David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami

by Shadow of Saganami(lit)

  * * *

  Johansen's survey crew, aside from the two women, and all of their local colleagues stood barefoot in their briefs and watched their vehicles and all of their equipment heading off deeper into the mountains. Westman and two of his men waited beside the final air car. The leader watched the last of his other men depart, then turned back to his prisoners.

  "Now," he said, "Les here knows the way to Bridgeman's Crossing. You gentlemen just head off that way. I'll be sending a message to your boss, Les, telling him you're coming, but it may take me a few hours to get it to him without giving him any hints about where to find us."

  "Steve," Haven said very quietly and seriously, "you've made your statement. God only knows how much trouble you've gotten yourself into already. But we've known each other a long time, and I like to think we've been friends. And because we have, I'm telling you now. Give this up. Give it up before someone does get hurt."

  "Can't do it, Les," Westman said with genuine regret. "And you'd best be remembering what I've said. We have been friends, and it would grieve me to shoot a friend. But if you keep helping these people steal my planet, I'll do it. You know I mean what I say, so I'd suggest you convince President Suttles that I do. I expect Trevor Bannister knows it already, but from what I've seen, keen intelligence isn't exactly Suttles' strong suit, so Trevor may need a mite of help getting through to him. And, Mr. Johansen, I'd suggest you convince your Baroness Medusa of the same thing."

  He held their eyes a few more moments, and then he and his last followers climbed into the air car and it lifted off into the cool morning.

  * * *

  "I don't like what I'm hearing. I don't like it at all," Henri Krietzmann said harshly.

  His tone and expression contrasted strongly with the deliciously cool breeze blowing across the penthouse terrace. The primary component of the distant binary system known as Spindle was a G0 star, but the planet Flax was thirteen light-minutes from it, and it was spring in the planet's northern hemisphere. Spectacular thunderheads-blinding white on top and ominous black across their anvil bottoms-drifted steadily in from the west across the Humboldt Ocean, but it would be hours before they arrived. For the moment, the three men on the terrace could enjoy the brilliant spring sunshine and the windborne perfume of spring blossoms from the terrace's bounteous planter boxes as they gazed out over the capital city of Thimble on the west coast of the improbably named continent of Gossypium.

  It was a beautiful city, especially for a planet in the Verge. Its buildings were low, close to the ground, without the mountainous towers of modern counter-grav cities. That was because when most of Thimble was being built, the people doing the building hadn't had counter-grav. But if they'd been limited to primitive technologies, they'd obviously taken great pains when they designed their new capital. The huge central square, built around a lovingly landscaped park of flowering green and intricate water features, was clearly visible from the penthouse terrace. So were the main avenues, radiating out from the square like the spokes of a vast wheel. Most of the city buildings were constructed of native stone, a blue granite that glittered when the sun struck it, and more water features and green spaces had been carefully integrated into the city plan.

  It wasn't until one got beyond the center of the city on the landward side, away from the ocean, that one began to encounter the ugly, crowded slums which were the legacy of poverty in almost any of the Verge systems.

  "None of us particularly likes it, Henri," Bernardus Van Dort said mildly. Van Dort was fair-haired and blue-eyed. He stood well over a hundred and ninety-five centimeters in height, and he sat with the confidence of a man who was accustomed to succeeding. "But we can hardly pretend it was unexpected, now can we?"

  "Of course it wasn't unexpected," the third man, Joachim Alquezar, put in, his lips twisting wryly. "After all, stupidity's endemic to the human condition."

  Although very few people would ever have described Van Dort as short, Alquezar made him look that way. The red-haired native of the planet San Miguel was two hundred and three centimeters tall. San Miguel's gravity-only eighty-four percent of Terran Standard-tended to produce tall, slender people, and Alquezar was no exception.

  "'Stupidity' isn't really fair, Joachim," Van Dort reproved. "Ignorant, yes. Unaccustomed to thinking, yes, again. And prone to react emotionally, certainly. But that isn't the same thing as irredeemably stupid."

  "Forgive me, Bernardus, if I fail to discern a practical difference." Alquezar leaned back, cradling a snifter of brandy in his right hand and waving a cigar gently with his left. "The consequences are identical."

  "The short term consequences are identical," Van Dort replied. "But while there's not a great deal that can be done about genuine stupidity, ignorance can be educated, and the habit of thought can be acquired."

  "It always amazes me," Alquezar said with the smile of an old friend rehashing a familiar argument, "that a hardheaded, hard-hearted, money-gouging Rembrandt capitalist can be so revoltingly liberal in his view of humanity."

  "Oh?" Van Dort's blue eyes glinted as he smiled back. "I happen to know that 'liberal' only became a dirty word for you after Tonkovic pinched it for herself."

  "Thereby confirming my lifelong suspicion-previously unvoiced, perhaps, but deep seated-that anyone who actually believes someone who claims to be a liberal suffers from terminal softheadedness."

  "I hope the two of you are enjoying yourselves." Krietzmann's tone hovered just short of biting. At thirty-six T-years, he was the youngest man present. He was also the shortest, at a brown-haired, gray-eyed, solidly muscled hundred and seventy centimeters. But despite the fact that he was twenty T-years younger than Alquezar, and over forty younger than Van Dort, he looked older than either of them, for he was a citizen of Dresden.

  "We're not enjoying ourselves, Henri," Van Dort said, after a very brief pause. "And we're not taking the situation lightly. But I think it's important to remember that people who disagree with us aren't necessarily monsters of depravity."

  "Treason's close enough to depravity for me," Krietzmann said grimly.

  "Actually," Alquezar said, looking steadily at Krietzmann while the breeze ruffled the fringe of the umbrella over their table and sent the Spindle System flag atop the hotel popping and snapping, "I think it would be wiser if you didn't use words like 'treason' even with Bernardus and me, Henri."

  "Why not?" Krietzmann shot back. "I believe in calling things by their proper names. Eighty percent of the Cluster's total population voted to join the Star Kingdom. To my mind, that makes anyone who's prepared to resort to extralegal means of resisting the annexation guilty of treason."

  Alquezar winced ever so slightly, and shook his head.

  "I won't disagree with you, although I imagine the point could be argued either way, at least until we get a Constitution adopted that establishes exactly what is and is not legal on a Cluster-wide basis. But however accurate the term may be, there are certain political drawbacks to using it. One which springs immediately to mind is that throwing around terms like 'treason' and 'traitor' will actually help your opponents polarize public opinion."

  Krietzmann glared, and Van Dort leaned forward to lay a hand on the younger man's forearm.

  "Joachim is right, Henri," he said gently. "The people you're describing would love to provoke you into something-anything-they and their supporters can characterize as extremism."

  Krietzmann glowered some more, then inhaled deeply and gave a choppy nod. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, and he reached for his own glass-not a brandy snifter like Alquezar's or a wineglass like Van Dort's, but a tall, moisture-beaded tankard of beer. He drank deeply, then lowered his glass.

  "All right," he half-growled. "Point taken. And I'll try to sit on myself in public. But," his eyes flashed, "that doesn't change the way I feel about these bastards in private."

  "I don't think anyone would expect it to," Van Dort murmured.

  Not if they have any sense at all, at
any rate, he thought. Expect emotional detachment out of Henri Krietzmann on an issue like this? Ridiculous!

  He felt a familiar twinge of guilt at the thought. Dresden was ruinously poor, even for the Verge. Unlike his own Rembrandt, or Alquezar's San Miguel, which had managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become fabulously wealthy-by Verge standards-Dresden's economy had never risen above the marginal level. The vast majority of Dresden's citizens, even today, were ill-educated, little more than unskilled labor, and modern industry had little use for the unskilled. The Dresden System's poverty had been so crushing for so long that only the most decrepit (or disreputable) of tramp freighters had called there, and no outside system-including Rembrandt, he admitted bleakly-had ever been attracted to invest there.

  Which was why Dresden's medical capabilities had been as limited as its industrial capacity. Which was why Henri Krietzmann had seen his father and his mother die before they were sixty T-years old. Why two of his three siblings had died in early childhood. Why he himself was missing two fingers on his mangled left hand, the legacy of an industrial accident in an old-fashioned foundry on a planet without regen. And why Krietzmann had never received even the cheapest, simplest first-generation prolong therapies and could expect no more than another sixty to seventy years of life.

  That was what fueled Henri Krietzmann's hatred of those attempting to derail the Constitutional Convention. It was what had driven him to educate himself, to claw his way out of the slums of the city of Oldenburg and into the rough and tumble of Dresden politics. The fire in his belly was his blinding hatred of the Solarian League, and of the Office of Frontier Security's pious platitudes about "uplifting the unfortunately retrograde" planets of the Verge. If OFS, or any of the Solly lobbying groups who claimed to be so concerned about the worlds it engulfed, had really cared, they could have brought modern medicine to Dresden over a century ago. For a fraction of what Frontier Security spent on its public relations budget in the Sol System alone, they could have provided Dresden with the sort of education system which would have permitted it to build up its own industrial and medical base.

  Over the last twenty T-years, largely as a result of the efforts of men and women like Henri Krietzmann, that had begun to change. They had scratched and clawed their own way up out of the most abject poverty imaginable to an economy that was merely poor, no longer destitute. One which was finally beginning to provide something approaching decent health care-or something much closer to it-to its citizens. One whose school systems had managed, at ruinous expense, to import off-world teachers. One which had seen the possibilities for its own development when the Trade Union came calling and, instead of resisting "exploitation" by Rembrandt and its allies, had actually looked for ways to use it for its own advantage.

  It had been a hard, bloody fight, and it had instilled a fiercely combative, fiercely independent spirit in the citizens of Dresden, matched with boundless contempt for the parasitic oligarchs of star systems like Split.

  Oh, no. Detachment was not a quality much to be found in Dresden.

  "Well," Alquezar's deliberately light tone told Van Dort his old friend had followed-and shared-his own reflections, "however Henri wants to describe them amongst ourselves, we still need to decide what to do about them."

  "That's true enough," Van Dort agreed. "Although, I caution all of us-myself included-yet again that we must avoid creating an undue impression of collusion between us. More especially, between you and me, Joachim, and Henri."

  "Oh, give it a break, Bernardus!" Krietzmann's grim expression was transfigured by a sudden grin, and he snorted a genuine laugh. "Every voter in the Cluster knows you and your Trade Union set up the annexation effort in the first part, unscrupulous and devious money grubbers that you are. Yes, and funded it, too! And I was the politician who led the effort on Dresden. And Joachim here is the head of the Constitutional Union Party-and just happens to be the senior Convention delegate from San Miguel, which just happens to be another member of the Trade Union... of which, he also happens to be a major shareholder. So just who, with the IQ of a felsenlarve, is going to believe we aren't in collusion whatever we do?"

  "You're probably correct," Van Dort conceded with a slight smile of his own, "but there are still proprieties to observe. Particularly since you're currently the President of the Convention. It's perfectly reasonable and proper for you to consult with political leaders and backers, and you campaigned openly enough for the President's job on the basis of your determination to drive the annexation through. But it's still important to avoid the impression that we 'unscrupulous and devious money grubbers' have you in our vest pocket. If you're going to work effectively with all of the delegates to the Convention, that is."

  "Probably something to that," Krietzmann agreed. "Still, I don't think someone like Tonkovic cherishes any illusions that I nurture warm and fuzzy feelings where she's concerned."

  "Of course you don't," Alquezar agreed. "But let me be the one to lock horns with her openly. You need to remain above the fray. Practice polishing your disinterested statesman's halo and leave the down and dirty work to me." He grinned nastily. "Trust me, I'll be the one having all the fun."

  "I'll avoid having myself tattooed into your lodge, Joachim," Krietzmann said. "But I'm not going to pretend I like Tonkovic."

  "Actually, you know, Aleksandra isn't all that bad," Van Dort said mildly. The other two looked at him with varying degrees of incredulity, and he shrugged. "I don't say I like her-because I don't-but I worked quite closely with her during the annexation vote campaign, and at least she's less slimy than Yvernau and his friends on New Tuscany. The woman's at least as ambitious as any politician I've ever known, and she and her political allies are as self-centered and greedy as anyone I've ever met, but she worked very effectively to support the plebiscite. She wants a degree of local autonomy she's never going to get, but I don't believe she has any intention of risking the chance that the annexation might actually fail."

  "Whatever her intentions, she's fiddling while the house burns down," Krietzmann said bluntly.

  "Not to mention encouraging the kind of resistance movements we're all worried about," Alquezar added.

  Van Dort considered pointing out that Alquezar's own CUP's agenda probably did some encouraging-or at least provoking-of its own, but decided against it. There was no real point. Besides, Joachim understood that perfectly well, whether he chose to say so or not.

  "Well, that's really neither here nor there right this moment," he said instead. "The real question is how we respond to the emergence of organized 'resistance movements.'"

  "The best solution would be to drive the Convention through to a conclusion before they have the opportunity to really get their feet under them," Krietzmann said, and both his guests nodded in agreement. "That's why I'm so pissed off at Tonkovic," the Convention President continued. "She knows perfectly well that she's not going to get anywhere close to everything she's asking for, but she's perfectly content to string out the negotiating process as long as possible. The longer she can tie us up, the more concessions she can expect to extort out of us as her price for finally bringing a draft Constitution to a vote."

  "She'd probably say the same about me," Alquezar pointed out.

  "She has said it," Krietzmann snorted. "But the real difference between the two of you, Joachim, is that she sees the indefinite delay of a finalized Constitution as a completely legitimate tactic. She's so focused on securing her own platform to protect her own position in Split that she's ignoring the very real possibility that she could delay the Convention long enough for the entire effort to come unglued."

  "She doesn't believe that will ever happen," Van Dort said. "She doesn't believe Manticore would permit it to."

  "Then she needs to listen to what Baroness Medusa is saying," Krietzmann said grimly. "She's made herself plain enough to anyone who will listen. Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Alexander aren't about to force anyone to accept Manticoran
sovereignty. Not here in the Cluster, at any rate. We're too close to the League for them to risk incidents with OFS or the SLN unless the local citizenry's support for the Star Kingdom is solid. And they don't really need any of us just to hang onto the Lynx Terminus. In fact, we actually complicate the equation, in a lot of ways. To put it bluntly, we're much too secondary to the Star Kingdom's survival needs at the moment for them to start pouring starships and Marines down a rat hole to suppress resistance to an involuntary conquest."

  "Surely neither the Queen nor the Governor sees this as some sort of conquest!" Van Dort protested.

  "No... not yet," Krietzmann agreed. "But until we decide the constitutional basis for our formal annexation and send it to Parliament for ratification, there's really nothing Alexander or even the Queen can do. And the longer we spend arguing about it, and the wider we allow our own internal divisions to become, the longer the delay in getting the damned thing drafted in the first place. And if the delay stretches out long enough, or if enough brainless wonders embrace the 'armed struggle' people like that lunatic Nordbrandt are calling for, then what looked like the smooth assimilation of eager new citizens starts to look like the forcible conquest of desperately resisting patriots. Which, I hardly need point out to you two, is exactly how OFS is already trying to spin this for the Solly media."