Shadow of Freedom

“By this time, Filareta’s either been blown to dustbunnies, surrendered, or run like hell,” she said. “When Admiral Khumalo and Baroness Medusa find out which it was, they’ll be sending dispatches both here and to Tillerman. I’d find out about it a bit sooner if I stayed here, but I’d still have to move to Tillerman—or waste time ordering Bennington to join us here—to concentrate our wall before we make any moves of our own. And I’ve come to the conclusion that if things have fallen still further into the crapper, we are going to be making some moves. Specifically, as I see it, our first step has to be to cover our backs before we do anything else. Which means taking out the Madras Sector.”

The assembled officers sat very still.

“If we’re going to find ourselves in a genuine war with the League, I’m not going to sit here and let them bring it to us,” she said flatly. “We know, because we’ve demonstrated it against the Havenites and they’ve demonstrated it against us, that the deep strike can be decisive…and that standing on the defensive surrenders the initiative to the other side. From everything we’ve seen out of the Sollies so far, they haven’t figured that out. Oh,” she waved one hand impatiently, “they went straight for Spindle and straight for the home system, but both of those moves were completely in line with their step-by-step approach; it just happened that we didn’t have a lot of depth. But I don’t think there’s much doubt that they’ll be thinking about staging any additional operations against the Quadrant out of Madras or one of the other sectors out this way. They almost have to, in a lot of ways, because their logistics are so short-legged. They don’t have a fleet train organization with the kind of strategic mobility and flexibility we and the Havenites have developed, and I doubt there’s a single Battle Fleet admiral who has the mental flexibility to work around that. Given time, they’ll develop it or find someone—probably from Frontier Fleet—who does have it, but it’s going to take time for that to happen. And that’s why we’re not going to stand on the defensive. If these idiots persist in dancing to Mesa’s piping, then we’re going to take the war to them. I want to eliminate their basing infrastructure out here. them fully on the defensive—psychologically, as well as strategically—from the get-go. That means punching out every sector capital behind us as we advance, so if we do end up pulling the trigger, we’re going into the Meyers System hard and fast and in sufficient strength that nobody’s going to even think about shooting back. I want that system taken with as close to zero bloodshed as humanly possible, and after that, we’re going to punch out the rest of the sector.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Captain Peter Clavell frowned grumpily as he checked his chrono for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. His relief was late—again—and Clavell didn’t like the rumors he’d been hearing. All very well for General Yardley to announce a general offensive against the rabble-rousers and malcontents, but she wasn’t the one out here in command of a checkpoint whose relief was dragging in late…again. And she wasn’t the one wondering if maybe this time his relief was late for a reason nobody would like. Or if some terrorist son-of-a-bitch was going to come along and ruin his entire night when he should have been safely back in his quarters while some other poor bastard took over the checkpoint in question. God knew it had happened to enough other Guardsmen in the last two or three weeks!

He scowled at the thought and reminded himself that it would be a very bad idea to say anything like that out loud where it might get back to Internal Affairs. “Defeatism” was well on its way to becoming a capital offense, and at least one other field grade officer Clavell knew had been posted to one of the penal battalions for “sedition” when she’d questioned an intelligence appreciation of the general public’s support for the terrorists who’d taken down the White Whore. Against that sort of backdrop, suggesting General Yardley didn’t care diddley about how many Guardsmen she might have to sacrifice to make this particular omelette probably came under the heading of something other than career enhancement.

And given the sort of welcome a member of the Presidential Guard was likely to receive from the citizens of Mobius this day, it wasn’t as if Captain Clavell could expect much of a career in the civilian sector. Most jobs tended to go to people who were still breathing, after all. Not that he wouldn’t have been simply delighted to embrace some other form of employment if he had been able to find it.

Clavell sighed heavily, tipped back in the Scorpion’s command chair, and yawned and stretched—hard—before he crossed his ankles and clasped his hands behind his helmeted head.