CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“And that will close out the final report.” O’Hanraghty turned off the holo projector in Murphy’s flag briefing room. Callum was there with his father, sitting in a wheelchair, his eye covered by a patch.
“Your report about Xing’s execution is in the appendices.” O’Hanraghty poured out a glass of whiskey, crossed to Murphy’s desk, and offered it to him. The admiral refused with a slight shake of his head, and the chief of staff sipped it instead.
“We could leave all that out…” he said.
“No.” Murphy shook his head again. “Legally, we’re covered by my authority as a commander in the field.” He grimaced. “People who are already inclined to piss and moan over our…shenanigans will probably add it to the fire. But when you’ve bent as many rules as I have…” He shrugged. “Let’s just say Xing won’t be the straw that breaks that camel’s back.”
“Xing got a better death than she deserved,” O’Hanraghty huffed. “But when we make our case for the Rish’s materiel aid to the League, we should have brought back an alive Second Admiral Xing in chains to testify to that. Even the most crooked fax run by the Five Hundred would’ve had trouble ignoring that bit of evidence.”
Murphy’s face darkened.
“And what makes you think that? Obviously Xing would be saying whatever we wanted her to say to stave off her execution for war crimes. Obviously.”
“Terry, she would’ve been the best witness we could have delivered. A witness that spouts a lie becomes less and less credible as scrutiny wears on. That doesn’t happen when people tell the truth. Quite the opposite, actually.” O’Hanraghty rapped on the desk.
“But people do lie,” Murphy’s shoulder slumped, “and whatever Xing would have testified to—assuming she cooperated—would come with a seed of doubt. Those that have had their head in the sand when it comes to the Rish wouldn’t be moved. Physical evidence is more convincing, even if its circumstantial. Justice for Eira and the innocents killed by Xing was important. You’ve had your ear to the deck. What’s the sentiment among our spacers about how we dealt with Xing?”
“No complaints,” O’Hanraghty said. “Scuttlebutt is all for executing Xing right then and there. Not that the average spacer knows about the Rish.”
“And leaving Xing alive to curry favor back home is exactly what a Heart would have done,” Callum raised a finger. “That’s what I overheard in sick bay. Also, a bunch of guys have been asking if Eira’s got a boyfriend. But then Sergeant Major Logan made it clear that…no one’s going to bother her. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Immediate justice for Xing might have been the ‘wrong’ decision from a Machiavellian perspective,” Murphy said. “But our fleet needs faith in me. Sparing Xing the airlock or the bullet would have been out of line with what they expect. I sow doubt and we’ll reap that harvest later. Besides, this way I can sleep at night. Having that monster in my brig wouldn’t have come with the same comfort.”
“The Oval should give you a hero’s welcome,” Callum said. “You didn’t just save New Dublin; you knocked the League back decades. And we found proof the Rish have been propping up our enemy. Those lizard bastards must have kept the war going for decades and helped kill God knows how many people without us ever suspecting.”
“Without our knowing.” O’Hanraghty raised his glass. “We suspected plenty. We just never could prove it before. Now we can.”
“Can we?” Murphy asked. O’Hanraghty looked at him. “The Rish blew themselves up before we could drag any of them back to Earth.”
“Maybe so,” the chief of staff replied, “but there’s still the whole damned shipyard. I don’t care how good the Lizards are at hiding their tracks. There has to be evidence of their tech buried in something that size. All we have to do is convince the Powers That Be to come out and look for it!”
“Which would be sort of like walking from Earth to Mars without a suit…only harder,” Murphy said dryly. “For that matter, it’s not just a matter of convincing them to look at it. It’s also a matter of whether or not they’d get the chance even if they were willing to. We left Granger to keep an eye on the POWs until the Republic can pick them up, but there’s no way she can hold onto the yard if they turn up to collect them with a task group or two in their pocket. Which, if you’ll recall, is why I specifically told her to not even try. She’s got her finger on the trigger to slag the yards if she needs to, and she’s got the early warning to skip the system and make it back to New Dublin and avoid a fight.”
“Well, no,” O’Hanraghty acknowledged. “But it’s in an ‘out of the way’ spot for the League, too, Terry. Freeing up any sizable force to go take it back—and then getting it there—is going to be what you might call a nontrivial challenge. And that doesn’t even consider the way you just kicked their combat power right in the balls. I’d say the odds are at least even she can hang onto it for show-and-tell if we can get the Oval to send anyone out to look in the first place.”
“And if she can’t?”
“In that case there’s still the video from the Hoplons. And the DNA on Logan’s fists from pounding that one lizard into hamburger, for that matter!”
“But nothing from the League prisoners.” Murphy raised a forefinger. “They never once saw a Rish or even heard about their involvement. According to them, Project Astra was simply a long-term, carefully hidden project of the League.”
“Terrence…whose side are you on here?”
“Pretend I’m Fokaides,” Murphy raised both hands, “and I’m skeptical. Skeptical because I have to take it to Prime Minister Schleibaum, and she’s going to be even more skeptical before she lays it out for the public.”
“She cares about the public?” Callum asked. “She just has to speak to the Five Hundred, right?”
“Now he’s starting to get it,” O’Hanraghty sighed. “Oh, she does need to worry about the electoral fallout if the voters in general find out their dauntless leaders have been systematically closing their eyes to Rishathan involvement for at least thirty or forty years. That’s not going to help her party in the next election.
“But that’s the least of her problems, because the Five Hundred control the major newsfeeds, among other things. They’ll shape the narrative however they want it shaped, and they generate a hell of a cash flow off luxury goods traded with the Rish. They may not care all that much about anything that splashes on the Navy and ONI, but they won’t want to accept being dragged into a popular war against the Rish. It’s entirely possible that’s exactly what would happen if the general public can be convinced of what the Lizards have been up to, too. So, since they do control those newsfeeds—”
He shrugged.
“I doubt the average person’s going to want a war against the Sphere, anyway,” Murphy said, shaking his head. “Not after fifty-seven years fighting the League. Humanity’s earned a peace dividend, wouldn’t you say?”
“If we can bring the League to the table,” O’Hanraghty said. “There’s probably a decent chance of it after this. That Eternal Forward party of theirs will take the blame for the losses at New Dublin and Diyu, and they’re the biggest plurality in the Accord. It could bring down their entire government, really. Or maybe Than will keep enough clout for a coup, bring this to a close.” He frowned, considering it, then shrugged. “But back to you being Fokaides. Even without any captured shipyards to examine, the amount of circumstantial evidence is enormous, Terrence.”
“But still circumstantial,” Murphy said. “If Granger loses the yard, the only physical evidence we’ve got is one oddly designed Fasset drive component and the DNA on a Hoplon’s knuckles. Everything else is digital. It could easily be faked. At least that’s how I think Fokaides will explain it away.”
“But for everyone in the Federation that suspected the Rich were involved, this is proof,” Callum said. “And it’ll convince more people, especially in the Fringe, that the Rish are dirty.”
“Which should terrify the Five Hundred and the Heart Worlds,” O’Hanraghty replied somberly.
“You’re probably right about that,” Murphy said, “but what should terrify them—all of us—is that we don’t have a clue what the Rish’s endgame is.”
“They’ve got an endgame?” Callum asked. “Aside from making a ton of money while they watch the stupid monkey boys and girls kill each other?”
“The Rish always have an endgame,” O’Hanraghty told him.
“But they’ve never actually attacked anyone outside their own borders,” Callum pointed out. O’Hanraghty raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “I’ve had time to do some research since I got turned into a younger version of President Tolmach,” he said. “And all the sources I’ve found—including some almost as tinfoil as you and Dad—agree on that. So isn’t it likely that what this is really about is just a way to keep us and the League bleeding each other white rather than sniffing around their borders?”
“Reasonable point,” O’Hanraghty said, but Murphy shook his head.
“Really?” He leaned back behind his desk. “What about that matriarch on the Bǐshǒu…Remember what she said? ‘The League humans have failed the Sphere.’ That sounds like a hell of a lot more than just war profiteering or keeping the Federation and the League occupied and away from the Sphere’s borders.”
“Like what?” O’Hanraghty sounded skeptical.
“Harry, you’ve been suspicious of the Rish even longer than I have. Do you really think they’ve been playing this deep a game for this long just to keep us and the League chasing our own tails?”
“So while we’ve been tearing each other down,” Callum said, “the Rish have been…what? Prepping for the moment we’re weak enough?”
“Or until the League is. Or both,” his father said, then snorted. “Listen to me! I’ve taken off my ‘the Rish are helping the League’ tinfoil hat and donned my ‘the Rish are coming to kill us all’ hat. Let’s get the Heart Worlds to believe the Sphere’s been backing the League for years before we go to the next…somewhat logical conclusion.”
“One impossible thing at a time,” O’Hanraghty agreed. “The Fringe will believe it. The military…? Maybe. The rank and file probably will. Maybe not the Army, but a huge percentage of the Navy’s enlisted and the Marines—officers and enlisted—are from outside the Heart. Convincing someone like Admiral Rajenda Thakore will be a tougher sell.”
“And how do we even start to convince them?” Callum asked.
“We tell the truth.” Murphy let his chair come forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “What else is there to convince anyone?”
“And if they won’t listen?” O’Hanraghty shook his head. “Let’s not forget what we were telling Callum a minute ago. Getting the top brass and their Five Hundred masters to admit the truth even if we can prove it won’t be easy. They’d a lot rather sweep any evidence out the airlock. And probably do the same thing for the messenger right along with it.”
“I don’t like your implication.”
“Terrence, we’ve rocked the boat pretty hard. First, we win the most strategically significant naval battle in decades, maybe longer. Then we smash a League system and put our enemy back years—decades—in terms of production and manpower. Then we find a whole lot of smoke—maybe not from a fire, but from some pretty hot embers—of Rish involvement. And the way we did all that involved ignoring and violating command directives left and right, which puts the people who issued them in a piss-poor light. The status quo can’t survive all of that. It has to break, when our report gets back to Earth. But something tells me the system will fight to keep it in place anyway.”
“Am I supposed to be the little boy who says the Emperor has no clothes? Or am I Chicken Little pointing at an inbound dinosaur killer?”
“Tough one, Sir. Something tells me we’re going to have to play this one by the seat of our pants for a while. We’ll be back at New Dublin for rest and refit. I imagine we’ll get a feel for the Heart Worlds’ response pretty quick.”
“Which is what I’m afraid of,” Murphy acknowledged with a sigh.
“Dad, you remember when you said this assignment was going to be two years of just marking time?” Callum motioned to his eyepatch. “Well, I’ve decided excitement is actually pretty awful. Can we go back to boredom, somehow?”
“Balls are rolling, son, and they’ve already moved faster and farther than I ever anticipated. It’s up to us to get control of the situation or get crushed by consequences of our own making.” Murphy smiled crookedly. “Welcome to the Navy.”
“Yeah…it’s just like the posters.”