by David Weber
"That, Bernardus, may be the one ray of sunlight in this entire thing," Terekhov said grimly. "I've been worried—for that matter, the Office of Naval Intelligence and Gregor O'Shaughnessy have been worried—that certain . . . outside interests might be interested in destabilizing the Cluster to prevent the annexation from succeeding. It might just be that this 'Firebrand' is the front man for somebody trying to do just that."
"By feeding weapons to local terrorists, or possible terrorists," Van Dort said.
"Absolutely. And, if that's the case, and if your estimate of Mr. Westman is accurate, we may finally have caught a break."
Van Dort looked up at him, trying to understand how the probable confirmation that the Solarian League was actively -working against the annexation effort could possibly be construed as "a break," and Terekhov smiled slowly. It wasn't an excessively pleasant smile.
"We're going back to Montana, Bernardus. I'll leave one platoon of Marines, with battle armor, one pinnace, and orbital sensor arrays, to support the Kornatians until Baroness Medusa's reinforcements get here. But you and I, and the Kitty, are returning immediately to Montana. Where we're going to confront Mr. Westman with the media coverage, and the government reports, and our own records, of what Agnes Nordbrandt's been doing here in Split. We're going to ask him if he really wants to be associated with a murderous bitch like her, and then, when he denies he ever could be, we're going to hit him squarely between the eyes with the fact that he's been buying guns from the same supplier she has and see how he likes that."
Chapter Forty-Six
Aleksandra Tonkovic sat in the golden sunlight spilling through the windows of her office on the planet Flax and glared at the neat, formal words before her. The entire Constitutional Convention had received precisely the same report on the FAK raid, and at least that bastard Rajkovic had been careful to keep any of his poisonous, scarcely veiled anticipation out of a document he knew so many other star system's political representatives were going to see.
Her personal correspondence had been another matter, of course.
No doubt he would insist he was merely doing his duty as Planetary Vice President. As the dutiful servant of Parliament. But she knew Vuk Rajkovic. Knew he'd never shared her vision of Kornati's future. No wonder he and that rabble rouser Nordbrandt had been such bosom buddies for so long! His Reconciliation Party might as well have publicly acknowledged that Nordbrandt's National Reformation Party was no more than an auxiliary adjunct of its own!
She gritted her teeth, inhaled deeply, and forced herself to step back—a little, at least—from her rage.
Fair was fair, she told herself sternly. Whatever his other faults, Rajkovic had never hidden his core beliefs. That was one of the things which made him dangerous. He had a carefully built reputation as an honest politician, one who not only couldn't be bought, but one who also meant exactly what he said. Tonkovic had enjoyed such a reputation with the electorate, but there'd been a difference; Rajkovic enjoyed the same reputation among his fellow politicians.
No, none of the idiots who followed Rajkovic's lead could ever claim they hadn't known exactly where he was going. Unless, of course, they willfully kept their eyes screwed shut throughout the journey.
Tonkovic had hated leaving him behind to work behind her back, but there was no one besides herself she could trust to represent the Split System properly, and the Reconciliation bloc in Parliament had been large enough to virtually guarantee Rajkovic would have been sent, if she hadn't come. In which case, the Split System would have found itself firmly aligned with those idiots Van Dort and Alquezar and their junkyard dog, Krietzmann.
And now this.
She'd hoped his onetime association with Nordbrandt might cripple him politically when the FAK began its atrocities. Not that she'd ever wanted the attacks themselves, of course. But it would have been so fitting to see his career ended by the bloodthirsty terrorism of the very elements he'd argued for so long needed to be given greater access to power. Surely the unprovoked mayhem wreaked by the ignorant, childish, brutishly vicious rabble of that "dispossessed" and "unfairly excluded" underclass he was so fond of championing, should have destroyed his credibility.
Instead, he'd emerged from the carnage as a decisive national leader, a figure of reassuring calm and inflexible determination, dealing with the crisis while Tonkovic was in an entirely different star system. Someone who was enough the Mob's own to have credibility with it and simultaneously "respectable" enough to be seen by the oligarchical party leaders as their only real conduit to the underclass which had suddenly assumed such a frightening, bogeyman presence.
Although she'd consistently played down the FAK's threat, privately, Tonkovic had been as frightened as anyone else by its initial, spectacular successes. She'd wanted to blame Rajkovic for not having seen it coming, but she'd known that would have been absurd. Another part of her had blamed him for not acting more decisively after it began, but her contacts back on Kornati made it clear he—and, of course, her Cabinet appointees—had been doing everything possible. And another part of her had hoped that if Nordbrandt wasn't going to be crushed—which, of course, Tonkovic wanted her to be—at least Rajkovic's image of decisiveness would erode under the fear and hatred generated by the FAK's bombing campaigns.
It had even looked as if that much was happening . . . until that even more unmitigated bastard Van Dort and the fucking Royal Manticoran Navy moved in and smashed Nordbrandt's hidden weapons cache. Only fifteen days ago. Was it really only fifteen days since that devastating blow had staggered not simply Nordbrandt's murderous organization but the entire political calculus of Kornati?
The sheer, stunning scope of the defeat inflicted upon the FAK and, even more importantly, its future capabilities, had enormously strengthened Rajkovic's hand. Especially after Nordbrandt's resurrection and the terrorists' resurgence. Even people who might otherwise have remained calm and collected enough to recognize that the Reformation Party's platform was just as dangerous, in the long run, as any terrorist bomb, thought he could walk on water! The idiots ought to have realized Nordbrandt was only the tip of an iceberg, no more than the first outrider of the barbarian invasion Rajkovic's entire political philosophy was busy opening doors for.
Even after Nordbrandt was defeated—as Tonkovic had never doubted she inevitably would be—she'd serve as an incendiary example to all of those useless, lazy, underproductive parasites who wanted to overturn the established bastions of society and loot the economy in some sort of crazed redistribution campaign. And the "rights" Rajkovic kept telling those same parasites they had would be the justification the Mob used to sanctify its demolition work! Unless the sane elements of Kornatian society were very, very lucky, they'd find themselves facing an entire succession of Nordbrandt clones. Tonkovic doubted any of them would possess the venomous capability of the original, but that wouldn't prevent them from doing enormous damage.
Which was why it was more important than ever to ensure that Kornati retained the law enforcement and economic mechanisms to guarantee another Nordbrandt couldn't succeed where the FAK failed. That was why she'd decided against passing on that insufferable prig Medusa's arrogant and humiliating demand that she surrender the principles she'd come to Spindle to fight for.
Even now, she couldn't believe Medusa was so foolish as to believe she could convince anyone who knew how the game was played that the Alexander Government's warnings about a set deadline were anything but a ploy. A bluff. One more attempt to browbeat her into surrendering Kornati's essential sovereignty. The Star Kingdom of Manticore had invested too much prestige in this annexation. Allowing the annexation to fail and Frontier Security to snap up the Cluster after all would be a devastating blow to its interstellar credibility. If she only stood her ground—if those cowards back on Kornati only let her call Manticore's bluff—Prime Minister Alexander would find some perfectly logical "reason of state" to extend the deadline.
And even if he didn't, how much wor
se off could they be? If they surrendered their full sovereignty, then everything that mattered about Kornati would be destroyed, possibly within months, certainly within years. Far better to hold their position on the basis of principle. And if the Manticorans carried out their cowardly threat and specifically excluded the Split System from their precious Star Kingdom because Split refused to cave in, she and her government could face the people of Kornati with their heads high. The fault would lie elsewhere, and Kornati would be free to pursue its own destiny. Best of all, the Star Kingdom which had refused to grant them membership as if they were some sort of moral pariahs would protect them from State Security after all by its simple presence.
So of course she hadn't told anyone back home about Medusa's insulting, intolerable demands. If she had, some of the weaklings in Parliament might have been panicked into insisting that they throw away the last shreds of self-determination. And if she never told anyone, the government would at least have plausible deniability. They could blame their homeworld's exclusion from the Star Kingdom on her. On a single, courageous woman who'd taken it upon herself to save her planet's ancient liberties. It might be hard on her, initially. But ultimately, her actions would prove justified, and she would return once more to her rightful place in the world of the Kornatian politics.
But did Rajkovic understand that? Of course he didn't! Or, even worse, he didn't care. It well might be that his own vengeful political ambitions drove him to seize this opportunity to destroy her, regardless of the ultimate cost to Kornati.
She looked at the letter—the official letter, on official parchment, not a simple electronic message—once more, and her jaw clenched. It was very short and to the point.
Presidential Mansion
Karlovac
December 13, 1920 PD
Madam President,
At the command of Parliament, I must request you to return to Kornati by the first available transportation. Your presence before the Special Committee on Annexation and the Standing Committee on Constitutional Law is required.
By command of the Parliament and people of -Kornati,
Vuk Ljudevit Rajkovic
Planetary Vice President
The sentences, the phrasing, were purely formal, defined by centuries of custom and law, yet she heard Rajkovic's gloating triumph in every syllable. He hadn't been able to defeat her at the polls, and so he'd embraced this sordid maneuver to steal the office he'd been unable to win.
She inhaled another deep breath and gave herself a fierce mental shake.
This wasn't the end. Yes, she'd been recalled to appear before Parliament, and the phrasing made it clear it would be an adversarial proceeding. And, yes, Parliament had the authority to remove her from office if it determined she'd violated the constitutional limits upon her powers as Planetary President and Special Envoy, or failed to discharge her responsibilities to either office. But her Democratic Centralists and their allies still commanded a majority in Parliament, and it would require a two-thirds vote to sustain an impeachment. Rajkovic and his cronies would never be able to muster that many votes for what was so obviously a partisan effort to steal the presidency.
She looked at the letter one last time, then stood and tossed it contemptuously onto her desk.
She had people to see before she returned home to confront that pygmy Rajkovic and his contemptible allies.
* * *
Forty-five days after leaving the Montana System for Split, and twenty-two days since the destruction of the FAK base, HMS Hexapuma came back over the Montana alpha wall 19.8 light-minutes from the system primary. The spectacular blue radiance of a hyper-transit radiated from her sails like sheet lightning, and she folded them back into an impeller wedge and began accelerating in-system from a base velocity of just under fifteen thousand kilometers per second.
Aivars Terekhov sat on his bridge, watching the G1 star grow before his ship, and then looked at Amal Nagchaudhuri.
"Record a message to Chief Marshal Bannister, please," he said, and Nagchaudhuri touched a control stud.
"Live mike, Skipper."
"Chief Marshal," Terekhov began. "Mr. Van Dort and I have returned to Montana after uncovering information on Kornati which, we believe, should have a significant bearing on Mr. Westman's opposition to the annexation. We would greatly appreciate it if you could contact him and inform him that we would like to speak to him again. We should enter Montana orbit in approximately two hours and twenty-five minutes, and Mr. Van Dort and I are both looking forward, on a personal level, to seeing you again. If it would be convenient, we'd very much enjoy having dinner with you at, say, the Rare Sirloin. If that would be possible, would you care to make reservations for our regular table, or should I?"
He stopped and watched while Nagchaudhuri played back the recording through his own earbug. Then the com officer nodded.
"Clear copy, Skipper."
"Go ahead and send it," Terekhov said.
"Aye, aye, Sir."
* * *
"What are you going to do, Boss?" Luis Palacios asked.
"I don't rightly know," Stephen Westman replied. It wasn't an admission he would—or could—have made to anyone else.
The two of them sat under the aspens outside the hidden mouth of the MIM's cave headquarters, gazing across the small mountain valley. The air was cooler than it had been, and the brisk, elusive smell of autumn was approaching. Palacios' jaw worked steadily, rhythmically, on a chew of backy while they listened to the wind, whispering in the leaves, and silence fell between them once more.
It was a comfortable silence. The silence of a leader and his follower. Of two old friends. And of a patron and the old and faithful retainer who'd long since earned the right to speak his own mind. And who knew now, at this moment, that there was no need for him to do so.
Westman sat in that silence, and the brain behind his blue eyes was busy.
How had it come to this? He could look back and see every step, every decision, and, truth to tell, he had no regrets even now. In fact—his lips twitched as he remembered barefooted off-worlders in their underwear limping off down a mountain trail—some of it had been just plain fun.
But then the temptation to smile faded. It wasn't that he was no longer prepared to fight, to die—even to kill—for what he believed was right. It wasn't even that he was no longer prepared to take Luis and his other followers with him. It was that he was no longer confident that what he had believed in was right.
There. He'd admitted it. He had doubts. Not about whether or not the RTU had cheated and abused Montana. Not about whether or not that arrogant bastard Van Dort should've told Suzanne the truth about his prolong before he trapped her into marriage. And certainly not about how far he was prepared to go to prevent the organized rape of his planet by greedy, corrupt off-worlders. But . . .
But what if they weren't greedy, corrupt off-worlders, out to clearcut his world and turn all its citizens into debt-enslaved peons on the planet their ancestors had made their home? What if he had permitted his hatred for Rembrandt to automatically extend itself to anyone Rembrandt—and Van Dort—thought good? And what if—most disturbing thought of all, in oh, so many ways—he had been wrong about Bernardus Van Dort himself?
Surely not! Surely he couldn't have been wrong about all of that! But, the same stubborn integrity which had turned him into a guerrilla demanded insistently, what if he had? And, that dogged integrity insisted, it was possible. After all, what did he actually know about the Star Kingdom of Manticore? Nothing, when it came down to it. Only that its vast wealth was based on its shipping and astrographic advantages, and that had only resonated in his own mind with Rembrandt's position in the Cluster. He knew it was a kingdom, with a hereditary queen and an aristocracy, and that was enough to raise any good Montanan's hackles. Yet if Van Dort and the Manticoran captain, Terekhov, were to be believed, it was the selfish resistance of oligarchs like Aleksandra Tonkovic which was stalling the annexation. And if the Star Kingdo
m was what Westman feared, why should -someone like Tonkovic resist the Constitution proposed by Joachim Alquezar and Henri Krietzmann? And, for that matter, what could a Dresdener possibly have in common with one of the wealthiest oligarchs San Miguel—charter partner in the RTU—had ever produced?
Face it, Stevie, he told himself, this mess is a whole bunch more complicated than you thought it was when you decided to jump right in like the hard-assed, stubborn, always-sure-you-know-all-the-answers country boy jackass you've always been.
Even as he thought it, he knew he was being unfair to himself.
But not very, his stubborn doubt insisted. Sure, a man has to take a stand for what he knows is right, and it's too late to take a stand after the fight's already lost. But a man ought to be certain he knows what he's fighting against—not just what he's fighting for—before he gets ready to kill people, or asks people who trust him to kill people. And what if you don't like Van Dort? Nobody says you have to. He doesn't even say you have to. Hell, Trevor says I should listen to him, and he was Suzanne's brother!
He frowned, remembering, once again seeing his best friend's glamorous older sister through the adoring eyes of a small boy. What had he been? Ten? No, he doubted he'd been even that old. But he remembered the day Suzanne left with her wealthy off-world husband. He remembered the day Trevor told him Suzanne's husband would live a thousand years, while she grew old and died. And he remembered the day—no little boy, now, but a man grown, a man of the Founding Families—when Suzanne came back to Montana to explain why her precious, treacherous husband was trying to make all the rest of the Cluster the economic slaves of Rembrandt.
His jaw clenched as he relived that moment of betrayal. The instant he realized that somehow Suzanne had been changed. That the strong, magnificent person he remembered had been brainwashed into spouting the Rembrandt line. And then the even worse betrayal, when she died. Died before she had time to come to her senses and realize how she'd been used.
