by David Weber
David Weber - Starfire 1 - The Insurrection
Copyright 1990 by Steve White and David Weber.
GALE WARNING
Ladislaus Skjorning frowned at his watch and rescanned the sparsely-peopled to ate-night ante-room of Federation Hall, but there was no sign of Greuner. It was unlike him to be late, add, from the code phrase, his news was urgent, so where was he?
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned slowly, one hand moving unobtrusively to the small slug thrower in the sleeve of his loose tunic of Beaufort seawool. A man faced him in the conservative informal dress of New Zurich's upper classes but it wasn't Greuner. Greuner was a little man; this fellow rivaled Skjorning's own 202 centimeters, and, unlike many Corporate Worlders, he looked fit and mean. Ladislaus eyed him with hidden distaste, and the muzzle of the invisible slug gun settled on the newcomer's navel.
"Mister Skjorning?" "Aye, I'm to be Skjorning." Ladislaus" deep voice sawed across the thin New Zurich accent like a doomwhale catcher through fog.
"Mister Greuner sends his regrets." "Not to come?" Ladislaus asked siowlv, broad face expressionless as scorn for his uncouth dialect flared in the Corporate Worlder's mocking eyes. He plowed on like an icebreaker, pandering to the man's contempt. "Would it chance he's to be sending a wording why not?" "Illness, I believe." The Corporate Worlder's mouth was a thin slash of dislike as he eyed the bearded giant.
Skjorning was a Titan for any world--- especially a heavy gray planet, even one whose chill temperatures favored large people--but the one huge hand he could see was a laborer's, thick-knuckled and scarred by a childhood with the nets and a young manhood with the purse seines and harpoons.
"Not to be serious, I'm hoping," Ladislaus said sadly.
"I'm afraid it may be. In fact, I believe he's decided to return to New Zurich for.., treatment." "I'm to see. Well, grateful I'm to be for your wording, Mister--his" "Fouchet," the tall man said briefly.
"Aye, Fouchet. Remembered to me you'll be, Mister Fouchet." Skjorning turned away with a bovine nod, and Fouchet watched him enter a deserted washroom. He started to follow, then stopped and turned on a scornful heel. Whatever Greuner might have thought, that thick-witted prole was no danger.
The washroom door eased slowly open behind him, and one brilliant blue eye followed his retreating back. The slug gun eased back into xs sleeve clip regretfully, and Skjorning stepped out of the washroom.
"Aye, Mister Fouchet," he said softly, barely a trace of accent coloring his voice, "I'll remember you." Fionna MacTaggart looked away from her terminal and rubbed her eyes wearily, then glanced at the dock and allowed herself a crooked grin. Old Terran days were tiresomely short for someone reared to the thirty-two hour Beaufort day. The air was bothersomely thin, and the gravity was irksomely low, but one could grow used to anything, including feeling tired at such a ridiculously early hour. She rose and poured a cup of Terran coffee, one of the only two things about the motherworld she would truly miss when she finally returned to Beaufort for good.
A chime sounded, and she crooked a speculative eyebrow and pressed the admittance key. The door hissed open, and Ladislaus Skjorning towered on the threshold, his blue eyes bright with annoyance.
"Damn it, Chiefl" Mister Fouehet would never have recognized his tone. "You're still not checking ID'S!" "No, Itm not," Fionna said coolly. "Not inside our own enclave, anyway. Nor am I meeting guests at the door with a laser in my hand." She shook her head with mock severity. "Sometimes I think all this security nonsense is going to your head, Lad." "Do you, now?" Ladislaus sank into one of the recliners, his anger ebbing, and closed his eyes wearily. Fionna's face tightened with sudden concern. "I wish our friend Greuner shared your opinion.".
"He didn't show?" Fionna" knelt on the recliner next to him and massaged one taut shoulder.
"No," he said softly.
"Fhey got to him, is it?" she asked, equally softly. "Aye. Hustled him back to New Zurich--I hope. But there's little to be putting past a Corporate Worlder who smells gelt, Chief." She felt him relaxing as her strong fingers iug the tension from him, then frowned and stopped massaging, leaning her forearms on his massively muscled shoulder.
"You're right, Lad. I just wish I knew what he had for "I feel the same," Ladislaus rumbled, allowing himself a frown, "but let's be grateful for what he already gave us. He turned from his own to be helping us because he thought it right; now I've the thinking he's to be paying for it soon and late." "I know, Lad. I know." She patted his shoulder, smiling contritely, and he felt a surge of guilt. It was hard enough heading a Fringe World delegation without your own people snapping at you. Besides, Fionna was fight to worry. The one clue they had to Greuner's message was the phrase "Gale Warning," and that was the code he and the little man had arranged to indicate a major Corporate World offensive against the Fringe.
"I did pick up something a mite useful," he proffered as a peace offering. 'rhe name of the new New Zurich bully boy, I'm to be thinking.
Fouchet. A tall, mean son-of-a sand-leech with a face like boiled blubber." "He's their new security chief?." Fionna asked, eyes narrowing.
"Chief, you know they're not to be using such titles] They're not so crude as that--heql to be called Computerman's Syndic or some such. But, aye, he's the one.
And had he just a little more curiosity or a little less brain--mind, I'm not sure which it was--it's squeezing Greuner's information from him I'd be the now." "Lad," Fionna said sternly, "I've told you we can't operate that way! They already call us 'barbarians". What do you think they'll call us if you start acting like that?" "Aye? I don't have the thinking it's to mind me the much," Ladislaus said, laying the accent with a trowel. "It's maybe "Corporate Worlder" they're to call me if I have the doing of their own against them. And where's the difference to lie? Yon Corporate Worlder flays his whales with money, Chief; I'm only after the doing of it by hand." Fionna started to reply tartly, then stopped.
She and Ladislaus had grown up together on the cold and windy seas of Beaufort, and she knew it irked him to play the homespun fool for men like Fouchet--but she also knew he recognized the advantages of his role. During his time in the Federation's navy, Ladislaus had acquired a cosmopolitanism at odds with the Innerworld notion of a Fringer, though, like anyone, he tended to revert to the speech patterns of childhood under stress. The slow Beaufort accent had drawn attention even in the Fleet, where such idosyncrasies were far from rare, and Lad had learned the hard way to speak excellent Standard English. But his' sense of humor had stood him in good stead, and he'd also learned to ape the stereotype so well few of his victims ever realized they were being hoodwinked. He found his hayseed persona useful as head of security for the Beaufort delegation, and he usually enjoyed it. Yet it seemed this latest episode had cracked his normal shield of humor. He'd evidently become closer to Greuner than she'd thought.., and he was right, damn it! The little banker had jeopardized his career, certainly, and possibly his life, to help worlds he'd never even visited--and now he'd pay for it. She felt a sudden hot stinging behind her own eyes, and her hands squeezed his shoulder in silence until she felt the new tension run slowly out of them both onc more.
A ('ow, murmuring rumble filled the chamber, and Fionna MaeTaggart looked across from her console at the tall podium in the center of the vast hemispherical room. It stood over two hundred meters from her seat in the center o pounds the Beau pounds rt delegation, separated om the ranked tiers o pounds delegates by a floor of ebon marble shot with white veins like tangled skeins o pounds stars. Ater twenty-five years in the Assembly--twenty o pounds them as head of her planet's delegation-- Fionna had learned the bitter, sordid realities o the Federation's government, but the Chamber of Worlds still took her breath away. She wished she could have seen it when the
Assembly had lived up to its promise, hut not even the gangrenous present of partisanship and exploitation could diminish the grandeur o pounds the ideal this chamber had been built to enshrine.
Her eyes swept over upward-soaring walls hung with the flags and banners o pounds scores of planetal systems, all dominated by the space-black Federation banner with its golden sunburst, and the blue planet and white moon o* the homeworld.The air stirred coolly against her skin as she adjusted her hushphone headset over her red hair. Ladislaus was going to he to ate ff he didn't get a move on.
A tiny light glowed on her panel as the Sergeant at Arms warned her a member o pounds her delegation was on his way, and she looked up, hiding a smile as Skjorning lumbered down the aisle. Thank Cod none of their constituents ever visited Old Terra! They'd have a fit ff they ever saw the role Ladislaus had assumed so well.
The big man sidled bashfully through the crowd in a state of perpetual embarrassment, then sank gratellly into the chair at Fionna's left hand and leaned forward to fumble clumsily with his hushphone.
"Any clues, Lad?" she asked softly.
"No, Chief." Ladislaus' lips barely moved. "Only the code, and it's a seaharrower's own luck that much got to US.
Fionna rowned and nodded in agreement. She started to say something more, but the echo o pounds a soft chime cut her short.
The Legislative Assembly of the Terran Federation was in session.
Fionna fidgeted uneasily as the opening formalities filtered past her. She could see the Galloway's World delegation from where she sat, and Simon Taliaferro wasn't in his usual place. The New Zurich delegation was less than ten meters away, and she noted sinkingly that Oskar Dieter wasn't with his fellows, either. Whatever Greuner had tried to warn them of, those two would be at the heart of it. Her fingers flew over her information console, keying their names and punching up a cross index of the committees on which they sat, for she'd learned long since that it was in the closed committee meetings that the Corporate Worlds wove their webs.
The screen lit, confirming her memory. Both men were from populous worlds; combined with their personal seniority in the Assembly and the "representative membership" committee rules the Corporate Worlds had rammed through twelve years ago, that gave them membership on dozens of committees... including shared membership on Foreign Relations and Military Oversight. She frowned. blot only was each a member of both, but Taliaferro chaired Foreign Relations and Dieter chaired Military Oversight. It was an ominous combination.
The Clerk finished the formalities of the last session's minutes and stepped aside for David Haley. By long tradi-t'ion, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly was a citizen of Old Terra, and Fionna listened to his beautiful Standard English as he turned the Assembly to business, wishing' his office still had the power it once had. Unlike most of his Heart World fellows, Haley had traveled to the Fringe; he knew the hostility and hatred for the Corporate Worlds festering on the Fringe Worlds--and what was happening under the false cordiality of the delegates' relations.
Unfortunately, there was little he could do about it.
"Ladies and Genfiemen of the Assembly," Haley said, "the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has requested a dosed session of the Assembly sitting as a committee of the whole. Are there any objections?" Fionna keyed her console and saw Haley glance down as her light pulsed on his panel. Then he looked out over the sea of faces to the Beaufort delegation, and his face vanished from the giant screen behind the podium, replaced by Fionna's, though his image continued to stare up from the small screen before each delegate.
"The Chair recognizes the Honorable Assemblywoman for Beaufort," he said, and Fionna's headset beeped to indicate a live mike.
"Mister Speaker, this is highly irregular," she said quietly. "I would ask why the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee feels the need for a closed session? And why we were not informed in advance?" The faee on her console screen was dearly unhappy. Haley was too experienced to show his emotions openly, but the assemblymen were too experienced not to read him anyway.
"Ms. MacTaggart, I can only tell you that the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs Assad jointly have requested the Assembly's attention to a matter of grave import. That is all the information I have. Do you wish to object to the request for closure?" Fionna certainly did, but it would accomplish little, since she would know no more about Taliaferro's plans after blocking the secret session than she did now. Damn him! Despite the warning, he'd managed to keep her completely in the dark!
"No, Mister Speaker," she said softly. "I have no objection." "Is there any debate?" Haley asked. There was none, and the Speaker gaveled the Assembly into secret session.
The chamber buzzed with side conversations as the Sergeant at Arms and his staff escorted the news people out. The great doors boomed softly shuLike and sophisticated anti-snooping defenses were set in motion. There would be no way for the outside world to discover what was said or done here unless a delegate leaked the word. Such "accidental leaks" were far from uncommon these days, though they once had been. As the Fringer population base had slowly grown to challenge the Corporate Worlds' domination of the Assembly, the campaign of secret slander and counter-slander had taken on vicious overtones.
Initially, the Outworlders had been at a considerable disadvantage, but Fionna was almost saddened by how well they'd learned to play the game since. Onlv this time, leaks wouldn't be enough. Greuner's disappeaiance proved that.
Two new figures appeared beside Haley. One was Oskar Dieter, though he was as careful as ever to stay in the background. The other was Simon Taliaferro, possibly the man the Fringers hated most of all.
Taliaferro could have been prime minister, but his posio t'ion as head of his delegation was more useful, and he would have been forced to resign it to accept the premiership. On the other hand, he could never have been president, for that largely gelded office was still decided by direct election. As heir to one of the shipbuilding dynasties which had used political power to cement its stranggg'eo hold on the Outworlds' commerce, he could never have carried enough of the popular vote. Ninety percent of all Federation cargo moved in hulls owned by Corporate World shipping magnates, yet over sixty percent of the Federation's systems lay in the Fringe and Rim. Which was why Taliaferro was hated... and why he was prepared to embrace any expedient to stave off the rapidly-approaching day when the Fringe's delegates would be numerous enough to demand an accounting for two centuries of economic exploitation.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Haley said, "the Chair recognizes the Honorable Simon Taliaferro, Delegate for Galloway's World and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Mister Taliaferro." "hank you, Mister Speaker." Taliaferro's dark face was incongruously jovial on the huge screen, and Fionna's lips curled with dislike.
It was like a badly crafted disguise, she thought. A threadbare mask for the ruthless brilliance under that jolly exterior--yet the rules of the game required one to pretend his bonhomie was real.
"Members of the Assembly," Taliaferro said, "I bring you great news! After months of negotiation, I can now tell you that perhaps the most momentous departure in the history of the Galaxy has been proposed. President Zhi and Prime Minister Minh have received a direct communication from the Khan of the Orions, borne by a fully empowered plenipotentiary." He paused for effect, knowing he'd gathered the eyes and ears of every delegate.
'le Khan proposes nothing less than the amalgamation of the Terran Federation and the Khanate of Orion!" His voice rose steadily through the last sentence, but it was almost, lost in the roar which burst forth at the word "amalgamation," and Fionna was on her feet, one fist clenched on the top of her console.
"No.t" she shouted, but her voice was lost in the uproar. It was just as well, she realized a moment later. She was the leader of the Fringe Caucus. She must appear calm and reasonable. Above all, reasonable[ Yet such a proposal would be intolerable to her constituents, an
d the Corporate Worlds knew it. In fact, only those fit-headed, liberal-minded, bureaucracy-worshiping ,Heart Worlders could be so blind as to think the Fringe wouldn't fight this!
Her eyes narrowed as she sank back into her seat. Of course the Corporate Worlds knew, and Taliaferro's obvious delight made cold, ugly sense. How was the huge population of the Khanate to fit into th new, amalgamated monster? were the Orions suddenly to find themselves enfranchised to vote for the first time in theft history? It had takest over a century of slow, painful population growth in the outwodds to earn the delegates to challenge the Corporate Worlds. With such a huge influx of votes, the Assembly would have no choice but to cut the representational basis... which would just coincidentally gerrymander the sparse Fringe population out of the representation it had finally gained.
Just who, she wondered, had proposed what to whom?
Had the Orions conceived this on their own? Or had the Corporate Worlds suggested it to them? Or had they, perhaps, simply misled the Khan's ambassadors into thinking the proposal would be joyfully accepted throughout the Federation? There were too many possibilities and too few answers--yet.
She pressed her ear button. Haley's panel must be bloody with scores of red attention lights, and she almost hoped Taliaferro would refuse to yield to her. But he would, ff only to give her the opportunity to cot her own throat, and, in a way, it would be a relief to take a stand, whatever the outcome. She had no choice but to voice the Fringe's position.., and it was time, part of her cried, to have done with careful maneuvering. It was time to speak from the heart.