“Bronson? A misguided idealist?” David Freedman asked.
Whitlock shrugged. “Call him a patriot if you prefer. He’d think of himself that way.”
“And we stand in his way,” David said. “Why? Because we—the Collins kings anyway—early on chose to be part of Lermontov’s scheme? Is that why our people are being bled to death in a filthy little war we can’t win? Because of this ill conceived alliance with Lermontov?”
“David,” Alexander said gently. “Please excuse my colleague, Dr. Whitlock. Still, he has a point. Have we merited Senator Bronson’s attentions because of our support of his enemies? Could we have avoided all this by remaining neutral?”
“I very much doubt it, Sire. And now I really will have to lecture. If you’ll excuse me, I think better on my feet.” Whitlock rose and strode to the map wall, where he paced back and forth. “Always did like blackboards,” he said absently. “I take it that everyone in this room is cleared for—for everything.”
“Yes, of course,” Alexander said.
Whitlock was silent as he looked at them one by one.
“You can proceed,” Hal Slater said.
“As General Slater says,” Lysander said carefully.
Whitlock nodded to Slater, then bowed slightly to Prince Lysander. “Thank you, Highness. All right, let’s start from the beginning. The CoDominium’s coming apart. When it does, there’ll be war on Earth, and it won’t stay confined to Earth. Enough of the nationalist elements on Earth have close ties with their colonies that the war will spread beyond the solar system. We have a name for that. Interstellar war. But we don’t know much about what that means. Just that it’ll be pretty bad, bad enough that it’s worth a lot to stop it. We okay so far? Good.
“So. The Grants and the Blaines saw this coming twenty years ago. Earlier, probably, but that’s when they hired me to study their options. Problem was, there weren’t many options. Too many colonies hate each other. Some areas, the Fleet’s all that keeps the peace. Remove the Fleet, war starts like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Obvious conclusion is that the Fleet, or a good part of it, has to keep operating if we’re to have any chance of holding onto civilization.
“That’ll cost money. A lot of money, and a Fleet’s no good without bases, recruiting grounds, retirement homes, home ports for families. You going to keep civilization, you got to have a civilized home base. You need forward bases, too, out among the barbarians. Outposts, listening posts, refueling facilities, bases. Some of those can be enclaves, but it’s better to have whole planets.
“That takes soldiers. Long time ago, man named Fehrenbach said it, you can fly over a territory, you can bombard it, you can blow it to hell, you can even sterilize it, but you don’t own it until you stand a seventeen year old kid with a rifle on top of it. So. Where to get soldiers? Can’t hire ’em. Not enough money, but worse, when you hire mercenaries, what have you got?”
Everyone looked at Slater and Owensford, then looked away.
“‘Course there’s mercenaries and mercenaries,” Whitlock said. “They ain’t all alike by a long shot. Take Falkenberg’s outfit. It started as the 42nd CoDominium Line Marines. Decorated all to hell, elite outfit even before Falkenberg took it over. No surprise that it stayed together after the CD ordered it disbanded. Lermontov helped find ’em work. Figures. Falkenberg and Lermontov go back a long way. Lot of loyalty in both directions. You can think of Falkenberg’s outfit as a kind of Praetorian Guard for Lermontov, except that Lermontov’s no would-be emperor.
“But that’s one regiment. Need a lot more troops to hold things together. Where to get them?”
“Sparta,” King David said. “You and my father—”
“Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Sire,” Whitlock said. “What we’ve established so far is a need for bases, and troops to guard them with. There’s another need, planetary governments interested in civilization. Places without any grudges to work off, no ambitions to drive them. That’s Sparta. Not much wonder you were one of the first they tried to sign up.”
“There was no commitment. Then,” Alexander said. “We were friends with Lermontov and Grant, and we got some trade concessions, favorable interpretations of regulations—”
“All of which ended when the Grants and Blaines lost control,” David said.
“Sure, but anyone could foresee that would happen,” Whitlock said. “You had to know it, there wouldn’t have been no need for this conspiracy if it hadn’t been clear things were going to hell and nobody could stop the trip. What were your alternatives? Join up with Bronson?”
Alexander shrugged. “That was never offered to us. If we had—”
“If you had, you’d have ended up with no independence at all,” Whitlock said. “Bronson planets have puppet governments, with a Bronson resident calling the shots. Can’t see Sparta going along with that.”
“Nor I,” Baron von Alderheim said. He looked thoughtful. “But is this what will happen if Croser and his people win?”
“Yep.”
“Do they know this?” Sir Alfred Nathanson asked. Nathanson was Minister of War, but that was an administrative rather than a command position. Under the Spartan constitution the Kings were the commanders in chief, and could issue orders directly to their generals. For all practical purposes, Crown Prince Lysander was the actual War Minister, with Nathanson handling administration and details.
“I doubt it,” Whitlock said. “Y’all know Croser better than me. Would he find the role of puppet very attractive?”
“Attractive, no,” Alexander said. “But I really don’t know if he would accept it. I knew his father well, but Dion is a bit of an enigma. Would he take the trappings of power without the substance? Probably. He would persuade himself that this was for the best, would serve some higher good.”
“And that he’d be able to use his position to take charge some day,” Roland Dawson said. “Yes, I think that’s how his mind would work. But surely he expects to gain both substance and trappings.”
“Well he sure ain’t got much chance of it,” Whitlock said. “Not given who he’s running around with.” He clicked the screen controller, and an image formed on the wall screen.
“Field Prime. That’s what the Helots call their military commander, just like Croser is Capital Prime, and Bronson is Earth Prime. Interesting set of designations, no? Don’t show any one of them subordinate to any other. Anyway here she is.”
The woman on the screen was in her early thirties, clearly Eurafrican. 175 centimeters, according to the scale beside the image, with a high-cheeked, snub-featured handsomeness and a mane of loosely-curled hair. Startlingly athletic-looking. An insolent half-smile was on her lips.
“Ms. Skida Thibodeau, aka ‘Skilly,’ born Belize City, Belize, 2061; mother Mennonite, kidnapped into prostitution, father a pimp. Orphaned at six, primary education in a Catholic charity school. Transported by the Belizian gov’mint—gallows-bait themselves—for ‘offenses against public order’ in 2083. Better lookin’ than your average terrorist, but hoo, lordy, look at that record! Arson, insurance fraud, illegal substances trafficking, assault, intimidation, murder, racketeerin’, you name it and she’s dabbled in it. When your police people closed in on her accounts and suchlike, they found she’d managed to accumulate better than six million crowns.”
“No small sum,” Lysander said dryly.
“Right. Got most of the money out, too. Presume it’s stashed where she can get at it if she has to vanish fast. She was an, ah, intimate friend of your good Citizen Dion Croser fo’ six years, but no trace of political ties. No paper trail.”
Chief Hruska nodded sourly. “No criminal record, except for the one assault charge that got her in jail. We’ve known she was a criminal for years, but no evidence. She moved around a lot, but she stayed with Croser every couple of months. They openly went to night spots together.”
“And of course Croser is simply shocked to discover she was involved in criminal activities,” Attorney General Rusher said.
“The point is, she’s not likely to knuckle under to anybody,” Whitlock said. “Doesn’t fit her personality. So here she is, out there carryin’ water for Croser, and if Croser’s not smart enough to see what Bronson has in mind for Sparta, this one is. Leavin’ us with the question, just what in hell is her game?”
“Do you have an answer?” Alexander asked.
“Only the obvious, she thinks that when the fightin’s over, Field Prime’ll be runnin’ the show and Capital Prime and Earth Prime can dance attendance.” He shrugged. “If she can outmaneuver Bronson she’s a rare bird for sure.”
“Devious, but inexperienced,” Hal Slater said. “Inexperienced at this kind of intrigue, that is. She will have been the cleverest around where she came from. Able to outsmart anyone. Look at her battle plan in the Dales campaign. Intricate, fine tuned, clever—and utterly unworkable. I suspect it’s the same thing here. She simply has no experience at dealing with really clever people, people served by an equally intelligent general staff. Her experience with Croser probably has done little to disillusion her—and of course Bronson’s people aren’t going to.”