“And, third, I’m sick and fucking tired of watching Frontier Security and its bastard friends grind their heels into people’s faces. According to this”—she never raised her voice, but her expression could have been carved out of battle steel as the tapped the report again—“Lombroso’s resorted to mass arrests, ‘stringent interrogations,’ and shutting down all nongovernment channels of public communication. Not to mention the fact that a lot of his opponents have started mysteriously disappearing.” She shook her head, brown eyes grim. “I’m not going to find any more of those people in unmarked graves than I can help, Mickaël. Not when they went there thinking my Star Empire got them into Lombroso’s line of fire in the first place.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Aivars Terekhov cleared his throat.
“I think you have a point, Ma’am,” he said.
“Only a point?” Michelle smiled humorlessly.
“What I meant, Ma’am, is that whatever we do or don’t do, the perception is still going to be that we fomented the situation in Mobius. I happen to agree with you that keeping people from being killed by a corrupt government is worthwhile in its own right, but even from a purely pragmatic political viewpoint, I don’t see that we have any choice. If we had engineered it, we’d have a moral responsibility to the people who’re being arrested and ‘disappeared,’ and that’s the standard we’re going to be held to, whoever actually set this in motion. For that matter, even if it later comes out—even if we’re later able to prove—that we weren’t the ones stirring the pot, intervention on the resistance’s side is still going to work out in our favor with everyone except the Sollies.” He shrugged. “I’m not trying to be cold-blooded or calculating about it, but if the independent star systems out this way realize we’re willing to stand by them when they think they have our word, even when that means facing the Solarian League and even when we weren’t actually involved from the beginning, it can only improve their perception of us.”
“Somethin’ to that, Ma’am,” Oversteegen remarked. “Quite a lot, really.”
“I agree,” Munming said firmly.
“Good.” Michelle smiled a bit more naturally. “It’s always nice to know my loyal subordinates approve of what I’m going to do anyway.”
One or two of the others smiled back, and she returned her attention to Terekhov.
“I’m especially glad to hear you feel that way, Aivars. For a lot of reasons, I don’t want to look like I’m…overreacting, let’s say. At the same time, I think a big enough force to make a firm statement—and hopefully to provide any Solly Frontier Fleet commander with a sufficiently overpowering threat that he can back down without losing face and touching off another Saltash—is in order. And, given the delicate questions of interstellar policy and diplomacy involved, I think it would be as well for us to send along a senior officer with Foreign Office experience. Someone like you.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” If Terekhov was dismayed—or surprised—he showed no sign of it.
“I’m thinking that I’m going to send one division of your cruiser squadron, a destroyer squadron, and one of Admiral Culbertson’s CLACs. The carrier’ll have plenty of life-support to carry a battalion or so of Marines, as well. That should give you a ground combat component if you need one. I’m hoping you won’t, but better safe than sorry.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I’ll want you underway within twelve hours,” she continued. “In the meantime, I’ll be leaving your other division and Scotty Tremaine’s division here in Montana, along with the rest of Culbertson’s CLACs, and the rest of our destroyers, all under Culbertson. I’ll leave him detailed instructions about what to do if any interesting little messages should happen to arrive from other resistance movements we didn’t realize we were supporting.”
“Pardon me, Ma’am,” Munming said, “but that seems to suggest you don’t plan on staying here yourself?”
“No, I don’t plan on that. And you won’t be staying either, Aploloniá. I’m taking your squadron, Michael’s battlecruisers, and Admiral Menadue’s carriers to join Admiral Bennington at Tillerman.”
More than one set of eyebrows rose this time, and she shrugged.
“By this time, Filareta’s either been blown to dustbunnies, surrendered, or run like hell,” she said. “When Admiral Khumalo and Baroness Medusa find out which it was, they’ll be sending dispatches both here and to Tillerman. I’d find out about it a bit sooner if I stayed here, but I’d still have to move to Tillerman—or waste time ordering Bennington to join us here—to concentrate our wall before we make any moves of our own. And I’ve come to the conclusion that if things have fallen still further into the crapper, we are going to be making some moves. Specifically, as I see it, our first step has to be to cover our backs before we do anything else. Which means taking out the Madras Sector.”
The assembled officers sat very still.
“If we’re going to find ourselves in a genuine war with the League, I’m not going to sit here and let them bring it to us,” she said flatly. “We know, because we’ve demonstrated it against the Havenites and they’ve demonstrated it against us, that the deep strike can be decisive…and that standing on the defensive surrenders the initiative to the other side. From everything we’ve seen out of the Sollies so far, they haven’t figured that out. Oh,” she waved one hand impatiently, “they went straight for Spindle and straight for the home system, but both of those moves were completely in line with their step-by-step approach; it just happened that we didn’t have a lot of depth. But I don’t think there’s much doubt that they’ll be thinking about staging any additional operations against the Quadrant out of Madras or one of the other sectors out this way. They almost have to, in a lot of ways, because their logistics are so short-legged. They don’t have a fleet train organization with the kind of strategic mobility and flexibility we and the Havenites have developed, and I doubt there’s a single Battle Fleet admiral who has the mental flexibility to work around that. Given time, they’ll develop it or find someone—probably from Frontier Fleet—who does have it, but it’s going to take time for that to happen. And that’s why we’re not going to stand on the defensive. If these idiots persist in dancing to Mesa’s piping, then we’re going to take the war to them. I want to eliminate their basing infrastructure out here. them fully on the defensive—psychologically, as well as strategically—from the get-go. That means punching out every sector capital behind us as we advance, so if we do end up pulling the trigger, we’re going into the Meyers System hard and fast and in sufficient strength that nobody’s going to even think about shooting back. I want that system taken with as close to zero bloodshed as humanly possible, and after that, we’re going to punch out the rest of the sector.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Captain Peter Clavell frowned grumpily as he checked his chrono for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. His relief was late—again—and Clavell didn’t like the rumors he’d been hearing. All very well for General Yardley to announce a general offensive against the rabble-rousers and malcontents, but she wasn’t the one out here in command of a checkpoint whose relief was dragging in late…again. And she wasn’t the one wondering if maybe this time his relief was late for a reason nobody would like. Or if some terrorist son-of-a-bitch was going to come along and ruin his entire night when he should have been safely back in his quarters while some other poor bastard took over the checkpoint in question. God knew it had happened to enough other Guardsmen in the last two or three weeks!