In Her Name: The Last War (84 page)

Hanson paused a moment. “Mr. Chairman, I suggest we consider the two issues separately for now,” she finally said. “I’ll maintain my task force in orbit around Saint Petersburg while we conduct our inspections. Once that is taken care of, we can further discuss the situation with Riga.”

“There is not really any more to discuss on that point,” Korolev told her, “but for as long as your ships stay in orbit here, we have no quarrel. If there is nothing else, commodore, my naval personnel will contact you with the necessary information to coordinate your inspections.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Hanson said. “You’re most gracious.”

Korolev nodded, then killed the connection.

“Fools,” Marshal Antonov said, aghast. “They cannot believe that we would just let them walk into our facilities. The armistice conditions expired years ago!”

“Not entirely true, marshal,” Morozov said. “Technically, the provisions of article fourteen, and article fourteen alone, were to remain in effect in perpetuity: the good commodore does indeed have legal right to inspect our facilities if they have reasonable suspicion that weapons of mass destruction are present or being produced. No doubt she will land her troops and then stay in close orbit to protect them. Of course, this is exactly what we wanted.” He smiled. “So, you see, even though it caused us much pain at the end of the war, today the armistice will serve our purposes nicely, and will allow us to firmly put the Confederation in its place.”

Almost grudgingly, Antonov returned Morozov’s smile.

* * *

“Do not be deceived, commodore,” Grishin said with uncharacteristic vehemence, “This is a trap.” 

Commodore Hanson had called a final commander’s meeting over the inter-ship vidcom immediately after she got off the link with Korolev. All of the ship captains were virtually present, their images displayed on the main viewscreen in her ready room. Around the table with her sat her flag staff and the
Constellation’s
captain. As the senior Marine commander, Grishin also participated, the vidcom projecting his image from the cramped cockpit of his assault boat. It was ready to be launched with the rest of the boats carrying the Marines from the two assault carriers, as soon as the commodore gave the word.

“Colonel,” Hanson’s intelligence officer said in a neutral voice, “we’re not seeing any indications of a hostile reaction. We’ve identified every ship in the system as either some sort of transport or a coast guard vessel. There’s not a single sign of any warships. We’ve also not detected any unusual emissions — search or targeting systems — from the planet.” He turned to Hanson. “Ma’am, I’m not saying that Korolev may not have a surprise in store for us, but if he is, he’s concealing it bloody well.”

Grishin shook his head. “
Maskirovka
— deception — is a specialty of theirs. If you review the history of the conflict twenty years ago, you will clearly see this: the Terran and Alliance forces suffered several major defeats and the loss of many troops because of it.”

“Colonel,” Hanson said, “even if it is a trap, there’s very little I can do other than spring it while keeping our eyes wide open. We have confirmation that they have nuclear weapons, and we have details on where they’re produced and stored. Our orders are clear on what we have to do next: get down there as quickly as possible to seize them before they can be moved.” As she spoke, the task force was taking up position in a series of polar orbits. This would allow Hanson to have at least a few ships passing over the primary target area at any given time in low orbit to provide support to the Marines, while allowing her to also keep an eye on the rest of the planet. “If I knew what their deception was, we could try to disrupt it. Unfortunately, we don’t, so we’ve got to go with what we’ve got.” She paused, looking each of her commanders in the eye. “Let’s do it, people.”

CHAPTER FORTY

“You don’t have to do this, Valentina,” Sikorsky said for the third time as she drove him back into Saint Petersburg City. After she had sent the signal to the fleet, he had wanted to return home, to try and get his wife out of the city before the Confederation Marines came. Before the next war started.

“If you say that one more time, Dmitri,” she told him with a wry smile, “I’m going to break your arm. I’m coming with you. So get used to the idea and stop worrying about it.”

Sikorsky nodded, an unhappy expression on his face. As he turned to look out the window, however, she saw in the side mirror a small smile form on his lips.

What she was doing was explicitly against her orders. She was supposed to sever any ties with the locals and wait in a secure location for pickup. It was something she had done before, many times. One of those times, she had even been forced to kill her contact, a woman she had worked closely with and befriended over a three month-long mission that had gone bad, literally, at the last minute. Valentina had been known as Consuela then, just one of the many false identities behind which Scarlet had concealed herself. Outwardly, her contact’s death did not appear to affect her; she told her controller that it was simply part of the mission, and that the woman had been an asset or, as Dmitri had said, a tool to be used and discarded as necessary. 

But she had become so adept at the art of deception that she had deceived herself. It took her several months to realize that part of her soul had died the day that she had turned to this woman, her contact and friend, and wordlessly snapped her neck before she could be captured and interrogated. The two of them had been cornered, trapped, and the woman had simply known too much to fall into the wrong hands. There had been no way for both of them to escape, and so Consuela — Scarlet — had killed her friend. She managed to escape after a vicious fight with her pursuers, but the emotional wound was deep, and had never truly healed. There had been other missions since then, but she had never allowed herself to become close to any of the contacts she had made. Nor to anyone else.

Until Dmitri. He was an anomaly in her experience. There was nothing outwardly special about him. While he certainly was not a homely man, she was not physically or emotionally attracted to him. He didn’t play the role of a hero, although he clearly had courage. He wasn’t rich or powerful. Had she called him a simple and ordinary man, with simple and ordinary ways, he would no doubt have heartily agreed and poured the two of them some vodka to drink together. 

No. Her bond to Dmitri, the sense of loyalty she felt to this human tool, who would be used and discarded as necessary for her mission, was simply because he was a good man, with a good heart. There were few enough of those in the universe, she knew from painful experience, and she had decided that if she could help him, she would. It wouldn’t be a full atonement for her past sins, but it was a start.

Now that her primary mission objective had been met and the target information conveyed to the fleet (she hoped, for there was no way for her to know if the fleet had actually received it, or if the Navy had even arrived), the only harm that could come from her helping Dmitri was to herself. She realized that she was an asset to the Confederation in the same way that Dmitri was to her, but the difference was that the Confederation was not here to enforce the rules. What she did now was up to her, and she had chosen to help him.

On the way back to the city, they had stopped at the small town where Valentina had boarded the train to Saint Petersburg only a week earlier. It was risky, but she needed some civilian clothes to do what they had planned. Assuming the arrogant attitude typical of the secret police, she had marched into the shabby local clothing store and bought what she needed using the credit disk of the soldier whose uniform she wore. That caused the clerk to raise her eyebrows, but looking up into Valentina’s cold eyes was enough to avert any questions. Valentina knew that there was a chance the woman would report her, but Sikorsky dismissed the notion.

“No one will question you,” he said. “You wear a secret police uniform, are driving one of their vehicles, and have a comrade with you, all in plain sight. It does not matter if the name on the credit disk does not match. People do not delve into the affairs of the secret police, because they do not want them knocking on doors, asking questions, and taking people away, never to return. If you look like secret police, to them you
are
secret police.”

They had made a second stop, this time at a small deli that was completely empty except for the elderly man behind the counter. Sikorsky bought some questionable looking cold cuts and bread, which actually looked good and smelled delicious, and two bottles of mineral water. In the meantime, Valentina disappeared into the disgustingly dirty rest room to change. She put on her civilian clothes, a pair of black pants and a dark brown blouse that were both shapeless and common, and then put her baggy uniform back on over top. She had also bought a set of sandals that were typical summer casual wear for women here, which she left in the vehicle. So, for all the proprietor of the deli knew, she had simply gone to the bathroom while her comrade had procured lunch.

As they got back on the road and headed toward Saint Petersburg, they saw contrails, high in the sky, spiraling downward.

* * *

Grishin struggled to keep from gritting his teeth in frustration.
I should not be surprised
, he told himself harshly.
It is exactly what I would do, just before springing the ambush
. The Saint Petersburg government had waited until the Marine boats were away before they had a sudden “unexpected systems failure” that caused all of their planetary defense arrays to activate. Fearing an attack, Hanson had called the boats back and regrouped her ships in higher orbit in a better defensive position, with every vessel poised to repel the as-yet unseen Saint Petersburg Navy.

Not surprisingly — at least to Grishin — no attack had materialized. The whole farce, he knew, had been both to test the Confederation task force’s reactions and to gather information on their weapons systems. On top of that, their entire operation had effectively been disrupted. Hanson had been forced to make an agonizing decision: take the time to reposition her ships as she had before, which would have provided optimal support to the Marines, or send the assault carriers in with minimal protection while keeping the bulk of her ships further from the planet where they had more maneuvering room for combat.

Knowing that the tactic had been nothing more than a play for time, no doubt to move as many weapons and incriminating equipment as possible out of the huge mountain facility, Hanson had sent the carriers in with Sato’s ship,
Yura,
and one of her sister heavy cruisers for protection and fire support for the Marines, if they needed it.

After the targeting systems had been shut down, the Russians had been extremely obliging in guiding the boats down and effusive in their apologies. Hanson had accepted their regrets with admirable diplomacy, but Grishin was not fooled: he had planned a small bit of deception of his own.

His original plan, after analyzing the information the Confederation agent had transmitted, had called for a battalion of troops to land at the mountain facility, and two companies each to land at the coal burning facilities (he refused now to call them “power plants”). After the game the Russians had played, however, he knew that the only facility of any true value would be the mountain facility: the locations of the coal burning facilities were known now, and their outward details had been confirmed from orbit. They may be producing uranium, but that was all. The real prize, if there was one, was the massive bunker in the mountains.

Once Hanson finally gave clearance for the landing to recommence, Grishin had his boat pilots follow their original courses, with one small deviation: the boats bound for the coal burning facilities simply did a quick flyover of their targets before turning to join Grishin’s main force at the mountain bunker, concentrating the entire Marine brigade at the main objective. The boats dove low, skimming the treetops, to avoid the planetary defense radars as best they could.

* * *

In a deep underground bunker five kilometers south of Saint Petersburg City that served as the military command center and survival shelter for the planet’s leaders, Marshal Antonov grunted in satisfaction. 

“All too predictable,” he murmured as the Confederation boats that had been heading for the coal plants suddenly disappeared from the defense network displays, no doubt as some sort of ruse. He could have ordered his aerospace fighters up to engage and destroy them, but that would have given away the game. They could only be heading toward one place. “Let them concentrate at the Central Facility where we can apply overwhelming force,” he said to Korolev, who stood beside him at the massive map table, whose surface showed the known and projected tracks of the enemy boats as they raced toward the Central Facility, “and we will be done with these fools.” The map showed the forces that now awaited the Confederation Marines: in addition to the division that was normally garrisoned in and around the facility, two more divisions had been deployed in concealed positions in a ring around the massive bunker. The Confederation troops would be outnumbered six to one. He glanced at the wall display, which showed the disposition of the Confederation task force’s ships, hovering in high orbit not far from the moon. He shook his head in disgust at the sight of the vulnerable carriers, now escorted only by a pair of heavy cruisers. “Then we will formally introduce them to the Saint Petersburg Navy.”

Beside him, Korolev could not help but smile as he looked at the icons representing the seventy-three ships of his planet’s secretly built navy, including thirty-eight powerful heavy cruisers, all armed with highly advanced nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Carefully concealed in deep fissures in the small moon’s surface, they were perfectly positioned for a surprise attack on the Confederation task force.

* * *