by David Weber
"This GLF you mentioned—that stands for what? Gyangtse Liberation Front, or something like that?" she asked after a moment, and Medrano glanced at her.
"You got it, Larva."
"And it's opposed to Incorporation?"
Medrano nodded, and Alicia made a face. Of course it was. And, from the name, it was probably doing everything it could to hamstring the local planetary debate on whether or not to seek Incorporated status. Some ex-League worlds, she knew, had voted as many as twenty or even thirty times before their citizens finally decided to forget the past. Or, at least, to forget it sufficiently to become willing subjects of the Emperor.
"Have there been any actual incidents?" she asked, and Medrano grunted.
"More than a couple," he acknowledged, just a bit grimly.
"What kind?" she asked, frowning thoughtfully. Medrano raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. "I mean, have they been more of the 'we want to make ourselves enough of a pain that you'll negotiate with us and give us what we want so we'll go away' sort, or of the 'we're dangerous enough nuts that we actually think we can kill enough of you so that you'll go away' sort?"
"That's the big question, isn't it, Larva?" Medrano replied, but there was an odd light in his eye. As if Alicia's question—or the insight behind it, perhaps—had surprised him. "Nobody much likes the first kind of loony, but it's the second kind that fills body bags. And right this minute, I don't have the faintest idea which variety we're looking at here."
"I see." Alicia's frown deepened, more pensive than ever, and she leaned back in the jitney's seat.
Medrano glanced at her again and half-opened his mouth, then closed it again, his own expression thoughtful, as the self-possessed larva at his side digested what he'd just told her. It wasn't the response he'd expected out of someone that young, that fresh out of Camp Mackenzie. Maybe this kid really did have something going for her?
Well, Leocadio Medrano thought dryly, I guess we'll just have to see about that, won't be?
Chapter Three
"So what do you make of our new larva?" Lieutenant Kuramochi Chiyeko asked. The slightly built, dark skinned lieutenant was tilted comfortably back in her chair, nursing a cup of coffee. Gunnery Sergeant Michael Wheaton, her platoon's senior noncom, sat across the paperwork-littered desk from her, sipping from his own battered, much-used coffee mug.
"Um." Wheaton lowered his mug and grimaced. "Gotta admit, Skipper, I wasn't very pleased to see her." He shook his head. "I'm a little happier now Abe's had a chance to look her over, but still—! Things are getting hot, and they're sending us one warm body at a time? And a larva straight out of Mackenzie, at that?"
"Take what we can get," Kuramochi said philosophically, but Wheaton's eyes sharpened.
"I know that tone, Skipper," he said, just a trifle suspiciously.
"And what tone would that be, Gunny Wheaton?" Kuramochi's expression was innocence itself.
"That 'I know something you don't know,' tone."
"I don't have the least idea what you're talking about," she asserted.
"Skipper, it's my job to make sure all our round little pegs are neatly fitted into round little holes. If there's something about DeVries I should know, this would be a pretty good time to tell me."
Wheaton's tone was completely reasonable, but he gave his lieutenant a moderately severe look to go with it. Kuramochi Chiyeko had the makings of a superior officer, or she would never have been given a Recon platoon. And she and Wheaton had established a tight, well-oiled working relationship. But she was still only a lieutenant, and one of a gunny's most important jobs was to occasionally, with infinite respect, whack his lieutenant up aside the head with a clue stick.
"You mean aside from whose granddaughter she is?" Kuramochi asked.
"I know all about her grandfather, Skipper. And I know she graduated second over all from Mackenzie. And I know she's got a five-year college degree under her belt when she should still be home shooting marbles, that she's smart as a whip, and that Abe Metternich is impressed with her. None of which changes the fact that she's still a newbie less than eighteen standard years old in a slot she shouldn't have qualified for for at least another standard year. But you already knew I know all of that, so what is that I don't know?"
"Well, I don't actually know anything," Kuramochi said. "But take a look at what we've got. As you just pointed out, she's got a five-year degree—from ENC, no less. Plus where she graduated from Mackenzie. My record was nowhere near that good, but the Corps was already recruiting me as an officer before I was completely through Basic. And I've looked at her jacket's available profiles, Mike. She's better qualified for a commission, in terms of basic ability, than I am. In fact, she's probably better qualified than at least two-thirds of the Battalion's officers. And, like you say, Recon isn't a slot they normally offer a newbie, no matter how good her Mackenzie performance might have been. And although I've never met Sar'Major O'Shaughnessy, I've heard enough about him to seriously doubt that he pulled any strings to get her what she wanted. So, why did they give her to us, and why haven't they started gently suggesting to her that OCS lies in her future?"
"I don't know," Wheaton replied, but he was frowning as he spoke. Then his eyebrows rose. "No way, Skipper!"
"Why not? You know they like to use Recon as the final filter for the selection process."
"Of a Mackenzie larva?" Wheaton shook his head. "I dunno, Skip. I've never heard of their even looking at someone who didn't have at least one complete tour under his belt!"
"Maybe not, but I've been trying hard to figure out any other explanation for why we've got her. And like you say, Abe is impressed with her, and he's seen a lot of larvae over the years." Kuramochi shrugged. "Nobody's told me anything officially, of course. They wouldn't. And I don't have access to her complete profile, even if I knew exactly what the selection criteria are. But it's pretty obvious she's a special case—both in terms of native ability and where they sent her for her very first active-duty tour."
"Wonderful," Wheaton said sourly. "You know, Skip, sometimes I get so tired of those overly clever . . . professional colleagues of ours. Let them do their own damned recruiting and testing! And leave us—especially Recon—the hell alone. I hate the way they keep skimming off our best people even after they've served their time, but if they're planning on poaching someone this early in her career, it really frosts my chops. If you're right, they're gonna give us just long enough to get her trained up right, bring her along nicely, and then they're gonna steal her from us. You wait and see."
"My, my." Kuramochi grinned. "Such heat, Gunny Wheaton!"
"Yeah, right," Wheaton grumbled. "Tell me you won't be just as pissed off as I am if it turns out there's anything to this."
"Of course I won't," Kuramochi said virtuously. "The very idea is ridiculous."
Wheaton snorted, and she chuckled. But then her expression sobered.
"Like I say, Mike, no one's told me anything, and it's entirely possible I'm completely wrong. But I think we—specifically, you and I—need to bear the possibility that I'm not wrong in mind. No corner-cutting, no special treatment—God knows, nothing to suggest to her that we think she's anything more than just one more, possibly above average, larva. But anything we can throw at her to give her that little extra edge of experience would be a good idea, I think."
"Understood." Wheaton drank some more coffee, then shrugged. "I may not like the idea of playing schoolmarm for someone besides the Corps, Skipper, but if you're right, then I have to agree. Want me to talk to Abe about it, too?"
"I don't think so." Kuramochi rubbed one eyebrow thoughtfully. "Not yet, anyway. He's going to be too close to her, and we've all got a lot on our minds right now with the local situation. We both know how good he is at bringing newbies along, anyway, so let's not jog his elbow. Let's get her settled in before we suggest to Abe that we may want to keep a special eye on this one."
"Something new from Gyangtse, Boss."
Si
r Enobakhare Kereku, Governor of the Martinsen Sector in the name of His Imperial Majesty Seamus II, looked up as Patricia Obermeyer, his chief of staff, walked into his office.
"Why," Kereku inquired after a moment, "does that prefatory remark fill my heart with dread?"
"Because you know what an idiot Aubert is?" Obermeyer suggested.
"Maybe. But while you, as a lowly member of the hired help, are casting aspersions upon the capabilities of my less-than-esteemed junior executive colleague, let us not forget the incomparable talent his chief of staff has for making things still worse."
"Point taken," Obermeyer said, after a moment, and grimaced. "To be honest, I think Salgado may be even more of a klutz than Aubert. Not that achieving such monumental levels of incompetency is easy, you understand."
"And now that we've both vented, suppose you tell me exactly what new bad news we've got from Gyangtse?"
"It's not actually from Gyangtse itself." Obermeyer crossed the large, luxurious office to lay a chip folio on the corner of Kereku's desk. "Brigadier Erickson's intelligence people handed it to us, as a matter of fact. According to their reports from Major Palacios—which Colonel Ustanov strongly endorses—the situation in Gyangtse is headed straight for the crapper."
"I've always known Wasps were bluntly spoken," Kereku observed with a crooked smile. " 'Straight for the crapper' in official correspondence is a bit blunt even for one of them, though, don't you think?"
"I may have taken a few liberties with the exact wording, but I believe the basic sense of the Colonel's comments comes through my own pithy choice of phrase."
"I'm afraid you're probably right about that," Kereku sighed. He looked at the chip folio with a distasteful expression, then back up at Obermeyer, and pointed at a chair. "Go ahead and summarize, Pat. I'll read the gory details for myself later, assuming I can find time."
"Basically," Obermeyer said, seating herself in the indicated chair, "it's more of the same, only worse. Ustanov is actually pretty careful about his choice of words, trying to avoid any sort of polarization between the military and civilian authorities, I think. But he's strongly behind Palacios on this one, and it's pretty clear—especially comparing Ustanov's dispatches to the last one's we've had from Aubert himself—that Aubert doesn't have a clue about the way things are starting to come apart on him. He thinks he's still completely in control of the situation, Eno. He's consistently playing down the threat of this Gyangtse Liberation Front's open avowal of 'the armed struggle' to drive 'the imperial oppressors from the soil of Gyangtse' as little more than a negotiating ploy. And, despite that, and despite what he and Salgado both know imperial policy has been for centuries now, he's actually welcomed Pankarma's 'participation' in the public debate over the Incorporation vote."
The sector governor's chief of staff shook her head, her expression grim.
"He doesn't seem to grasp the fact that the GLF's 'participation' can only be as a voice of opposition. Or that he's talking to criminals as the Emperor's personal, direct representative. Or that the GLF might actually mean what it's saying about armed struggles. I can't tell from here exactly what sort of local contacts and intelligence sources he may have, or think he has, but Palacios' sources indicate that weapons are being stockpiled. In fact, she's got some reports of at least a few arms shipments coming in from off-world, maybe even from the Freedom Alliance, although she admits she's been unable to positively confirm that. Despite that, though, her threat assessment is that things are getting steadily—and rapidly—worse. And Ustanov's reported to Erickson—not to any of his civilian superiors—that his requests to Aubert for permission to reinforce Palacios and authorize her to take a more . . . proactive stance have been persistently denied."
"So he's keeping it in his own chain of command, trying to avoid any appearance of going over Aubert's head," Kereku mused.
"I think that's exactly what he's doing," Obermeyer agreed. "At the same time, though, he's been expressing himself pretty strongly, for an officer of his seniority, in his 'in-house' reports to Erickson. And Erickson clearly takes his concerns seriously, since he handed Ustanov's and Palacios' raw reports over to me without sanitizing them."
"Wonderful."
Kereku's expression was not that of a happy man. The fact that the team of Jasper Aubert and Ákos Salgado probably would have had trouble zipping its own shoes under the best of circumstances—which these weren't—only made a bad situation worse. The Terran League and the old Federation had never seen eye to eye, even before the Rish got involved. The League had originated in the off-world migration of primarily Asian peoples who had resented the "Western" biases of Old Earth's immediately pre-space first-world cultural template, especially in light of how much of the home world's population had been Asian. The fact that the Asian Alliance had lost the last major war fought on the mother world's soil had only made that resentment still worse, although the sharpest edges had finally begun to fade . . . before the Rish came on the scene.
But after more than a century of careful manipulation by the Rishathan Sphere, followed by sixty more years of bloody warfare, the bitter resentment many citizens of the ex-League planets felt towards the Empire had attained a virulence which persisted with religious fervor. The sort of fervor which was far, far easier to create than it could ever be to overcome. A point which certain individuals—like one Jasper Aubert—seemed capable of missing completely.
Obermeyer watched his expression for several seconds, then sat forward in her chair.
"Governor," she said, with unusual formality when just the two of them were present, "we've got to get rid of Aubert. I sometimes think that if we could just get rid of Salgado, we might be able to get through to Aubert —whatever he may act like, he's not a total idiot. But Salgado's been 'managing' him for so long that he might as well have the brains of a carrot. By this time, he and Salgado're like Siamese twins. Where one goes, the other automatically follows, and we can't afford anyone out here who's as persistently blind to reality as they are. Not any longer.
"I think Gyangtse really is just about ready to move over to Incorporated status. Mind you, I don't think the local oligarchs realize just how bad a deal that's going to be in terms of their ability to control the folks they've been exploiting for so long, but it did look like the climate was just about ripe to carry the referendum when Aubert was sent out here.
"But that very fact was what lit a fire under Pankarma and his extremists. They were afraid that this time their friends and neighbors really were going to vote to become full subjects of the Empire, and they didn't like that idea one little bit. So they decided to do something about it, and their appeals to the Gyangtsese poor—especially the urban poor—have fallen on some fairly fertile ground. Class resentment and wondering how the hell you're going to feed your family will provide that, especially if the propagandists know how to use them. Which is a pity, since the people Incorporation would help most would be that same urban poor, if they only realized it.
"That would be bad enough, but Aubert's decisions are making the situation incomparably worse. I know it's hard to conceive of any mistakes he could make that he hasn't already made, but I'm sure he'll be able to come up with some more if we just give him time. And we both know Salgado's too busy being 'pragmatic' and practicing 'real politik' to rescue him from himself. Hell, he's probably out inventing brand new mistakes for Aubert to make! I don't think the situation on Gyangtse is past the point of no return yet, but between the two of them, they're going to push it there—or let the GLF do it—and I don't think either one of them has the least clue of just how much trouble they're headed into."
"I know, I know." Kereku ran a hand through his tightly-curled silver hair. "Unfortunately, the only way to get rid of Salgado is to dump Aubert, and I can't get rid of Aubert on my own authority. His appointment came directly from the Ministry, the same way mine did. And it was confirmed by the Senate, the same way mine was. The Emperor could get away with removing him on his ow
n authority, but I can't. And if I tried . . . ."
Obermeyer nodded unhappily. Enobakhare Kereku had been selected to govern one of the Empire's crown sectors—the frontier sectors, most of whose planets had yet to attain Incorporated World status and senatorial representation, and which thus came under the administration of the Ministry of Out-World Affairs—because he'd amply demonstrated his qualifications for the position. Jasper Aubert had been selected as a planetary governor in that same crown sector solely because of his political connections, however. And, she suspected in her darker moments, as a means of getting him safely off Old Earth and away from any important policymaking position. Which was all very well for Old Earth, but left Kereku with a hell of a problem in his sector. And as Kereku had just more or less observed, a sector governor who started doing little things like firing Senate-approved appointees on his own authority would not remain in his position long. But still . . . .
"If we can't get rid of him, then we'd better start getting ready for things to go from bad to worse on Gyangtse," she said gloomily.
"Ustanov is suggesting that there's being a genuinely significant buildup in weapons by the GLF?"
"Yes." Obermeyer's tone was flat. "So far he's had reports primarily of small arms, but there are persistent rumors, from what Palacios' intelligence people consider reliable sources, that at least some crew-served weapons are already in place. We're close enough to the frontier that all sorts of people can slip through unnoticed, and Palacios says that she thinks the GLF's been in touch with the Freedom Alliance."
