by David Weber
She paused, brown eyes hard with contempt and disdain. The Chamber of Stars was deathly still, its quiet broken only by a handful of voices shouting denials of her assertions.
“We expected nothing else from a morally, ethically, and legally bankrupt institution,” she continued finally, her voice colder than ever. “However, there is another right which the Constitution guarantees to every member star system, and Beowulf chooses to exercise that right today. If we cannot oppose the ‘Mandarins’’ criminal and disastrous policies from inside the system, we will no longer attempt to. Instead, as the leader of Beowulf’s delegation, acting on the instructions of my star system’s legally elected government, I hereby announce that Beowulf will hold a system-wide plebiscite two T-months from today to determine whether or not the Beowulf system shall withdraw from the Solarian League.”
The lonely voices shouting insults and denials vanished suddenly into a deep, singing silence, and she smiled grimly.
“That vote will be fairly, legally, and publicly taken, but speaking personally, I have no doubt whatsoever what its outcome will be. And, again speaking personally, I caution all of you to have no illusions upon that head. You’ve passed your motion, and you’re welcome to investigate anything you choose to investigate, but Beowulf will no longer be party to the blood-soaked policies of a corrupt and venal oligarchy prepared to murder entire star nations rather than admit even the possibility of wrongdoing on its part. We reserve the right to disassociate ourselves from criminal enterprises and murder on an interstellar scale, and to take whatever actions the citizens of our star system believe are required of it in the crisis which Permanent Senior Undersecretary Kolokoltsov and his fellow ‘Mandarins’ have created. For those of you who have chosen to vote in favor of this motion, we wish you joy of your actions … but I don’t think you’ll find it.”
She hit the key that cleared her image from the display, and the Chamber of Stars went berserk.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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“So, are you still so blasé about how easily Reid’s motion is going to ‘neutralize’ Beowulf, Innokentiy?” Nathan MacArtney’s voice was rather caustic, Innokentiy Kolokoltsov thought.
“I was never ‘blasé’ about it, Nathan,” the permanent senior undersecretary for foreign affairs replied. “And I never said it would neutralize them. I said I expected it to shift the focus of the debate from us to Beowulf and put a muzzle on Hadley, and I think that’s exactly what’s happening. I’ll admit I never expected even Beowulfers to go this far, and sure as hell not to go this far this quickly, but it does look like we’re going to take Beowulf out of play in the Chamber of Stars, doesn’t it? I believe it’s called looking for a silver lining.” He smiled thinly. “Since we can’t do anything to stop it, we might as well try to find a bright side to look on once it’s done.”
Hadley’s bombshell announcement had completely blindsided him. He admitted it. He’d envisioned quite a few possible outcomes of Reid’s motion, but never that Beowulf would simply walk away from its seven centuries of membership in the League. No one had ever done that, and most people had assumed that, like so much more of the original Constitution, the right of secession had withered and was no longer applicable.
Beowulf’s government obviously didn’t see it that way, and while the system’s secession had not yet become a fact, there seemed to be very little chance of the plebiscite failing. Benton-Ramirez and his fellow directors undoubtedly had better access to polling data on Beowulfan public opinion than anyone on Old Earth did, but what the Mandarins did have access to made grim reading. At least eighty-two percent of the system population supported the Board of Directors’ decision to accept Manticoran assistance to prevent Imogene Tsang’s transit of the Beowulf Terminus against Beowulf’s wishes. An only slightly lower percentage—seventy-five to seventy-eight percent, depending on whose poll one chose—firmly believed it had prevented thousands of additional Solarian deaths. And somewhere around eighty-five percent favored an outright military alliance with the Star Empire against the boogie man of this “Mesan Alignment” figment of the Manties’ imagination. It was only a very short step from an alliance against Mesa to one against anyone perceived as serving the “Mesan Alignment’s” purposes, and while Kolokoltsov hadn’t seen any specific data on the question of outright secession from the Solarian League, against that sort of public opinion background, he was sickly certain Hadley was right about the final vote on the question.
Worse, there seemed to be very little the federal government could do to stop it from happening. Not with the Royal Manticoran Navy and its allies only a single wormhole transit away. That was bad enough, but according to his agents within the Assembly, it appeared the system delegations of Strathmore, Kenichi, and Galen were strongly inclined to recommend that their own star systems follow Beowulf’s example! He didn’t know if any of them had actually made their recommendations yet, but their system governments certainly seemed angry enough to take the plunge once they did, especially if Beowulf succeeded in its defiance of the entire League, and the thought was terrifying. The average population of the four star systems was over six billion, and the decision of twenty-four billion Solarian citizens to withdraw would be a body blow to the federal government’s authority and prestige.
No, he thought, not to the federal government, but to the federal system. To us, sitting right here. And, damn it, sometimes I think they’d be right! But what other alternative is there? We can’t reform a system that’s been in place for the better part of a thousand T-years on the run. Especially not in the middle of a military and constitutional crisis! The entire League would come apart! Before we can fix the League’s problems—assuming anyone can fix them—we have to hold it together long enough to be fixed.
“Well, personally, I don’t think your silver lining’s especially bright,” MacArtney said sourly. “I’ve been hearing from a lot of people who aren’t any too happy about the invasion highway Beowulf offers if the Manties decide to come after us right here. For that matter, I’m not too crazy about it, either!”
“The worst thing the Manties could possibly do—from their perspective, not ours—is to attack the Sol System.” Kolokoltsov barked a laugh. “In fact, I wish they would! It’s the one thing I can think of practically guaranteed to get all the Core Worlds lined up to back us!”
“You really think so?” Agatá Wodoslawski sounded doubtful. “I mean, if they—and the Havenites, too; let’s not forget them—were to take out Old Terra, you don’t think that would terrify the rest of the League into throwing in the towel?”
“Only in the shortest possible term,” Kolokoltsov said positively. “Personally, I think it would convince most of the other Core Worlds that the Manties and their friends are just as expansionist and arrogant as we’ve been telling them they were all along. It would sure as hell knock any notion of distant, plucky little neobarbs defending themselves against Solarian aggression on the head and turn them into cynical imperialists striking at the very heart of the greatest star nation in human history! The most likely thing for the rest of the Core Worlds to do in that case would be to sue for a cease-fire just long enough to figure out how to build matching missiles of their own, then hammer this ‘Grand Alliance’ flat, and the Manties have to know it.”
He shook his head and looked straight at MacArtney even as he spoke to Wodoslawski.
“I don’t see the Manties wanting to pump that kind of hydrogen into the fire, Agatá. Not unless we drive them to it. For that matter, I don’t see Beowulf wanting to piss off so many of its neighbors by allowing that sort of attack. Whatever happens to the League, eventually Beowulf’s going to have to live with the star systems around it again. If the Beowulfers stick that kind of knife into the League’s back, most of those star systems are going to be gunning for them once the smoke clears and the tech imbalance has leveled out again.”
“Assuming the damned Beowulfers are smart eno
ugh to figure that out,” MacArtney grumbled.
“I think they are,” Kolokoltsov said with just a bit more confidence than he actually felt.
“Maybe so,” Wodoslawski said, “but there are other factors to consider. Like what’s going to happen if someone else decides to follow Beowulf’s example on this one. It could turn out Beowulf’s only the first drop of rain, and if that happens, we may find out just how badly screwed we really are.”
Kolokoltsov grimaced and decided—again—not to mention his agents’ reports about Beowulf’s neighbors. There’d be time for that once he’d been able to confirm the accuracy of those reports. But the permanent senior undersecretary of the treasury had a point, and he nodded as he was forced to concede it.
“That’s one of the things I’m hearing about from the transstellars, too,” MacArtney said. “They’re all worried that even if the Manties don’t use Beowulf to go after the League from the inside out, Beowulf’s example is going to cause other Core Worlds to decide to sit this one out. That’d be bad enough, but what happens when the Shell hears about this?” He shook his head. “You know that even a lot of the League member systems out there aren’t all that fond of our policies. I won’t say they feel as exploited as the Protectorates and the Verge, but they know we’ve consistently favored the Core World economies over their own. And a lot of them are a hell of a lot closer to Manticore and Haven than they are to us, even leaving the wormhole network out of the equation. If they see us starting to shed Core systems, what’s to keep them from deciding to jump ship and look for a better deal out of the Manties, too?”
What you mean, Nathan, Kolokoltsov thought, is that your buddies in the transstellars are worried about somebody’s seceding from the League and nationalizing their investments. That’s what they’re really worried about. And it’s what they’re turning the screws on you about, too. They could care less whether or not the entire Shell stays in the League as long as it goes on being business as usual for them! Which it won’t, of course, if the people they’ve been exploiting for so long see a chance to get out from under them.
He nodded gravely once more, keeping his thoughts out of his expression. And the truth was that what MacArtney was describing would become an all-too-plausible scenario if things went all the way south on them. For that matter, Kolokoltsov had entertained the occasional nightmare about what would happen if the transstellars started trying to cut deals with the Manties. Given the way their tentacles completely permeated the League, they could do an enormous amount of damage if they decided to throw in openly—or, possibly even worse, clandestinely—with the Manties and Havenites. He had no idea how likely the Manties would be to accept an offer like that, but he never doubted that the “loyal and patriotic” men and women who ran the transstellars would make it in a heartbeat if they thought it would benefit them. Which meant he had to keep them happy—or as happy as he could, at least—too.
Wonderful.
“I think Nathan has a point,” Omosupe Quartermain said. She didn’t much like MacArtney, and she didn’t sound very happy about supporting him, but the permanent senior undersecretary of commerce was probably the only person hearing more from nervous transstellars than he was. “I just have this feeling the avalanche is still accelerating,” she continued, looking around at the holographic faces of the electronic conference room. “It’s only going to get worse and worse, at least for the immediate future, and if we don’t do something to at least slow it down, we may run out of time to do anything else.”
Wodoslawski looked at her colleague, and Kolokoltsov’s heart sank as the permanent senior undersecretary of the treasury nodded slowly. The nature of Wodoslawski and Quartermain’s responsibilities meant the two female Mandarins ended up supporting one another more often than not, and Kolokoltsov didn’t like the way he thought this was headed.
“What would you like us to do to try and slow it up, Omosupe?” Malachai Abruzzi asked.
“I don’t know,” Quartermain admitted. She raised her right hand, waving it in an uncharacteristically helpless, worried gesture. “I just know that if we let Beowulf do this, if we just stand back and wave goodbye, we’re establishing a precedent. The exact kind of precedent Nathan’s worrying about where the Shell systems are concerned. Right this minute, the jury’s still out on whether or not Beowulf really does have the constitutional right to leave. But if we let them go, aren’t we saying for all the galaxy to see that they do? And if they do, then every member system does!”
“Maybe, but the simple truth of the matter is that we can’t stop them,” Abruzzi pointed out with unwonted gentleness. “They’ve got to have a hundred or so Manty SDs sitting on top of the Beowulf Terminus right this minute. After what happened to Filareta, we all know what would happen if we got into shooting range of them, too.” He shrugged. “That constitutes a pretty conclusive rejoinder as to whether or not we have the ‘right’ to stop them, I’m afraid.”
“But the fact that we can’t stop them doesn’t mean we have to condone their actions,” MacArtney said, his expression mulish.
“Meaning what?” Kolokoltsov asked.
“Meaning we don’t have to admit their actions are legal.” MacArtney tapped an index finger on his desk for emphasis. “We can condemn them, announce that they’re illegal, and that we intend to take firm action at the earliest possible moment.”
“Which will only underscore the fact that we can’t take any kind of ‘firm action’ right now,” Abruzzi retorted. “It’d make us look ridiculous, Nathan!”
“Maybe, and maybe not,” Quartermain said, her expression suddenly hopeful. “Oh, I agree it would underscore the fact that we can’t take action against Beowulf, but the entire League knows Beowulf’s in a very special astrographic position, thanks to its direct connection to Manticore. Most people understand how that limits our options where it’s concerned. But if we make that our guiding principle, then we’ll have positioned ourselves to react … more forcefully in the case of star systems we can actually reach.”
“Basically, you’re saying we reject anyone’s right to secede, whatever they may think the Constitution says, and use force to prevent any additional secessions?” Wodoslawski said with the air of a woman wanting to be certain there was no confusion on the point.
“If we have to,” Quartermain replied unflinchingly. “I don’t like the thought, and, frankly, there are a lot of potential secessionist systems we probably couldn’t reach militarily. But we’d be able to reach a lot of them, and if they don’t have the super missiles the Manties and the Havenites do, Frontier Fleet should be more than capable of keeping them in line.”
“We probably could,” Abruzzi conceded. “It’d be hard to spin that as anything except us using the iron fist, though. I mean, after everything else we’ve already had to throw out there in the ’faxes since this thing began.”
“Well, if we’re going to take the position that Beowulf has no right to secede,” MacArtney said, “then Hadley and the rest of their delegation have just committed treason.” He smiled nastily. “That being the case, I think they should be arrested and prevented from leaving the system!”
Oh, that’s a marvelous idea, Kolokoltsov thought bitterly.
“Nathan’s probably right,” Quartermain put in, and Wodoslawski was nodding again.
“And if we’re talking about arresting the bastards for treason over this secession crap,” MacArtney went on, “I think we should consider whether or not their decision to harbor Carmichael doesn’t constitute another act of treason!” His smile was even uglier than before. “If we put the arm on them, then we’re in a position to put the arm on him as well.”
“Whoa! Just slow down, Nathan!” Abruzzi said sharply. “If we start throwing terms like ‘treason’ around now, and start strong-arming Assembly delegates before this plebiscite of theirs has even been voted on, the rest of the delegates are going to raise merry hell. Not because they’re all that fond of Beowulf, either! You think they
won’t see that as a precedent that could come home to bite them too?”
“I’m not so sure it would be a bad thing if they did,” MacArtney shot back. “If they figure out we’re going to hammer anybody who looks like they’re turning on us, then they’ll probably think twice—or even three times!—about doing just that.”
“This isn’t the Verge, and we’re not talking about OFS protectorates,” Abruzzi said flatly. “We’re talking about Core Worlds. We’re talking about star systems that have the internal industry to build significant navies of their own if the urge strikes them. We’re already looking at a confrontation against somebody whose weapons technology we can’t match, and you want to go around irritating our own star systems into deciding they have to build a military capability to protect themselves from us?”
The permanent senior undersecretary of education and information shook his head, his expression incredulous, and MacArtney flushed angrily. He opened his mouth to snap something back, but Kolokoltsov raised one hand in a “stop” gesture.
“Calm down, Nathan. And you, Malachai.” He shook his head. “You and Omosupe and Agatá have raised valid concerns, Nathan. But Malachai has a point, too. If we start resorting to the kind of tactics you’re suggesting, we up the ante for everybody, and right this minute, we can’t afford that.”
“We can’t afford not to,” MacArtney replied stubbornly, and Quartermain nodded. Wodoslawski seemed more torn, however, Kolokoltsov noted. “If we don’t get our heel firmly on this kind of thing now, we never will.”
“But Malachai’s right that we can’t get our heel on it right now,” Kolokoltsov said inflexibly. “We literally can’t. So if we try to grab Hadley and Carmichael, we only run the risk of alienating the other Core Worlds at a time when our weakness is going to be obvious to everyone. Especially when grabbing Hadley and Carmichael is the only thing we can do, because we sure as hell aren’t going to be able to follow through by arresting the rest of the Beowulf system government!”