the Battle of Monica, but nonetheless exaggerated. And while I’ve just agreed it’s better to be safe than sorry, our resources—as Commodore Thurgood has just pointed out—are limited. I don’t think it would be wise to waste them responding to threats which may not even be real.”
“I’m inclined to agree, Junyan,” Verrochio said quickly, before Yucel could fire back. “I’d like to stay focused on the specific case of Mobius at this point, though. Brigadier?”
Yucel sat in brief, fulminating silence, then inhaled deeply.
“It’s possible President Lombroso is seeing Manticoran involvement when there isn’t any,” she conceded, although her tone made it obvious she thought nothing of the sort. “Nonetheless, it’s clear his problems are much more serious than our earlier assessments suggested. And I think it’s equally clear he’s losing whatever nerve he may once have had. That’s not a recipe for success, so I think we have to decide whether we’re going to support him or the time’s come to go ahead and supplant him. And the Vice Commissioner—and the Commodore—are right that we have limited resources. We can’t afford to waste them, and, frankly, providing a garrison to maintain direct control on a long-term basis would cut deeply into my available strength.”
Verrochio winced. One thing of which no one could ever accuse Francisca Yucel was subtlety. Still, she had a point. Lombroso was a lot less valuable to Frontier Security than he might think he was. In fact, under normal circumstances, as Yucel had just implied, Verrochio would have been simply biding his time until things got bad enough to provide OFS with an unassailable case for—regretfully, of course—moving in to restore public order and safety. In the process of which, Mobius would just happen to find itself an official protectorate and President Lombroso would just happen to find himself unemployed.
Circumstances weren’t normal, however, and the last thing he needed was to have Mobius melt down right on his doorstep. Manty meddling in the Mobius System or not, the restiveness of Lombroso’s opposition undoubtedly owed a lot to what had already happened in Talbott. The example of a whole cluster of worlds seeking and receiving admission into the Star Empire hadn’t been lost on any of the nominally independent planets in the vicinity. They were bound to see that as a better deal than being systematically sucked dry by one transtellar or another or engulfed by Frontier Security, at any rate, and he never doubted that his ultimate superiors back in Old Chicago would recognize that as well as he did. And they wouldn’t thank him for allowing the dike of OFS’ prestige and power to spring any fresh leaks, either.
Which didn’t even consider the way Trifecta Corporation and its economic allies would react if he let anything like a genuine Mobian régime topple Lombroso. It might take years for Trifecta to get its hooks properly into Lombroso’s successor, and they’d undoubtedly raise hell about it the entire time.
“Should I take it you concur with Brigadier Yucel’s reading of the situation, Colonel?” the commissioner inquired, looking at Colonel Armand Wang, Yucel’s equivalent of Captain Merriman.
Wang was a good forty centimeters taller than Yucel, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a high-arched nose. He was also, in Verrochio’s opinion, rather less of a blunt object. Now he glanced at Yucel from the corner of one eye, then shrugged.