Shadow of Freedom

“For right now, we go ahead and try to keep a lid on things.” Breitbach finished his hot dog and picked up his beer in both hands, propping his elbows on the picnic table so he could nurse the stein properly. “I’d say the odds are at least sixty-forty against our being able to do that, but we’ve still got to try. We just plain aren’t ready yet, Kayleigh.”

“And if it turns out we can’t keep a lid on?” Blanchard’s eyes were troubled, and she shook her head. “I’ve got to tell you, Michael—I don’t think we are going to be able to.”

“To be honest, neither do I,” he said heavily. He sipped beer, his own eyes hooded, then shrugged.

“Neither do I, and the hell of it is that I don’t really want to. I wouldn’t have approved Kaz’s operation if he’d asked me to, but I would have wanted to. There’s nothing I want more than to see Lombroso and Yardley hanging at the ends of ropes the way they damned well deserve. So the whole time I’m standing there waving my hands and screaming ‘Stop! We’re not ready yet!’ what I really want to be shouting is ‘Kill the bastards!’”

He managed to keep his picnicker’s expression in place, yet his voice was harsh and ugly and his hands tightened convulsively on the stein.

“But my brain knows better than that,” he continued in a voice which sounded more like his own. “So before we do anything else, I’m going to do my damnedest to sit on the other hotheads—the hotheads just like me—until I hear something back from the Manties. Which doesn’t change the fact that I agree with you that I’m not going to be able to in the end.”

He swallowed a little more beer, then set the stein down very neatly and precisely in front of him.

“If we’re both right and it looks like we’re going to lose control, I really only see one thing we can do. What we can’t do is allow everything we’ve managed to build to just come apart, and that’s what’s going to happen if more of our cells start doing what Kazuyoshi did. So however unready I may think we are, we’ll just have to go for it. Now.”

“‘Go for it’?” Blanchard repeated carefully, and he gave her a thin smile.

“The only reason we’ve gotten as far as we already have—further than anyone else’s ever gotten against Lombroso—is that we’ve been organized and disciplined, Kayleigh. If we lose that, Yardley breaks us even without the Gendarmerie’s support. And one of the most important principles of successful command I came across in all my research is that you don’t give an order you know won’t be obeyed. If we’re going to maintain our discipline, we’ll have to get out in front of our people’s anger. We’ll have to demonstrate to all those other Kazuyoshis that we’re committed to move and that we are moving. If we do that, and do it effectively, they’ll get behind us and push instead of dragging us all out into Yardley’s sights behind them. And whether I think we’re ready or not, we’re a hell of a lot closer to ready than anyone else’s ever been. I think we’ve got a shot—probably a pretty good one, and sure as hell a better one than Yardley thinks we do—against the Guard and Lombroso. Which really leaves only three things to worry about.”

“Only three?” Blanchard looked at him with what might have been an engine of incredulity, and he smiled.

“Sure. First, whether or not I’m right that we do have a shot at winning. Second, whether or not we can pull it off before the first intervention battalions get here. And, third, whether or not Verrocchio and Yucel will back off and throw in their hand if we do pull it off before the gendarmes get here.”

“And just what do you think the odds of that are?” she demanded, and his smile grew thinner than a razor.

“Just about zero,” he said softly. “Which is why I really, really hope the Manties get here before the Sollies do.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

.“Well, it just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” Albrecht Detweiler observed sourly. He tossed the document reader onto the small table beside his armchair and reached for his beer stein. He took a hefty swallow and shook his head. “I suppose we should at least be grateful we found out about it before that loose warhead Gold Peak!”

“It could be a lot worse, dear,” his wife, Evelina, pointed out, looking up from her own viewer and the analysis of the pros and cons of the weaponization of mutagenic nanotech she’d been studying. Her busy crocheting needles went right on working, and her expression was calm. She always had been more philosophical about bumps in the plan than he’d been, he reflected. “At least the battle itself worked out the way you had in mind.”