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, and 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.

 

 

"Mister Speaker," Taliaferro's amplified voice cut through the uproar, "I yield temporarily to the Honorable Assem-blywoman for Beaufort!" The background noise died instantly as Fionna appeared on the giant screen, and her green eyes flashed fire.

 

 

"Mister Speaker," her voice was dear and strong, "I must tell the Honorable Assemblyman for Galloway's World that he has made a grievous error ff he expects every Federation citizen to greet this proposal with loud hosannas! No one in the Federation has more respect for the Orions than we of the Fringe. We have fought against them and beside them.

 

 

We admire their courage, their fortitude, and their spirit. They have their own claims to greatness: the first race to hypothesize the possibility of warp travel; the first to create a stellar empire; and the first to recognize the inevitable end result of blind militarism and turn away from it. But, Mister Speaker, they are Orions--and we here represent the Terran Federation! We represent a society forged, in part, in combat against the Orions, one which has made for itself a place second to none in the known Galaxy. And, Mister Speaker--was her long anger and frustration burned in her throat as she hurled the final words at Taliaferro his-comthe Fringe will never consent to this so-called amalgamation!" She sat down abruptly, and the Chamber of Worlds went berserk.

 

 

Soft, somehow mournful music swirled like the sea as Fionna stood at the head of the receiving line, smiling and gracious despite her exhaustion. The last week had been a nightmare, and only the extravagance of her personal exertions had held the Fringe bloc together. It wasn't that any delegation favored the proposed amalgamation; the reverse was true-they were angry with her for not taking a more extreme position.

 

 

But if twenty-five years in the Assembly had taught her anything, it was that the Heart Worlds didn't understand the Fringe. The Corporate Worlders knew their outworld cousins and enemies far better than the motherworld and its oldest colonies did, though she suspected not even the Corporate Worlds fully realized the fulminating anger they were fanning. But the Heart Worlds were too far removed from their own frontier days. They'd forgotten what it was like to know that any ,outside attack must come through their systems to reach the heart of empire. As they'd forgotten--ff they'd ever known--whichat it was to have their commerce, the lifeblood of their societies, manipulated and exploited by predatory mercharts with a yen for power.

 

 

And because they had forgotten or did not know, they were a terrible danger to the Fringe. Fionna had seen the "new liberalism" of her Heart World colleagues. The Heart Worlds had it too good, she thought bitterly; they were too content, too ultracivilized. The Corporate Worlds could convince them the Fringe really was peopled by uncouth barbarians but little removed from outright savagery.

 

 

Worse, they could be convinced to do what was "best" for the Fringe even ff it killed the object of their kindness!

 

 

Knowing that, she also knew it was imperative to convince the Heart Worlds of the Fringe's maturity.., or at least open-mindedness. The position she'd taken was the strongest she could take.

 

 

The firebrands who longed to denounce the Corporate Worlds openly, to point the accusing finger where it so richly deserved to be pointed, would play straight into Taliaferro's and Dieter's hands, but only one Fringer could convince them of that. Fionna MaeTaggart wasn't a vain woman, yet she knew no one else among the Fringe delegates had the prestige and power base she'd built against this very day.

 

 

Of all the Fringe Worlds, Beaufort, perhaps, most despised Corporate Worlders. Beaufort's heavy gravity had not been kind to its colonizers, despite their selection for high pressure tolerance, yet there had been fierce compe-fit'ion for space on the colony ships. The rebels of the Corporate Worlds, those who could no longer tolerate their roles as cogs in the vast machines, had seen in Beaufort a world poor enough and distant enough to be secure from manipulation and control. They'd gone to Beaufort to escape, and many had died there so many BuCol actually closed the planet to immigration for almost sixty years.

 

 

Fionna's parents and grandparents had spoken of those bitter years. The gene pool was small; the environment was harsh; and BuCol's Corporate World bureaucrats had not gone out of their way to help. Those six decades of isolation had produced the dialect the Innerworlders mocked--and left a burning hatred in the hearts of the people who spoke it.

 

 

But then the unsuspected pharmaceutical potential of the Beaufort doomwhale had rocked Terran medical science, and suddenly the Corporate Worlds and the Assembly were filled with concern for the colony they had ignored for so long. The Corporate World combines had moved in, and the Corporate World nightmare had come for the people of Beaufort once more.

 

 

Yet cold, hostile Beaufort had trained them well, and the planetary government moved quickly to regulate doomwhaling and exclude the Corporate Worlds, unmoved by threats of economic reprisal. There was little anyone could do which the Corporate Worlds hadn't already done, and, for the first time in over a century and a half, Corporate World plutocrats were forced to dance to the eeo[*oslash] nomic piping of a Fringe World.

 

 

They had hated it, and it was Beaufort's successful resistance to their penetration which gave her delegation such prestige. Beaufort had proved the Corporate Worlds could be stopped; now it was time to prove they ceuld be pushed back, and Fionna MacTaggart had dedicated her professional life to that goal.

 

 

Yet there was only one of her, and she was tired... so very, very tired. Beyond each confrontation, another loomed, and she faced each a little more diminished, a little more weary.

 

 

She shook herself mentally, banishing the dark thoughts.

 

 

It had been a bad day--perhaps that was why she felt so somber. Or perhaps it was this reception. It had been scheduled before Taliaferro dropped his bomb, and canceling it now was out of the question, but it was a strain to be polite to the Corporate Wodders as they arrived.

 

 

Still, she thought with a sudden flicker of amusement, it might be equally hard on them.

 

 

She glanced at her watch. Another ten minutes and she could find herself a drink and begin to circulate.

 

 

That might help. It was always easier to deal with people in small, intimate groups rather than in formal, antagonistic public forums. Then she looked back up and bit off a curse as Oskar Dieter entered with his now-constant shadow, Fouchet.

 

 

She felt Ladislaus materialize by her side. Dear Lad! He played the buffoon for the Innerworlders, but his fellow Beauforters knew his worth. Indeed, she sometimes wished she didn't know him quite so well. It would be nice to lose herself in an affair with someone with his strength and integrity, but any liaison with him would have felt incestuous.

 

 

Dieter paused at the head of the reception line, and his dark eyes glittered. Fionna didn't like Dieter; she never had, and she knew the feeling was mutual. Unlike Taliaferro, Dieter was a poor hand at hiding his emotions, and she'd flicked him on the raw often in debate. He resented that, and resented it all the more because she was a woman. The Constitution might outlaw sexual discrimination, but New Zurich's unwritten law enshrined it, and she suspected Dieter found her an insult to his prejudices as well as to his ambitions. Still, there were amenities to be observed, and sheeaheld out her hand with a smile.

 

 

"Mister Dieter." "Ms. MacTagsart." He bowed slightly, ignoring her hand, and his voice was cold, his eyes scornful. Fionna's palm itched.

 

 

"A pleasure to see you, sir," she made herself lie. "I understand you will be taking a major role in tomorrow's debate?" "Indeed," he said. "And so, I hear, will you. Playing your usual obstructionist role, I presume." Conversation slackened, and Fionna felt Ladislaus tighten beside her. She touched his hand unobtrusively.

 

 

"I prefer, sir, to consider my role as that of a constrnc,-tive advooate for the Fringe Worlds," she said, equally coldly. "We, too, have a right to present our point of view and to contend for our values and dreams." "Values and dreams?! Fringe garbage!" Dieter flushed suddenly, his voice hissing, and Fionna's eyes widened. Good God, what ailed the man? One simply didn't say things like that at formal receptions!

 

 

"Yes, Mister Dieter," she heard herself say, "we, too, have our dreams and aspirations--or will the Corporate Worlds take even those from us?" Ripples of silence raced outward. Fionna dared not turn to see the effect of the acid exchange, yet neither dared she to ,ill disi! retreat. It was one thing to appear reasonable; it was quite another to appear weak.

 

 

"We have no desire for them," Dieter sneered. "You speak very prettily in debate, for a Fringe Worlder, Madam, but the Assembly'will not be blind to your barbarism and xenophobia forever. You and your kind have stood in the path of civilization too long?

 

 

He almost spat the last words, and suddenly she smelled his breath. Reefgrubs! He was almost in orbit on New Athens mizir! How could he be so stupid as to meet her in this condition? But whatever madness possessed him wasn't her worry; responding to his attack was.

 

 

"We may be barbarians, sir," she said, and her voice rang clearly in the silence, "but at least we have the advantage of you in manners!" Dieter's face twisted as the crowd murmured approval. Even through the haze of mizir fumes he could sense the incredible blunder he'd made. But recognizing it and reo trieving it were two different things, and his fuddled brain was unequal to the task.

 

 

"Slut!" he hissed suddenly, thrusting his face close to hers. "You've aped your betters for too long! Get home to your stinking little ball of mud and make babies to play in the muck!" Fionna and her guests froze. Enmity between political leaders was nothing new, but this--to No one could quite believe Dieter was so lost to self-control, yet his words hung in the supercharged air like a sub-critical mass of plutonium, and they waited breathlessly for the explosion.

 

 

It came. Ladislaus Skjorning's huge fight hand lashed open-palmed across Dieter's face.

 

 

The New Zuricher rebounded from the blow, crashing into Fouchet, blood bursting from the corner of his mouth.

 

 

He stared at Ladislaus for a moment of terror, then clawed himself upright, gobbling curses while Fouchet's hand darted inside his tunic. But Ladislaus wasn't yet done, and Fionna's world reeled about her as his quarterdeck rasp cut through Dieter's fury.

 

 

"You're to meet me for this," he grated.

 

 

Dieter's mouth snapped shut as a warning battered at the mizir. He was in the Beaufort enclave; the enclaves enjoyed extraterritoriality; and on Beaufort, dueling was an accepted fact of life.. He stared at the giant before him, and for the first time he understood the difference be- tween a patiently plodding ox and a charging bull.

 

 

"I--I--was He fought for words. "This is... is preposter- ous! Barbaric! You can't be--was "Aye, we're to be called barbarians," Ladislaus agreed grimly, "but it's to meet me you'll be for all of that." "I--I won't!" Dieter gasped desperately.

 

 

"No?" Ladislaus wrapped one hand in the New Zuricher's tunic, and muscles bred to a gravity a thirdeaagiin that of Old Terra's rippled as he lifted him from the floor. "You've the right to be calling barbarians, but not the guts to be facing one, have you? But it's on Beaufort soil you are the now! It's Beaufort law has the ruling of it here." "Let him go, Skjorning!" It was Fouchet, his hand still inside his tunic, and Ladislaus' blue eyes moved coldly to the security man's tighteaface.

 

 

"Chief?." the big Friffger said softly.

 

 

"Mister Fouchet," Fionna's voice rang through the hor- rified room, "You are legally on the soil of Beaufort, and as chief of her delegation, I will thank you to remove your hand from your tunieempty." Fouchet eyed her contemptuously, then paled.

 

 

Three grim-faced Assembly lictors stood behind her, stun batons in hand and a hard light in their eyes. He hadn't seen them appear, but he knew whose orders they would obey in this room.

 

 

His hand came out of his tunic--empty.

 

 

"Thank you," Fionna said icily, then touched Ladislaus lightly on the arm. "Put him down, Lad," she said quietly.

 

 

For a moment it seemed the towering blond giant might refuse, then he slammed Dieter back onto his feet, and the Corporate Wodder swayed. Fionna's eyes were emer- ald ice, but her voice was colder.

 

 

@u "Mister Dieter, you have been challenged to honorable combat by Ladislaus Skjorning. Do you accept the chal- lenge?"" "I-- Nol Of course not! It's---was "Be silent!" Fionna's voice whiplashed across his splut- tering and shocked him into silence. "Very well. You have declined the challenge--as is your right. But as represen- tative of Beaufort on Old Terra, it is my duty to inform you that you are no longer welcome on her soil.

 

 

Leave. If you ever return, you will be forcibly ejected." Dieter stared at her like a gaffed fish, the mottled red print of Ladislaus' hand the only color in his white face. He looked desperately around the circle of hostile faces, and he found no support. Not a man or woman present questioned Fionna's decision. He opened his mouth.

 

 

"One word, Mister Dieter," Fionna said softly, "and I will ask these lictors to escort you from the premises. Now leave!" And Oskar Dieter turned to stumble away through the crowd.

 

 

Fionna couldn't fault Lad--comexcept, perhaps, in that the challenge had rightfully been hers to give. Such behavior was not tolerated on Beaufort, nor most other Fringe Worlds. Sparse societies in alien environments tended to be armed, and insults carried a stiff price. Yet even if she couldn't question his act, she regretted the impact she expected it to have.

 

 

But the actual impact surprised her. The Corporate Worlds might have convinced the Heart Worlds the Fringe was uncouth, but not even they dared argue that a society's customs could be challenged with impunity. That sort of intolerance would have destroyed the Federatiori long since, and no Heart Worlder hesitated to condemn Dieter's behavior.

 

 

Not even the excuse that he'd been drugging (acceptable on most Heart Worlds, though not in the Fringe) could mitigate his unforgivable boorishness.

 

 

So far as the Heart Worlds were concerned, the whole focus of the Corporate-Fringe World debate had been shifted by a single instance of supremely bad manners.

 

 

The Fringers' reactions were even more startling.

 

 

She'd expected a ground swell of anger she would never be able to control; instead, she got a tightening of ranks and an upwelling of ever stronger support.

 

 

The hatred she'd expected was there, but it was controlled by respect for her and Ladislaus.

 

 

Dieter's stupidity had strengthened her prestige with Fringer and Heart Worlder alike, and the Corporate Worlds lost ground steadily in debate. The amalgamation issue was far from resolved, but under her leadership the Fringe had emerged as astnoderate and reasonable entity, and as the days passed, she felt the pendulum swinging in her favor.

 

 

Simon Taliaferro's joviality was in abeyance, and his eyes were cold as Oskar Dieter and Francois Fouchet entered his office.

 

 

"You idiot!" he flared. "How could you be so stupid?!" "I--I wasn't myself," Dieter muttered. "I was provoked!" "Provoked, hell!

 

 

You were glitter-dusted to the eyeballs, that's what you were! Look at these'--he slammed a fist on the sheaf of printouts on his desk--com?and tell me it was worth it!" "Mister Taliaferro," Fouchet's calm voice cut the super- heated tension like an icicle, "we're prepared to stipulate an error was made, but fixing blame won't solve our difficulties. Clearly gou have something to tell us; equally clearly it isn't something you much care for. Very well. Tell us, and let's see ff we can't find a way to retrieve the situation." Fouchet's coolness seemed to calm Taliaferro, and he drew a deep breath. Then he let it hiss out and squared his shoulders.

 

 

"You're right, Francois," he said finally. "I'll say no more about the... episode. But the consequences are out of all proportion, I assure you. These---was he thumped the printouts again his-comtell it all. A week ago, we had them; today, they're rolling us up like a rug." Dieter mopped his forehead with a tissue and said noth- ing. In one, terrible week he'd fallen from the Corporate Worlds' second most powerful leader into a sort of limbo. Every insider knew Fouchet spoke for New Zurich, and most expected Dieter to be recalled so Fouchet could replace him officially. He was ruined, and his eyes burned into Fouchet's back as he remembered who had encouraged him to glitter-dust that evening... and provided the drug that was so much more potent than he normally used.

 

 

Dieter knew mizir produced no delusions, that it couldn't make a man say what he didn't actually feel, yet his statements had shocked him even more, perhaps, than they had Fionna MacTaggart. They'd revealed a personal hatred he hadn't even known existed. But Fouchet had known. Fouchet had maneuvered him, yet accusing him would be worse than useless. If there was anything the Corporate Worlds had less use for than a fool, it was a dupe.

 

 

"Those projections are confirmed?" Fouchet asked, and Taliaferro nodded. "But, of course, they're based on certain givens, aren't they?" "Any projection is, but there's not much room for change in the parameters. What it boils down to is that we've lost the high ground. In a straight debate over something as emotional as amalgamation, they'll probably beat us--even without the reapportionment issue. God! To think of a brainless lummox like Skjorning bumbling into the only thing that could hurt us this way!" "I'm not so sure he is brainless," Dieter offered in a subdued voice.

 

 

"Of course you're not," Taliaferro sneered.

 

 

"That'd make your little fiasco look better, wouldn't it?" Dieter wilted under the savage irony. "But he is a fool. He reacted with his muscles, the way he always does, and it just happened that this time it was the best thing he could do--or the worst, depending on your viewpoint!" "But it comes down to Skjorning and MacTaggart, doesn't it? Fouchet murmured thoughtfully, recapturing Taliaferro's attention.

 

 

"Eh? I suppose so--not that he's too important. It's MacTaggart. She's spent a quarter-century building a power base. She's got the best political brain in the whole Fringer crowd, and they know it--that's why they follow her lead -comb her control was slipping. Another few days and I'd'ye moved the vote, and every projection said she'd lose the firebrands on the floor. Well, the hotheads are hotter than ever, but she's got more authority than ever. They'll never break with her now." "No, I can see that," Fouchet said slowly, "but ff there were some way to remove her from the equation?" "Without MacTaggart, they'd attack us like wolves," Taliaferro said simply, "and that'd be just as good as their scattering like sheep. But we can't touch her. She can't be bought, she can't be blackmailed, she can't be intimidated, and she's headed the Fringe Caucus for fifteen years. After hst deek, she might as well be in God's hip pocket!" "True," Fouchet said, his lips curving slowly, "but accidents do happen, don't they? And Granyork isn't like a colony world. Why, we're right in the middle of the Northeast Corridor Conurbation, and that's a sort of jungle Fringers aren't well equipped to deal with.

 

 

"What are you saying?" Dieter's horror cut the sudden silence like a saw. "You can't possibly suggest--was "I didn't hear Mister Fouchet suggest a thing, Oskar," Taliaferro said coldly. "I only heard him speculating idly on matters totally beyond our control. And, of course, he's quite right. If Ms. MacTaggart were to suffer an. accident, it could only help us on the floor.

 

 

Unless, of course, our enemies were able to... invent... a connection between her accident and us." "Oh, of course" Fouchet agreed. "Of course." Fionna MacTaggart considered the face in her mirror critically. It wasn't quite as young as she still liked to think of herself, and she'd never been--comin her opinion--a beauty, but her image had nothing to apologize for. She nodded companionably to herself.

 

 

"Just you and me, girl," she said softly. "No one else has to know how hard we worked for that, do they?" She chuckled and reached for her small evening bag.

 

 

God, it felt good to be going somewhere besides to another floor fight! But the Corporate Worlds were on the defensive now. Now they were fighting to delay the vote, though she didn't really know what they hoped to achieve; delay only strengthened her hand at this point. No doubt they planned something devious, and equally no doubt Ladislaus or one of the others would figure it out ff she didn't. But for now she felt younger than she had in weeks, and she looked forward eagerly to the night's entertainment. True, the thin Old Terran atmosphere detracted a bit from her enjoyment, but the strength of the performance more than compensated. Opera had been born on Old Terra, and in her opinion it still achieved its highest expression here.

 

 

She glanced into her bag at the snub-nosed and chunky two-millimeter needler and debated leaving it behind, for if it was small, it was still heavy. And it wasn't as ff she were headed into the back islands.

 

 

Granyork was the epicenter of the ultracivilized Heart Worlds. Still, she knew how Lad would react if she went unarmed.... She sighed and closed the bag.

 

 

She keyed her bedside terminal and the screen lit briefly with an attention pattern, then with Ladislaus" face.

 

 

"All set, Lad," she told him cheerfully.

 

 

"Would you have the ear sent around, please?" "Aye... ff you're not leaving your little toy behind," he said suspiciously.

 

 

"Me?" She laughed and clunked the bag solidly against the terminal. "See, Daddy?" "Laugh ff you will," he said with a slight grin, "but I rest easier knowing you're armed, Fi." "I know, Lad." She was touched by his use of her name, for Ladislaus was always careful to call her "Chief' to avoid any impression of taking advantage of their lifelong friendship. "I may think you're a little paranoid, but you're the man I chose for security chief. If you want me in a combat zoot with a grenade launcher, that's how I'll go." "I know you mean it for a joke, but it's happier I'd be for it," he said, only half-humorously.

 

 

"Still, it's the offalbirds are on the rocks the now, it's to be seeming. So go--have a good time, Chiefl" "Why, thank you, Lad," she cooed, batting her eyes. "I certainly shall." She touched the button again, and the terminal blanked.

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Ladislaus' terminal hummed once more, and he looked up from his report with a frown, for he'd left orders not to disturb him.

 

 

Then he looked again, and his brow furrowed. It was an outside call on his priority number, and his eyes widened as he touched the acceptance key and Oskar Dieter's sweating face filled the screen.

 

 

"Please excuse the intrusion, Mister Skjorning!" Dieter took advantage of his shock, speaking quickly to wedge a toe in the door.

 

 

"I had to call you. I have... have vitally important information for you." "Do you, now?" Ladislaus' voice was cold, but his mind raced. Under Beaufort's code, Dieter no longer existed as far as he was concernedl and he could imagine nothing they might have to discuss. Yet the Corporate Worlder had to know he would feel that way, so it followed that there was something important here--but what?

 

 

"Yes. I--I don't know who else to give it to," Dieter sounded desperate, and Ladislaus suddenly noted how low-pitched his voice was. Was he afraid of being overheard? "And what's that information to be?" "B--combbf I say any more, you have to promise to keep its source confidential," Dieter said feverishly, wiping his brow.

 

 

"I'm to be but a simple fellow. What's--was "Please, Mister Skjorning! You may have convinced the others--indeed, you play the part very well-- but must we continue to pretend?" Ladislaus' eyes narrowed. So a Corporate Worlder had finally bothered to pierie his mask. Yet it seemed Dieter had little interest in shai-+ his deductions with his fellows... not if he was honestly seeking to impart some sort of sensitive information.

 

 

"All right, Mister Dieter," he said. "You have my word." "Thank you, Mister Skjorning!" Dieter drooped with relief, yet now that he had Ladislaus" promise, he seemed to find it difficult to go on. Ladislaus could almost feel the painful physical effort with which he screwed up his courage.

 

 

"Mister Skjorning, ImI made a fool of myself the other night. I know it and you know it, but I swear to God I had no idea where it would lead!" "What are you talking abally' Ladislaus' brows knitted.

 

 

Could the man be drugging even now?

 

 

"I wrecked a lot of plans," Dieter said in a fast, frantic monotone. "I'm sure you know what I mean.

 

 

But I never realized just how... how desperate some of my colleagues have become! They're going to kill her, Mister Skjorning!" Dieter seemed to sag, as ff simply voicing the words lifted a great weight from his shoulders, but Ladislaus was totally at a loss for an instant. Then it penetrated.

 

 

"Are you serious? They're going to assassinate Assem- bl.vwoman MacTaggart!" "Yes! That is--I think so." Dieter squirmed in fresh uncertainty.. "All I really know is that there was a lot of talk. You know hypothetical discussion about how "convenient" it would be if something happened to her. I -comI tried to oppose it, but I don't have the influence I had his "Who's going to do it and when?" Ladislaus snapped.

 

 

"Tm not even positive they are going to do it," Dieter said anxiously. "I think... I think it's Francois Fouehet's project. I don't know when or how." "Is that all you have for meThat" "Yes. Except... except Francois said something about how dangerous Granyork can be." "My God!" Ladislaus paled and reached for the disconnect, then paused, his eyes on the wretched man before him. "Mister Dieter, I thank you. What was between us is no more." Dieter's miserable expression lightened slightly as he recognized the formal renunciation of challenge.

 

 

"Thank you," he whispered. "And for God's sake, don't to et them kill her! I never dreamed --was He stopped and chopped his hand at the pickup.

 

 

For a moment, he became the man he once had been.

 

 

"Enough! Protect her, Mister Skjorning. And tell her.., tell her I'm sorry." "I will. night." Ladislaus cut the circuit and immediately punched for another, staring at his watch. With any luck and normal Granyork traffic, Fionna had not yet reached the Met.

 

 

"Goodness, Chris, I don't believe we've ever made such good time," Fionna remarked as the ground car slowed.

 

 

"I think you're right, Chief," the young security man agreed, his eyes flickering over the smartly dressed crowd before the opera house.

 

 

"Good. I hate finding my seat after the house lights go down[*oslash]" Chris Felderman opened her door and she stepped out, picking her way through the crowd towards the huge front doors behind him.

 

 

"Stop, thiefi" Fionna and Felderman swung to face the shout as a running man suddenly burst from the crowd and snatched at the purse of the wife of Hangchow's chief delegate. His course carried him close to Fionna, and she punched her bodyguard's shoulder sharply.

 

 

"Stop him, Chris! That's Madam Wu's pursel" "Yes, ma'am!" ,Felderman lunged after the thief, his long legs gaining ground quickly, and Fionna watched for an instant, then felt something like a chill on the nape of her neck. She turned, and her eyes widened as she saw two men approaching her. She'd never seen them before, but something in their purposeful expressions woke a warning deep inside her. She felt an instant of helpless panic as a terrible premonition struck--replaced in an instant with icy calm.

 

 

She knew better than to turn and run.

 

 

There was no time to resummon Chris. The thoughts flicked through her brain like lightning, yet her reactions were even faster. Her hand darted into her bag. Her fingers found the butt of the needler. She didn't try to draw the weapon; she simply raised the bag and pistol together.

 

 

The killers were from the world of Shiloh. They hadn't expected their tarset to be armed; still to ess had they allowed for the reac'taon speed a high-grav planet instills. But they could not mistake her movements, and they were the best money could buy.

 

 

The thunder of two compact machine pistols buried the high, shrill whine of the needler.

 

 

Fionna was lying on the sidewalk. It hurt-- God, how it hurt!--and she whimpered a little at the terrible pain. She lay in a puddle of something hot, and she felt a gentle hand under her head, raising it to slip some sort of cushion behind it.

 

 

She opened her eyes. It was Chris Felderman leaning over her, she thought confusedly. But why was he crying?

 

 

"Chris?" The voice was hers, but she'd never heard herself sound so weak. Something dribbled down her chin, and she realized it was blood. She felt only a distant curiosity at the thought.

 

 

"DD-ON'T try to talk, Fionna. Please!

 

 

The medics are coming." "M--medics?" She blinked at him. A mist was rising from the pavement, obscuring her vision, and the temperature had fallen. Then she understood, and she managed a weak smile. "Don't think.., it'll matter.., much," she whispered.

 

 

"It will! It will!" Chris sobbed, as if saying it could make it so.

 

 

"May--maybe." She knew better, but it struck her oddly detached brain as needlessly cruel to tell him so. "What about--That' "DeadVery he whispered fiercely. "You got "em both, Chiefl." "Ggood." The mist was much thicker, and she was much, much colder. Yet the darkness beyond the mist seemed suddenly warm and inviting. It wouldn't hurt so much there.., but she had something left to say, didn't she? She cudgeled her fading brain, then her bloody mouth smiled up at Chris. Two police floaters screamed to a halt, but she ignored them as she gripped his hand.

 

 

"C,--give... Lad... my love," she murmured. "And @u.. tell him.., tell him... I got them b--" The light went out of her universe forever.

 

 

Ladislaus Skjorning sat in the Chamber of Worlds like a boulder of Beaufort granite, and the black-draped seat beside him was less empty than his soul.

 

 

He had failed. He'd failed his planet and himself, but, far worse, he had failed Fionna.

 

 

Chris Felderman thought the failure was hsts, but Ladislaus knew. The entire surviving Beaufort delegation was in shock, but the others had managed somehow to keep going. Not Ladislaus.

 

 

He remembered their childhood on windy, purple seas under the orange Beaufort sun.

 

 

Remembered sailing and' fishing, the first time she stood for office as a seaforcer, the day she convinced him to seek the new Assembly seat. "I need someone to watch my back, Lad," she'd said, and for ten years he'd done just that-- until he to et her go out onto a street on the birthworld of Man to be gunned down in her blood like an animal.

 

 

His teeth ground together on the agony of memory, and suddenly a single, dear thought stabbed through his brain like an ice pick.

 

 

The Federation wasn't worth Fionna's life.

 

 

Four and a half centuries of human history had come down to this, he thought bitterly, looking at the banner-hung walls and marble floors. To this holodrama showpiece, this mausoleum dedicated to dead ideals and housing a government whose members connived at murder.

 

 

His broad face went grim. Fionna was gone, and with her went her dream. There would be no transition, no gradual change. Wifhout her, the Fringe bloc was leader- less, headless, already splintering in rage as the local authorities sought uselessly to link the dead assassins to someone anyone--but the tracks were well buried.

 

 

The killers had been Fringers, not Innerworlders, but the Outworlds knew who had hired them.

 

 

Ladislaus had Dieter's confirmation, though his oath meant he couldn't use it. His fellows didn't need it, for the Fringe knew its enemies well. Yet there was no proof, and. without proof, there was no guilt. Without guilt, there was no punish- ment; and without punishment, the Fringe would shatter in incoherent fury and be swept aside by the Corporate World machine. He saw it coming, and he was glad.

 

 

Glad!

 

 

He rose and pressed his attention button, and there was a moment of silence as the delegate from Xanadu looked down from the giant screen and reeoguized who sought l[fffulffilllffiilllll! recognition.

 

 

"Mister Speaker," the delegate said slowly, "I yield to the Honorable Assemblyman for Beaufort." Ladislaus Skjorning's grim face appeared on the master screen, and the chamber fell silent. In ten years, he had never sought the floor.

 

 

"Mister Speaker!" His voice was harsh, with little trace of his habitual accent, and he felt a stir around him as he put aside his mask at last. "I would like clarification on a point of law, Mister Speaker." "Certainly, Mister Skjorning," Haley said, his face compassionate.

 

 

"Mister Speaker, am I not correct in believing that many years ago--comin 2357 Winston Ortler of Galloway's World was accused of murdering his Old Terran mis- tress1r' A silent gasp rippled through the Assembly, and Simon Taliaferro's face twisted in fury while Haley stared at Ladislaus in shock.

 

 

"Am I not correct, Mister Speaker?" "Yes... yes, you are. But no formal charges were ever filed--was "Precisely, Mister Speaker." Ladislaus' face was bleak.

 

 

"No formal charges were filed--just as no formal charges have been flied over the death--the assassstnatston -comof Fionna MacTaggart. But in the earlier case, I believe, there was substantial evidence of guilt, was there not? Is it not true that his colleagues ruled that, as an assemblyman, he was immune from prosecution for ant crime under the Constitution?" "Yes, Mister Skjorning," Haley said softly. "I am very much afraid that was the case." He drew a deep breath and gripped the dilemma by its horns. "May I ask the purpose of your questions, sir?" "You may." Ladislaus drew himself up to his full height, towering over the other assemblymen like an angry Titan. "It is only this, sir; just as there was no prosecution then, there will be none now. Because the men who murdered Fionna MacTaggart are in this very chamber!" The Chamber of Worlds exploded as the words were spoken at last. The Speaker's gavel pounded, but Ladislaus grabbed the volume control on his console and wrenched it to full gain. His mighty bass roared through the tumult, battering the delegates' ears.

 

 

"Fionna MacTaggart was murdered by the political machine headed by Simon Taliaferro!" Confused shouts of outrage and approval echoed from the floor, but Ladislaus thundered on. "Fringe World fingers pulled those triggers, but Corporate World money bought them! It may never be "proved," but Francois Fouchet planned her murder because she stood in the Taliaferro machine's way!" His savage words shocked the Assembly into silence at last, but for a handful of shouted denials from the Corporate World seats, and Ladislaus slowly turned down the volume.

 

 

"But let it pass," he said very softly, his amplified voice echoing in the silence. "We of the Fringe have learned our lessons well. We cannot tuna to this Assembly for justice; the Assembly is the tool which took our rights. But let that pass, too. Let all of it pass. It doesn't really matter any more, because when you killed Fionna --was his eyes burued across at the New Galloway delegation his-comand when these other Innervorldersstet you kill her, and demanded no accounting, you also killed this Assembly. You're dead men's shadows in a hall of ghosts, and you will wake one morning to find that you are all alone here.... his His voice trailed off, and an icy hush hovered as he started to turn away. But then he paused. His fists clenched at his sides, and when he turned back to the pickup the muscles in his cheeks stood out like lumps of iron in a face reduced to elemental hatred by loss and rage.

 

 

"But happen to be one last service this putrid Constitution have the doing offor Fionna," he said thickly. "Happen to be a Fringe Worlder can claim a Corporate Worlder's protection!" They were still staring at him in eomCusion as he vaulted the low railing of his delegation's box.

 

 

Members surged to their feet as his long legs flew over ten meters of marble to the New Zurich box.

 

 

Fouehet saw him coming and lunged up, his hand snaking into his coat, but Ladislaus was too fast. Muscles trained in a gravity thirty percent greater than Old Terra's--almost forty percent greater than New Zurich's--hurled him into the New Zurich delegation, and his right hand locked on Fouehet's wrist. His fingers closed like a vise, twisting, and Fouehet sreamed as his wrist shattered like crushed gravel.

 

 

Ladislaus jerked the moaning Corporate Worlder to the front of the box, his left hand scything a New Zurich aide contemptuously aside, and his bull voice roared through the tumult.

 

 

"Happen to be"-- he shouted, tears streaming down his bearded checks--"even a Fringe Worlder can find justice if he make it for himsehq" His left hand gripped the back of Fouehet's neck while the entire Assembly rose to its feet in disbelief.

 

 

Two lictors raced towards the box, but they were a lifetime too late. Fouehet shrieked as steely fingers tightened, but Ladislaus' bull-throated roar battered through all opposition. "Happen to be your stinking Constitution give me immunity for th.t" And he snapped Fouehet's neck like a stick.

 

 

COUNCIL OF WAR "My friends!" Simon Taliaferro raised his glass and beamed at the men and women seated around the conference table. "I give you victory!" Agreement rumbled as glasses were lifted and drained, but Oskar Dieter left his on the table and felt dull, smoldering anger burn in the pit of his belly. His eyes were narrowed to knife-hard sharpness as they sought to strip away the false joviality which always shrouded Taliaferro's inner thoughts. How had he worked so long with him without realizing exactly what he was?

 

 

"Yes, my friends," Taliaferro continued, "much a I regret the death of Francois Fouchet, his murder his martyrdom--has assured our victory.

 

 

I received the latest projections this morning." He beamed at them like a fond uncle. "Within two months--three at the outside--our majority will be sufficient to assure approval of the Amalgamation?

 

 

The rumble of approval was even louder, and Dieter felt a chill breeze whistle around the corners of his soul. The Amalgamation was but the first step of the plan he and Taliaferro had worked out years before, but Dieter had always regarded it as a theoretical exercise, a sort of?what he' in ease the opportune moment ever arrived. He'd never really believed that they would succeed. Nor would they have... without murder.

 

 

He stared into his glass. The media, with its customary voracity for sensationalism, had arrived even before the medical examiner, ahd Dieter's heart chilled as he recalled the pathetic figure lying almost neatly in the wide, dark pool of blood. The assassins hadn't bled as much as she; men who die instantly bleed very little.

 

 

Dieter had watched those news shots with a sort of self-flagellating fascination. He'd tried to prevent it, but his efforts had been too little too late, and for all that he'd striven to stop it, it was also his unforgivable stupidity which had made the act inevitable... and stripped him of the power to forbid it.

 

 

He looked up from his glass with a bitter half-smile. Fouchet's death had restored him, however temporarily, to the ranks of the Corporate World autocrats on Old Terra. He lacked the power and prestige which had once been his, but there was no one else to speak for New Zurich, so his fellows had been forced to accept him once more, at least unstil the New Zurich oligarchs replaced him. Yet he was an outcast, now; more so even than they realized. He understood the dreadful attraction he held for them--the near hypnotic fascination of a tainted man whose career lay in wreckage. But they seemed unaware how deep the taint truly went.

 

 

"Of course, we all regret the terrible events which. led to this," Taliaferro was saying smoothly, "but one cannot deny that the entire crisis is tailor-made for our Heeds." "Maybe," Hector Waldeck rumbled. The chief delegate from Christophon was a choleric man, and his face flushed as he spoke. "No doubt the Amalgamation will pass, Simon, but what about Skjorning? The bastard's a damned savage!

 

 

He ought to pay for what he did, by God!" Dieter's mouth twisted behind his hand as others murmured agreement. They were all so sanctimonious about Skjorning's act what about what they had done? They knew the truth about Fionna's death, yet Waldeck was so smugly self-righteous he could demand punishment for Skjorning!

 

 

His sighed, anger tempered by shame as he realized that once he would have shouted as loudly as any. He glanced around the angry, self-important faces, seeing them as they were now that he was no longer part of them, and it was like looking into a terrible mirror. They were no more truly "evil" than he himself. Like him, they played by the only rules they knew, and they played the "game" well. That was the problem. For them, it was onlq a game, a vastly exciting contest for the wealth of a galaxy.

 

 

They were manipulators and users because it had never occurred to them to be anything else. The Legislative Assembly was no government; it was a tremendous, fascinating toy, a machine whose buttons and levers disgorged ever more wealth, ever more power, and ever more intoxicating triumphs.

 

 

Sorrow filled him. The Corporate Worlds had spent trillions of credits and decades of political effort to master that machine, and when the growing Fringe population threatened their control, they'd moved ruthlessly to crush the opposition--all as part of?the game." For all the time and effort they spent plotting and planning, they were even blinder than the insulated Heart Worlders, for they saw Fringers only as obstacles, not as people, and certainly not as fellow citizens. They saw them as pawns, dupes--cartoon caricatures cruelly drawn by habitual contempt and denigration.

 

 

"No, Hector," Taliaferro said firmly.

 

 

"We don't want to punish him--though I certainly share your outrage!" He managed to sound quite sincere, Dieter thought bitterly, and revised his earlier estimate. Some of these people were evil, however you defined the term. "But despite what we feel, we must remember that Skjorning's accusations can be made to work for ns rather than against us. We need to use him, not indict him." "Crap," Waldeck said harshly. "I want that murderous bastard stood up against a wall and shot!

 

 

We need to teach these barbarians a lesson especially the Beauforters!" Dieter saw a few sardonic smiles.

 

 

Christophon's medicinal combines had tried hard to move in on the doomwhaling industry, and Beaufort's government had slapped them down with a sort of savage delight. Waldeck's fellow oligarchs hadn't taken that well, nor had they cared for the loss of prestige they'd suffered.

 

 

"No, Hector," Taliaferro repeated more forcefully. "In fact, I intend to oppose any effort to try him on civil charges. We need him gone, trne, but we can arrange that without a civil trial-Zand we damned well better after the insane charges he made in the Chamber! If we come down as hard as he deserves, his supporters will scream that it's part of a cover-up, and some of the Heart Worlders might believe it. Besides, if we can send him home in disgrace, it'll undermine the Fringe far more effectively, not to mention the approval our forbearance will win from the liberals." "But--was "Listen to me, Hector," Taliaferro said. shply. "All our projections say that as soon as Skjorning's gone, scores of Fringer delegates will resign in protest. They'll take themselves out of the picture and give us an absolute majority. But ff we make him a martyour the Fringe'll close ranks to 'avenge" him. It'll be as bad as having MaeTaggart back!" "I don't like it," Valdeck grumbled.

 

 

"Nor do I, but the Amalgamation is what matters." "Is it?" Dieter was more surprised than any of the others to hear himself speak. Eyes swiveled to him, filled with a sort of cold curiosity, but Taliaferro's eyes weren't cold. They were fiery with contempt.

 

 

"Of course it is, Oskar," the Gallowayan said, sweet reason sugarcoating the disdain in his voice. "You worked as hard as anyone else to arrange it." His tone added the unspoken qualifier "before you lost your touch," and Dieter flushed. But his chin lifted, and he looked around with a sort of calm defiance which was new to him.

 

 

"I did," he said quietly. "Before I saw what it's going to cost." "What are you talking about?" Amanda Sydon's harsh-roweled New Detroit accent grated on Dieter's ears, and he eyed her with distaste.

 

 

Sydon was a cobra, every bit Taliaferro's equal. And then he remembered his drugged insult to Fionna. Was his damned prejudice speaking again?

 

 

But, no, there was no comparison between Fionna and Amanda Sydon. They both happened to be women, but Fionna had also happened to be human.

 

 

"You know what I'm talking about, if you'd care to accept the truth, Amanda," he said quietly.

 

 

"The truth," she sneered, "is that the Fringe won't even know what hit it for at least ten yearsff they manage to figure it out then! With our majority, we'll control the post-amalgamation reapportionment.

 

 

We'll gut them, and they'll stay gutted for fifty years!" "Fifty?" Dieter allowed himself a chuckle.

 

 

"Amanda, you obviously don't know as much about the demographics as you think." He felt spines stiffen as he threw his challenge into her teeth, filled with a courage based for a change on conviction rather than convenience. "It won't be fifty years, dear; if the Fringe population curves hold steady and the borders continue to expand, it'll be more like a hundred and fifty years." He glanced at Taliaferro amid a hiss of indrawn breaths as the others heard the true figures for the first time, and the fury burning behind the fixed joviality amused him. So Simon hadn't wanted his minions to know the full extent of his ambition? Was he afraid even they might see the result?

 

 

"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.

 

 

They'll be ready enough if you only railroad Skjorning out of the Assembly--was he saw frowns of distaste at his deliberately honest choice of verb his-comb that isn't all you'll be doing. This amalgamation is an antimatter warhead, man! The mere threat of enfranchising the Orions will drive them berserk. And it won't be 'barbarian xenophobia," whatever you tell te Heart Worlds.

 

 

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 his briefcase, the sound loud in the breathless hush, and walked to the door through the silence, and hostile eyes burned his back. He knew he'd just sealed his political fate, but what mattered was that he would make his fight on the Assembly floor.., and lose.

 

 

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, hiding the deadly devices crouching within.

 

 

Even the clutter of external ordnance hardpoints and the massive housings of her drive pods seemed graceful and balanced. Other ships carried heavier armaments, or more defense, but none matched the speed, maneuverability, and power blended in Longbow's sinister beauty.

 

 

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.

 

 

Was he reading it now?

 

 

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.

 

 

"Well, today I have good reason for being in a hurry," he said. 'Fomorrow is Courtenay's birthday, and I haven't picked out a present yet. And your godson is shipping out tomorrow on Ashanti." His jaw clenched for an instant, as if with sudden hurt. "I'm supposed to have lunch with him. lunch and--was he added, looking straight at Butgers his-coma much-needed talk." Hah carefully did not take note of the pain in her senior's dark face.

 

 

"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.

 

 

In'the spirit of "generosity," their delegates had declared that it was only proper that each system should be responsible for its own relay networks rather than making them a charge upon any other system, and, since they controlled the Assembly, the Assembly had agreed. But the Fringe Worlds, of course, were too poor to build and extend the relay nets to their worlds. All of their messages must travel by ship or drone, which--just coincidentally--meant that it was far, far easier for Corporate World politicos to confer with their homeworlds. Thev could send a message and get a response in days; the saree process took months for a Fringer delegation, and that explained a great deal about the smoothly-oiled precision of the Taliaferro Machine.

 

 

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.

 

 

"Han, someday klou may be able to keep me from guess- ing what you're thinking. Until that day comes, I wouldn't waste the effort, if I were you." "Sir" "You know precisely what I mean. This--was he tapped the piece of paper his-comis probably the stupidest brilliant litical maneuver in human history. And, my dear, you ow it as well as I do." "As the Admiral says," she said in a colorless voice. "One day, Han," Rutgers mused, "you'll try the China doll trick once too often." Despite her concern, Han's lips twitched, and he grinned at her. Then he sobered.

 

 

'? is also--was he said slowly, tapping the paper again his-comgoing to make a bad situation much, much worse. Amalgamation and reapportionment would be terribly hard for the Fringe to swallow under any circumstances, but when you add the MaeTaggart assassination and what they're going to see as a calculated and contemptuous rejection of justice.... his "I should bloody well think sol" Trevayne said. "Talk about a cat among the pigeons left-brace his "I know, lan. I know. But ONI thinks it's going to happen." "But it hasn't happened yet, has it?" "No, but it will, Ian. It's only a matter of time, and what matters to us right this minute are the Fleet orders which came in the same drone. They're the reason your leave's been canceled, and why you, Captain, aren't going to Christophon after all." He pinched his nose wearily. "In ali my days in the TFN, I have never received orders quite like these," he said soberly. "As of now, the Fleet's primary mission has been changed 'forthe duration of the current political crisis," as our instructions so neatly phrase it. Our new mission is to play fireman across the width and breadth of the Federation when this gets out." "Good God, Bill," Trevayne said mildly. "They have to be out of their minds. They do realize the Federation is over fourteen hundred light-years across, don't they? How do they expect us to be everywhere we'll have to be?" "They don't. Intelligence has identified a dozen critical systems and dusters with an exceptional potential for disaster. Our immediate concern is to place a battlegroup or two to cover each of them as a show of force." "Against our own people, sir?" Han asked softly.

 

 

"Against anyone, Captain," Rutgers said heavily.

 

 

"If you'll pardon my saying so, Bill," Trevayne said quietly, "that's an excellent recipe for disaster if something does go wrong. Since you're talking to us, I assume you mean Battle Fleet units, not Frontier Fleet." "I do," Rutgers said. "Frontier Fleet's spread t6o thin as it is--Frontier Fleet is ahoays spread too thin." And, Han thought sadly, too many of Frontier Fleet's officers were too sympathetic to "their" sectors' needs to be "reliable." "So we're dispersing some of Battle Fleet to the trouble spots; a little less than half our active units, to be precise." "And ff the balloon goes up, we won't have concentration of force anywhere," Trevayne pointed out.

 

 

"I know that. You know that. Probably the Joint Chiefs know that. The Assembly, unfortunately, doesn't know it and doesn't want to know it. And we, as you may recall, work for the civilians." "Yes, sir." "rhank you. Now, Ian, your battlegroup is headed for Osterman's Star. I want you to ship out before nineteen hundred zulu today." "Yes, sir." "You, Captain Li, will sign for this binder. You will personally detivbledr it to Fleet Aeaeadmiral Forsythe and attach your ship to his command. He 11 give you further orders at that time." "Yes, sir." "All right." Rutgers rubbed the binder and drew a deep breath. "I'm going to say something I really shouldn't say. I'm going to tell you that I think the Assembly's lost its mind and that when--not if the shit hits the fan, it's going to be up to us to scrape it off our. faces and salvage something from the wreck. We're the Federation Navy, and the Federation Navy has never fired on Terran civilians. I'd like to keep it that way. But ff it comes to itm" his eyes burned into Han's and then swiveled slowly to Trevayne his-comremember that we are the Federation Navy." There was a moment of silence, and Han felt something like guilt as she returned her old teacher's regard.

 

 

"Very well.?Rutgers rose to signal the end of the inter- view and held out his hand again. "My yeoman has your orders. Pick them up and carry them out. And may God have mercy on us all." IA Han reclined in lotus position in the center of her cabin carpet. By planet-side standards, her cabin was small and cramped; by Navy standards, it was luxuriously large; and by anyone's standards, a proud Hangchow government had furnished it with elegant taste. Her eyes drifted to the priceless fifth-century lacquered screen hiding her safe, and the thought of what lay within it undermined her abiiiw to find tranquillity.

 

 

She sighed and rolled out of the lotus. There was no point pretending, and it was a bad habit to pretend to relax. She flowed to her feet and considered more stringent exercises, but activity wasn't the anodyne she needed now. Her doubts demanded resolution.

 

 

Yet there was nowhere for a captain to turn when troubled by doubt. Junior officers could discuss their fears; enlisted people could do the same. Even admirals could talk with other admirals, or at least their flag captains. But captains' absolute authority during their months-long voyages robbed them of that luxury. God was the only person to whom a wise skipper admitted her doubts.

 

 

Infallibility.

 

 

Her lips quirked at the thought. That was what a captain must radiate. Absolute confidence.

 

 

Hah had never made any secret of her own apolitical loyalty to her homeworld, and though, like most Fringers, she'd studied politics closely, she wasn't a political person. Or, at least, she hadn't been a political person. Like every child of Hangehow, she'd learned at an early age that the Corporate Worlds controlled her people's economic destiny, yet she had always believed the Legislative Assembly would somehow safeguard their political rights... until she'd gained her fourth ring and become privy to the inner workings of the policies the Fleet sometimes enforced. Her first deployment as captain had based her ship on New Detroit, and, for the first time, she had realized how totally the Corporate Worlds controlled the Assembly.

 

 

Even then, she'd believed time and demographics were on the side of the Fringe; now it seemed the Corporate Worlds were determined to turn back the clock and disenfranchise her people. They even had a precedent, for the Reapportionments of 2184 and' 2240 had done exactly the same thing.

 

 

Han had not been a political person, but she had been and still was a direct one. She never lied to herself. When the first doubt appeared, she'd dragged it ruthlessly into the open, examining it pitilessly.

 

 

To her surprise, the light of day did not kill it. Indeed, it thrived in the sunlight, and her suspicion-sharpened eves saw things she'd never noticed before. And as a direct person who accepted the Fleet's admonition to be prepared, Han had begun to consider what she--Li Han the woman, as well as Li Han the captain--would do if the unthinkable happened. What was her duty? Where did her loyalty lie ff the madmen on either side pushed the Federation beyond its strength? Her conclusions had shocked her, but she was what she was.

 

 

She could be no other; and being what she was, she had acted.

 

 

Captian Li Hah, TFN, woke frequently these nights--woke praying that the Federation she loved and served would survive the storm lashing across it. But ff the day came when the Federation toppled under the hurricane,. she also knew what she would do... what she would have to do.

 

 

"Challenge from the flagship, sir." Han glanced at her executive officer and then at the plot displaying the might of Task Force Seventeen.

 

 

Eight monitors, eight superdreadnoughts, six assault carriers, two fleet carriers, ten battle-cruisers, dozens of cruisers, and scores of destroyers, Marine transports, repair ships, colliers.. @u It made an imposing sight on the tactical display. More firepower than the TFN had committed to most campaigns of the Fourth Interstellar Var--- certainly more than had ever been deployed in a single battle. And all this panoply of war, she thought sadly, was to overawe the citizens of the Federation, not to defeat their enemies in battle.

 

 

"Standard acknowledgment, Chang," she said.

 

 

"Yes, sir." The message rehed out across the emptiness to the task force. There was a communications lag of over two minutes at this range, even as Longbow loped towards Task Force Seventeen at ten percent of light speed.

 

 

"Reply from Flag, sir. We are to take position in com- pany with Flintlock. Captain to report aboard Anderson as soon as convenient. One query: do we have dispatches on board?" "Reply affirmative, Exec." She pressed a stud on her command chair arm console. "Boatbay," she said.

 

 

"Boatbay, aye," a voice replied in her mastoid battlephone. "Chief Ling, this is the Captain. I need my cutter in twenty minutes." "Yes, sir. She'll be ready to flit." 'rhank you, Chief." She killed the circuit and returned her attention to the plot, watching the tiny blips blink from the red-ringed circles of unidentified ships to the green-ringed dots of known units as Longbow's computers sorted out their transponders. One dot was circled in gold--- TFNS Howard Anderson, the monitor flagship-- and it swung to the center of the plot as Longbow headed straight for her. Han studied it a moment, then punched up identities on the others, looking for familiar faces among their commanders.

 

 

Anderson's skipper she knew: Captain Willis Enwright, Fleet Admiral Forsythe's handpicked flag captain and one of the most brilliant of the many Fringe World officers in the Fleet. Nor was he the first such in his familv-- Anderson's sistership, the Lawrence Enwright, was nared for one of his ancestors. Captain Simon Hodah had her, Han remembered with a warm smile. Simon was ten vears her senior, but they'd been close friends since Han's mddie cruise as his assistant astrogator. There were other names and faces out here to be remembered. Vice Admiral Traynor in command of one of the superdreadnought battlegroups; Vice Admiral Eric Hale, commanding the other. Vice Admiral Analiese Ashigara, a Fringe Worlder from Hokkaido, flying her lights aboard the assault carrier Basilisk. Vice Admiral Singh, Forsythe's second in command, flying his lights aboard Hodah's ship.

 

 

Meetings between this many Fleet units were rare, and it felt good to see the light codes, to remember the men and women in the tight knit Navy community.

 

 

They were professionals one and ali; brothers and sisters of the sword, dedicated to the pure service of the Federation's ideals.

 

 

Or that was the idea. That was the Navy's credo, even if its members were merely human and often fell short of the ideal. Han's smile faded as she weighed herself against the standards of the Fleet, and she wondered how many of those others she knew were doing the same thing over there behind the weapons and armor, behind the armor of their eyes?

 

 

She shook her head and rose.

 

 

"You have the con, Exec," she said formally. "I'm going to my quarters for a quick shower before I report to the Admiral." "Yes, sir." Commander Tsing Chang took the command chair as the captain left the bridge. His eyes flicked over the readouts as the intraship car's doors hissed quietly shut. Only then did he allow himself a glance at the blank doors which had hidden his tiny captain. Did she really think no one else on board had guessed what she was thinking?

 

 

He returned his attention to the tactical plot, his tace expressionless, his mind busy behind his dark eyes.

 

 

"Greetings, Captain Li." Fleet Admiral Stepan Forsythe held out his hand, and Hah could not help comparing his INSU-AAECTIO dry, frail grip with" the firm, hairy clasp of the last fleet admiral she'd met.

 

 

Stepan Forsythe was William Rutgers' physical opposite in every way, she thought. He was slen- der, stoop-shouldered, showing his advanced age in his lined face and thinning hair. Forsythe was a living link with the days of the Fourth Interstellar War, and Han knew he was due for retirement soon. His body was old and frail, for he was one of the rare individuals who responded poorly to the anti-aging therapies, but keen intelligence and will power glinted behind his gray eyes.

 

 

"Thank you, sir," she said, returning the clasp.

 

 

"You made a fast passage," Forsythe continued, waving her to a chair and touching the security binder on his desk as if to restrain a venomous serpent.

 

 

"We tried, sir." "Yes. Well, would you like a drink while I glance through this?" "No, sir. Thank you." "Very well. If you'll excuse me?" Han arranged her cap very precisely on her knees and sat quietly as the old admiral opened the binder and extracted the sheets of closely printed material. He read slowly, carefully, but no change of expression betraved his thoughts. Perhaps the contents were less of a shocl to him than they'd been to her. Perhaps he'd gone even further than she in analyzing the crisis, or perhaps he simply had access to more information than a mere captain.

 

 

Forsythe sighed and turned the final page at last, then jogged the sheets neatly back into order. He returned them to the binder and pressed a stud on his console, glancing into the screen as it lit.

 

 

"Willis? Would you come to my quarters, please?" "Yes, sir." Forsythe cut the circuit and smiled tautly at Han. "I realize you probably don't know any more than is con-rained in these documents, Captain Li, but I'd appreciate it if you'd give Captain Enwright and myself the benefit of your firsthand impressions. We're rather isolated out here, and neither of us has had any personal contact with the Innerworlds in almost a year." "Of course, sir," Han said, hiding her discomfort.