Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Forty-Four

Lombardi/Harmony System, 4097

Captain Caitlin Bowery was a very small woman, Marius thought, as she was escorted into his presence by two hulking Marine guards. Indeed, she looked almost child-like, although that meant nothing in a universe where people could alter themselves to fit any desired form. There was no mistaking the intelligence and determination in her eyes, however, nor the trepidation in her body language. The Marines hadn’t cuffed her, but she obviously knew she was a prisoner.

“Welcome aboard,” Marius said. He’d invited Vaughn and Tiffany to the meeting, while Williams had insisted on coming along. “I am sorry that we must meet under such circumstances.”

“So am I,” Caitlin said. She had a rich, warm voice that reminded him, just a little, of his sister. He felt an odd surge of warmth towards her. “Please allow me to congratulate you on your victory.”

He heard the bitterness in her tone and nodded.

“I understand from your crew”—of course, Vaughn’s Marines had interrogated the superdreadnaught’s bridge crew—”that Admiral Justinian made his escape, with a little help from you. You’ll be pleased to know that his battlecruiser and a number of other ships made it over the mass limit and vanished.”

“I made sure he’d get away,” Caitlin said. Her voice hardened. “What—exactly—are you going to do with my crews?”

Marius frowned. It was clear that she believed that her life was already lost to her. Why?

“We won’t do anything to the vast majority of your crewmen,” he said. He was tempted to point out that they were, in fact, Admiral Justinian’s crewmen, but decided that would be pointless. “They will be held until the end of the war, then most of them can be discharged from the service. There would be little point in prosecuting them. As Admiral Justinian refrained from war crimes, or acts forbidden by the Articles of War…”

“Apart from mutiny and barratry, of course,” Caitlin pointed out sourly.

“I believe that there is little point in holding them for trial by a war crimes tribunal,” Marius concluded, ignoring the interruption. “They will be required to give a full account of their service under Admiral Justinian. If we discover that they have lied to us, we may reopen the question of their future standing, but I do not think they will be exiled.”

He looked into her quiet brown eyes, wondering what she was thinking. “As for you, I would like you to perform a service for us. If you carry out our request, you will be granted exile or, better yet, a full pardon.”

Caitlin made a show of studying his face.

“And what if I believe that you don’t have the authority to make such an offer?”

“I have a document from the Senate granting me wide leeway in dealing with prisoners,” he said with a smile. “I can certainly recommend that they pardon you, but I can certainly offer internal exile as opposed to immediate execution. I can show you the document if you like…”

“No, thank you,” Caitlin said. She hesitated. “What do you want me to do?”

Marius keyed his console. A star chart shimmered into existence.

“Admiral Justinian and his remaining ships have fled to Harmony, we believe,” he said. He watched her closely, but she had her expression under tight control. Doctor Dunwoody had confirmed that she had security implants that would probably kill her if she was interrogated under truth drugs or torture. She’d probably been given them when she had become Admiral Justinian’s flag captain. “We want to put an end to this as quickly as possible…”

“You want me to talk him into surrendering,” Caitlin corrected flatly. “What makes you think he will listen to the person who booted him off his own ship?”

“Let me put it like this,” Marius said. “The Senate wants this to end quickly. If we can convince Justinian to surrender, the war will be over and normal trade can resume. We could take out Harmony and end the war that way, but that would cause thousands of additional, unnecessary deaths. I am empowered to make Justinian the same offer as I made you; if he surrenders, he will receive exile instead of death—and hundreds of thousands of people will live.”

“And you’re just going to let me go back to him?” Caitlin stared at him.

“We’ll give you your parole,” Marius said. “If you swear not to take up arms against us, we will release you when we enter the Harmony System.” He frowned. “But should we catch you fighting us in the future, we’ll execute you on the spot.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Caitlin said, finally.

Marius nodded, impatiently. He’d expected that.

“But if you wish me to try to convince him to surrender, I will do so,” Caitlin finished.

“That suits me,” Marius said. He looked up at the guards. “Escort Captain Bowery to her quarters; keep her under guard.”

“Aye, sir,” the Marine said.

The hatch had barely closed behind the women and her guards when Williams started to froth at the mouth.

“Admiral,” he said, so quickly that the words started to blur together, “the Senate will not be happy at the thought of letting the bastard go free.”

“Exile is not the same as going free,” Vaughn rumbled, his deep voice echoing through the compartment. “He will remain on one world for the rest of his life under permanent supervision by security forces. It may be a comfortable prison, but it will still be a prison. He won’t be allowed to leave, ever.”

“The fact remains,” Williams began, “that you are offering him…”

“Enough,” Marius said quietly. “Our objective is to put an end to the war as soon as possible. If offering Justinian exile instead of a bullet in the back of the head succeeds in ending the war, we will accept it and be glad. And besides, this way we take all of Harmony’s industrial plants and workers—enough to please your masters, surely?”

Williams flushed. “Admiral…”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Marius promised. “Now, I have to contact Captain Garibaldi and inform him that he’s going to play messenger boy again.”

Williams took the hint and stormed out of the compartment.

Marius and Vaughn exchanged a long look, then Vaughn and Tiffany followed the Political Commissioner through the hatch. Marius allowed himself a tired smile, keyed his console and issued orders to Midway, and then headed over to check on the reports from the replenishment teams. The fleet train had entered the system after the battle was won and had immediately started reloading ships and arsenals. Marius had warned them that they might be departing for Harmony within a day, so they were now trying to determine how many ships could be repaired on the spot, and how many needed to be sent back to a shipyard.

His intercom buzzed forty minutes later.

“Admiral, Captain Garibaldi is requesting a personal meeting,” Raistlin said. There was no hint in his voice that he knew the captain personally, although Marius privately suspected that his young aide was jealous. His father’s influence had seen him appointed to a prestigious post that was dangerous, but without the chance to win glory. “He says that it’s urgent.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Marius replied. “Did he say what it was about?”

“No, sir,” Raistlin said. “He specified that it was for your ears only.”

“Right,” Marius said. “Tell him to come aboard. I’ll see him in thirty minutes.”

Roman had lost his parents before he reached his majority and, like all parentless RockRats, had been sent to live with relatives. His uncle had taken him in and tried to fill the void in Roman’s life, although the old man hadn’t been in the best of states to take care of a teenager. Despite that, the young Roman had dreaded having to face him when he knew that he was in trouble.

He felt that way now. It was his duty to face the admiral, to tell him how they could approach Admiral Justinian, and yet…it might be the last act of Roman’s career.

The hatch opened in front of him and he stepped into the admiral’s quarters. A glowing star chart caught his attention at once, but he looked away from it to see the admiral sitting behind his desk. He didn’t look forgiving.

Part of Roman quailed, yet he kept walking until he was in front of the desk. He snapped a perfect salute.

“At ease,” Admiral Drake growled. “Take a seat. What was so important that you insisted on a personal meeting?”

Roman sat down and pressed his hands tightly together to keep them from shaking.

“I saw your orders, sir,” he said. “You want us to take Captain Bowery back to Harmony and get her to convince Admiral Justinian to surrender…”

“Yes,” Admiral Drake said. It was not a question.

“It may not prove convincing,” Roman said. “He may feel that she has been subverted, or threatened, or maybe have even changed her coat. Is he going to be willing to listen to her?”

“I have no one else to send,” Admiral Drake said dryly.

“That isn’t true, sir,” Roman said. “There is one other person he’ll listen to.”

Admiral Drake looked up. “And do you have a secret connection with him that passed unnoticed for five years?”

“No, sir,” Roman said. “I have his daughter.”

There was a long, uneasy silence.

“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” Admiral Drake said, carefully. “And I suggest that you make it extremely good.”

Roman outlined the full story, starting with the discovery of the wreck of the Harmonious Repose and ending with his decision to keep Henrietta confined on Midway rather than hand her over to the tender mercies of the Senate. Admiral Drake listened, his face showing no expression, as Roman explained that Admiral Justinian would be bound to listen to his daughter. The mere fact that she was still alive, without having been executed by the Senate or killed by pirates, would be very convincing. It would be a gesture of good faith.

“You know, captain,” Admiral Drake said, when Roman had finished, “I cannot decide if I should promote you, or send you up for court martial.”

Roman kept his mouth shut, figuring that anything he said now would only get him in further trouble.

“You disobeyed orders that came directly from the Senate,” Admiral Drake said, as if he were building a list of charges. “You kept someone prisoner without reporting her presence to higher authority. You wasted Federation Navy resources on looking after the prisoner…should I go on?”

“No, sir,” Roman said.

“On the other hand, you’re quite right,” Admiral Drake continued.

Roman breathed a sigh of relief.

“His daughter would be a much more effective peace envoy than his flag captain,” Drake said. “So…I guess I’ll just have to thank you for your foresight and, in the interests of balance, cancel both the promotion and the court martial.”

“Thank you, sir,” Roman said.

“Which doesn’t mean,” Admiral Drake said in a suspiciously pleasant voice, “that you are to go and do it again. I’m going to have to shield you from the commissioners and come up with some bullshit story about how we captured her. Do not put me in a position like that again, do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Roman said.

“Return to your ship,” Admiral Drake ordered. “Prepare for the mission; brief the admiral’s daughter and make sure she knows what’s expected of her. And captain?”

Roman looked up nervously.

“Good work.”

Marius watched the hatch close behind Captain Garibaldi before he broke down in helpless laughter. The sheer audacity of capturing the enemy’s daughter and keeping her prisoner, without telling anyone…he chuckled again while shaking his head. Captain Garibaldi’s luck still held strong. Who knows? Perhaps he could end the war without any more fighting.

Still chuckling, he turned back to his console and started to update the operations chart. The fleet needed to move within a day so they’d be in position to support Midway if Admiral Justinian turned nasty, and there was too much work to do.

He almost missed Tiffany’s entry into the room; only the smell of her perfume alerted him to her presence. He turned to greet her, but she ran into his arms before he’d gotten out a single syllable. Then, she kissed him…his arms went reflexively around her, and for a time, nothing else mattered. Finally they broke for air.

“Do you think Admiral Justinian will surrender?” she wondered. “I mean…he doesn’t have any chance of victory, does he?”

“I don’t think so,” Marius said, answering the second question first. “Actually, the worst thing he could do from my perspective is to flee into interstellar space and head to the Rim. We’d never be sure we’d got him. And if he stumbled across an Outsider world and offered to share technology, he could create a whole new threat to the Federation.”

The reports he’d seen from ONI tended to confirm his pessimistic feelings about the Outsiders. Something was clearly up beyond the Rim, something that threatened the entire Federation. And here they were, wrapped up in a squalid little civil war.

“Marius, what are you thinking?” his wife asked.

“If he doesn’t surrender, we can take out Harmony and then spend a year mopping up,” he said slowly. “And if he does, the war is over and all we have to do is deal with the minor warlords.”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said. Her voice sharpened, a legacy of her time in High Society. “Tell me something.”

“Sure,” Marius replied.

“You’re saying that Admiral Justinian has lost the war. But does he know that?”

“He should,” Marius said. “No professional admiral worth his salt could still believe that he had any chance at ultimate victory in his position.”

Admiral Justinian had spent the trip from Lombardi to Harmony considering the virtues of suicide. He’d expected to die in battle, not to have his closest ally stun him and dump him into a shuttle so he could escape, even though it had saved his life. It had taken a day to get rid of the headache that had burned through his skull, and another day to overcome the depression that followed. Afterward, he’d been able to make some plans, although the truth was that he had no idea what to do. Harmony was strongly held, but most of his fleet had been crushed. He doubted the Federation would give him time to rebuild.

With no other choice, he plunged himself into issuing orders as soon as the Apollo returned to normal space, just outside the Harmony mass limit. As the battlecruiser plunged farther into the system, he was gratified to see his subordinates working on defense and repairing the damaged ships. Best of all, Harmony operated a large starfighter plant and could turn out new starfighters and gunboats on very short notice. Training up the pilots was harder—especially as the training course would have to be updated to account for the damned antifighter cruisers—but if he had a few weeks, he’d be able to give a good account of himself.

He was still contemplating it when a courier boat transited the Jefferson Asimov Point and transmitted an urgent message for him personally. As soon as he saw the recording, he called a meeting of his subordinates.

“These recordings were taken by a scout ship I dispatched to Bester,” he said before displaying them on the main screen. Some of his subordinates had been quietly muttering about making contact with the Federation—with or without their command—and seeing if they could cut a deal. “The news is not good.”

His subordinates watched the dispatch in silence. They saw how the Federation Navy had secured Bester and then departed up the Asimov Chain to Sphinx, followed by the Internal Security operations on the planet’s surface. The bloody massacre of the surrendered personnel and the brutal crushing of the early uprisings against Federation control played out in front of them, a mocking reminder that they’d be fools to trust any promise made by the Senate.

He knew Caitlin hadn’t known about it when she’d surrendered. She might be dead now.

“Some of you have been considering that it might be best to try to negotiate with the Federation,” he said flatly.

No one bothered to dispute it.

“As you can see, the Federation took the surrenders, promised good treatment…and then slaughtered the surrendered personnel in cold blood. That was no accident, my friends; that was cold-blooded murder. The Federation killed men it had promised to spare, along with their families and children!”

He looked around the compartment, his eyes moving from face to face.

“That is the fate that is in store for us when they arrive,” he pointed out. “If we surrender, they will kill us and our families once we are helpless. That’s why I will not surrender to the Federation Navy, not now, not ever. And if any of you want to surrender, you can move to Jefferson and wait for them to capture you.”

No one said anything at all.

Admiral Justinian took a deep breath.

“We may not be able to stop them from killing us,” he concluded, “but by God, we can make them hurt!”