(eng) Owen R. O'Neill & Jordan Leah Hunter - Loralynn Kennakris 04 by Apollyons Gambit

Author:Apollyons Gambit [Gambit, Apollyons]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Six: Events Multiply

Day 193 (PM)

Whitehall, Caernarvon

Iona, Cygnus Mariner

“Bill, you can’t be serious!” The Foreign Secretary scooted the hardcopy across the big ash-wood table as Roquelaurie stirred sugar into his second cup of coffee. “Do you realize what’s you’re saying?”

“Perfectly, Wes.” Roquelaurie set his spoon on the saucer with an irritated flick. An aide leaned over his shoulder to wipe up the drops that had spilled. “I’m just—”

“Buggering the whole peace process!” Secretary Wesley Poule glared from across the table.

“Wes,” Roquelaurie forged on, “What I’m suggesting is we raise the alert level—”

“At a critical juncture in very delicate negotiations! Good God, man!” He spread his hands wide at the enormity of the thought. “Can’t you conceive how provoking that is?”

President Seth Marquardt cleared his throat. “Wes, let’s try to keep things productive here.”

Bill Roquelaurie heartily agreed with that. After a brief cloud conference, President Marquardt had set back their meeting until the next day, in hopes they’d get a better handle on the situation and that tempers might cool. Regarding this latter hope, he’d been disappointed. Matt Buckner, left to seethe all night, had opened with a full broadside against Edgar Fellows, the Director of ISS, which lasted a good twenty minutes, and to which Fellows, after acknowledging the “unfortunate incident”, responded with a more dreary than usual homily on operational security. The overall tone of the meeting hadn’t risen appreciably since then.

The president turned his long, solemn face to his Secretary of Defense. “Bill, Wes does have a point about putting our people on elevated alert right now. It would send a rather negative signal.”

“It is all so circumstantial,” the Secretary of the Interior put in, smoothing her platinum hair back as she leaned forward to add weight to her words. “You’re practically assuming these League people are clairvoyant.”

Roquelaurie stifled a sigh. Agnes de Chamberet was one of the more unfortunate compromises of the current administration. Seth had carried the last election largely by playing up his reputation as a conciliator. He’d kept the most of his predecessor’s senior cabinet members—Roquelaurie, Buckner, Fellows and Lieutenant General Richard Avery, the military’s Chief of Staff were all holdovers—and brought in his own Foreign Secretary, which Roquelaurie could hardly blame him for, although he thought Poule too callow and earnest for the position. It was in the lesser offices, like Interior, where the post-election deal-making became most intense, that Marquardt had given his go-along-to-get-along tendencies freer play, saddling them with some ignorant, self-important, officious busybodies like Agnes de Chamberet.

Sipping his coffee slowly as he nudged his briefing materials to one side, Roquelaurie weighed his answer before putting his cup down. “I doubt clairvoyance is the issue here, Agnes. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that the CEF marine commandant on-station is a former executive officer of the mercenaries we hired. She served with General Corhaine for six or seven years, I believe.”

Marquardt, who’d been sitting back in his chair with his hands folded, sat up in alarm. “Bill, are you suggesting Corhaine will flip on us?”

“Certainly not, Seth.

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