On stormy seas, p.25
On Stormy Seas, page 25
“Setting off EMPs on human worlds is illegal.”
“Not when they’re small scale, focused and directed at legitimate targets. But nice try. You’re so cute when you invoke laws you don’t obey. There’s a future in politics for you. A Commonwealth senator’s seat, perhaps? You could always ask your friend Sara. And when you do, please give her my love, and tell her better luck next time.”
With that, Dunmoore turned on her heels and left.
— Thirty-Five —
“My Marines said watching you own a dozen top mobsters was a thing of true beauty, Admiral. A shame we couldn’t record the operation. I get the feeling we missed the show of the century.”
“What operation?” Dunmoore chuckled at Pushkin’s mock crestfallen expression. “I will confess I enjoyed myself immensely.”
“But what would have happened if this Lassieux creature had picked up your gun and fired?”
“Nothing.”
Pushkin gave her a suspicious glare.
“What you mean, nothing?”
“It wasn’t powered. By the time she figured that out, one of the Marines would have winged her, or I would have taken my weapon back.”
“I’m sure Vince had a heart attack, though.”
She shook her head.
“No. We discussed every potential move I could make beforehand, and that was one of them. This was the most thoroughly choreographed operation I’ve ever planned. Thank you once again for loaning me your Pathfinders and their dropships. I'll take the blame if someone finds out we used them on a sovereign Commonwealth planet in their mercenary guise.”
“Still, I’m happy we didn’t need Sea Eagle One again.”
“That was just a contingency in case things went spectacularly wrong. I didn’t expect to need another extraction under fire.”
“What happens now?”
“I fix what I can at the command level and turn 3rd Fleet back into the aggressive war-fighting machine it once was. Vincenzo and his colleagues will go witch-hunting through the headquarters and Starbase 30 and ferret out those who sold their loyalties to the Pègre or the SSB. And we will wait for whatever orders may come from Earth.”
“I suggest you ask Kathryn to arrange orders giving you — well, Admiral Hogue, but we know who the real boss will be — tactical control over the 101st. No one on Earth would do it when Hogue asked, probably at Keo’s urging so they could make sure they directed us even further away from trafficking activity. But the situation has radically changed, and you’re best placed to integrate my activities with those of your battle groups now that we know about the systems they’ve been using as hubs. I don’t have specific orders at the moment beyond the general, go out and find something to kill. Is there a system in particular you want cleansed?”
“How about Mission Colony? It’s been a thorn in our flanks since the Shrehari gave it back. Your ships may have intercepted a few traffickers, but there’s a major hub hidden somewhere on the surface with the connivance of the colonial administration, perhaps even the governor himself.”
“Can do. Get orders out to the local patrol that it comes under my command when I arrive in the system and stays so until I leave.”
“I’ll give you the orders, and you can present them upon arrival. Since we don’t know how deeply they’ve penetrated 3rd Fleet communications, I won’t risk letting anyone find out the 101st is on the way.”
Pushkin put on a rueful expression.
“Right. I should remind myself there’s still a lot of manure shoveling to do in your HQ. And on that note, it occurs to me you can’t live in your house anymore. As in flashing target, if not for the Dordogne mobsters, then the SSB.”
“I’m way ahead of you. Or at least Vince is. I’m moving into a vacant senior officer’s house in the Joint Base Dordogne residence quarter tomorrow. Vince and his pals are moving my personal possessions over, and I’ll be putting my place on the market. Not that I’m afraid of the mobsters.”
“You? Never.”
“But idiots from the SSB may try sending me up in the middle of the night despite what the Pègre wants, and I’d rather not put my neighbors in the unenviable position of becoming collateral damage.”
Pushkin gave her a wink.
“Always thinking of others. That’s one of the many things we love about you.”
“You give me too much credit. After my performance at Antoine Calvert’s beach house, I’d never have felt safe in my home again. After all, he claims friendship with Sara Lauzier, and she already has plenty of reasons to want me dead.”
***
“Thanks for meeting me, Zeke.”
Holt sat down beside Hersom on the lookout bench and studied the Palace of the Stars complex across Lake Geneva’s leaden surface. It was a cold, rainy day, and both men wore overcoats and broad-brimmed hats to keep themselves warm and dry. As always, when he met the head of the Special Security Bureau, Holt wore a business suit rather than his uniform.
“What do you want, Blayne?” He asked in a conversational tone.
“Sara’s on the warpath. I tried to convince her she should simply write Dordogne off as a clear loss, but she wants Siobhan’s blood.”
“Ah. So her friend Antoine Calvert complained about Siobhan taking over the entire Pègre, did he?”
Hersom turned his head toward Holt and smiled.
“If what I heard is even just a fraction of what happened, Siobhan outdid herself and found a truly inventive solution to your trafficking and corruption problem. Cutting off the Pègre’s interstellar reach will put a serious dent in the financing of illicit operations worth billions.”
“And strangle political financing, Blayne. Let’s not forget where a good chunk of the ill-gotten wealth flows after they laundered it in exchange for laws and regulations that keep the illegal trade alive, and the Armed Forces leashed.”
Hersom nodded once.
“Indeed. You can see why Sara is furious. She was getting a huge percentage of her donations from people who live off trafficking in the Rim Sector. Dordogne’s Pègre was not only one of the major groups fueling untraceable cash into her coffers but also charged with neutering 3rd Fleet’s effectiveness on behalf of every OCG involved. Calvert and company were handsomely rewarded to corrupt Horace Keo and others at 3rd Fleet HQ. If Siobhan cleans up and is free to hunt for trafficking hubs in the Rim, everyone will be affected — criminals, money launderers, crooked politicians, corrupt bureaucrats. And that spells crisis for many people here on Earth because it will take years for the various trafficking and money laundering channels to be re-established elsewhere.”
“You’re free with information today, Blayne. It’s not your style to help us, let alone against the redoubtable Madame Lauzier, our next SecGen and your next immediate boss, provided you stick around. What gives?”
“Enlightened self-interest, my friend. Sara is planning a campaign of unrestricted political warfare against Siobhan in particular and the Fleet in general. I’ve already told her kinetic action against Siobhan is out of the question. So now she wants the SSB to play a key role in bringing Siobhan down and curbing the Armed Forces’ operational autonomy.”
“Which will rebound on the SSB in an excruciatingly painful way, as I believe my boss might have mentioned in the past.”
“I understand that, but Sara either can’t or doesn’t care. As you might imagine, I’m deeply concerned about my organization’s survival and future effectiveness. Thus, my first loyalty will always be to the Bureau, not politicians who come and go.”
“The deep state must endure,” Holt said in a sententious tone.
“I got news for you. We’re both part of the deep state, even if we see things from radically different angles.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re being friendly, and you know how easily I become suspicious of other people’s motives.”
Hersom let out a snort of amusement.
“Suspicion is your default setting, Zeke. And mine. Sara thinks the SSB is her private plaything and will sacrifice it for political purposes. Oh, she doesn’t think of it as sacrificing, of course, because she doesn’t understand that while we may thwart you in the opening stages, you will eventually crush us and do so with extreme prejudice. I can resist her only to a certain extent before she ensures the SecGen fires me and appoints someone unsuitable but utterly under Sara’s control.”
“Meaning for the good of the SSB and your career, you want Sara cut down to size. And the means you’ve chosen is ensuring her campaign against the Fleet and Siobhan fails by minimizing the Bureau’s involvement and maximizing the Fleet’s situational awareness.”
“Precisely. Siobhan’s little coup d’état gave me the perfect opening, so you might say she did me a good turn for once, but don’t tell her. She might look for a way of screwing me over again.”
Holt allowed himself a smile.
“She just might. And because of that, no promises.”
“I’ll be suspending SSB operations on Dordogne for a while and withdrawing my agents so that Sara can’t force my hand if ever she orders direct action against Siobhan and 3rd Fleet HQ.”
“Orders?” Another smile. “You’re confirming Sara Lauzier still wields the same power behind the throne as during her father’s tenure. Thanks for that. We thought so, but it’s nice to know we were right.”
“You didn’t hear it from me. And that’s all I wanted to discuss. Let’s stay in touch, shall we?” With that, Hersom stood and walked away, leaving a pensive Holt to stare at the Palace of the Stars where Senator Sara Lauzier was plotting his best friend’s downfall.
It was time to speak with the CNO about giving Siobhan the tactical control over the 101st Battle Group she’d requested. That way, she could continue fighting with her own praetorian guard at her back.
— Thirty-Six —
The weeks following that fateful Saturday when Dunmoore forced terms on the Pègre were eerily quiet. The authorities considered both warehouse destructions accidental after their owners paid off the fire service investigators. Nothing was heard about the electronics in Calvert’s beach house getting fried by EMP bursts, either.
But Dunmoore no longer received invitations to socialize with Marseilles’ crème de la crème, not even from Victor Herault, the man who was supposed to become her honey pot. That suited her. Leaving the base had become a chore since she could no longer travel without an armed escort. And if Admiral Hogue had any inkling of what had happened, she mercifully gave no sign and was content to let Dunmoore take care of 3rd Fleet’s day-to-day operations.
Two more of Vincenzo’s cousins had appeared on Dordogne, and they, along with Lou, Gus, and Vincenzo, formed her bodyguard. Whenever she traveled beyond the gates, at least two of them would be with her, armed to the teeth. When she didn’t need an escort, they worked on ferreting out more of the Pègre’s helpers in the ranks, which Dunmoore deemed more critical than her rare visits to a restaurant or enjoying a hike among the vineyards. And so she spent her off-duty hours in the senior officers’ residence — a spacious four-bedroom bungalow — she’d drawn from base housing.
It offered all the privacy she could want, thanks to tall walls surrounding the property and a front gate at the curb which remained shut against anyone not on her admittance list. Vincenzo had ensured its security and surveillance network were the best the Fleet could offer and warned the military police that any alarm from Vice Admiral Dunmoore’s residence must be checked out immediately.
But loneliness soon overcame her. Without friends on the planet and no way of making new ones, Dunmoore spent most of her waking hours immersed in work, though she only sat at her desk the standard eight to four so as not to give others a bad example by continuously working overtime. Yet everyone knew she was putting in more time after supper at home, based on the number of notes, memos, plans, and proposals circulating the next morning.
The only bright spots were Pushkin and Guthren’s visits whenever Iolanthe was in port and the occasional party she hosted for the 101st’s captains. The unauthorized raid on the suspected trafficker hub hiding in the backcountry behind Ventano, Mission Colony’s capital, had been a success with tons of illegal merchandise destroyed, several dozen traffickers seized for transport to Parth, and the buildings and landing strip vaporized by kinetic strikes from orbit. The colonial administration protested at what they called an attack condoned, if not carried out by the Navy, proving at least some of the senior people were in the traffickers’ pay. But Dunmoore ignored the copy sent to 3rd Fleet and heard nothing from Earth.
Yet she suspected those weeks were merely the calm before the storm.
***
“Did you hear Sara Lauzier’s speech in the Senate concerning the egregious, nay outrageous actions of a Navy gone rogue?” Holt asked as he joined Kowalski at her table in the cafeteria, coffee cup and fruit bowl in hand for his afternoon snack.
“You mean the one that if she’d made it outside the Senate chamber, we’d have sued her for libel?”
“That would be it. She’s quite the rabble-rousing orator. Notice who among the honorable senators applauded and who sat on their hands?”
Kowalski nodded.
“The usual split. Sara’s playing with fire, and she knows it. But she’s counting on the slight Home World majority to support her against the OutWorlders.”
“Sara didn’t mention Siobhan by name, but anyone who knows what’s going on in the Rim Sector now that she’s kicked 3rd Fleet into high gear with help from the 101st got the message that Vice Admiral Dunmoore is the biggest, most egregious rogue of all and must be stopped.”
“Then little Sara will be deeply chagrined when Siobhan sends her ships and Marines to wipe out the trafficking hubs on several Rim worlds, including our favorites, Andoth and Garonne. It’ll be much harder to hide the fact that the Fleet is wielding its broom.”
Holt scoffed. A marginal world that subsisted on mining, Andoth’s sole habitable zone lay at the bottom of a ten-kilometer-deep chasm slicing through the planet’s broken landscape for thousands of kilometers, where the air pressure sufficed to support human life. Much like Mission Colony, Garonne had little by way of population dotting the shores and riverbanks. Most of it was tropical and subtropical forest.
“Why should we give a tinker’s damn if the evidence points at us? Andoth has needed a serious cleanup since well before the war, and every senator with over two brain cells knows it.”
Kowalski gave him a wry smile. “So mainly those from the OutWorlds, then.”
“Cruel, but accurate. Garonne?” He shrugged. “Just as bad as any frontier colony. Let Siobhan unleash the full fury of her 3rd Fleet and see how Sara Lauzier spins that into a diatribe against us.”
“Oh, the CNO has signed classified orders to that effect, and since Iolanthe’s Pathfinder task group might not be enough, the 101st will take on a squadron from the 1st Special Forces Regiment, both of the latter to be TACON to 3rd Fleet for the operation. Siobhan can decide how many of her own units she’ll add to the mission. But the strike force will be under Gregor Pushkin’s command unless she climbs aboard one of the 3rd’s ships rigged with a flag bridge, brings along a task group to back up the 101st, and directs the operation herself. None of her rear admirals are to be involved since we can’t be one hundred percent sure none of them are playing on the wrong side. Horace Keo couldn’t have been an isolated case. Siobhan has complete freedom of action to decide on force composition and operational planning.”
Holt let out a low whistle.
“Zeb Lowell is getting serious.”
“He’s always been serious, but your boss got information from the Colonial Office’s intelligence service pinpointing trafficker bases on those two worlds. Now he’s pushing through the gap created by Siobhan’s actions like a good commander and reinforcing success.”
“Against Sara Lauzier? Won’t she have SecGen Chu pounding on the Grand Admiral’s desk?”
Another smile.
“Who do you think green-lighted Lowell exploiting the situation?”
“Best news I’ve heard all day. And if I were a betting man, I’d say Siobhan will take personal command, and she won’t just stop at Andoth and Garonne. Expect the largest scale deployment since the war. She’ll make sure the traffickers in several places leave nothing for Sara to present as evidence of the Navy’s cruelty.”
“You mean the Navy declaring war against the good citizens of the Commonwealth? She’ll go there, mark my words. Lauzier knows the only effective opposition against her Centralist cabal is the Fleet, even though we pretend to be non-political.”
“Oo-rah.” Holt pumped his fist.
***
“An inspection tour?” Hogue stared at her new deputy commander as if Dunmoore had grown a second head.
“And impromptu war games with each battle group, so I can judge their state of readiness.”
“Well, I never. Horace didn’t do those sorts of things.”
Dunmoore gave Hogue an apologetic shrug.
“I’m not Horace, Admiral. But I know this part of the galaxy better than any other flag officer. Do you have any objections if I took a task group from Battle Group 30, say, Salamanca, along with a trio of frigates to convey me under Commodore Nieri?”
Hogue made a dismissive gesture.
“Of course not. I’m sure Quintin won’t mind, provided they’re not just back from patrol and crews need rest. Paola Nieri will be thrilled to get away from the office.”
“Salamanca and the three frigates spent their allotted turn in spacedock, they’ve been resupplied, and their crew got time ashore. I’ll re-jig the deployment schedule so we can spare all four from training and patrol duty for the next few weeks.”
“Then, by all means, Siobhan, head out there, show the flag, and enjoy yourself. I’m hearing you’ve not been socializing much since you took over from Horace, so you might as well sail for the stars.”
