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Chapter Thirty-Seven
"Good morning, Mr. Commissioner." Admiral Josef Byng bestowed his best gracious, depress-the-bureaucrat's-pretensions-without-stepping-on-him-too-hard smile on Lorcan Verrochio as he stepped into the Frontier Security commissioner's Meyers office. "How can the Navy be of assistance to you today?"
"Good morning, Admiral," Verrochio replied. "I appreciate your getting back to me so promptly."
Verrochio's smile was far less patronizing than Byng's, although not, perhaps, for the reasons the Battle Fleet admiral might have believed. That entrance was just like Byng, Verrochio thought. The man was a native of Old Earth herself, and like quite a few citizens of the ancient mother world, he gazed down from that lofty pi
But that was just fine with Lorcan Verrochio. In fact, the commissioner was delighted to see it, because he felt far more nervous about this entire arrangement than he'd let on to Hongbo Junyan.
He wanted his own back against Manticore—oh, yes, he wanted his own back! And he intended to have it. On the other hand, he'd come to the conclusion that Commodore Thurgood's warnings about the efficiency and effectiveness of the Royal Manticoran Navy were probably justified. None of the evidence he'd seen from Monica argued against the Frontier Fleet officer's conclusions, at any rate, and Verrochio wished he'd had the benefit of Thurgood's insights before Hongbo had convinced him to sign on for a return match.
Unfortunately, Thurgood's report had arrived on the commissioner's desk only after he'd embraced Manpower's new designs. At which point it had inspired a bit of rethinking on Verrochio's part. The size and power of the Battle Fleet formations Manpower had managed to manipulate into position to support its new operation were still reassuring, but much less so than they'd been before the commodore's damned memo. And, Verrochio admitted to himself, they were almost equally frightening. He'd been aware for years of how Mesa's tentacles in general—and Manpower's in particular—extended into and permeated Frontier Security's upper reaches. He hadn't realized until now that Manpower also had the pull to actually manipulate the deployment of such powerful Battle Fleet formations.
Oh, get a grip, Lorcan! he scolded himself yet again. Sure, it looks like a huge diversion of combat power to you, but that's because you're a Frontier Security commissioner, not a frigging admiral. You're used to seeing pe
That was undoubtedly true, but it still didn't change the fact that Manpower had somehow managed to gather up more firepower than ninety-five percent of the galaxy's formal navies could have massed and get it deployed to an out-of-the-way corner like Lorcan Verrochio's. Which suggested to him (although he'd been very careful not to mention it to Valery Ottweiler or Ottweiler's buddy Hongbo) that it was past time for him to reevaluate just how deep into the League's bureaucratic and political structures the various Mesan corporations really could reach . . . and what that meant for him.
In the meantime, however, that recognition of Manpower's reach was one of the reasons Verrochio was secretly delighted by Byng's attitude. He'd come to the conclusion that disappointing Manpower would be even less wise than he'd originally thought, which meant there was no going back on his quiet little agreement with them. And, to be honest, he didn't really want to. Or not as long as there was anyone else around to scapegoat if things went as badly as Thurgood's analysis suggested they might, at least. And that was where Verrochio's good friend Josef Byng came in.
Despite his own trepidation, Lorcan Verrochio sure as hell wasn't going to shed any tears if the Manties got reamed, and he wasn't going to lose any sleep over what happened to a Battle Fleet asshole like Josef Byng, either. In fact, in Verrochio's private best-case scenario, Byng would shoot up the Manties, providing the incident Manpower obviously wanted, and get his own ass shot off in the process. And the commissioner intended to be very careful about exactly what the official record indicated about just which fool had rushed in where the wiser and cooler-headed angels of Frontier Security and Frontier Fleet had declined to tread.
"Well, Mr. Commissioner," Byng said with another smile as Verrochio shook his hand and nodded welcomingly to Admiral Thimár, "your memo indicated you were concerned about something the Fleet might be able to assist with. So," he waved his free hand at his chief of staff, "here Admiral Thimár and I are."
"So I see, so I see."
Verrochio ushered his visitors to chairs which gave them an unimpeded view of Pine Mountain, then settled back down behind his desk once more and pressed the button to summon the servants who were primed and waiting. They appeared as if by magic with trays of coffee, tea, and snacks which they distributed with deft, courteous efficiency before they disappeared once more. Byng and Thimár ignored them as if they didn't even exist, of course.
"Vice-Commissioner Hongbo and I," Verrochio continued then, nodding to where Hongbo sat nursing his own cup of coffee, "have just been reviewing some rather . . . bothersome information, Admiral Byng. Information regarding a situation which may end up requiring action on the part of the League's official representatives in the region. We're not quite certain how best to proceed at this point, however, and we'd appreciate your input."
"Of course, Mr. Commissioner." Byng sipped tea a bit noisily, then patted his lips and mustache delicately with a linen napkin. "May I ask what sort of information is proving so bothersome?"
"Well," Verrochio replied with an air of troubled candor, "to be honest, it concerns the New Tuscany System and the Manticorans." Less experienced eyes might not have noticed the way Byng stiffened slightly in his chair, and the commissioner continued as if he hadn't noticed it, either. "Part of my problem, I think, is that, to be perfectly frank, I'm not really confident in my own mind that I can consider anything that concerns Manticore without prejudice at this point." He produced a crooked smile. "After what happened in Monica, and after all of the wild accusations they've been hurling about at everyone concerning that business in Split and Montana, I feel a certain undeniable amount of . . . automatic hostility, I suppose, where they're concerned."
He paused, his expression pensive, and Byng cleared his throat.
"Under the circumstances, Mr. Commissioner, I doubt anyone could reasonably be surprised by that," the admiral said after a moment. "Certainly I don't see how it could be any other way. After my own visit to Monica, I'm convinced the people back home who sent me out here—partly because of their concerns over Manticoran imperialism, although I'm not really supposed to admit that to just anyone—had a right to be concerned."
"Really?"
Verrochio put a carefully measured dose of worry into his one-word response, tempered by exactly the right amount of relief that someone whose opinion he respected didn't think he was jumping at shadows. He gazed at Byng for a second or two, just long enough for his expression to register, then twitched his shoulders in a small shrug.