by David Weber
"Dear me, Amanda-didn't Simon mention that?" Dieter's voice was harsh in the semi-silence.
"He should have, because the Fringers have waited two hundred years for their representation to match ours; they'll certainly run a worst-case projection and realize they're facing at least another century of powerlessness. How do you think they'll react to that?" "How can they react?" Taliaferro scoffed.
"They won't have the votes to stop it." "Precisely," Dieter said flatly. He drew a deep breath and rose, his gaze burning over the faces around him. Guilt over Fionna's death and over the part he had played--intentionally and unintentionally--in bringing the Federation to this pass supported him. It wasn't enough that he'd only played the game. Games were for children; adulthood carried the duties of adulthood. Angry self-loathing gave him a sort of visionary strength, and he suddenly knew how Cassandra must have felt, yet he had to try, ff only to prove to himself that once he'd had the right to sit in the same chamber as Fionna MacTaggart.
"Listen to me, all of you," he said softly. "We can do it. We can use Skjorning to break the Fringe and then ram reapportiomnent through whatever opposition is left, but are you all too blind to see what will happen then?"
"Tell us, Oskar; sifice you seem so prescient," Taliaferro sneered, no longer hiding his contempt.
"TII tell you, Simon," Dieter said, his voice sad. "War." "War!" Taliaferro's laugh was harsh. "With whom, Oskar? That penniless bunch of ragged-assed barbarians? Hell, man, the Taliaferro Yards alone can build more hulls than all the Fringe Worlds put together! Not even Fringers could be stupid enough to buck that much firepower!" "Can't they? Simon, I chair Military Oversight. I know what I'm talking about. They can fight, and they will.
It'll be a cold sober appreciation of whsttt adding that many non-Terran voters will do to their representation." "So what?" Taliaferro shot back. "Let some of them try to secede! We'll squash them like bugs, and it'll prove they're barbarians! The Heart Worlds'Il be as eager as we are to expel them from the Assembly -comfor good!" Cold shock knifed through Dieter. Not surprise, really; perhaps he'd guessed Taliaferro's real intent all along and simply chosen not to face it.
"My God," he said softly. "You want a war." "Nonsense!" The denial was just a bit too quick, a touch too offhand. Some of the others were clearly shaken by Dieter's charge, and Taliaferro made himself smile. "It won't come to a war, no matter what you think. The absolute worst may be a police action or two, and we've had those before, haven't we, Hector?" He winked at the Christophon delegate, and the reminder of the food riots on Christophon, three hundred years past, woke a rumble of nervous laughter. "But nobody's left the Federation after a police action," Taliaferro went on persuasively, "and that's all it can be. The Fringers don't have a fleet or the means to build one; we have both.
All I'm saying is that if they're that stupid, it'll only strengthen our position in the long run." Dieter saw Taliaferro's words sink home.
They were the words his allies wanted to hear, the ones that told them everything was fine, that they still controlled "the game." He'd jolted them, but not enough to break Taliaferro's hold. They would follow him despite anything a political has-been said, and Dieter swallowed an angry rebuttal.
"You're wrong, Simon," he said. "Even assuming all we get is a "police action or two," the damage will be done. You've all forgotten that the Federation exists only because its citizens want it to exist. When enough of them stop wanting it to live, it will die." He shook his head, feeling their disbelief and rejection.
"No doubt you'll all do exactly as you wish," he said heavily, "but I warn you now--I'll oppose you, both here and on the floor." The tension in the room suddenly doubled.
"Go ahead!" Taliaferro snarled, his face dark with rage.
"If not for your stupidity, we'd already have carried the amalgamation vote! So go on, damn youl We'll still be here when you're a memory--and you know it!" "Perhaps so, Simon," Dieter said sadly across the im- mense breach between them. "And you're probably right about whether or not I can stop you. But when you turn the Federation into armed camps which can never live in peace agaire--was his eyes were live coals as they swept the silent room his-comremember I told you it would happen. And' when it does, I'll be able to say I tried to stop it... What will you be able to say?" "You're almost as eloquent as Skjorning," Taliaferro sneered.
"No, Simon," Dieter's quiet voice sliced back through the silence, "I'm nowhere near as eloquent as he is--but I'm just as accurate." Taliaferro made a contemptuous gesture, but even un- der his anger there might have been just a trace of uncertainty. Dieter didn't know, but ff Taliaferro did feel any lack of confidence, it wasn't enough. Dieter looked at the stony faces and knew he'd failed. He'd tried to convince them, but they refused to hear; now he could only fight them.
He closed the door gently behind him, and the corridor was as empty as his futnre as he walked slowly to the elevators. He felt the approaching defeat in his bones, but he'd forfeited his career the night he insulted Fionna and discovered he was not the ,nan he'd thought himself to be, and the floor fight would be his Gethsemane. His self-destruction could never expiate his guilt, but perhaps it would let him face Fionna's memorv with a sense of having done his best. With a sense of l left-brace aving stood up on his hind legs and said "I am a man -comwitha man's duties and a man's right to destroy myself for what I know is right." Oskar Dieter stepped out into the night of Old Terra under a blanket of stars--a man who held his chin high again at last.
CHANGE OF ORDERS Captain Li Han, commanding officer of TFNS Longbow, shrugged as her tunic's seams slid back off the points of her shoulders and the dragonhead flash of her planet dipped low. She should have stood over that tailor with a club! He wasn't used to dealing with officers who massed less than forty kilos, and it showed.
The intraship car slowed and Han banished her frown, squaring her cap on her sleek black hair. The trick, they'd explained at the Academy, was never to notice that anything was wrong. If you didn't, they didn't. Assuming, of course, that the Protocol Procedures profs were correct.- The door hissed open on the boatbay, and Han watched the side party snap to attention beside her cutter as the electronic bosun's pipe shrilled. There were few non-Oriental faces in Longbow; she was homeported on the Fringe World of Hangchow and her crew reflected her ethnicity, and even those few were from other Fringe Worlds. There was not a single Innerworlder in Longbow's complement, and Han sometimes wondered ff any of her personnel ever guessed just how and why that had come to pass.
She hoped not. She hoped they would never have to know[*oslash] She shook herself mentally and stepped from the car.
Hangchow ran to about ten percent more gravity than the one standard G all TFN ships maintained--enough to make the one-gravity field restful--and Hah moved with a dancer's gracer hiting a familiar wry smile as she passed through the side party. The top of her cap was below shoulder level on the sideboys, and she wondered if they found her small size amusing? Probably. Han's diminutive size dogged her career like a shadow. She'd probably always be remembered as the smallest midshipman ever to enter the Academy, rather than as the woman who graduated with the honor sword by her side, but the fact that she stood just under 107 centimeters hadn't kept her from showing the whole pack her heels, she thought cheerfully. And captain's rank in Battle Fleet at thirty-seven was no mean accomplishment, either.
She returned the salutes, and the cutter's hatch slid shut as she dropped into the cushioned chair.
And so, she thought, off to another scintillating courtesy call... but this one might be more important than most.
The cutter idgged clear of Longbow, and Han allowed herself a moment of pride as she studied her command through the port. The huge, ungainly bulk of Skywatch Three, the orbital headquarters of Galloway's World System Defense Command, made a perfect foil for the battle-cruiser's elegance. Light from the system's Gbled primary glittered on Longbow's graceful flanks and turned her recessed weapons bays into sooty ovals of shadow, hi
ding the deadly devices crouching within.
Han sighed and looked away. Beautiful, yes, but still a killing machine. A weapon of war to engage and destroy humanity's enemies. It passed belief that Navy personnel might someday have to decide just which humans were enemies.
Air screamed past the cutter's hull as it skipped into Galloway's World's atmosphere, and the little boat banked gently as it headed for the Yard's landing pads. Han watched the Jamieson Archipelago grow, amused as always by the anomaly which left the Fieet's fourth largest shipyard the only Navy base in existence without a name. It was just
"the Yard," as it had been since the First Interstellar War, when Galloway's Wodd was the navy yard for the Federation -comj as the sprawling kilometers of dependent housing around it were simply "the Reservation." There were larger bases now, Zephrain for one, but no other planet rivaled the sheer numbers of hulls which emerged from the military and civilian building slips of Galloway's World.
The cutter swooped over the innocent weather domes that hid the Yard's missile silos and projector pits. As a rule, the TFN preferred to defend inhabited planets with orbital forts, sparing civilians the incidental destruction attendant upon modern combat, but there was no point pretending about the Jamieson Archipelago. The Yard alone made the island chain a priority target for any enemy, and the Yard wasn't alone.
It crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with the Taliaferro Yard; the Kreuger Space Works; Viekers-Mitsubishi-Galloway "s World; General Dynamics of Terra; and a dozen other major building centers. Coupled with the orbital facilities where the ground-built components were assembled, the Archipelago represented the largest concentration of industrial might in the known galaxy.
The cutter dropped quickly for its landing circle, and Hah watched the ground rush up to meet them, but her thoughts were on her meeting with the Port Admiral. She drew a deep breath, concentrating on the mental diseil pline that calmed the pulse, and glanced at her watch. Right on the tick. Good.
"Good afternoon, Captain Li." The yeoman in the outer office stuffed respectfully as the tiny captain entered. "Please have a seat. Admiral Rutgers" last appointment is running a little over." Han settled in a comfortable chair and checked her watch again, hoping Admiral Rutgers wasn't going to be tied up long. She was due to ship out for Christophon in two hours, and there were always last-minute details to crowd a departure time. It was well known that Port Admirals' whims had much the same force as direct decrees from God, but that never seemed to help when the admiral at the other end wanted to know where you'd spent that extra hour or two.
The door slid open and Han glanced up--then came quickly to her feet at the sight of a vice admiral's sleeve braid. The tall, dark-faced man with the neat beard nodded to her.
"Captain." "Admiral Trevayne." "Another penitent here to see the Admiral, Captain Li?" "No, sir." Han hid a smile. "Just a courtesy call before departure." "Ah!" Trevayne nodded and turned away.
Li Hah regarded his broad shoulders thoughtfully. Now what did that "Ah!" mean? There was something hidden behind it; she could almost taste it. Did he know something she didn't? Possibly. Quite possibly. Trevayne was a marked man in the service: the youngest man ever to command a monitor battlegroup, and no question that he was headed for CNO and possibly even Sky Marshal before he was dong If there was any loose information floating around, it would have come to his ears long since. Rumor credited the man with an uncanny ability to read the future.
Hah didn't know him well enough to be certain, though she knew his son quite well. It was always easier to know one's juniors than one's seniors, but even if it hadn't been, Lieutenant Commander Colin Trevayne of the scout cruiser Ashanti was a highly... visible personality within the Fleet.
Centuries of tradition decreed that the Federation's widely-diverse military people must be nonpartisan.
In a sense, accepting a TFN commission was to take a vow of political celibacy--or so it had been until very recently--and Ian Trevayne honored that tradition. Colin, however, was as fiery as his father was calm and controlled. His outspoken sympathy for the Fringe put him firmly in the "Young Turk" camp, and Han wondered if rumor exaggerated the rift between father and son.
The veoman's panel beeped gently, and he spoke into his hushphone, then listened briefly.
"Admiral Trevayne, Captain Li; Admiral Rutgers would like to see you both, ff you please," he said, and Han felt her eyebrows rise. There was something in the wind! She waited courteously for Trevayne to lead the way into the sanctum, and her nerves were strung to fever pitch.
Fleet Admiral William Rutgers was a bulky man of indeterminate ancestry, and Han smiled warmly as a paw like an Old Terran bear's enveloped her tiny hand in greeting.
Rutgers, once her father's chief of staff, had been her own fifth-year tactical instructor almost left-brace 'ffteen years ago.
'lhank you both for being patient," he said, sitting back down and waving them to chairs. Han waited until Trevayne sat before she followed suit. It was just a little awkward to be so junior to the only other two people present... especially after coming straight from her own ship, where she was mistress after God and even that precedence was a bit blurred.
"Patient, Biffful?" Trevayne chuckled.
"Junior officers are always patient--or they bloody well better learn to pretend they are!" "Except for the ones like you, Ian," Rutgers said, shaking his head in mock sadness.
Trevayne laughed easily. His elegant frame--noto proly iems with hsts tailoring--was seated casually, almost carelessly, right ankle on to eft knee. To sit like that in the presence of an admiral, you had to be an admiral. But Trevayne had something else, something beyond even his membership in one of the "dynasties" of the Federation's Navy. His rapid rise wasn't due solely to birth or brilliance. Han's father had been an admiral before his retirement, and his father before him, yet she lacked that not-quite-arrogant "something else," Charisma, perhaps?
But from what source? He was a man who valued style and flair, and one who carried it off with ease, yet that wasn't explanation enough. It came to her suddenly that Trevayne had been reared to lead even as she had, but in a society which openly acknowledged and accepted such expectations. He expected to be a leader, and because he expected it of himself, others expected it of him, as well. His undoubted brilliance simply confirmed the wisdom of those mutual expectations.
"I'm sorry, Ian," Rutgers said, suddenly serious. "You'd better delegate the shopping to Natalya. As for Colin... I know things are touchy just now, and Ill try to leave you time for lunch, but I may not be able to. Your leave's been Han sat straighter and felt her face become masklike. Vice admirals" leaves were not cut short on whims.
"I see." Trevayne's face was very calm as he studied the Port Admiral. Too calm. It was a mask, too, Han realized sadly; everyone wore masks these days, even in the Fleet, "And might one ask why, Admiral?" "One might," Rutgers said grimly. He glanced over at Hah for a moment. "I asked you two to come in together to save a little time; wha left-brace I have to say will affect you both. On the other hand, I trust that I don't have to remind you beth that what's said here sta left-brace ts here.
Clear?" Both his juniors nodded.
"All right. As you know, the Assembly's been in a furor ever since the MacTaggart assassination.
And it didn't help a bit when Skjorning murdered Fouchet left-brace I--was He broke off and glanced at Han, then smiled unwillingly and shook his head.
"Captain, I seem to recall a certain midshipman's expression which generally indicated disagreement. Why am I seeing it now?" "Disagreement, Admiral?" Han shook her head. "Not disagreement. It's just that I find it difficult to condemn Assemblyman Skjorning." "Who said I condemned him? I only said it didn't help, which it didn't. Mind, I'm not saying the same thing wouldn't have happened ff he'd held his hand; I think it would have, in fact. But it's happened now, and it's up to us to pick up the pieces." "Yes, sir." "What "pieces" d'you mean, Bill?" Trevayne asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I wish I knew," Burgers sighed, running a hand over his hair. "I take it you're both reasonably informed on events on Old Terra.tm They nodded, and he continued. "Well, things are coming to a head. The Assembly has decided to impeach Skjorning." "It's not as if they really have a choice, Bill," Trevayne pointed out, "but it doesn't automatically follow that the impeachment will be sustained." "Oh, you're so right, lan," Rutgers said softly, and pulled out a classified binder. He slapped it down on his blotter and pressed his thumb to the lock. Scanners considered for a moment, then released the latch, and he pulled out a sheaf of yellow security paper.
"This," he said, "is an ONI evaluation of the situation as of three weeks ago. It arrived today.., by courier drone." Han's inner tension clicked higher.
Galloway's World was a Corporate World, tied into the communications net the Corporate Worlders had used to deadly effect against the Fringe for decades; No eom beam could be driven through a warp point, but it was quite possible to build deep-space relay stations within star systems. All messages had to be physically carried through warp points aboard ships or small, unmanned courier drones, but once through, they could be transcribed and transmitted to the next warp point. Yet such systems took time to emplace, and thev were incredibly expensive, both to build and maintain. he Corporate Worlds had capitalized upon that.
But if ONI had sent this data bv drone, it meant whoever had sent it didn't trust the relays.
It wasn't all that unusual for classified data to be sent physically rather than risk interception,- bat Admiral Burgers' tone and expres- sion told her this drone was more important than most.
"Indications are that the Taliaferro crowd doesn't plan to challenge the Ortler precedent," the burly admiral continued grimly. "Rather than push for Skjorning's civil trial on Old Terra, they're going to expel him from the Assembly and send him back to the Kontravian Cluster under Lictor escort. As Taliaferro puts it--was he thumbed through the Naval Intelligence report for the passage he sought, and his voice was harsh as he read aloud his-com"Let us send the barbarians among us back to the Fringe where they beltingSo"" Han felt her face blanch. No wonder Trevayne's leave had bn canceled! When the Fringe heard about this--I Butgers watched her calmly, and she returned his gaze levelly. He shook his head.