David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

Van Dort gazed at his friend's bleak expression. Maybe Terekhov was a harder man than he was-hardened by his profession, and experience. Yet, even if he was, Van Dort knew he was right. FAK's actions had put its members beyond the pale. Whatever twisted justification they gave themselves for their actions, they'd reduced human beings-men, women, and children-to tools. To readily expended pawns. To things to be destroyed in a coldblooded, calculated ploy to terrify and demoralize their opponents.

And yet… and yet…

There was a part of Bernardus Van Dort which couldn't help being horrified. Couldn't accept that any human beings, whatever their crimes, could be wiped away in such transcendent horror without some corner of his soul crying out in protest. And even if he could have shed that soul-deep repugnance, he didn't want to. Because the day he could do that, he would become someone else.

"Well, whatever else it's done," he said at length, "it has to be a body blow to the FAK. It's more than three times their total casualties to date, and all inflicted in less than two hours. That kind of damage has to knock even fanatics like Nordbrandt back on their heels."

"And losing a thousand tons of modern weapons has to make a hole in their offensive capabilities," Terekhov pointed out. But there was something odd about his voice, and Van Dort looked up quickly.

The Manticoran's eyes were distant, almost unfocused, as he gazed across the cabin at the bulkhead portrait of his wife. He sat that way for over a full minute, rubbing the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand together in a slow, circular movement.

"What is it, Aivars?" Van Dort finally asked.

"Hmph?" Terekhov shook himself, and his eyes refocused on Van Dort's face. "What?"

"I asked what you were thinking about."

"Oh." The Manticoran tossed his right hand in a throwing-away gesture. "I was just thinking about their weapons."

"What about them?"

"Tadislaw already has First Platoon's armorers examining their find. So far, everything's been Solarian manufacture. Some of the small arms are at least twenty T-years old, but all of them are in excellent shape. Replacement parts, some a lot newer than the weapons themselves, indicate they were all refurbished and reconditioned before they were delivered to Nordbrandt. The crew-served weapons they've looked at so far seem to be newer than that, though, and they've turned up modern com gear, reconnaissance systems, night vision equipment, body armor, military-grade explosives and detonators…" The captain shook his head. "Bernardus, they had everything they needed to equip a battalion of light infantry- modern light infantry-complete with heavy weapons support, buried in that hole in the ground."

"I realize that," Van Dort said.

"You're missing my point. They had it buried in a hole in the ground . Why? If they had this kind of equipment, why weren't they using it? They could've blasted their way right through anything the Kornatian police could put in their way. Hell, for that matter, they could've blasted their way through anything Suka's System Defense Force could have thrown at them, unless the SDF was prepared to resort to saturation airstrikes! Nordbrandt could have invaded the Nemanja Building and taken the entire Parliament hostage on the very first day of her offensive, instead of just bombing it with civilian explosives. So why didn't she?"

Van Dort blinked, then frowned.

"I don't know," he admitted slowly. "Unless they didn't have them then." He inhaled deeply, still thinking. "Maybe you said it yourself. You said they were either suicidal or didn't know what they were doing. Maybe they just hadn't had the weapons long enough."

"That's exactly what I was thinking. But if they didn't have them stockpiled to begin with, where did they come from? How did they get here? I can't believe Nordbrandt had a big enough war chest socked away to pay for them, but the kind of rogue arms dealer who'd deal with someone like her would demand cash in advance, and he wouldn't sell them cheap. So who did pay for them? And when did they deliver them? And while we're asking questions like that, how do we know this is the only stockpile she had?"

"I don't know," Van Dort admitted again. "But I think we'd better find out."

Agnes Nordbrandt's hands trembled as she switched off the com and returned it to its hiding place in the canister of flour. She put the canister back into the cabinet, closed the door, and switched on the HD. But there was only regularly scheduled programming, none of the screaming news bulletins which would go streaming out when the government announced its stunning victory.

How? How had they done it? How had they even spotted Camp Freedom in the first place?

Was it her fault? That second load of weapons and -equipment-had they spotted the delivery shuttle after all? Tracked it to Camp Freedom?

No. No, it couldn't have been the delivery. If they'd spotted that, they would have attacked before this. They would never have risked waiting until we might have dispersed the weapons to other locations.

But if not that, then what?

Drazen. It must have been Drazen's people. Yet how could it have been? They'd made dozens-scores-of careful, stealthy trips in and out of Camp Freedom since the Nemanja bombing without anyone ever noticing a thing. And Drazen had been even more cautious than usual. Less than a dozen individual flights-nondescript personal air cars and copters-buried in the background of an entire hemisphere's routine, civilian traffic. Their flight paths had been almost random. Even their arrival times had been staggered over a window more than six hours wide! There was no way they could have been spotted. No way their courses and arrivals could have been connected with one another.

The Manties, she thought. The goddamned, murdering Manties. They did it. Them and their sensors and their jackbooted Marines!

It was the only answer. Only the Manties had the technical capability to pluck a handful of innocent-looking flights out of the clutter of everyone else's air traffic. Only the same greedy, avaricious, grasping imperialists out to devour her planet. They were the only ones who could have spotted Drazen, and their mercenary so-called "Marines" were the only troops in the star system who could have butchered everyone in Camp Freedom like so many helpless sheep hurled into a furnace.

Hot tears burned the backs of her eyes, but she refused to shed them. She wouldn't weep. She would not weep! Not even though the hired thugs of the interstellar appetite waiting to rape her world and the corrupt regime of local despots waiting to help them do it had murdered Drazen and his entire cell. Had burned them like so many logs in a fire and butchered over ninety other people-friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters of the armed struggle, some of whom she'd known for literally two-thirds of her entire life-with them.

She would not weep.

They may have destroyed Camp Freedom, she told herself fiercely, but they don't know about the other arms caches. They don't know the Movement still has modern weapons, still has dozens of times the firepower and capability we had at the beginning!

She told herself that, and resolutely refused to consider the fact that whatever the FAK might have, the government had the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

"So now what do we do?"

Vice President Vuk Rajkovic looked around the table at the members of "his" Cabinet, although less than a quarter of them had been chosen by him.

"What do you mean, Mr. Vice President?" Mavro Kanjer asked.

"You know perfectly well what I mean, Mavro," Rajkovic told the Secretary of Justice flatly. "You were there when Van Dort told us what Aleksandra didn't tell us." Several people shifted uneasily, and Rajkovic stabbed them with an angry glare. " All of you know, by now. Don't pretend for one moment you don't! And if any of you want to try to, I'm officially informing you now that I have formal confirmation of Van Dort's statements from Baroness Medusa herself. President Tonkovic was informed six weeks ago that a hard deadline existed, and she still hasn't informed her own government of that fact."