Shadow of Freedom

“After Kazuyoshi’s operation?” He shook his head. “I think they were probably going to send them in the first place; after Kaz and his people took out a whole fucking regiment of the Guard—and a Solly operations manager—our Ms. Xydis for damned sure started screaming for everything she could get! If they weren’t already in the pipeline, I guarantee Verrocchio’s going to cough them up now, damn it. That’s why I sent off another message to the Manties three days ago.”

“You did?” She blinked at him in surprise, and he shrugged.

“Yardley’d already begun her crackdown, Kayleigh,” he pointed out. “It was obvious things were only going to get worse, and I had to make a quick call. There was a fast Trifecta freighter heading for Montana to follow up on the contract our first contact was sent to negotiate. Of course, that whole deal was one of Guernicke’s brainstorms, so it’s possible Frolov will scrub it now that she’s so fortuitously retired. But in the meantime, the first freighter was off to pick up whatever their agents had been able to purchase, and we had another ‘secret friend’ in her crew.” He shrugged again. “The opportunity wasn’t likely to present itself again anytime soon, so I decided to take it.”

“I see.” She regarded him steadily for several seconds. “Do you think the Manties are actually going to respond?”

“I wish I were as confident that they’re going to as I am that Verrocchio’s going to,” Breitbach admitted. “Having said that, though, I do think it’s more likely they will than that they won’t.” He shrugged slightly. “They committed themselves to, and they have to figure that if we go down, Yardley and Lombroso are almost certain to find evidence of that in the wreckage. Having the rest of the galaxy find out they encouraged us and promised us support and then pulled the plug on us when we needed them most would hurt them badly with the independents out here in the Verge. And not coming through for us wouldn’t do them any good with the Sollies, either. The League’s going to be almost equally pissed off even if we do go down, especially because they’ll blame the Manties for encouraging us in the first place.”

“Cynical…but probably accurate,” Blanchard conceded after a moment, taking another bite of her own hot dog.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Breitbach replied. “I don’t think it was all cynical calculation on the Manties’ part in the first place. I think they really do hate the Solarian League and OFS, and I think they find people like Lombroso and Yardley almost as morally reprehensible as we do. But let’s be realistic, Kayleigh. All the moral revulsion in the universe isn’t going to bring somebody into conflict with something the size of the Solarian League unless there are good, solid and pragmatic reasons to go with it. From everything I’ve seen, it looks like Manticore realizes it’s fighting for its life, and if it’s going to win, it’s going to have to fight smart. That means not throwing away its claim to the moral high ground by encouraging people to revolt against régimes like Lombroso’s and then just walking away. And to be honest, I don’t care whether or not they’re saints as long as it’s in their own best interests to help us take down him and that butcher Yardley.”

“I can get behind that,” Blanchard agreed feelingly.

“I figured you probably could.” Breitbach smiled at her, but the smile faded, and he shook his head.

“I figured you probably could,” he repeated, “but that doesn’t make me any happier about this mess. Yardley is going on the offensive, and I think she’s doing it deliberately, trying to force our hand.”

“Push the entire Resistance out into the open where she can get at it?” Blanchard looked unhappy at her own suggestion, and Breitbach nodded.

“That or pull it out into the open,” he agreed. “I’m not sure she realizes just how well organized we actually are, but even if she does, she probably figures that if she hits us hard enough—especially after Kazuyoshi hit them as hard as he did—she can goad our people into coming out where she can get at them. She’s got to be pretty damn confident she’s still got a lot more heavy weapons than we do, not to mention the Guard’s air assets, satellites, surveillance systems, and spies. I’m pretty sure her thinking’s going to be that if she can only get us out in the open she’ll be able to smash us once and for all, or at least prune us back pretty damned drastically.”

“And if she’s wrong about that little calculation?” Blanchard asked with an unpleasant smile.

“And if she’s wrong, she figures she’s got Yucel coming in right behind her,” Breitbach said, and Blanchard’s smile disappeared.

“So what do we do?” she said after a moment.