Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 19
“She’s recovering well now and expects to return to the campaign trail this week,” Brookes says. “Do you worry that this event will galvanize support for her further?”
“Not a bit,” Noovin replies smoothly, but a glint of perspiration gathers at his hairline. “And while I’m relieved—as we all are, certainly—that Kathleen wasn’t more seriously injured, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s wrong for the High Council and she’s wrong for the Alliance.”
Brookes checks her holopad again, seems to hesitate. “You, or course, know the AIB found the shooter.”
“Yes,” Noovin replies even more smoothly. The sweat beaded at the edge of his brow slides down along his face. “Dead, from what I understand. Political orientations aside, the government takes all threats against its members seriously.”
“It’s been leaked that the gunman’s holofeeds were full of pro-Noovin sentiment.”
Noovin shrugs with exaggerated effort. “No political movement is devoid of its weirdos, Sandra. I can’t speak to the motives of one deranged lunatic.”
“So, you know nothing else of it?”
Noovin smiles once more, shows his teeth this time, like the fangs of a cobra about to strike. “I denounce all forms of violence.”
SCANNING>>>SCANNING>>>HYPER-CHANNEL 422826>>>RECEPTION>>> Hovercamera pods circle Kathleen Kerrigan as she exits the hospital. Her arm is in a sling and her features are drawn, but she smiles as reporters crowd in and the questions start flying. Further back, and kept clear by suited men who appear to be beefed-up campaign security, supporters cheer and wave signs.
Kerrigan pauses to wave to the latter before turning her gaze on the HoloMedia. “It’s nice to see you all. I’d like to thank the medical staff, here, for their amazing care. I’d like to thank my family and friends for their love and perseverance. I know this has been tough. I’d like to thank my supporters” she waves again to the crowds, who bawl in response “who haven’t wavered.”
Allowing the throng a few moments of racket, she draws out a tissue and touches it to the corner of her eye. “And, most importantly, I’d like to take just a moment to publicly state my condolences to the families of Jake Cummins and Daegan Farley, whose loss I can barely endure, myself. Both have worked with my campaign since the beginning. Daegan has—had been—with me since the early days with the Assembly.”
She pauses, chokes up, rubs her eye again. The crowd quiets, waits.
“They gave their lives...for me...” She clears her throat and tucks the tissue away. “And for our Cause. This incident, this ugliness will not deter us. It will not deter me.”
The crowd cheers explosively.
“The thuggery of Alexi Noovin’s movement and his followers will not intimidate us. We’re going to keep at it, friends! And we’re going to win!”
The force of the cheering causes the hovercameras orbiting Kerrigan to shudder in the air.
>>>SCANNING>>>SCANNING>>>HYPER-CHANNEL 920549>>>UNION-BROADCAST-RESTRICTED>>>RECEPTION>>> Shaking and red-faced, Cupp is out of his seat and stalking down the aisle to the floor of the Senate. “You told us, you told the People, that you would not interfere with the election!”
Levine holds up both arms in a gesture of martyrdom. “And how exactly is anything I’ve done interfering with the election?”
“You are blocking the bill to change the date of the election!” Cupp shrieks as he stops at the floor’s edge. “Don’t deny it!”
“I have no vote in the proceedings of this body,” Levine replies hotly. “And while I can veto a bill, you and I both know I’ve sworn not to do so” he grins venomously “sworn not to interfere.”
“You’re blocking the bill by proxy! Through your supporters!”
That starts growls and a couple shouts of outrage from amongst the other Senators.
“My understanding is that you can muster a plurality for your bill, but not a majority.” Levine shrugs. “Seems that your supporters are the problem, sir.”
Laughter from some of the Senators causes Cupp’s face to darken to the hue of a fresh bruise. “You’ve been threatening the holdouts. I’ve seen your staffers circulating.”
“And I’ve got to ask you, again, Mister Cupp, why it is the vote needs to be moved up, all of a sudden. Only a couple weeks ago, you seemed completely confident in your efforts.”
“Don’t make this about me!” Cupp waves a finger at Noovin and his rage carries him a few steps onto the Senate floor. “This is the will of the People!”
Eyes twinkling with the light of advantage seized, Levine says, “You’re still just pissed about that event on Halcyon.”
“That was completely inappropriate!” Cupp screams and lurches towards him. Only the grasp of some of the other Senators keeps him from reaching Levine. “You’ve got no class, no decency, Levine!”
“The people of your home world seemed plenty welcoming to me!” Levine barks back, smiling, folding his arms in satisfaction. “Isn’t their will important, too?”
“You bastard!” Cupps flails against the restraint of the others. “We will have our vote! We will have the Recall!”
“On the date already agreed to,” Levine calls after him as Cupp’s supporters drag him from the floor. Levine glowers around at the rest of the Senate. “I will not interfere with the Will of the People.”
SEVERSON HAD HAD HIS galley aboard the Annihilator decked out with opulence that seemed almost obscene for what was, after all, a ship of war. Grooms in full livery circulated amongst Admirals and their staffs, themselves, adorned in full, first-class uniforms, gold braid, ruby stars, and the “fruit salad” of service pins resplendent. Trays brought wine, and kept it coming. Conversation was careful, but cheerful.
“I tell you, Nehemiah,” the man swirling his drink pensively at Harrison’s side said, “it’s getting to be nervy business.”
Harrison looked at his companion. Calvin Buto—Admiral, Commanding the Rimward Fleet—was an athletic man nearly his height with a tan that spoke of longer hours in the sun than most active spacers managed. “What’s that, Cal?”
“Timothy just waves it off as more paperwork,” Buto said, “but this talk of a Loyalty Oath to the High Council...”
Harrison’s eyebrow quirked up. “I’d heard of it, but thought the Assembly shouted it down. Caused quite the fuss, if I’m told correctly.”
“It died down, but didn’t go away.” Buto glanced about uneasily. “Stationed close to the heart of things, you become privy to rumors that maybe don’t circulate as far out as here, near the front.”
“The Fleet is apolitical,” Harrison stated and took a draw on his wine glass. “The Joint Chiefs would never stand for that. Nor, as you have said, would the Assembly.” He shook his head dismissively, but glanced about, searching for Terry. He hadn’t heard that this particular corpse had been exhumed again from its grave.
“You don’t understand,” Buto pressed. “Things have changed, Nehemiah. They are still changing.” He glanced over his shoulder, towards where Severson was nibbling on a roll and nodding at something said by one of Buto’s task force commanders. “Lines are being drawn, not just between the Assembly and the Council, or the Council and the Fleet.” He leaned close and his eyes shimmered. “They’re being drawn amongst the service.”
Harrison took another sip in the hopes it might drown the twinge in his guts. Cautiously, “And do we have some sense of where our commander stands in all that?”
“Look, I’m a Fleet man, through-and-through!” Buto proclaimed, loud enough that others glanced at him. The rising flush of his cheeks betrayed the amount of alcohol he’d consumed.
“There’s a good man,” Harrison spoke up jovially, as though they’d just shared a joke. But his teeth ground. This was no place for this. The galley could be lousy with listening devices. And where the hell is Terry? Harrison lowered his voice. “What does Severson say to all of this?”
“Nothing.” Buto downed the last of his wine, waved for another. “Like I said, he just presses on.” He paused, almost calculating as he accepted another glass from a passing groom. “He’s remarkably, unnervingly calm about it. Like he doesn’t think any of it will come to fruition.”
Harrison looked again across the room at his commander. Severson did seem at ease, joyful, even, like this final conference he’d called for his commanders—compelling several of them to cross a good portion of the Alliance to cluster their flagships in orbit over Coronado—was some sort of send-off before a Grand Review.
“He doesn’t,” Harrison said with sudden realization. He’s utterly confident in victory. And a victory, especially if it hastens the end of the war, guarantees his immunity to the Council’s machinations. If there are divisions in the Fleet itself, victory will weld them back together.
“Then I worry he’s not seeing the big picture,” Buto muttered. “Noovin’s creatures are everywhere. We’ve got AIB on every ship and these Council Guard slugs replacing Marines.”
Harrison turned to him sharply. “What?”
“Not on this one,” Buto replied hurriedly, “but I’ve had to take them on. I’m told it’s to make good casualties.”
And, sadly, that might be as true as not. But still... “Cal, maybe you ought to slow down on that stuff.”
“Makes it almost a relief to be going into action,” the Admiral of the Rimward Fleet said. “At least it’ll get us away from all of” he waved around them exaggeratedly “this conspiracy.”
“Really, Cal,” Harrison started to scold, but saw Omura coming and took the opportunity. “If you could excuse me, just a moment.” He nodded towards Terry. “That’s for me.”
“Of course, of course,” Buto slurred slightly, then chuckled. “Watch your back.”
Harrison grimaced at the loudness with which he’d said it as he stepped across the room to meet Omura. The little spy was smiling uncertainly, eyeing Buto. “Problem, sir?”
“Too many to count. You have news for me?”
Terry smiled. “Your son has completed his transfer to his new assignment” he raised an untouched wine glass “aboard this vessel.”
And that was rather less of a relief than Harrison would have thought it even a few minutes ago. But he nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”
“He will do well, Admiral,” Terry added.
Harrison nodded a second time before pitching his voice low. “Are any of your...rivals from the Bureau lurking about?”
Omura’s polite smile remained utterly unaffected. “Likely. The Foundation Fleet has always been riddled with snitches. But I’ve detected none here.”
“You’re here.”
The spy shrugged. “I am one of a kind.”
Harrison couldn’t help a laugh at that. “You are at that.” He sighed and took a drink, at last. “Terry, I’m not going to lie, it will be a relief to be hypering back out into the thick of it. At least there, all I have to worry about is Greer and his rebels.”
“Aye sir.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Severson called out, pinging his Academy class-ring against his wine glass for attention, “ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your attention and for joining me for this last conference before the main event!”
That elicited good-natured chuckles. Harrison managed a tight smile, himself, despite knowing what “main event” would very likely mean for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of star sailors.
“We stand on the eve of a great change in the course of galactic events,” Severson said. “The rebel Union is an aberration; one we are about to consign to the dustbin of history. What comes after that will be a different age, my friends. It’s said that it’s always darkest before dawn, and certainly these years have been dark. But I remain confident we will come through this to give rise to a new galactic harmony.”
He raised his glass high to all of them. “Together, my friends, we will assure that. To victory!”
“Victory!” resounded through the Admiral’s galley.
“Victory...” Harrison muttered uneasily.
TIM ARRIVED AMONG THE last of the squadron leaders to reach the conference room, situated with a view looking out from a crack in the cliff face down into the valley. A Shangri-La afternoon hazed beyond; a thunderstorm having just given way to a shimmering sun. The chamber’s big holoprojector contrasted that humid light with its artificial bluey glow, displaying a star system ringed with a dense debris field.
Red met Tim’s eye momentarily before touching a remote control that closed the room’s single door. That done, she gestured at the hologram. “This is the place you’ve all been hearing about. Surigao.”
“So, Greer bought the spy’s story,” Matyszak stated.
“Seems so,” Red replied. “We just received the summons by hyper pod. He’s calling for our full mobilization.”
Murmurs went through the gathered commanders.
“We’ve got, maybe, fifty effectives after that sortie into Coronado,” Tim pointed out. “Are we talking about filling that out with the Recruit Wing?”
Red’s lips pinched to a fine line. “For this one...we are.”
More murmurs at that. Red almost never risked the newbies, at least until they’d had a “blooding”—a couple of lower-risk missions. But there didn’t appear to be missions anymore that rated as low risk.
Red turned to Cory, who, though serving in Tim’s First Squad, was still the Jesters’ Director of Operations. “Are we going to have enough Mark IV’s produced and shaken out for that?”
“When do they need us?”
“We need to be leaving in twelve hours.”
Cory hissed and shook her head. “Not a chance. Watkins Wing is now fully kitted out with the V’s, as are two of your squadrons, Red. But the rest are still coming out of the fabrication suites.” She turned to the computer console behind her that linked the conference room and its system to Overmind. “Is that your sense of things?”
“As you say,” the AI replied, “not a chance. It takes time to convert the chassis. Even more to build from scratch. And the Union quartermasters are not as efficient at procuring raw materials as our black-market contacts in the old days had been.”
Tim chuckled at that, as did a few others. Red even smiled a little and shrugged. “It’ll have to do, then. We go into Surigao with everyone we can, with the ships we’ve got. Tim, you and I will still need to sort out the recruit assignments.”
He nodded. “Twelve hours, huh? Big damned hurry.”
Red sighed. “Greer sent timetables and coordinates, not much detail. But I’d say this is looking like a major effort.” She looked around the room. “Maybe the major effort. So, finish whatever you all need to finish on-planet. See whoever you need to see.”
Tim frowned a little at the tremor in her voice.
“I wish I could tell you all more than a destination,” she went on, “but we’re all part of the Union war effort, still, and they’re calling the shots. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.” She shrugged and pointed at the system map. “That’s a fourteen-hour jump, so limber up now. Going to be spending a bit of time cooped up!”
Brittle laughter answered her. Others were noticing her off tone.
“All right, Jesters,” Red said, “that’s all for now. I’ll take to you again soon.” She flipped them the off-handed salute that was as close to military formality as any of the Jesters ever strayed.
The hastily-called meeting broke up just as hastily. Tim didn’t follow the others out, kept his eyes on Red, who leaned one-handed on the holoprojector and stared into the imagery above it. Cory lingered at the corner of his sight until he shook his head at her, gestured for her to go.
As soon as she was, and the door whisked shut at her back, he said, “I’ve seen you give some bum speeches, but that one was pretty uninspired.”
Red snorted. “Suppose I’m not feeling it today.”
He stepped closer to her. She looked beat. Her crimson-dyed hair had frizzed at the ends and the barest glint of gray showed at the roots of it as she ran her hand through the coils. “What is it, Red?”
She blew out a long breath and her eyes were glassy. “Captain Red,” she said and chortled bitterly. “Jumped two pay grades, by the old Alliance system.”
“What’s that?”
“It was Lieutenant Commander,” she replied and turned her green gaze towards him. “Executive Officer of the medium cruiser, Tigress.”
Tim opened his mouth to answer, but surprise stole the best words. He barely managed, “So, it is true. You were an Alliance officer.”
She nodded. “Think you all guessed that a long time ago.”
“Does explain why you’re so unpleasant.”
She laughed out loud at that, but it ended with a sad note, and her eyes had gone glassy. For a moment, she didn’t look like Red, the leader and founder of the Hell’s Jesters—she looked like just a woman, driven past the point of mental and physical reserves.
“I was so young and driven, back then,” she said. “Cory reminds me of myself, except not so dumb.”
“Find that hard to believe.”
“Dumb enough to get twisted up in an affair with my Captain,” she replied with a suddenly hot fire in her stare.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Pretty dumb.” She shook her head with memory and wiped an eye. “It was love, though, you know? Makes you do stupid things.”
Tim smiled and thought of Kelly. “I know it.”
“But I never imagined how stupid...how...” she swallowed “...dark.”
Feeling as though he perched at the doorway to something he maybe didn’t want to see, Tim said, “Whatever it was, it’s not where you are now.”
“Murder, Tim,” she said hollowly, then hurried to add, “You see, I wasn’t his only one.” She wiped her eyes again and this time it didn’t do as much good, allowed a tear to streak free down her cheek. “Turns out, he was a collector of sorts.”
Tim’s guts shriveled.
“Lot of accidents happened on the Tigress,” Red said. “Worse, it became clear a lot of people who should have said something earlier knew about it. Or at least suspected. But he was the Captain! And he was so convincing. The crew would do anything for him. Did do anything for him.” She shivered. “There was this midshipwoman from Altair—Krista, I still remember her name—who came to me after...things happened.”
