“You probably have a point.”

  Weng sipped tea. They sat in silence for twenty or thirty seconds, then she set the cup down and sat back.

  “I think we’d better find out about this,” she said. “And I can only think of one way to do that.”

  “Assuming there’s time,” Blanton pointed out, and Weng nodded. The travel time to Maya was fifty-one days, one way.

  “I know,” she said. “But I don’t see another option.”

  “Neither do I. Can’t be one of my people, though. Even at the best of times, I’d be poaching in Rajmund’s preserve. And these are hardly ‘the best of times.’ If we’re right about him, the last thing we need is to warn him anyone—especially me—might be looking in his direction. Send your Scarlatti back again?”

  “I don’t know,” Weng replied, answering Blanton’s professionally thoughtful tone. “On the one hand, I trust him and he was the one who first suggested Barregos’s relationship with Erewhon was closer than most people here in Old Chicago thought it was. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d been in Barregos’s pocket. On the other, he is Allfrey’s friend, and if Barregos is up to something, Jerzy didn’t get a clear sniff of it—or report it, anyway—the last time he was there. And,” she added, “coming up with a plausible reason to send him back again so soon without making someone as smooth as Barregos suspicious could be a nontrivial exercise.”

  Blanton’s expression showed her agreement with Weng’s thought train.

  “I’ve got at least a half-dozen other people I could send if I don’t send Jerzy back,” the colonel said with a shrug. “And if I need to, I’ll go to Noritoshi and get him to let me pick one of Simeon’s people from CID. Either way, I can get someone off to Smoking Frog within a couple of days, outside.”

  “The sooner the better,” Blanton said. “Even if she leaves tomorrow, it’s going to be mid-September by the time she gets there.”

  “And the soonest she could get back would be the end of November,” Weng agreed. “And that’s assuming someone’s stupid enough to leave that ‘smoking gun’ lying around for her to stumble over the instant she steps off the landing shuttle! Not going to happen.”

  “So we’re probably really looking at not hearing back before the new year.” Blanton’s expression was sour, and Weng snorted.

  “Any dinosaur’s nervous system has a certain amount of built-in delay,” she pointed out, and Blanton grimaced.

  “Under the circumstances, I wish you’d picked a different metaphor,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the dinosaurs are extinct,” Blanton replied grimly.

  AUGUST 1922 POST DIASPORA

  SLNS Québec

  Cachalot System

  “You can’t be serious!”

  The woman on Vincent Capriotti’s com display was platinum-haired and dark skinned. It was a striking combination, and she was so photogenic he suspected she’d been the recipient of quite a lot of biosculpt. Politicians, as a rule, found physical attractiveness a valuable asset—far more valuable, in fact, in Capriotti’s opinion, than simple competence. On the other hand, Cachalot System President Miriam Jahnke had amply demonstrated her own competence over a forty-T-year political career.

  And, at the moment, the fury blazing in her brown eyes honed her attractiveness in much the same way lightning honed a thunderstorm’s.

  Or a hurricane’s, perhaps.

  “I’m afraid I’m quite serious, Madame President,” he said in reply, then sat back to wait out the six-minute communications lag.

  At the moment, TF 783 was almost 56,000,000 kilometers from the planet Orca, just over ten light-minutes inside the Cachalot System hyper-limit, closing with the planet at 18,119 KPS and decelerating at a steady 300 G. Given that geometry, they would reach Orca orbit in another hour and forty minutes, and their recon platforms had been swarming around the inner system for the last couple of hours. ONI had grudgingly admitted that stealth systems were another area in which the Manties had somehow acquired a commanding lead, but nobody’s stealth was good enough to hide warships—even completely shut down warships—from the horde of drones he’d sent speeding ahead of his ships.

  Which means there’s absolutely no reason I can’t carry out Buccaneer…damn it, he thought grimly. The odds are we’ll be the first task force to execute it, too, which means I’m the one going down in the frigging history books. I don’t think I’m going to like that.

  At least it also meant there’d be no need—or any possible excuse—for Parthian. There’d be ample time for an orderly evacuation, and thank God for it!

  He’d waited until he was positive that would be the case—and until the com lag was at least semi-manageable—before contacting Jahnke’s office and telling her why he was here. Her response had been pretty much what he’d anticipated.

  “You have no conceivable justification for this!” she snapped now from his display. “It’s a blatantly illegal action against an independent and neutral star system! It violates at least a half dozen interstellar treaties—treaties the Solarian League both negotiated and guaranteed—and every conceivable canon of interstellar law!”

  All of which was absolutely true…and had nothing at all to do with his orders, Capriotti thought.

  “I’m very sorry you feel that way, Madame President,” he said. “And, speaking as an individual and not as an officer of the Solarian League Navy, I understand why you do. I deeply regret the orders I’ve been given, but I have no option but to carry them out, and I intend to do so. At the same time, my orders emphasize the vital importance of minimizing any possible avoidable loss of life.” Which was also true, as long as Parthian wasn’t on the table. “That’s why I’m speaking to you now to inform you that you have seventy-two hours to complete your evacuation of the infrastructure in question.”

  He waited for his words to reach her, and saw her expression when they did. If she could have reached him in that moment, she would have ripped out his throat with her bare hands, he thought.

  “This system has maintained cordial and cooperative relations with the Solarian League since the year the League was created,” she told him flatly. “We have never, in all those centuries, been anything but your star nation’s friendly neighbor. And we certainly aren’t participants in any aggression against the League! We’re not Solarians, we aren’t Manticorans, and we’ve been scrupulously neutral. We don’t even have a navy, only a system police force! What you propose is not only blatantly illegal but an atrocity carried out against the life’s blood of my star system!”

  She had an excellent point, he reflected. Not that he intended to admit that Cachalot’s lack of a navy was one of the main reasons he’d been sent here.

  “Madame President, I’m prepared to grant that you haven’t been military participants in the so-called Grand Alliance’s aggression against the Solarian League,” he said.

  He knew he was speaking for the record, that this entire com exchange was probably going to wind up on the public boards throughout the League, and he forced himself to sound calm, measured, and—above all—reasonable. It was hard when what he actually felt was bitter shame. But he was a senior officer of the SLN and he had his orders.

  “Even though you may not have aided the Manticorans and their allies militarily, however,” he continued, “you’ve certainly aided and abetted them in other ways. As your government is well aware, Manticore began its campaign against the Solarian League by way of its blatantly illegal interference with freedom of astrogation and the Solarian economy. In effect, Manticore has weaponized interstellar commerce and directed it against the Solarian League because of my government’s refusal to simply stand aside and enable its raw, unbridled imperialism through our passivity. And, Madame President, your star system has transferred virtually the entirety of its own trade to Manticore and the other star nations who, by their own declaration, are now actively at war with the League. That’s hardly the action of an even-handed neutral, and my government has no option but to consider active collaboration with outlaw regimes which have killed hundreds of thousands of Solarian military personnel and citizens an act of aggression.”

  He met Jahnke’s eyes steadily, even though both of them knew just how tenuous the connection between reality and what he’d just said truly was.

  “The Solarian League takes no pleasure in the destruction of property, and my government is well aware of the economic hardship this will create for the people of your star nation,” he went on in a tone of implacable regret, filling the transmission lag with the rest of the “talking points” with which the Navy and Foreign Affairs had seen fit to provide him. If he gave her the opportunity to respond, she’d probably point out that Manticore’s version of commerce warfare meant the Star Empire and its allies were the only people with whom Cachalot could trade at the moment, and his lords and masters could never have that as part of the official record, now could they?

  “However, it’s clear Manticore has embraced an imperialism which is as much economic as territorial. Not content with the commanding position it already enjoyed, it’s now set out to secure dictatorial control of the entire inhabited galaxy’s economic life. The Solarian League cannot—and will not—allow any star nation to acquire that sort of power, of control and coercion, over its star systems and their citizens. And, since it’s evident that raw aggression and economic domination are the only languages the ‘Star Empire’ understands, the League has no option but to respond to it in its own terms. Much as I may regret the mission which has brought me to your star system, your complicity in Manticore’s assault upon the Solarian League has left my government with no other alternative.

  “Again, I inform you that you have seventy-two hours in which to organize an evacuation of your orbital infrastructure. Obviously, I must also insist on the surrender of the armed units of your System Patrol. Vice Admiral Angelica Helland, my chief of staff, will be in contact with the System Patrol’s commanding officer to arrange that surrender in as peaceful and orderly a fashion as possible. I’m sure I’ve presented you with a great many unpleasant decisions and actions. Again, I regret the necessity of doing so, but I will leave you to deal with them. I will contact you again when my flagship enters Orca orbit. Capriotti, clear.”

  He pressed the stud to kill his com and swiveled his chair to face Commodore Anthony, his staff communications officer.

  “Until I contact her again, I’m unavailable, Roger,” he said. Anthony’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly and it was obvious from his expression that he didn’t look forward to fending off Jahnke’s inevitable fiery demands to speak to Capriotti. But the commodore only nodded.

  Capriotti returned the nod, then turned back to the master plot as Québec and the rest of the task force decelerated toward Orca. He watched the moving icons and wondered how much of his unavailability stemmed from the PR requirements and psychological warfare aspects of Buccaneer…and how much of it stemmed from shame. He remembered his words to Captain Timberlake in their first discussion of the ops order, and they were bitter on his tongue. This wasn’t the reason he’d joined the Navy, but if he had it to do, then he’d damned well do it.

  “We’re ready, Sir,” Lyang-tau Rutgers said quietly.

  Capriotti nodded without speaking. He stood with his hands clasped behind him, gazing into the flag bridge plot. It had been reconfigured for visual display, showing him a needle-sharp vista of the planet Orca and the massive orbital infrastructure about it.

  Cachalot had been settled for a long time, but it wasn’t the best real estate in the known galaxy. Despite the relative dimness of the system primary, whose luminosity was less than fourteen percent that of Sol, Orca’s close orbit—the planetary year was less than three T-months long—produced a mean temperature significantly higher than Old Terra’s. Its tropical zone was virtually uninhabited, and its axial inclination was only nine degrees, which meant it had minimal seasonal variation even outside the all but unendurable tropics. There were, however, almost five billion human beings in its temperate zones…and another three billion in its orbital habitats.

  That was a lot of people to turn into implacable haters, he thought.

  At least the Cachalotians had opted for a sharper segregation between their industrial platforms and their habitats than happened in most star systems. That had probably started, initially, because so many of them had opted for the habitats’ controlled climates in preference to the planet’s from the very beginning. That meant the inhabited neighborhood had grown up even before its industrial base really developed, and separating them had protected their orbital population from the sorts of industrial accidents that could have unfortunate consequences. It had to create commuting problems for a lot of their labor force, but they clearly thought it was worth it, and their building codes had officially enshrined the separation for several centuries now.

  Of course, they’d never seen an “industrial accident” like Buccaneer coming.

  They were still going to lose one orbital habitat—and the homes of over five million of their citizens—anyway. There simply wasn’t any way to demolish the Siesta Three platform’s industrial capability without taking out the entire habitat. Three more major habitats were going to take significant damage, but Rutgers’s demolition crews were confident the housing sections would survive unhurt.

  Not so confident that Jahnke—or me—was going to leave those people aboard when the charges go off. Capriotti snorted mentally. It’s a lot easier to be “confident” about somebody else’s homes, he thought harshly.

  Even without minor considerations like that, destroying the platforms in Orca orbit without creating catastrophic debris strikes on both the planet and the remaining habitats was a nontrivial exercise in its own right. The Snapper Belt platforms, better than fifty light-minutes from the primary, were a much simpler proposition. Snapper’s 644,000 inhabitants had simply been moved en masse to Orca’s surface and a dozen of Capriotti’s destroyers would take out the belt’s entire infrastructure with targeted missile launches. Closer to the planet, that was a nonstarter, however, and he considered the battlecruisers positioned around the first of Rutgers’s targets.

  “Very well, Lyang-tau,” he sighed finally. “Proceed.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Capriotti stayed where he was, watching the visual, as the battlecruisers brought up their impeller wedges. The three major platforms—two fabrication centers and one of Orca’s six primary freight platforms—remained clearly visible from Québec’s more distant orbit. The activated wedges completely enclosed them on three sides, however, cutting off direct visual observation from the planetary surface or any of Orca’s other near-planet habitats or space stations.

  “Detonation in fifteen seconds…mark,” Rutgers said clearly behind him. “Fifteen…ten…five…four…three…two…one—”

  The nuclear charges detonated simultaneously, in bursts of brilliance which hurt the eye. That had to be purely psychosomatic, Capriotti thought, even as he blinked against the brightness. The display automatically filtered their intensity more rapidly than mere organic nerves could respond to it, after all. Maybe it was just that he knew what they must have looked like to the unshielded eye.

  Not even a nuclear blast could completely vaporize several billion tons of space station. That was why he’d placed his battlecruisers’ impeller wedges to intercept any debris. They’d hold their stations until he was positive nothing could get through to Orca or any of the other platforms. Then they’d move on to the next targets on their list.

  He stood for another fifteen seconds, gazing at the spot where the next best thing to two millennia of investment—and the livelihoods of 1.7 million people—had just been wiped from the cosmos. Then he drew a deep breath and looked over his shoulder at his staff.

  “Keep me informed, especially about any debris fields,” he said. “I’ll be in my quarters.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Vice Admiral Helland responded for the entire staff.

  He nodded to them and walked from the flag bridge in silence.

  Hillary Indrakashi Enkateshwara Tower

  City of Old Chicago

  Sol System

  Solarian League

  “This is the reason Irene and I needed someone like you, Natsuko,” Daud al-Fanudahi said in a tone of profound satisfaction. “We wouldn’t have had a clue how to find something like this!”

  “Well, don’t go assuming we’ve really found what we all think we’ve found,” Lieutenant Colonel Okiku replied. Al-Fanudahi stood looking over her shoulder as she sat at one of the desks in the office which had become their private HQ. Now she waved one hand at the display in front of her. “We’ve got plenty of evidence of corruption on all these people, but God knows there’s always corruption—tons of it—here in Sol. So it’s still entirely possible we’re seeing connections that don’t exist. Or connections that do exist but aren’t the ones we think they are, at any rate.”

  “Understood.” Al-Fanudahi nodded. “Same thing happens on our side of the shop. One of the things that’s hardest to avoid—and one of the things that’s biting the Navy on the butt right now, for that matter—is mirror-imaging. Interpreting what the other fellow’s doing through the lens of how you’d do it. If their operating assumptions are different, their decisions and actions are going to be different, too, and it’s hard to check your own fundamental concepts at the door.”

  “There are some similarities with that,” Okiku acknowledged. “It’s a little bit different, from a cop’s perspective, though. It’s not so much our fundamental ‘operational concepts’ as it is our effort to assess someone else’s motivations when we can’t just open a window and peek inside their heads. We know a lot about what these people are doing now; what we have to be careful about is assuming we know why they’re doing it.”