"But, realistically speaking, there's not much possibility of my followers and me being able to throw Tonkovic out using our own unassisted resources. And even if we succeeded, it would be much easier for the Manties to decide to resort to forcible suppression against a single 'outlaw' star system. No," she shook her head, "I'm prepared to fight them with only my own supporters, if that's the only alternative open to me. But the odds of actually achieving something would go up enormously if Split weren't the only system which rose up to throw the Manties out. And even if we can't manage the outright overthrow of the collaborationists, I think there's an excellent chance a unified, Cluster-wide resistance movement could convince the Manties they'd poked their noses into the wrong hornet nest. They're already at war. If we make it too expensive and difficult to hold us all down, they're likely to decide they have more important fish to fry closer to home."
Firebrand took another, longer sip of beer. Then he set the stein aside with a decisive air.
"You're right," he said simply. "Whatever you or I might like, the truth is that we're on the short end of the balance of political and military power at the moment. There's no way, realistically speaking, we could hope for wholesale changes of government throughout the Cluster. But you're also right that if we make the game too unpleasant, the price too high, the Manties probably will decide to take their marbles and go home. They can't afford to do anything else. And if we can manage to send them packing, we may just be able to convert the prestige and momentum of that into the ability to run the collaborationists out of town, after all."
He nodded slowly, his expression somber.
"I'll be honest with you, Ms. Nordbrandt. You aren't the only person here on Kornati we've considered contacting. There's Belostenic and Glavinic, for example. Or Dekleva. But I'm impressed. The combination of perceptiveness and pragmatism you've just demonstrated is exactly what I came looking for. I don't need dewy-eyed idealists, and I don't want raging fanatics. I want someone who can differentiate between fantasy and what's possible. But I still need to know how far you're prepared to go. Raging fanatics are one thing; people who aren't willing to do what's necessary are just as bad. So are you an ivory tower analyst, able to theorize with the best but unwilling to get your hands dirty... or bloody?"
"I'm prepared to go as far as it takes," she told him flatly, her wiry body coiled about its tension as she met his eyes steadily. "I'm not in love with the concept of violence, if that's what you mean by 'raging fanatics.' But I'm not afraid of it, either. Politics and political power are all upheld by force and the readiness to shed blood, in the final analysis, and the independence of my star system is important enough to justify anything I have to do to protect it."
"Good," Firebrand said softly. "Very good. At the moment, it's still a matter of putting the pieces into place. Just as I'm here on Kornati, I have colleagues having similar conversations on other planets across the entire Cluster. Within a few weeks, a couple of months at the outside, we should be in a position to begin making concrete plans."
"So all of this, all your talk about what 'I need,' is only a hypothetical exercise?" Nordbrandt's eyes were suddenly cold, but Firebrand only shook his head calmly.
"Not in the least. It's just still at a very early stage. Do you really think I'm in a position to make spur-of-the-moment decisions for my entire organization, solely on the basis of a single firsthand conversation? Would you want to have anything to do with me if you thought that was the case?"
He held her eyes until she shook her head slowly, then shrugged.
"I'll take my report back to our central committee. I'll recommend strongly that we establish a formal alliance with you and your people here on Kornati. And as we find similar allies on other planets, we'll either coordinate operations for you, or possibly even put you into direct contact with one another, as well as with us. In the end, what we hope to accomplish is the creation of a central coordinating body-one on which you would almost certainly hold a voting seat-to organize and support a Cluster-wide resistance movement. But building that, especially if we want to prevent the local authorities, like your President Tonkovic, from infiltrating us and taking us out before we can accomplish anything, is going to take some time."
She nodded, obviously unwillingly. Her eyes were hot with disappointment, with the frustrated desire to do something now, but there was discipline behind the frustration. And an awareness that what he'd said made sense.
"In the meantime," he continued, "I may be in a position to begin providing a strictly limited amount of financial and material support. Eventually, obviously, my people hope to provide more substantial assistance, including access to weapons and intelligence. If we manage to create the central coordinating structure we're trying to put into place, we ought to be in a position to receive intelligence from all of our planetary members without jeopardizing the security of any of them. We'll be able to put all the pieces anyone gives us together into a single, coherent whole which ought to allow all of us to formulate more effective strategies. And we also hope to pool our financial resources. Speaking of which, I hope you realize it may be necessary for us to do some things none of us would really like to do in order to finance our operations?"
"That's understood." Nordbrandt's voice carried more than a touch of distaste, but, once again, her eyes were unflinching. "I'm not looking forward to it, but resistance movements can't exactly send out Revenue Service agents to collect income tax."
"I'm glad you understand that," Firebrand said gravely. "To begin with, though, it looks as if we're going to be able to secure at least the seed money we need through a little judicious electronic manipulation."
"Oh?" Nordbrandt perked up visibly.
"Oh, yes," Firebrand said with a nasty smile. "I'm obviously not at liberty to give you any details. For that matter, I don't have many details to give, at this point. But come the end of the current fiscal quarter, Bernardus Van Dort is going to discover that the Trade Union is running an unanticipated deficit."
Nordbrandt clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a delighted peal of laughter, and her brown eyes danced devilishly. Firebrand grinned back like a little boy who'd just gotten away with cutting an entire week of school without being caught. He'd thought she'd like the notion of pilfering from the coffers of the powerful, theoretically nonpolitical trade organization which had taken the lead in organizing the annexation plebiscite in the first place.
"There is a certain poetic justice involved, isn't there?" he said after a moment, and she nodded enthusiastically.
"As I say, I don't know any details," he continued, "but if the operation comes off half as well as I've been led to expect, we ought to be able to begin providing some discreet additional funding to you and your organization in the next couple of months. Possibly even a bit sooner, though I don't think you should count on that. Of course, before we can do that, we're going to have to have some idea of just how large and how active your own organization is likely to be.
"I'm not going to ask for any details," he went on quickly, one hand waving the thought aside. "But obviously we're going to have to have some idea of the relative needs and capabilities of the various organizations we hope to bring together if we're going to make the best use of what are inevitably going to be limited resources."
"I can see that," she agreed. "But I'm obviously going to have to discuss this with my people before I can commit them to anything."
"Naturally." Firebrand grinned again. "I'm sure it's going to seem like it's taking forever for us to get this up and running. But I truly believe that once we have it in place, it's going to make the difference between success or failure for the entire Cluster."
"Then let's hope we do get it organized," Agnes Nordbrandt said, and raised her beer stein in salute to her new allies.
* * *
"Are you out of your mind?!" "Firebrand's" companion demanded quietly as the two of them strolled down the sidewalk together twenty minutes later. Any c
asual observer would undoubtedly have dismissed them as no more than two friends, making their way home from an evening of conviviality and looking forward to a night's rest before facing another day of work.
"I don't think so," Firebrand replied, then chuckled. "Of course, if I were out of my mind, I probably wouldn't realize it, would I?"
"No? Well Eichbauer never authorized us to go that far, and you know it. For God's sake, Damien, you all but promised that lunatic funds!"
"Yes, I did, didn't I?" Captain Damien Harahap, known to Agnes Nordbrandt as "Firebrand," chuckled. "I thought my explanation for their origin was downright inspired. She certainly liked it, didn't she?"
"Goddamn it, will you be serious?" His fellow's exasperation was obvious to Harahap, although it wouldn't have been to that putative casual observer, and the senior agent sighed. He'd worked with the other man before-not often, but two or three times-and he supposed he ought to be accustomed to his partner's stodginess. But it was rather sad that he had so little sense of how the Great Game was played.
"I am being serious, in my own perhaps peculiar fashion," he said after several seconds. "And I might remind you that I've worked with Ulrike-I mean, Major Eichbauer-a lot longer than you have."
"I'm aware of that. But this was supposed to be an exploratory probe. We were looking for information, not setting up goddamned conduits! You're so far outside our instructions it isn't even funny."
"It's called 'initiative,' Tommy," Harahap said, and this time there was a faintly discernible edge of contempt in his smile. "Do you really think Eichbauer would have sent us to gather this kind of information if there wasn't at least a potential operation floating around?"
He shook his head, and the other man grimaced.
"You're senior, and Talbott's your so-called area of expertise, so it's your ass hanging out there to be kicked. I still think she's going to rip you a new one as soon as she reads your report, though."
"She may. I doubt it, though. Worst case, 'Mr. Firebrand' just never gets around to revisiting Kornati. Nordbrandt will never see me again, and all she'll have are some unanswered questions and useless speculation." Harahap shrugged. "She may decide I was just pulling her chain, or she may figure I was quietly arrested and disposed of. But if Ulrike is up to something, establishing credible contact with someone like Nordbrandt could be very useful. And I'm sure we could scare up enough funding to make my little fable about looting the RTU stand up without ever going beyond Ulrike's discretionary funds."
"But why?" the other man asked. "The woman isn't too tightly wrapped, and you know it. And she's smart. That's a bad combination."
"That depends on what you're trying to accomplish, doesn't it?" Harahap shot back. "I agree she seems a couple of canisters short of a full load. If I wanted to keep Frontier Security off my planet, I'd jump on the opportunity to join Manticore in a heartbeat. So would anyone else whose mind spent its time in the real universe. But I think Nordbrandt genuinely believes she can orchestrate a resistance movement which could not only convince Manticore to go elsewhere, but do the same thing to OFS and probably even overturn Kornati's entire economic system, as well."
"Like I said-a lunatic."
"Not entirely," Harahap disagreed. The other man looked at him incredulously, and he chuckled again. "Oh, she's dreaming if she thinks Frontier Security would lose an instant's sleep over turning her and all her loyal followers into so much dogmeat. OFS has had too much experience swatting people like her. But she could just have a point where Manticore is concerned. And if Major Eichbauer, or her esteemed superiors, are actually contemplating any sort of operation here in Talbott, just who do you think it's going to be directed against?"
"I suppose that's a reasonable point," the other man said unwillingly.
"Of course it is. And it's also the reason-well, one reason-I'm going to recommend we make good on that funding offer of mine. And that we cultivate Westman, as well."
"Westman?" The other man looked at him sharply. "I'd think he was more dangerous even than Nordbrandt."
"From our perspective?" Harahap nodded. "Certainly he is. Nordbrandt simply figures there's no real difference between OFS and Manticore. Any outside power mucking around in Talbott is the enemy, as far she's concerned. Hard to blame her, really, even if she is a bit of a fanatic about it."
For a moment, a few fleeting instants, his expression tightened, his eyes bleak with the memory of a boy's childhood on another planet not unlike Kornati. Then it disappeared, and he chuckled yet again.
"The point is, though, that she's so focused on resisting anyone's 'imperialist designs' on her home world that she's constitutionally incapable of recognizing how much better terms she could expect from Manticore than from Frontier Security.
"Westman's a whole different case. Nordbrandt hates Van Dort and the Trade Union because of the role they played in inviting Manticore in; Westman hates Manticore because inviting it in was Van Dort's idea. He's hated and distrusted the Rembrandt Trade Union ever since it was created. He's spent so long worrying about its mercantile imperialism that he's automatically opposed to anything the RTU thinks is a good idea. But when you come right down to it, he really doesn't know anything more about the Manticorans than Nordbrandt does. At the moment he's seeing them strictly through a prism that's still focused on the way things were before Manticore suddenly acquired a wormhole terminus here. He's more organized and better financed than I think Nordbrandt is, and his family name gives him enormous influence on Montana. But if he gets himself educated about the difference between Manticore and Frontier Security, he's just likely to decide there might be something in this 'Star Kingdom' business for the Montana System, after all."
"And you're still going to recommend we cultivate him?"
"Of course I am. What's that old saying about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer?" Harahap snorted. "If we can convince him of our sincerity-and if we can get Nordbrandt on board to act as local protective camouflage, we'll stand a better chance of doing that-we'll be in a much more promising position when it comes to controlling him. Or, at least, to containing him."
He walked along in silence for another minute, then shrugged.
"Don't ever forget what we're really doing here, Tommy. I'm convinced Eichbauer is setting up an operation, or at least scouting the terrain to be ready if she's ordered to mount one. And in that case, the object has to be preventing Manticore's annexation of the Cluster. Both Nordbrandt and Westman could be very useful for that sort of maneuver. Getting our hooks into them so we can 'encourage' them and direct them as effectively as possible would be worthwhile in its own right. But the bottom line is that if we manage to keep Manticore out, it's only going to be so we can move in ourselves. And in that case, it's even more important to have good, solid communications with people like Nordbrandt and Westman."
He looked at his companion, and this time his smile was icy cold.
"It's always so much easier to round up the local opposition for disposal if they think you're their friends."
Chapter Eight
Ansten FitzGerald looked up at the sound of a cleared throat. Naomi Kaplan stood in the opened hatch of his small shipboard office.
"Chief Ashton said you wanted to see me?" she said.
"Yes, I did. Come on in. Take a seat." He pointed to the chair on the far side of his desk, and she crossed the decksole and sat down, smoothing her long blond hair with one hand. "Thanks for getting here so promptly," he continued, "but it really wasn't quite that urgent."
"I was on my way stationward when Ashton caught me," she said. "I've got a dinner date at Dempsey's with Alf in about-" she looked at her chrono "-two hours, and I wanted to do a little shopping first." She grinned, her dark-brown eyes glinting. "I'd still like to get the shopping in if I can, but to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have the free time to stay out after dinner, Daddy. So I thought I'd come see you ASAP."
"I see." FitzGerald smiled back at her. The petite, att
ractive tactical officer reminded him of a hexapuma for more than just her ferocity in combat. He didn't know whether he envied Alf Sanfilippo, or whether he sympathized with him, but he knew the other man wasn't going to be bored that evening.
"I think you can probably count on having the free time you want," he told her, and then his smile faded. "But you may not have much more than that." She cocked her head, looking a question at him, and he shrugged. "How do you think Lieutenant Hearns is working out?" he asked.
Kaplan blinked at the sudden apparent non sequitur. Then her eyes narrowed.
"Are you asking my opinion of her as my assistant tactical officer, or as Hexapuma's OCTO?"
"Both," FitzGerald replied simply, tipping back in his chair and watching her expression.
"Well," Kaplan said slowly, "I haven't really had the opportunity to see her in action, you understand." FitzGerald nodded. For someone who had absolutely no trace of hesitation when the fecal matter hit the rotary air impeller in combat, Kaplan had a pronounced tendency to throw out sheet anchors in non-combat situations.
David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami Page 12