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Chapter Fifty-Three
HMS Ericsson erupted over the hyper wall into the Spindle system in a starbust of blue transit energy twenty-seven days after leaving Dresden.
She sent her identity and notice that she carried dispatches to HMS Hercules via grav-pulse as soon as she made translation, and a trickle of consternation flowed uphill as the news of her arrival wended its way towards the superdreadnought's flag deck. Ericsson was a depot ship. She wasn't a dispatch boat, and she was supposed to be permanently stationed in Montana, supporting the Southern Patrol.
No one knew what she was doing here, but no one expected it to be good.
"Dispatches?" Captain Loretta Shoupe frowned at Hercules ' com officer. "From Montana?"
"That's what I'm assuming at the moment, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander said. "But assume is all I can do. Unless you want me to send a query back?"
Shoupe considered. According to the time chop on the arrival message, it had been receipted nineteen minutes before it was actually delivered to her. Allowing for decryption time and the fact that the communications officer had hand-delivered it to her, which had required him to walk it up six decks and down the next best thing to a quarter-kilometer of passages, that wasn't too bad. But the total transit time for Ericsson from the hyper limit to Flax orbit would be approximately two and a half hours, which meant it would be another two hours and fifteen minutes before she reached Hercules .
She sca
"Yes," she said. "Ask them to confirm the originator and the addressee of their dispatches."
"From Terekhov, you say?" It was Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo's turn to frown. "Aboard Ericsson ?"
"Yes, Sir." Shoupe stood just inside the hatch of his day cabin, and he beckoned for her to come further in and take a seat. "It's from Terekhov," she continued as she obeyed the silent order, "but she didn't come direct from Montana. According to her arrival message, she's inbound from Dresden."
" Dresden? " Khumalo sat straighter behind his desk, and his frown deepened. "What the hell was she doing in Dresden?"
"I don't know yet, Sir. I'm guessing Terekhov sent her there for some reason before she came on to Spindle."
"But she's carrying Alpha-Three priority dispatches from Terekhov , not from anyone in Dresden?"
"That's correct, Sir. Lieutenant Commander Spears requested and received confirmation of that."
"That's ridiculous," Khumalo fumed. "If his message is so damned important, why send it so roundabout? Going by way of Dresden added almost three weeks to the direct transit time! Besides," his frown became an active scowl, "there's a dispatch boat assigned to the Montanan government, and she could have made the trip direct from Montana in ten days, a fifth of the time he he took sending it this way!"
"I know, Sir. But I'm afraid I don't have enough information even to speculate on what's going on. Except to say we'll know one way or another in about-" she checked her chrono "-another hour and fifty-eight minutes."
"He's done what ?"
Baroness Medusa wasn't doing any frowning. She was staring at Rear Admiral Khumalo in stark disbelief.
"It's all in his dispatch, Milady," Khumalo said in the voice of a man still dealing with his own disbelief. "He's come up with some wild suspicion that the Republic of Monica— Monica , of all damned places!-is preparing some lunatic military operation here in the Cluster."
"So he stole a merchantship-a Solarian merchantship-put a Navy crew on board her, and sent her off to violate Monica's territorial space?" the Provisional Governor demanded.
"Ah, actually, Milady," Shoupe said a bit nervously, "that part of it makes a certain amount of sense."
" None of this makes any sense, Loretta!" Khumalo snarled. "The man's chasing phantoms!"
"That's obviously one possibility, Sir," Shoupe acknowledged. "But it's not the only one," she added stubbornly. Admiral and Provisional Governor alike turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "I'm not saying he's right, Sir. There's no way for any of us to know that at this point. But if he is right, the sooner we confirm it, the better. And if we can possibly keep the Monicans from realizing we have confirmed it, the advantage could be enormous. And-"
"And going to call on Monica to investigate with a Queen's ship would make that impossible," Baroness Medusa finished for her.
"Exactly. A freighter, on the other hand, especially a Solly freighter, probably has a pretty good chance of getting in and out without arousing any suspicion."
"But if it does arouse any suspicion, and it's stopped and searched, the discovery that it has a Navy crew-a Navy crew that stole the ship in the first place-will make the situation ten times as bad as if he'd sailed straight through Monica in Hexapuma !" Khumalo threw in.
"Excuse me," Gregor O'Shaughnessy said, "but I came in on this late. What makes Captain Terekhov think the Monicans are up to something in the first place?"
"That's... a little involved," Commander Chandler said. Khumalo's intelligence officer glanced at the rear admiral considerably more nervously than Shoupe had. "He's included a summary of all the evidence which forms the basis of his analysis, and he's copied his intelligence files for you and the Provisional Governor, so you can check both the evidence and his conclusions for yourself. The short version's that he and Van Dort have an informant who claims the Jessyk Combine delivered a large number of shipyard technicians, well versed in naval applications, to Monica. Apparently, according to this same source, Jessyk's sending in a flock of freighters configured as minelayers, as well. At Jessyk's cost, not Monica's. And the same ship that delivered the technicians saw what looked like two very large repair or depot ships in Monica, at Eroica Station, its main naval yard, when it dropped off the techs. And it was also the ship used to run arms to Nordbrandt and Westman."
"Westman!" the baroness said suddenly. "That's another thing. What's happening with Westman in the middle of all this?"
"That's actually one of the bright points, Milady," Chandler replied. "Apparently, Westman's laid down his weapons and accepted an amnesty offer from President Suttles."
"Well, thank God there's some good news!" Khumalo grated.
"Forgive me, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy said, "but assuming this merchantship— Copenhagen , you said it was called?" Khumalo nodded, and the civilian intelligence specialist continued. "Well, assuming Copenhagen gets into and out of Monica without being intercepted or boarded, where's the problem?"
"Where's the problem?" Khumalo repeated. "Where's the problem ?" He glared at O'Shaughnessy. "I'll tell you where the problem is, Mr. O'Shaughnessy. Not content to steal a Solarian-registry freighter-a fact which is going to come out, eventually, you may be sure-and use it to violate a sovereign star nation's territoriality, Captain Terekhov's also seen fit to order every unit of the Southern Patrol in Tillerman, Talbott, and Dresden to join him in Montana. He's assembled himself an entire squadron-somewhere between eight and fifteen Queen's ships, depending on who was in-system and who was in transit between-and, assuming he kept to the schedule which he so kindly provided to us, he left Montana with that squadron ten days ago."
"Going where?" O'Shaughnessy was noticeably paler than he'd been a moment before, and Khumalo seemed to take a certain gloomy satisfaction in the change.
"His immediate objective is a point approximately one hundred light-years from Montana-thirty-eight light-years from Monica-where he expects to rendezvous with Copenhagen sometime in the next ten days to two weeks."
"Jesus Christ," O'Shaughnessy said prayerfully, "please tell me he's not going to-?"
"It's the only explanation for why he chose this peculiar way to get his dispatches to the Admiral in the first place, Gregor," Shoupe said heavily. "He's made it physically impossible for us to stop him."
"He's a frigging lunatic!" O'Shaughnessy snapped in a horrified voice. "What kind of loose warhead is the Navy giving ships to, goddamn it?"
Shoupe glared at him, anger sparkling in her dark brown eyes, and even Khumalo gave him a dirty look. The rear admiral opened his mouth, but Dame Estelle's raised hand stopped him. The Provisional Governor gave O'Shaughnessy a stern look, and pointed one index finger at him like a pistol.
"Don't let your prejudices run away with your mouth before you engage your brain, Gregor." She didn't even raise her voice, but it stung like the flick of a whip. O'Shaughnessy flinched visibly, and she gave him a cold, level stare. "Captain Terekhov's intentionally arranged matters so that he becomes the obvious sacrificial lamb if one becomes necessary. I once knew another Navy captain who would've done precisely the same thing if she'd believed what he apparently does. He may be wrong, but he is not a lunatic, and he's deliberately placed his career on the chopping block. Not simply to back up what he believes in, but so that the Queen will be free to court-martial him if she needs to prove to the galaxy at large that her Government had nothing to do with his totally unauthorized foray."
"I— " O'Shaughnessy paused and cleared his throat. "Forgive me, Admiral. Loretta. Ambrose." He bowed to each uniformed officer in turn. "The Provisional Governor's right. I spoke before I thought."
"Believe me, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Khumalo said heavily, "I doubt very much that you could possibly think of anything unflattering to say about Captain Terekhov's mental processes which hasn't already passed through my own mind. Which isn't to say the Provisional Governor's wrong in any way. It's just that the entire notion seems so preposterous, so bizarre, I simply can't believe it's possible."