“Aivars?” Michelle invited, looking at the tall, blond commodore.
“The same points you’re raising occurred to me when I first heard Ankenbrandt’s story, Captain Lecter,” Terekhov said, looking down the table at Michelle’s chief of staff. “In fact, I was inclined—especially in the absence of a treecat lie detector of my own—to write him off as either a complete crackpot or a Frontier Security plant trying to suck us into a misstep. Frankly, I’m still not completely ready to dismiss the second possibility. Even if he believes he’s telling us the truth, he and all of his friends in Mobius could’ve been set up by OFS for that very purpose. On the other hand, as you pointed out yourself, there’s the timetable. I can’t see why Frontier Security would have been worrying about setting anything like this up before we ever crossed swords with Monica.
“As I say, I was about to write him off when Ensign Zilwicki suggested a third possibility to me. I realize some people”—he carefully refrained from looking in Admiral Munming’s direction—“may be inclined to wonder if her father’s…radicalism, let’s say, might affect her judgment. I don’t happen to think that’s very likely in her case, but even if it were, her suggestion still made a lot of sense to me.”
“And that suggestion was, Sir Aivars?” Munming asked, but she was eyeing him intently, and her tone suggested she’d already figured out where he was headed.
“Ensign Zilwicki suggested that it’s possible we—and, for that matter, the resistance people in Mobius—are being set up, but not by Frontier Security. As she pointed out, it’s obvious from Crandall’s movements that Mesa must have put her into play at the same time they started providing battlecruisers to Monica. Which, just coincidentally, would have been about the same time Ankenbrandt says his resistance organization was initially contacted by ‘Manticore.’ Or, for that matter, the time somebody began talking to Mr. Westman here on Montana and Nordbrandt in Kornati.”
“You’re suggesting it’s actually this Mesan Alignment, Commodore?” Roddick said slowly.
“The original notion wasn’t mine, Admiral, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Especially if the rather sketchy information we have so far from home is accurate and Mesa’s been maneuvering us into a shooting confrontation with the League all along. If one of the local régimes or OFS itself were to break a resistance movement, all of whose leaders genuinely believed they’d been instigated, coordinated, and supplied by the Star Empire, how do you think the League would have reacted even before our current confrontations?”
There was silence for several seconds. Then Oversteegen nodded.
“Always did think Helen had a pretty good head on her shoulders,” he drawled. “An’ sometimes a little paranoia’s a useful thing. And speakin’ about bein’ paranoid, does anyone think—assumin’ this little scenario holds atmosphere—that the bastards would’ve stopped with settin’ up one resistance movement?”
“I don’t know about ‘anyone,’” Michelle said, “but I don’t. Assuming, as you say, Ensign Zilwicki’s hypothesis holds atmosphere. And I’m very much afraid it could. For that matter, I’m afraid there’s still worse to come” She cocked her head at the commodore. “Would you care to go ahead and share the rest of your unpleasant ruminations with everyone else, as well, Aivars?”
“I wouldn’t like to take complete credit for them, Ma’am,” Terekhov pointed out. “In fact, once Helen—Ensign Zilwicki, I mean—had gone that far, another rather nasty thought occurred to her. If this really is Mesa, and if they’ve contacted not just Mobius but other independent or protectorate star systems out this way, what happens when the balloons start going up? When OFS and Frontier Fleet move in to put down the ‘rebellions’ and the blood starts to flow? It wouldn’t just be a matter of the PR damage we’d take in the League. Bad enough hundreds or thousands of people would be killed, but if dozens of resistance movements start sending us messengers like Mr. Ankenbrandt, expecting the open assistance and support they’ve been promised, and we don’t deliver, what happens to the tendency for independent star systems to trust us more than the Sollies?”
“Those fucking bastards,” Ruddock said softly, then shook himself. “Sorry about that, Milady,” he said apologetically, “but I believe Commodore Terekhov and—Ensign Zilwicki—have just converted my skepticism into something else.” His eyes hardened dangerously. “You’ve almost got to admire them. Aside from the time they’ve invested in it, look how little it’s cost them to set all this up!”
“That thought occurred to me, too, when Commodore Terekhov first shared this whole fascinating train of thought with me,” Michelle said sourly. “And it leads to an interesting quandary, doesn’t it?”
Heads nodded all around the table, and she inhaled sharply.
“All right.” She sat up straighter, tapping an index finger on the table for emphasis as she continued. “All of this is hypothetical, of course. I’m not going to pretend I don’t think there’s something to it, though. And, to be honest, there are some potential upsides to the situation. For one thing, although I don’t think the strategy ever actually occurred to anyone on our side, it really is a damned good way to force the League to disperse its efforts. That’s one of the things that’s going to make our supposed complicity so convincing to the Sollies when the shit finally gets around to hitting the fan. At the same time, we don’t have any way to know how many other Mobiuses may be ticking away out there. And the truth is that Ensign Zilwicki’s final hypothesis is downright scary. The damage this could do to the Star Empire’s reputation outside the League doesn’t bear thinking about.”
She looked around the table again.
“So we’re going to begin contingency planning now. Especially after how effectively Captain Zavala’s squadron performed in Saltash, I don’t think it’s going to take wallers to support something like Mobius. A destroyer division or a couple of cruisers should be able to handle anything Frontier Fleet’s likely to be able to spare for rebel-thumping. I’m not going to disperse my main combat strength, but I want plans to peel off light forces to respond to any of these ‘Manticore-supported rebellions’ we hear about. We can’t do anything about the ones we don’t know about, and I sure as hell don’t want to encourage even more ‘spontaneous uprisings.’ For that matter, what I’d really prefer would be to turn up in the role of peacemaker before things get too far out of hand. In the real world, that’s not going to happen, though, and we all know it. So the way I see it, in this respect at least, we have no choice but to dance to the Alignment’s music…assuming Mesa really is behind it, of course. I’ve already sent a dispatch boat on to Spindle with my conclusions, and to be frank, I’d be delighted to have guidance from Baroness Medusa and Prime Minister Alquezar before things get even more lively out here. In the meantime, though, I’m not going to let Mesa get away with branding us not just as instigators of rebellion but as the sort of people who abandon our catspaws when the blood actually begins to flow.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What the hell was Kazuyoshi thinking?” Kayleigh Blanchard demanded.
Almost a week had passed since the apocalyptic conclusion of Kazuyoshi Brewster’s attack, and she and Michael Breitbach sat at a picnic table in Landing’s Central Park. A checkered cloth covered the table between them, and their plates were piled with potato salad, baked beans, and hot dogs. Sitting out in the open was enough to make Blanchard nervous, but she knew Breitbach was right. Security forces paid less attention to people eating picnic lunches out in the sunlight where everyone could see them than they did to people who seemed concerned with hiding in the shadows. Their current table was on a little point of land, pushing out into the lake. Directional microphones could undoubtedly hear every word they said, if anyone were suspicious enough to point one of them in their direction, but there weren’t going to be any other diners near enough to overhear casual conversation.