Shadow Of Freedom – Snippet 32
“I think we have to assume Lörscher’s telling the truth,” she said. “And one of the reasons I’m inclined to think this isn’t deliberate misinformation on anyone’s part is that Montana’s where Lörscher was headed all along, but no one could’ve known we’d be here when he got here. He’d probably have passed the information along anyway, but it would’ve taken two weeks for a dispatch boat to get word back to Spindle even if Montana had one ready to go on zero notice. If they wanted to draw us into doing something unfortunate, I think they would have sent their messenger directly to either Spindle or Lynx, where they could’ve been sure of finding the Navy waiting for them and drawing a quicker response.”
“There is that, Ma’am,” Lecter acknowledged.
“And, frankly, the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter whether or not this is a set up,” Michelle said in a harsher tone. “Either Dueñas really has impounded one of our merchies, or he hasn’t. Whoever we send is going to have to mind his feet and be sure he doesn’t step on any tender Solly sensibilities if this is some sort of misinformation. But if it’s not — if Dueñas has done what Lörscher says he has — then I really don’t care who put him up to it.”
Lecter’s eyes widened in alarm, and Michelle chuckled coldly.
“I’m not going all berserk on you, Cynthia,” she said. “But the bottom line is that one of our primary missions ever since there’s been a Navy has always been the protection of Manticoran commerce. Nothing in any orders I’ve seen has changed that. And they haven’t put any limitations on who we’re supposed to protect our commerce and our merchant spacers from, either. I don’t know if this was Dueñas’ own brainstorm or if someone put him up to it, and it doesn’t matter, when you come down to it. Maybe it is an effort to create a deliberate provocation, but even if it is, it’s one we can’t ignore or back away from. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to, either.” She showed her teeth. “In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I haven’t already jumped on it. I wanted to make sure I had myself on a short enough leash to give some thought to it, first.”
“I’ve known you a while, Ma’am,” Lecter observed. “And if you’ll pardon my saying so, it sounds to me like you’ve done most of the thinking you intend to do.”
“Yep.” Michelle gave Dicey’s head another rub and nodded her own. “I think this should be right up Zavala’s alley. And a destroyer squadron — especially one that’s a little understrength — will be a lot less threatening than a division of battlecruisers.”
“Do you think five tincans will be enough to convince a Solly system governor to back down?”
“When they’re bigger than most Solly light cruisers, I think the odds are probably pretty damned good,” Michelle said. “And I’d prefer to tailor our response to the nature of the mission. I don’t want to use any bigger club than we have to, which is one reason I’m thinking Zavala would be a good choice. He won’t take any crap, but he’s not going to come in throwing around threats until he’s at least tried to get them to see reason. And, to be honest, I can’t really afford to start slicing off detachments of cruisers or battlecruisers — not when the whole notion is to maintain a concentrated force here in Montana.”
And not when I don’t know when the next Lörscher’s likely to turn up with somewhere else I need to send a detachment, she added silently.
“I follow your logic, Ma’am,” Lecter said, which wasn’t precisely the same thing as saying she agreed with it, Michelle noted. “Should I assume you want to speak to Zavala personally before we send him off?”
“I definitely do.” Michelle nodded firmly. “This isn’t something you send someone off to do without making damned sure she understands her orders, and that those orders are going to cover her backside if it all goes south on her.”
“Understood, Ma’am,” Lecter replied, although the chief of staff could think of quite a few flag officers she’d known who would’ve been more concerned with covering their own backsides than that of the officer they’d designated to carry out a mission like this one.
“Good.” Michelle took a final pull at her beer, then leaned forward and set the empty bottle on the coffee table. Dicey gave her a disgusted look as her lap moved under him, then relented and gave her a parting head butt of affection before he hopped down. She smiled as the cat meandered out, then looked back at Lecter. “I’d like to have him underway within the next twelve hours.”
“I’ll see to it, Ma’am.” The chief of staff tossed back the last of her whiskey and set the glass beside Michelle’s bottle. Then she rose, nodded respectfully to Michelle, and headed for the day cabin’s door.
Michelle watched her go, then she climbed out of her own chair and keyed the holo display above her desk, frowning at the steadily blinking icon of the star called Saltash.
I sure as hell hope it isn’t some kind of set up, Cynthia, she thought after her vanished chief of staff. I talk a good stiff upper lip and all that, but I really, really don’t want to step into it all over again with the damned Sollies.
It was like picking her way without a map through a waist-deep swamp she knew was filled with patches of quicksand and poorly fed alligators. There was so damned much treachery, so many crosscurrents of deception, so much Solarian arrogance and resentment, and so many things which could go disastrously wrong. The temptation was to fort up, go strictly onto the defensive to avoid the kind of mistakes which could only make the situation worse. But as she’d told Lecter, that wasn’t an option in this case. If Lörscher was right about what was going on in Saltash, Michelle had to act.
And I hope to hell this doesn’t go as badly for Zavala’s squadron as things went for it in New Tuscany, too, she thought.
What if the detained ship is sailing under false papers. I suspect that it’s really a MALIGN ship, packed with guns, and the government at Saltash was completely within its rights to detain it. MALIGN’s successes so far have been largely due to being able to keep anyone from realizing their plots. No longer true! If this is true, the wheels begin to come off.
I’d guess it’s more likely a ship with legit Manticoran papers–but perhaps a cargo of arms for rebels that Firebrand shipped under a false shipping manifest.
The only problem with that theory being that earlier, the transtellars appeared to control all of the incoming shipping to their “protectorates”. That’s not the case with this planet–including the Andermanu freighter.
My money is on the merchant ship that was allowed to continue on it’s way in the last HH book. At the time I thought that it was DW showing the effects of the recall on the merchant fleet closer to the ground as it were. It wouldn’t be the first time he introduced a ship crew from stage left before he dropped them in the deep end.
That’s an excellent question, however, according to the Illegible Map, Saltash isn’t a Solarian League member or protectorate, so it would be legal for the Manticore merchant marine to service it. Of course, the Illegible Map isn’t exactly canon so DW may have changed his mind.
I don’t think that ship was headed for Saltash, though.
ART, p.23. The ship was headed for Klondike, transit time 2 1/2 weeks, and then it could get to Beowulf, transit time another 2 1/2 weeks. That puts it in the Core. Mesa is 565 ly from Visigoth, meaning Saltash is somewhere between 500 and 600 ly from where the incident took place, way out of range.
I should, however, note that there’s a contradiction here. The text suggests that Saltash is a Solarian League world, since it mentions a system governor, etc., however the Illegible Map has it colored the same as Mesa, which is definitely not a Solarian League world. If it is a Solarian League world, what is a Manticore freighter doing there unless it was captured somewhere else and transported in.
Well, DW may have changed his mind since the Illegible Map was published a year and a half ago.
Well technically it is an independent world but ….BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ… darn snerk collar.
You’ll find out in Snippet 36. [Smile]
Waitasecond there, O mighty Drak–Snippet 33 is next, not 36!
Said 36 and meant 36. Snippets 33 – 35 cover other “plot threads”.
Yes, I was just being…whiny. [wink]
Talk about conspiracy theorists! But seeing as some people are looking back through published HH books, Chapter 41 of WOH has Albrecht Detweiler detailing a few of his plans which he is going to bring to fruition about now.
Oops NOT WOH but MoH. Sorry.
Is the DD understrength squadron being sent the home of our favorite Grayson Tactical Officer? (Does anyone know?)
/Rob
Unless I’m misreading it, they’re sending all five ships, so unless Lt. Hearns has been transferred she ought to be heading that way.
Er, “set up” is a verb. You want the noun “setup.” This occurs twice.
In one of the earlier snippets, Captain Zavala is the commander of the understrength squadron containing ‘Tristram’ and our fav crew, doing the simulation, so I think they’re definitely going.