by David Weber
He shook his head.
“No. We can’t make this about whether or not secession is legal. Not now. That’s something we’re going to have to address later, but it’s not anything we want to go anywhere near at a moment when we know other Core Worlds are at least considering it.”
“We don’t have any choice,” McCartney began, “and if you think—”
“Wait, Nathan,” Wodoslawski interrupted, gazing intently at Kolokoltsov. The permanent senior undersecretary of the interior looked affronted, but he also closed his mouth, and Wodoslawski cocked her head to one side.
“What did you mean ‘we can’t make this about whether or not secession is legal,’ Innokentiy?” she asked.
“I mean we have to make it about whether or not Beowulf’s actions threaten the security of the League in general and the Core Worlds in particular, instead,” Kolokoltsov replied. “I think we have to take a more or less hands-off position on the entire issue of secession’s legality for the moment. That’s something we should probably hand over to Reid and Neng once they get the inquiry into Beowulf’s collaboration with Manticore underway. I’m sure Reid will be able to come up with a whole stack of legal precedents he can convincingly claim have invalidated a supposed ‘constitutional right’ nobody’s exercised in seven hundred years! Jurisprudence and living constitutional law have moved on, you know.”
He smiled, and Abruzzi actually chuckled out loud. Even MacArtney looked a little more thoughtful.
“At that point,” Kolokoltsov continued, “we argue that secession from the League isn’t legal, but for now we formally reserve judgment on the subject. We make it clear we’re not conceding that Beowulf has the right to leave, but that we’re not prepared to make an ugly situation even worse until there’s been time for the courts to rule on whether or not their actions are legal.”
“We let the erring sister go—for now, at least—more in sorrow than in anger, you mean?” Abruzzi asked, his eyes narrowed in thought. “And when we do, we leave ourselves the option of deciding later that Beowulf was wrong and taking whatever remedial action seems appropriate then?”
“More or less.” Kolokoltsov nodded. “What I’m trying to do here is to defang the emotional aspects of the issue. I’d love to get this resolved before anybody else starts holding referendums on secession, you understand, but I doubt we’re going to be that lucky. So what I’m looking to do right this minute is to avoid handing any extra ammunition to the people who’d be likely to agitate for secession in the referendums we may not be able to prevent in the first place.”
MacArtney and Quartermain still looked profoundly unhappy, but Wodoslawski actually looked a bit hopeful, Kolokoltsov thought.
“All well and good,” MacArtney growled after a moment, “but it doesn’t do diddley about Beowulf right now.”
No, and it’s not going to make any of those transstellars any happier with you, either. Not right now, at least, Kolokoltsov thought trenchantly. Unfortunately, all we can do is all we can do!
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t take any action at all against Beowulf, Nathan,” the permanent senior undersecretary for foreign affairs said coolly. “Mind you, I’m not sure what kind of action we’re going to be in a position to take, but I’m in favor of doing anything we realistically can. I just don’t want it to be over the legality or illegality of secession at this point.”
“That’s what you meant about not making it about whether or not secession is legal,” Wodoslawski said.
“Exactly.” Kolokoltsov tipped back in his chair. “I think we need to get Kingsford in here, let him take a look at any military options we may have—workable military options, I mean—where Beowulf is concerned. If there’s one that will work, I’m entirely in favor of using it, but not because they illegally seceded from the League. At this point what we need to do is to make it over the security threat to the League Beowulf represents because of its association with the League’s avowed enemies. As Omosupe said, everybody knows about Beowulf’s effective proximity to Manticore. That means everybody knows Beowulf does, indeed, represent that ‘invasion highway’ Nathan was talking about. We’d be fully justified in taking military action against any star nation that was in a position to enable a Manty invasion of the very heart of the Solarian League. I don’t think they’d be remotely stupid enough to do it, you understand, but we can make an ironclad case for taking action to deprive them of the capability to do it. But making certain that they can’t would be a simple matter of self-defense, and one we’d have no choice but to pursue. We’d be derelict in our responsibilities to the rest of the League if we didn’t!”
“Which lets us hammer Beowulf as hard as we want—assuming we can find a way to do it, that is—without ever even touching the question of secession!” Abruzzi said enthusiastically.
“Exactly,” Kolokoltsov repeated. “And, Nathan, there’s no way anyone out in the Shell who might be thinking in terms of seceding is going to miss the subtext. There won’t be a single official word about secession in anything we have to say on the subject, but everyone will hear it anyway.”
“And once the immediate furor dies down, Reid and Neng’s committee reports back that Beowulf’s actions were treasonous before it seceded,” Wodoslawski said thoughtfully.
“After which Reid produces the precedents to establish that the right of secession’s lapsed with the passage of time,” Abruzzi said, nodding energetically.
There was silence for several seconds, then MacArtney shrugged irritably.
“I don’t like it,” he grumbled. “We’re still pussyfooting around the issue, and a lot of people are going to realize it.”
“I agree with you, Nathan,” Quartermain said, “but I think Innokentiy and Malachai have made some valid points, too.” She shrugged. “Given the practical limits on what we can actually do at the moment, I’m afraid I’m going to have to side with them. But”—she glared suddenly at the others—“whatever our justification for going after Beowulf, we need to do it just as hard and just as quickly as humanly possible. Because Nathan’s got a point, too, people. The situation in the Verge is going to go straight to hell on us, no matter what we do, but the last thing we need is to have the Shell going up in flames right along with it. We need to get a handle on this, and we need to do it fast!”
* * *
“You’re kidding me,” Irene Teague said, staring at Daud al-Fanudahi. The two of them sat on benches across a small outdoor table from one another, eating their lunch as the warm summer sun spilled down across them. Lake Michigan’s waters stretched limitlessly towards the horizon below the restaurant perched on a two-hundredth-floor balcony of the Admiralty Building, and gaily colored sails and powerboats dotted that dark blue expanse as far as the eye could see.
Not that either of them was in much of a mood to appreciate the view at the moment.
“I wish I were.” Al-Fanudahi sounded entirely too calm for Teague’s mood, and she glared at him.
“Calmly, Irene,” he said, gazing serenely past her towards the lake water so far below. “I don’t think anyone’s listening to us out here, but I’d just as soon not give anyone a reason to think they should be listening to us, if you know what I mean.”
Teague looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded and reached for her own fork.
“Granted,” she said. “But I stand by my original reaction. Please tell me you were just making a really bad joke.”
“Wish I were,” he repeated with a sigh. “Unfortunately, the official request for intelligence updates will be coming through this afternoon sometime. As far as I can see, they’re very serious about it.”
“After what happened to Filareta?” She scooped up a forkful of delicious tuna salad and chewed without tasting it at all. “I knew Rajampet wasn’t what anyone would’ve called brilliant, but I thought Kingsford had a working brain!”
“As far as I can tell, he does,” al-Fanudahi replied. “I don’t know that this is his idea,
either. But given the kinds of intelligence data they’re going to be requesting, there’s no question what they’re looking at.”
“A military operation against Beowulf?” She shook her head. “That’s got to be the worst idea I’ve heard since Operation Raging Justice itself!”
“I don’t know.” Al-Fanudahi shrugged. “It depends on the mission parameters and the available resources, I guess.”
“Mission parameters?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Just what sort of ‘mission parameters’ are going to make our superdreadnoughts survivable against their superdreadnoughts, Daud?”
“None that I can think of right offhand,” al-Fanudahi conceded. “But the evidence from the merchies who’ve been passing through Beowulf since Raging Justice does seem to suggest that the Manty forces in Beowulf space are concentrated around the terminus, not the planet.”
“So what?” Teague demanded. “Superdreadnoughts are mobile, you know!”
“Yes, and the Beowulf System Defense Force is a nasty handful all on its own, which doesn’t even consider the system’s fixed defenses,” al-Fanudahi agreed. “What I suspect our lords and masters are thinking about is that the Manties appear to be trying to avoid stepping on any Solarian sensibilities, especially until the final tally is in on Beowulf’s plebiscite. It may be politics on their part, for all I know.”
“Politics?”
“If they want to encourage other star systems to follow Beowulf’s example—to encourage the fragmentation of the League—they’d want to avoid any suggestion that they’re using force majeure to turn Beowulf into some sort of Manty puppet régime, don’t you think? One way to do that would to be to let Beowulf defend Beowulfan space while they defend the terminus, instead of putting a batch of their wallers into Beowulf orbit. It avoids the appearance of iron-fist pressure on Beowulf’s voters at a particularly delicate moment … and just happens to put their superdreadnoughts a couple of light-hours away from Beowulf itself.”
“You mean Kingsford and Bernard are thinking in terms of pouncing on Beowulf—coming straight in across the hyper limit and going flat out for the planet—before any Manty forces at the terminus can intervene?”
“I think that’s about the only thing they could be thinking of,” al-Fanudahi said. “I don’t know if it would work, but assuming Beowulf hasn’t been completely surrounded by new and nasty missile pods, a big enough force of superdreadnoughts, especially with enough of the new Technodyne missile pods, probably could fight its way in through the BSDF and the fixed defenses. And once they controlled the planetary orbitals, they’d be justified under interstellar law in demanding the system’s surrender.”
“And exactly where in this fascinating analysis of yours do the Manty superdreadnoughts come in?” Teague inquired politely. “You know, the ones over at the terminus? The ones who are going to come right back over to Beowulf and kick our sorry asses out of the star system?”
“Oh, those superdreadnoughts?” Al-Fanudahi smiled crookedly at her. “Well, I suppose the idea would be that once the system government surrendered to us, we’d announce special emergency elections—called at the insistence of the Beowulfan public, of course—in light of the existing Board of Directors’ high-handed and probably treasonous actions. And no doubt that new, legitimate system government would denounce the previous system government’s decision to even consider seceding from the Solarian League. Obviously, it would be incumbent upon us to recognize the new, legitimate—I did mention that it would be legitimate, didn’t I?—system government’s position. And, equally obviously, Manticore would be on very thin ice when it came to denying the legitimacy of that new system government, given their desire to avoid the puppet-master image. So the logic, I imagine, is that since what Manticore really needs is control of the Beowulf Terminus, the Manties would recognize a fait accompli when they saw it and let us have the Beowulf System back.”
“And if the Manties don’t roll over that way?”
“In that case, I would imagine, our fleet commander negotiates a withdrawal from the star system. Probably on the grounds that the orders which sent him there in the first place had misread the true sentiments of the Beowulfers. Now that he’s had the opportunity to observe firsthand that the decision to secede enjoys genuine popular support, of course he’s prepared to acknowledge that and retire from the lists. Of course, if Manticore is so unreasonable as to deny a negotiated, peaceful withdrawal with no further combat, our commander can’t be held responsible for any collateral damage that might befall the system infrastructure—and population, unfortunately—in the course of an unprovoked Manticoran attack upon his peaceably departing forces.”
Teague scooped up another forkful of salad, chewed slowly, and swallowed, all without taking her incredulous gaze from al-Fanudahi. Then she shook her head.
“That may be less totally insane than Rajampet’s attack on the Manty home system, but that’s not saying a hell of a lot, is it?” she observed caustically.
“No. On the other hand, they’re in a hell of a crack at the moment,” al-Fanudahi pointed out. “I think they figure they’ve got to do something, and I’m afraid they may decide this is the best option they’ve got. And there’s actually at least a chance—a remote one, I’ll grant you, but still a chance—they could pull this one off.”
He shrugged and popped an olive into his mouth.
“Personally, I wouldn’t want to make any heavy bets on our ability to get away with it, but the Manties are going to be cautious about inflaming Solarian public opinion any more than they have to, especially if Kingsford can get this up and running before any of the other Core Worlds choose to follow Beowulf’s example. The question would be whether Manticore would decide it would look more like an outside tyrant intervening to protect a collaborationist clique or like a liberator intervening to prevent the reimposition of an illegitimate, unconstitutional tyranny of bureaucrats.”
He chewed and swallowed, then inspected his salad plate for another olive before he looked back up at Teague.
“Interesting choice, don’t you think?”