Torch of Freedom

to look at it that way must've taken some doing . . .

'You said there were three things to consider,' he said to Watanapongse after a moment, and the commander nodded.

'The third thing, maybe the most important one of all,' he said, his expression much more somber, 'is that four or five-T-year window between now and the delivery of our first wallers. Even after the SDs start coming out of the yards, it's going to take a while for any sort of volume production to build up. We'll hide as many of 'our' wallers as we can in the flow going to Erewhon, of course, but the odds are good that we're going to have to start shooting at somebody before we have a real wall of battle of our own.'

Stephens felt a distinct stir of alarm, but Rozsak flashed him the lazy, white-toothed smile of a confident tiger.

'Even with a four or five-year delay to our own first waller, we're going to be ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the League, Brent. A long way ahead of the curve. Trust me, the 'not invented here' syndrome is going to kick in back home even after they begin to figure out just how screwed any SLN ship is going to be going up against its Havenite—or, even worse, Manty—equivalent. So, what we're really going to need to tide us over is something that can kick the shit out of anything Frontier Fleet's likely to be sending out towards us with unfriendly intentions. Right?'

'With the proviso that I think we need to do a little worrying about the Battle Fleet units that might be sent along behind that first wave,' Stephens agreed a bit caustically.

'Well, of course.' Rozsak chuckled. 'And it just happens we've come up with something that should let us do that, at least as long as nobody back on Old Earth is paying any attention to all of those ridiculous rumors about how Manticore and Haven have been sticking multiple drives into their missiles. Nonsense, of course! I'm sure those reports are just as exaggerated as Commander Watanapongse's diligent staff has consistently reported they are! Still, it's occurred to us that if someone were building multidrive missiles, and if they happened to have themselves a couple of dozen freighters—freighters that might happen to have military-grade drives, and maybe even sidewalls—that could carry, oh, I don't know, three or four hundred missile pods at a time, then they could probably do a lot of damage to a fleet equipped only with single-drive missiles, don't you think?'

Stephens's eyes narrowed, and Rozsak chuckled again, more harshly.

'That's one of the things Edie and I have been kicking around when we started thinking about doctrine and ship designs. And it's the real reason we're going to be building that extra tonnage into our light combatants. Most of it's going into fire control, not extra weapons.'

'And the beauty of it,' Watanapongse said, 'is that Carlucci already has a commercial design—they picked it up from some outfit in Silesia—for a freighter designed around plug-in cargo modules. It's one of those ideas that sounds really good on paper, but it hasn't worked out that well for the Sillies as a commercial proposition. It's actually less flexible, it turns out, than what you can do reconfiguring a standard cargo hold's interior. But that's not something that's going to be instantly evident looking at it from the outside, and the basic construction just happens to be something that's going to lend itself well to a 'merchantship' pod-carrier design. The Sector government is going to be buying quite a few of them—several dozen, at least—as part of our move to broaden our investment base in Erewhon. We've got a lot of short domestic cargo routes of our own, just like the Sillies, so if it works for them, it ought to work for us, right? And even if it turns out they aren't the most cost-efficient possible way to haul freight around, so what? It was still worth it just to get our toes further into the Erewhonese door.'

'And,' Rozsak said quietly, 'if it just happens that our new ships' plug-in cargo modules just happen to have exactly the same dimensions as the missile pods the Erewhonese Navy is going to be building for its own new ships-of-the-wall, well'—this time his smile could have liquefied helium—'it's a big galaxy, and coincidences happen all the time.'

Chapter Three

Catherine Montaigne looked down at the very large suitcase on the bed. The look was not an affectionate one.

'Do you realize, Anton, what an archaeological relic this is? We're coming close on two thousand years since the human race left our planet of origin—and we still have to pack our own bags.'

Anton Zilwicki pursed his lips. 'This is one of those damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't, and damned-if-I-try- to-keep-my-mouth-shut situations.'

She frowned. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

He pointed with a thick, stubby finger to the door which led to the personal services bay of the bedroom. 'There is a household robot in there with a perfectly functional travel program. I haven't personally packed a bag myself in . . . oh, years. Can't remember how many, any longer.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Well, sure. You're a man. Three outfits to your name, leaving aside socks and underwear—identical socks and underwear—and the sartorial imagination of a pot roast. Meat, potatoes, carrots, what more do you need?'

'Like I said, damned any way I turn.' He glanced at the door, as if seeking an escape route. 'The last time I looked, our daughters Helen and Berry were both women. So is Princess Ruth. And not one of the three has personally packed a suitcase in years, either.'

'Well, of course not. Helen's in the military, so willy-nilly she's been tainted by male attitudes. Berry grew up without a pot to piss in, and she still accumulates personal belongings as if she had the budget of a rat in the Terran warrens. And Ruth is just plain unnatural. The only member of the royal family in . . . oh, hell, ever, who wants to be a spy.'

She straightened up and squared her shoulders. 'I, on the other hand, retain normal female customs and views. So I know perfectly good and well that no fucking robot is going to pack my suitcase properly. Being fair to the critters, I'm still making up my mind what to put in the suitcase until it's closed.'

'You're also one of the richest females in the Star Kingdom, Cathy. Hell, the Star Empire—for that matter, the whole damn galaxy, since the wealth of the Manticoran upper crust matches that of almost anybody in the Solarian League, damn their black and wicked aristocratic hearts. So why don't you have one of your servants pack your suitcase?'

Montaigne looked uncomfortable. 'Doesn't seem right,' she said. 'Some things a person has to do for herself. Use the toilet, clean your teeth, pack your own suitcase. It'd be grotesque to have a servant do that sort of thing.'

She stared at the suitcase for a few seconds, and then sighed. 'Besides, packing my own suitcase lets me stall. I'm going to miss you, Anton. A lot.'

'I'll miss you too, love.'

'When will I see you again?' She turned her head to look at him. 'Best estimate. You can spare me the lecture about the temporal uncertainties of intelligence work.'

'Honestly, it is hard to know. But . . . I figure a number of months at a minimum, Cathy, and it could easily stretch to a year or longer.'

'Yeah, that's about what I figured. Dammit, if I could . . .'

'Don't be silly. The Liberals' political situation on Manticore is far too critical for you to leave the Star Kingdom again once you get back home. As it is, you probably stretched it by staying here on Torch for so many weeks after Berry's coronation.'

'I don't regret it, though. Not for one moment.'

'Neither do I—and, for sure, Berry appreciated it. But while I figure you can afford one extended vacation'—he smiled as crookedly as she had earlier—'given that the occasion was the coronation of your daughter—you can't really do it again. Not until the political mess gets straightened out.'

'It'd be better to say, 'political opportunity.' The repercussions of that quick trip you took back home a few weeks ago will have had time to percolate, by now.'

Between the time Anton had returned to Erewhon from Smoking Frog with the critical information he'd found