A Rising Thunder

“And Rajani still hasn’t managed to get Imogene Tsang to Old Chicago where we could ask her exactly what her orders in Beowulf were, either, has he?” Quartermain observed. She glanced at Kolokoltsov from the corner of one eye. “She was a hell of a lot more confrontational than she was supposed to be. I can’t help wondering if maybe her instructions — and Filareta’s — might not have included a couple of clauses we didn’t know about.”

“I can see where you’d wonder that,” MacArtney acknowledged, “but I don’t think that’s what happened. Not in Filareta’s case, anyway. I don’t know what the hell did happen, but I have — had, I suppose — met him, and he wasn’t the kind to commit suicide on someone else’s orders, no matter who the someone who gave them might be.”

“Even if that is exactly what he did.” Abruzzi shook his head when MacArtney stabbed another sharp look in his direction. “I’m not arguing with your analysis of his character, Nathan. I’m just saying something caused him to commit suicide.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Malachai!” Quartermain said disgustedly. “Please don’t climb on the Manties’ mind-control nanotech bandwagon!”

“I have no intention of doing anything of the sort, Omosupe,” Abruzzi replied coldly. “First, because the entire notion is ridiculous. But, second, because even suggesting there might be something to the Manties’ claims in that regard would be the first step in legitimizing all their other claims about this ‘Mesan Alignment’ and the way we’ve been allowing it to manipulate us.”

“Well, we’re going to have to issue some kind of statement,” Wodoslawski pointed out. “The Manties’ recordings of Harrington’s conversation with Filareta are already hitting the news channels, and they make it pretty damn clear she gave him every opportunity to surrender, and he chose to fire on her instead. I hate to say it, but that’s pretty damning evidence of who’s to blame for this massacre.”

“And it’s only a matter of time before Felicia Hadley starts screaming about it in the Assembly,” Kolokoltsov agreed. “She’s been justifying Beowulf’s opposition to Tsang’s passage on the argument that Beowulf’s refusal actually saved the lives of Tsang’s crews. What happened to Filareta’s only going to strengthen her position in that regard.”

“The hell with Hadley!” MacArtney said harshly. “The newsies are going to be all over this. Even some of our ‘special friends’ in the media are going to find it hard not to join the pack on this one, because, frankly, they’ll lose a hell of a lot of credibility if they don’t. And that doesn’t even consider someone like that incredible pain in the ass O’Hanrahan. She’ll be all over this like stink on… Well, you get the idea.”

“One of my people over at Education and Information may have come up with a way we can spin it, at least in the short term,” Malachai Abruzzi said. The others looked at him in disbelief, and he shrugged. “Nobody’s going to be able to spin this one in the long term,” he conceded. “The best we can do is try to get out in front and at least slow it down, plant some seeds of doubt to undermine the credibility of the early reports. The problem is that whatever we gain in the short term is likely to turn around and bite us in the long term when the Manties’ version of events is independently verified.”

“Then what’s the point?” MacArtney demanded.

“The point is that if Malachai’s people have come up with a way to buy us some time, even if it’s only a few months, we may be able to pull together some coherent strategy for getting through this more or less intact, after all,” Kolokoltsov replied. “At this point, frankly, I don’t have a clue what that strategy might be, but the critical point is that we’re looking right down the barrel of a constitutional crisis.”

The sudden silence was absolute, and his colleagues looked at him as he finally said the words.

“That’s been the anaconda under the table none of us have wanted to talk about from the very beginning,” he continued unflinchingly. “Unfortunately, Holmon-Sanders brought that front and center when she faced down Tsang, and this is only going to make it worse. For the first time in T-centuries, people may actually be willing to look at the Emperor and admit he’s bare-assed naked.” He looked around their holographic faces. “The Constitution was effectively dead on arrival; we’ve always known it never could have worked as the basis for an effective system of government the way it was written. So we found ways around it. Ways that, frankly, are completely illegal under the letter of the Constitution. Now people like Hadley and Holmon-Sanders are saying so openly, and a lot of other people who would’ve been willing to say ‘so what?’ and let us go on with the business of making the League work anyway are going to look at what happened to Filareta as proof we don’t know how to make the League work. And if they decide that, and they listen to Hadley and the rest of those crazy Beowulfers, the entire League could go straight down the crapper. That’s what this is really about now.”

“That…has to be a little alarmist,” MacArtney said tentatively. He looked around at the others. “Doesn’t it?”

It was obvious to Kolokoltsov that MacArtney had been totally focused on the crisis’ personal implications. That he’d never looked beyond the problem of cuffing the Manties aside so the League in general — and Nathan MacArtney in particular — could get on with business as usual the way they always had. Now, though…

“I don’t think it is, Nathan.” Abruzzi didn’t like MacArtney and never had, but his tone was almost gentle as he shook his head. “I admit it sounds preposterous, but this really could take down the entire League, and when it does, God only knows what’s going to happen out in the Protectorates. Hell, some of the Core systems don’t like each other all that much! If they see an opportunity to go their own ways, maybe even get some of their own back against someone who pissed them off centuries ago, they’re likely to take it.”

MacArtney sat silent, his face ashen, and Kolokoltsov returned his attention to Abruzzi.

“Tell us about this time-buying idea, Malachai.”

“It’s actually pretty simple.” Abruzzi shrugged. “In some ways, this is Spindle all over again — all we have really is the Manties’ word for what happened, plus the stories filed by civilian newsies in the system. In other words, the only first-hand information is coming from official Manty sources. So we do what we did then.” He shrugged again. “We lie.”

“How?”

“The sequence is clear from what the Manties have released. Filareta sailed into an ambush; Harrington sprang the trap and gave him the option of surrendering or being destroyed; he opened fire; she handed him his head. Right?”

Heads nodded, and he shrugged again.

“Well, we can’t possibly win if we try to defend his actions. So instead, we change the storyline. Harrington deliberately drew him into the trap; she offered him the option of surrendering as a ploy to get him to scuttle his missile pods; he did scuttle his missile pods…and the instant he’d given up the one weapon she was afraid of, she opened fire and cold bloodedly destroyed his fleet. It was never about giving him a chance to surrender; it was always about her intention to destroy him whatever he did.”

“How the hell do you expect to make that stand up?” Wodoslawski demanded. “Especially with the recordings the Manties have already made public!”

“We point out that they’re the recordings the Manties have made public,” Abruzzi replied. “They’ve told us they’re clean copies of the actual conversation, but we have no proof of that. We point out that Filareta’s orders gave him the option of standing down or even surrendering if it turned out Admiral Rajampet’s estimate of the tech imbalance turned out to be in error. I don’t know if they did — in fact, I doubt like hell they did — but by the time an official transcript of them gets released, they damned well will have! On the basis of those instructions and what appears to have been the tactical situation when Harrington demanded his surrender, we believe that’s what he actually did. At which point Harrington opened fire, and everything after that point in the ‘official record’ they’ve sent us is almost certainly a skillfully edited montage of the actual battle.”

“It’ll never fly,” Wodoslawski said flatly.

“It might,” Kolokoltsov said more slowly, eyes narrowed as he considered the scenario. “It has the advantage of being consistent with what we’ve been saying about Spindle and the other confrontations. Sure, some people are going to see it as the same old line, but for a lot of others that continuity’s going to give it a certain legitimacy. It’ll fit with what those people have already accepted as the truth, and the Manties can’t disprove it. They can provide all the sensor recordings and recorded messages they want, but all of them will be coming from official government organs, and any good, cynical Solarian citizen knows