Shadow of Freedom

“Your terms?” she sneered. “Who the hell do you think you are? You come waltzing into this star system, you attack Navy starships, and now you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to tell me you’re going to offer me terms? Well fuck you! One of us is here at the invitation of the legally constituted government of this star system, Commodore Terekhov, and it sure as hell isn’t you!”

“A legally constituted government that’s massacred—or allowed you to massacre—a half million or so of its citizens with kinetic strikes? That legally constituted government?”

“What a sovereign star nation does to suppress criminal insurrection is none of your goddammed business,” she said harshly. “And what the Solarian Gendarmerie does at the request of that sovereign star nation is none of your business, either! So get your ships the hell out of this system.”

“Not going to happen.” Terekhov’s calm, cold precision was a sharp contrast to the seething fury of her own tone. “To put this in terms even you may be able to understand, Brigadier, you’re screwed. I don’t care if we have to kill every single gendarme down there, and I certainly don’t care if we have to kill you. But I’d just as soon avoid any additional damage to the Mobians’ planet if I can. So here are those terms. You lay down your weapons, you march all your personnel out of Landing to a point to be designated by me, and you wait there until my Marines take you into custody.”

“And then what happens in this fantasy of yours?” she demanded. “You shoot us all on the spot?”

“I’ll admit the thought has a certain appeal,” he said. “But, no. We take you into custody and we keep you there until a proper court can be convened to consider the actions of your personnel on this planet. All of you will receive a fair trial, and the guilty will receive the sentence commensurate with their crimes.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.” Yucel’s voice was almost conversational. “You really think you’re going to get away with trying and shooting Solarian gendarmes?”

“I was thinking more in terms of hanging, actually, since that seems to be your own favored form of execution, but we’ll probably leave that up to the Mobians,” he told her, and she barked a scornful laugh.

“And just what the hell do you think is going to happen to your pissant little Star Empire when the League finds out about that?” she demanded.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” he told her flatly. “Not that I’m particularly worried about it in the short term.”

“You may have kicked Crandall’s ass at Spindle, but it’s going to be different when the Navy knows what you’ve got and comes after you!” she spat.

“You obviously haven’t paid any attention to reality in some time,” Terekhov said. “And you’re just a bit behind the news, too. For example, on the basis of what you’ve just said, I don’t suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Vice Admiral Dubroskaya at Saltash, when five of our destroyers destroyed all four of her battlecruisers. Or about the fact that the Star Empire is now allied to the Republic of Haven. Or that between us, we now have somewhere around five hundred ships of the wall, any two of which could have controlled every missile we fired at Crandall in Spindle. Let’s do some math here, Brigadier. If two of our ships can kill seventy of yours, and we’ve got five hundred of them, that means we can kill every superdreadnought in Battle Fleet, including the Reserve, about three times each.”

He paused, smiling coldly at her, letting her see the total confidence in his eyes, then continued.

“According to the latest dispatches before I headed out for Mobius, your Admiral Filareta was on his way to Manticore with somewhere around four hundred of the wall. By this time, I’m sure he’s arrived…and if he was foolish enough to actually fight when he got there, I doubt any of his ships lasted long enough to surrender. I’m certainly not worried about the outcome, anyway. Now, do you accept my terms or not?”

Yucel stared at him, her face momentarily slack with shock. Manticore and Haven allied? Allied against the Solarian League? He was lying. He had to be lying! But even as she thought that, something with thousands of icy little feet started crawling up and down her spine. If he wasn’t lying, if he was telling the truth, that would explain why he’d been willing to take out Watson’s ships. And if he really was ready to do what he’d just said he’d do to her personnel, to her…

The ice moving up and down her back seemed to settle in her belly. It was odd. She’d never realized her stomach could be simultaneously nauseated and frozen into a solid lump.

Panic surged suddenly, rising into her throat like vomit, and she swallowed hard. For a moment, she knew exactly what it had felt like for countless malcontents and troublemakers when her gendarmes’ pulser butts hammered on their doors. But then she forced herself to push the panic aside and glared at Terekhov’s image.