A Rising Thunder

“I’m the head of one of ONI’s main sections, Erzi, and I’ll be a flag officer in another couple of weeks. Rank hath its privileges in the SLN, including the use of officially assigned anti-snooping equipment while necking with my fiancee. Trust me, nobody’s going to find this remotely suspicious unless they’re already suspicious for some reason. In which case, we’re already screwed and might as well not worry about it.”

“I hate it when you get logical this way,” she complained with a pout, and he chuckled.

He sat back, surveying her, and reflected that he could have done far worse for a control. Erzebet Pelletier was every bit as smart as she was attractive. She was also athletic, and a pleasant armful in bed. Not only that, they got along well, and he knew she genuinely liked him. In fact, it might even go a little further than that, although both of them had to remember the risks of getting overly emotionally involved in their roles.

“All right,” Erzebet went on after a moment. “You told that nice young man we’d order in a few minutes, so why don’t we go ahead and get the dreary details out of the way?”

“Suits me,” he agreed.

He wished they ocould have held this conversation in their comfortable apartment, but it was a given that the apartment was bugged. Not very effectively — Rear Admiral Yau’s Office of Counterintelligence was pretty inept, and its bugs were no more than pro forma, since it was extraordinarily unlikely anyone in OCI cherished any suspicions where Gweon was concerned. Unfortunately, there was no good excuse for using his anti- eavesdropping equipment at home, whereas there were plenty of reasons someone might do that in public. So it actually made more sense for the two of them to exchange critical information in a “public” venue.

“First,” he told her, “there’s no sign anyone thinks there’s anything suspicious about Rajampet’s suicide.” He shrugged. “Given all that’s happened and the grilling he could expect from Kolokoltsov and the others, it’s easy to figure he had more than enough reasons to kill himself.”

“So it went off cleanly?” she asked.

“Evidently. It was his pulser, after all.” He grinned suddenly; he’d never much liked Rajampet. “It was a thoughtful of him to keep the damned thing in the same place for so many years. It was a lot cleaner and neater to have him shoot himself with a gun we knew how to find. God knows what kind of mess it would’ve made if we’d had to jump him out of a window that high, instead!”

“True.” Erzebet’s tone carried a certain delicate distaste. She hadn’t been much fonder of Rajampet than Gweon, and she was pleased by how neatly his demise tied off that particular loose end, but she didn’t share her companion’s amusement at the circumstances of the ex-CNO’s death.

Gweon sensed her reaction and grimaced an apology.

“Sorry, Erzi. Maybe I shouldn’t be so flip about it, but if you’d had to put up with that arrogant little prick as long as all of us who had the joy of working for him did, you’d probably feel like hoisting a few, too.”

“You may be right about that, and I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with him. Either way, we’ve got other things to think about, and the courier’s leaving for Mesa tomorrow evening, so let’s go ahead and get the rest of your report out of the way.”

“Fine.” He nodded. “First, I’m pretty sure I’m in the process of cementing my credentials with Kolokoltsov. I’m giving him good analysis, and he knows it. Same for Kingsford, although I’ve revised my opinion of his IQ upward. I always knew he was smarter than Rajampet; I’m beginning to think he may be smarter even than I’d allowed for, and I’d a lot rather be more cautious than I have to than not cautious enough.

“I wasn’t present when Kingsford pitched his new strategy to Kolokoltsov, but judging from the additional analysis he asked for after leaving Kolokoltsov’s office, it sounds to me as if—”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“So we’re agreed?” Kolokoltsov asked, and looked around the faces of his fellows.

“I’m still not sure this is the best policy,” Agata Wodoslawski said unhappily.

“I’m not wildly enamored of it myself,” Malachai Abruzzi told her, “but we’ve damned well got to do something. Something that looks at least moderately aggressive, I mean. And after what happened to Filareta, I don’t see a lot of other options.”

“And at least Kingsford’s being more realistic than Rajani was,” Nathan MacArtney put in. The permanent senior undersecretary of the interior was unwontedly subdued. Rajampet’s suicide had hit him particularly hard. It wasn’t so much that he’d liked the CNO, but they’d worked together for far too many years in policing the Protectorates, and they’d had far too many shared priorities, for MacArtney to take his sudden demise — and its circumstances — in stride.

“Yes, that does seem to be the case,” Kolokoltsov agreed in a tone of deliberate understatement, and MacArtney flushed. He looked as if he might be about to say something, but then he bit his lip. Kolokoltsov gazed at him for a moment longer, then sighed.

“I’m sorry, Nathan,” he said. MacArtney looked back up quickly, and Kolokoltsov shrugged. “We’re in a hell of a mess, and Rajani had a lot to do with our getting here. And, yes, you and he were our point team for the Protectorates. But the two of you didn’t act alone, and it’s obvious Rajani wasn’t keeping you fully informed any more than he was keeping the rest of us fully informed. So I suppose it’s about time I got past taking out my own fear and uncertainty — and I am scared, don’t doubt that for a moment — on you.” He smiled thinly. “Trust me, there’s been more than enough screwing up involved in getting us to this point to go around. And a lot of it comes to roost right here.”

He tapped his own chest, his expression grim. MacArtney gazed at him for a few seconds, then nodded. No one else said anything else, and Kolokoltsov didn’t blame them. Quartermain and Wodoslawski had persistently cautioned all of them about the potential economic consequences of a conflict with the Star Empire of Manticore, yet all of them — including Quartermain and Wodoslawski — had disastrously underestimated the Manties’ military capabilities. That was Rajampet’s fault, in many ways, yet that didn’t absolve them from their own disastrous mistake in accepting his assurances that Battle Fleet’s numbers were more than enough to compensate for any “minor” Manticoran advantages.

Especially not when we should’ve known — when I should’ve known — how much our own attitudes were being influenced by wishful thinking and arrogance. We walked into this one step — one avoidable step — at a time, and now we’re stuck with it.

“The only thing I wonder about,” Quartermain said now, her tone more hesitant than usual, “is whether we shouldn’t still be pursuing a back burner diplomatic resolution?” She looked at the others. “After what’s happened in the Assembly, especially, I’m more worried than ever about the long-term consequences of the Manty blockade. The political consequences, I mean. If there’s any way to get them to back off on that…”

Her voice trailed off and she grimaced unhappily.

“We all know what you mean, Omosupe,” Kolokoltsov told her. “But if I were the Manties, I wouldn’t be real interested in negotiating with us at the moment. Not when they know how badly that blockade has to be hurting us. And not when they’ve got the momentum and the combat advantage, either. I’m sure they’d be prepared to give us terms, but I’m also pretty sure any terms they’d be willing to accept would do us more harm than good in the Assembly. Not to mention what people who think Beowulf has a point about what would’ve happened to Tsang if they’d let her through their damned terminus might do if the news got out we were negotiating with one hand while ‘sacrificing Navy ships and lives’ with the other.”

Quartermain nodded slowly, although he wasn’t certain she fully agreed with him. For that matter, he wasn’t certain he fully agreed with himself. But he was certain they dared not show any evidence of weakness.

“We do need to be prepared to sit back down at the table with them,” he went on. “In fact, I think it’s essential that we put together a proposal we could live with and update it constantly, keep it current, so we can send it to the Manties as soon as the opportunity offers.”

“‘As soon as the opportunity offers’?” she repeated, and he shrugged.

“Before we can expect them to give any ground, entertain a peace settlement we could accept without the