"Yes, Ma'am. I have the senior officer of CruRon Ninety-Four on the com. A . . . Commodore Terekhov, I believe."
Michelle's eyes widened, and then she smiled even more hugely than before.
Jesus, she thought,they must have stuck an impeller node up his . . . um, backside and fired him back out our way before Hexapuma ever got as far in-system as Hephaestus! Poor bastard probably didn't even have time to kiss his wife first! But they couldn't have found anyone better to give the squadron to.
"Switch it to my display, Bill," she directed.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Aivars Terekhov's face appeared on the com display deployed from her command chair just at knee level, and she smiled down at it.
"Commodore Terekhov!" she said. "It's good to see you . . . and to hear about your promotion. No one told me that was in the works when they sent me off to Talbott, but everything I saw at Monica tells me it was well-deserved. And, to be honest, having your squadron here is at least equally welcome."
Michelle waited the seventeen seconds it took for the transmission to make the round-trip, and then Terekhov smiled.
"Thank you, Milady," he said. "I won't pretend I wouldn't have preferred a little bit more time at home, but the promotion is nice, and they gave me a brand-new squadron to play with to go with it. And I have to admit that I feel a certain proprietary interest in the Quadrant that makes it feel good to be back."
Michelle's eyes narrowed. The words—as words—were just fine, almost exactly what she would have expected. But something about the tone, and about the quality of that smile . . .
Strain, she thought. He's worried—even frightened—about something and trying like hell not to show it.
Her sudden, irrational suspicion was ridiculous, and she knew it. But she also knew that she couldn't shake it, and an icy wind seemed to blow through her bones at the thought. She knew exactly what this man had done, and not just in Monica. Anything that could frighten him . . .
"Commodore," she said slowly, "is there something I ought to know?"
Seventeen more seconds passed, and then the arctic blue eyes on her com display widened ever so slightly, as if in surprise. Then they narrowed again, and he nodded.
"Yes, Milady, I suppose there is," he said quietly. "I'd rather assumed you'd have received Admiral Khumalo's dispatches about it, though. I suppose they must have passed you in transit."
He paused, clearly suggesting that perhaps the vice admiral would prefer to tell her about whatever it was in person, and Michelle snorted. If he thought she was going to sit around on her posterior waiting for the penny to drop after an introduction like that, he had another think coming!
"I'm sure Admiral Khumalo and I will be discussing a lot of things, Commodore," she said just a bit tartly."In the meantime, however, why don't you go ahead and tell me about it?"
"Yes, Milady," he said again, seventeen seconds later, and drew a visible breath and squared his shoulders ever so slightly. "I'm afraid we received dispatches from the home system just over three T-weeks ago. The news isn't good. According to Admiral Caparelli, the Havenites attacked in overwhelming strength. From all appearances, Theisman and Pritchart must have decided to put everything on one throw of the dice after what happened to the Havenites at Lovett and go for an outright knockout blow before we could get Apollo into full deployment. We stopped them, but we got—both sides got—hit really hard. According to the follow-up reports we've received since, it looks like—"
Chapter Thirty-Eight
"I'm not happy about this, Maxime," Damien Dusserre said. "I'm not happy about it at all."
"I don't think you see me doing handsprings of joy about it, either, do you?" Prime Minister Maxime Vézien shot back tartly.
"Damn it, I knew this whole thing looked too good to be true from the very beginning," Dusserre grumbled.
Vézien felt a powerful urge to punch the security minister squarely in the nose, but he suppressed it easily enough. First, because the younger, larger, stronger, and physically much tougher Dusserre would probably have proceeded to remove the Prime Minister's limbs one at a time, with the maximum possible amount of discomfort. But secondly, and even more to the point, because Dusserre was, indeed, the one member of the Vézien Government who had consistently voiced his reservations about the entire operation.
Which didn't keep him from going ahead and signing off on it, anyway, Vézien thought rather snappishly. Maybe he didn't like it, but I didn't see him coming up with any better ideas!
Actually, as Vézien was well aware in his calmer moments, one of the reasons he was so easily pissed off with his Security Minister these days was that Damien Dusserre was Andrieaux Yvernau's brother-in-law. It was Yvernau's brilliant strategy at the Constitutional Convention which had gotten the entire New Tuscany System into the Star Empire of Manticore's black books in the first place, and Vézien couldn't quite suppress the ignoble urge to vent his frustration on Yvernau's relatives. And he could at least tell himself there was some justification in it, given the fact that it was Yvernau's family connections which had gotten him named to head the delegation to Spindle in the first place.
Yes, there is, he reflected. But the truth is, as you're perfectly well aware, Max, whether you want to admit it, that even though Yvernau is an idiot, not even a genius could have come up with a good strategy once those parliamentary bastards back in Manticore got up on their high horse and started bleating about "repressive local régimes" here in the Cluster. And having that bitch Medusa in the driver's seat didn't help one damned thing, either. If we'd only realized where all of this was going to go when that son-of-a-bitch Van Dort came around selling us on what a gold mine that whole damned annexation idea was going to be for everyone involved . . . !
"I know you've had reservations, Damien," he said out loud instead of the considerably more cutting (and satisfying) responses which flickered through his head. "Unfortunately, reservations or no, we're where we are, not where we might want to be. So why don't we both just go ahead and admit that neither of us is happy about the situation and then do what we can to make the best of it?"
Dusserre gave him a sour look, but then the Security Minister drew a deep breath and nodded.
"You're right," he acknowledged.
"Good."
Vézien tilted back in his comfortable chair and gazed up through the office's huge skylight. That skylight was one of the Prime Minister's favorite perks, one that offered refreshment and energy whenever the weight of his high political office crushed down upon him. It wasn't a view screen, wasn't an artificial image gathered from remote cameras. It was an actual, honest to God skylight, almost three meters on a side. Its thermal-barrier smart glass panes automatically configured themselves to filter sunlight, and then, under other conditions, seemed almost to disappear entirely. When it rained, the sound of the raindrops—from a gentle patter to a hard, driving rhythm—filled the office with a soothing sense of natural energy. When lightning rumbled about the heavens, he could watch God's artillery flashing in mist-walled valleys among cloudy mountains. And when it was night, he could look up through it to moon-struck cloud chasms or the clear, awesome vista of the distant stars burning so far above him.
At the moment, unfortunately, the sight of those stars was much less soothing than usual.