Shadow of Freedom

“Yes, Sir?” If Ensign Zilwicki felt any trepidation she hid it well, he thought.

“Opinion, Ms. Zilwicki. Do we talk to them now, or do we let them wait?”

Helen’s eyes narrowed as she considered the question. She was too busy thinking to notice the way several of Terekhov’s staffers looked at one another with smiles, not that it would have bothered her if she had noticed. She’d grown accustomed to Terekhov’s impromptu quizzes, and she knew it was a serious question, despite his quizzical tone.

“I think not, Sir,” she said after a moment.

“Why not?” he asked.

“As you and Commander Pope just said, they have to know we’re here by now, Sir. And from our acceleration numbers, they’ve got to have a pretty good guess who we are. Under the circumstances, I think it makes more sense to let them sweat until either they break down and talk to us or we’re good and ready to talk to them.”

“Why?”

“Anyone with a working brain would have to realize they’re toast if it comes to a fight, Sir,” she said. “On the other hand, these are Sollies, and we all know how reasonable they are. And to be fair, they probably haven’t heard anything but bits and pieces—if that—about what’s been going on elsewhere. Since they came from Meyers, they have to know what happened at New Tuscany and Spindle, but they probably haven’t heard anything about Saltash.” She shrugged. “If they haven’t, they may think the same way Dueñas did and figure we’ll hesitate about pulling the trigger if it comes to it. So I think it’d be a good idea to let some of that Solly arrogance soften, and if we let them sweat, we take the psychological advantage no matter who finally winds up opening communications. If they end up driven to talk to us, they start out in a position of weakness, and Sollies just aren’t used to finding themselves places like that. And the longer we wait to talk to them, the longer they have to see our ‘superdreadnought’ coming at them and think about all the things it can do to them.” She smiled nastily. “I don’t care if they are the Invincible Solarian League Navy, that’s gotta make ’em nervous, Sir! And if we use a Hermes buoy when we finally do talk to them…”

Her voice trailed off, and her expression turned absolutely beatific.

“I see.” Terekhov regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. “Works for me,” he said, and smiled at Pope. “And now that Ensign Zilwicki has so masterfully summarized her proposed approach, let’s give some thought to making it work most effectively.”

* * *

“And I don’t give a good goddamn who the hell it is!” Brigadier Francisca Yucel snapped.

“But, Ma’am,” Commander Watson began desperately, “that’s a superdreadnought! We can’t fight a super—”

“That’s enough!” Yucel barked. “You don’t even know who it is yet!”

“At those acceleration rates, the only people it can be are the Manties,” Watson replied. “And if it is—”

“And if it is, they have exactly zero right to be here,” Yucel shot back. “Mobius is a sovereign star system. The Manties have no legal standing here at all!”

“Ma’am, I realize that. But given what happened at Spindle, I think we have to assume—”

“You’re not going to ‘assume’ anything until I tell you to, Commander. Is that perfectly clear?” Yucel glared at him from his communications display, gray eyes flinty. He stared back at her for a handful of seconds, then nodded jerkily.

“Better,” she said in a marginally less angry tone. She sat back in her chair and waved one hand in an impatient gesture. “I understand why you’re anxious, Commander Watson, but let’s not let panic start dictating our reactions, all right? Yes, they hammered Admiral Crandall at Spindle. And, yes, as far as I can tell the Manties don’t have a single functional brain cell among them. But not even Manties could be stupid enough to actually open fire on a Solarian Navy squadron in the territorial space of a Solarian ally!”

“With all due respect, Ma’am, they fired on Admiral Byng in New Tuscany,” Watson responded, and her nostrils flared.

“Yes, they did, Commander,” she agreed coldly. “But New Tuscany wasn’t a Solarian ally at the time, either. And whoever this is, it’s not that crazy bitch Gold Peak, either—not in command of a force this small. No.” She shook her head. “This is some captain or commodore or junior rear admiral, and whoever it is probably doesn’t even know we’re here yet.”

“Ma’am, you’re senior to me,” Watson said. “But their track record suggests to me that they might just go ahead and pull the trigger after all.”

Francesca Yucel closed her eyes and counted to ten. What she really wanted to do was to rip someone’s eyeballs out. Watson’s preferably, but almost anyone else’s would have done in her present mood.