David Weber: Shadow of Freedom

“Probably not a bad idea,” MacLean agreed with what might have been the ghost of an answering smile. If that was what it was, it vanished quickly. “It was bad enough with just the Uppies tapping the coms. With the damned Sollies up there listening in…”

Her voice trailed off, and MacFadzean nodded. She understood the harsh, jagged edge of hate which had crept into MacLean’s voice only too well. They had Frinkelo Osborne, the Office of Frontier Security’s advisor to MacMinn’s Prosperity Party, to thank for the for Solarian League Navy starships in orbit around the planet of Halkirk. Officially, Osborne was only a trade attaché in the Solarian legation in Elgin, the Loomis System’s capital. Trade attachés made wonderful covers for OFS operatives assigned to “assist and advise” independent Verge star systems when their transtellar masters felt they stood in need of a little outside support. And if an “attaché” required a certain degree of assistance from the SLN, he could usually be confident of getting it.

We could’ve taken MacCrimmon and MacQuarie on our own , MacFadzean thought bitterly. We could have. Another few months, a few more arms shipments from Partisan and his people, and we’d have had a fighting chance to kick the LPP straight to Hell . Hell, we might have pulled it off even now, if not for the damned Sollies! But how in God’s name are people with pulsers and grenade launchers supposed to hold off orbital bombardments? If I’d only been able to get word to Partisan —!

But she hadn’t. They hadn’t been supposed to move for a minimum of at least another four months. Partisan had been supposed to be back in Loomis to lock down the final arrangements—the ones she hadn’t yet discussed even with MacLean—and there hadn’t been any way to get a message out when the balloon went up so unexpectedly.

She glanced across the room again, wondering if she should have told MacLean about those arrangements with Partisan. She’d thought about it more than once, but secrecy and security had been all important. Besides, MacLean wasn’t really a revolutionary at heart; she was a reformer. She’d never been able to throw herself as fully into the notion of armed resistance as MacFadzean had, and the thought of relying so heavily on someone from out-system, of crafting operations plans which depended on armed assistance from a foreign star nation, would have been a hard sell.

Be honest with yourself, Erin. You were afraid she’d tell you to shut the conduit down, weren’t you? That the notion of trusting anybody from outside Loomis, was too risky. That they were too likely to have an agenda of their own, one that didn’t include our best interests. You told yourself she’d change her mind if you could prevent a finished plan that covered all the contingencies you could think of, but inside you always knew she still would have hated the entire thought. And you weren’t quite ready to go ahead and commit to Partisan without her okay, were you? Well, maybe she would’ve been right…but it wouldn’t have made any difference in the way things’ve finally worked out, now would it?

She looked up at the command post’s shadowed ceiling, her eyes bitter with hate for the starships which had rained down death and ruination all across her homeworld, and wished with all her exhausted heart that she had been able to get a messenger to Partisan.

“How much longer do you expect this crap to go on?” Captain Francine Venelli’s tone was harsh. “I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit here in orbit killing a bunch of backwoods ground-grubbers, and my people don’t like it.” She glowered at the neatly dressed civilian on the other side of the briefing room table. “They don’t like it at all. For that matter, neither do I. And it’s not like there aren’t enough wheels coming off at the moment that I can’t find plenty of other more worthwhile things to worry about!”

“I don’t know how much longer, Captain,” Frinkelo Osborne replied as calmly and reasonably as he could. “I wish I did. And, while we’re being so frank with each other, I wish you weren’t here doing this, either.” He shook his head, his expression even more disgusted than Venelli’s. “It’s like using a hammer to crack an egg. Or maybe more like spanking a baby with an ax!”

Venelli’s blue eyes narrowed and she sat back in her chair. She’d dealt with more Office of Frontier Security personnel in her career than she could have counted—certainly a lot more of them than she could have wished! Too many of them, in her experience, were entirely in favor of using hammers on eggs, if only to discourage the next chicken from getting out of line. Of course, as a mere advisor to President Ailsa MacMinn’s Loomis Prosperity Party administration, not a full-fledged system or sector commissioner, Osborne might still be far enough down the food chain to believe there were more important things in the universe than his own bank balance.

Or maybe he’s just smart enough to realize what KEWs are likely to do to the source of his bank balance , she reminded herself. I wonder how many hectares of silver oak we’ve turned into cinders so far?

She kept her mental grimace from reaching her expression and glanced at the spectacular live feed from the exterior view projected on the briefing room’s smart wall while she considered that depressing question.

Her “squadron”—the battlecruiser Hoplite , the light cruiser Yenta MacIlvenna , and the destroyers Abatis and Lunette —had been improvised on very little notice when Loomis’ request for assistance came in. Now her ships orbited the planet Halkirk, the Loomis System’s primary inhabited planet, and the direct visual of the smart wall was magnificent. Indeed, under other circumstances, the captain, who was something of a connoisseur of planetary oddities, would probably have enjoyed her visit to the star system. Unlike the majority of systems, Loomis had two planets smack in the middle of the G7 primary’s liquid water zone. In fact, Halkirk and its sister planet, Thurso, were not only in the liquid water zone but orbited a common center of mass seven light-minutes from the star as they made their way around it. Yet while they might be sisters, they were far from twins.

Halkirk was all greens and browns—especially browns—with far less blue than Venelli was accustomed to seeing, since sixty percent of its surface was dry land. Some of it, like the continental interiors, was very dry land, as a matter of fact, although the smaller, mountainous continents of Stroma and Stronsay were quite pleasant. In fact, they were actually on the damp side, thanks to ocean currents and prevailing wind patterns, and even “small” continents were very large pieces of real estate. Hoy and Westray, which between them accounted for better than seventy percent of Halkirk’s total land area, or another story entirely, of course. Venelli understood exactly why the LPP had established its reeducation camps on Westray.

Thurso was a very different proposition—a gleaming, gorgeous sapphire of a world. Over ninety percent of its surface was water, and the widely scattered archipelagoes which were nominally dry land had to cope with tidal surges that reminded the captain more of tsunamis than anything most planets would have called tides. Not too surprising, she supposed, when Thurso’s “moon” was three percent more massive than Old Earth herself. Weather was…interesting on Thurso, as well, and it wasn’t too surprising that the planet’s population was tiny compared to Halkirk’s. On the other hand, Thurso’s gargantuan fisheries produced a startling tonnage of gourmet seafood which commanded extraordinary prices from Core World epicures. Probably not extraordinary enough to have attracted Star Enterprise Initiatives Unlimited’s attention to Loomis by itself, but enough to have made the star system a worthwhile trading stop even without Halkirk. The asteroid resource extraction industries and the gas mining operations centered on the star system’s trio of gas giants undoubtedly helped cover SEIU’s operating expenses, too, but the real treasure of the Loomis System lay in Halkirk’s groves of silver oak.