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CHAPTER EIGHT

Tara City

Planet of Crann Bethadh

New Dublin System

Free Worlds Alliance

November 10, 2552


“Vice President Karalaki.”

The bearded man stood to offer Aikaterini Karalaki his hand as she entered his office. He was a tall, stocky fellow, with brown-blond hair going to gray, and steady brown eyes.

“President Dewar.”

Karalaki gripped his hand firmly, meeting those brown eyes, and hoped this meeting was about to go better than she was afraid it might.

“I believe you’ve met Vice President McFarland,” Dewar continued, nodding to the brown-haired woman sitting to his right, and Karalaki shook McFarland’s hand in turn. “And this—” he indicated another woman, a centimeter or two shorter than McFarland, in embroidered robes and a porcelain facemask “—is Yukimori Aiko, Ryukyu’s delegate to the Free Worlds Alliance. I asked Aiko to join us because she’s effectively our Minister of War.”

“From Ryukyu?” Karalaki smiled slightly. “I imagine she’s a good choice. We’ve heard about Ryukyan special forces back home on Odysseus.”

“So have the Hearts.” Yukimori’s voice was sweet, but that sweetness was ribbed with iron as it flowed through the mask’s mouth opening. “They’ve spilled enough of our blood instead of their own, at any rate. And I don’t think they’ll like what they’ll be hearing about us shortly.”

“Aiko’s husband, Saneatsu, is the CO of the Ryukyu System Defense Force. A post I held here in New Dublin until the Hearts murdered President Tolmach.”

Dewar’s voice was both deeper and harsher than Yukimori’s, and Karalaki nodded soberly. Until she’d reached Crann Bethadh, she hadn’t known Dewar wasn’t simply Tolmach’s successor as president of New Dublin. He was also Tolmach’s son-in-law.

“And these—” Dewar continued in a less-harsh tone, waving at the two Terran Federation Navy officers who rounded out the people waiting for Karalaki “—are Commodore Cerminar and Captain Carson. They’re our senior naval officers in-system, and the Commodore is Governor Murphy’s in-space commander.”

“Commodore. Captain.” Karalaki shook their hands in turn. Both officers wore standard TFN uniform, although she noticed a nonregulation flash on their right shoulders. It showed a balance scale superimposed across a silver tree.

“Please, sit down,” Dewar said, waving at the empty chair at the foot of the conference table, and Karalaki settled into it while he resumed his own place at the table’s head. She ordered her expression to remain calm and politely attentive, although she was less than confident she’d succeeded in that.

“I promised you we’d get back to you as quickly as we could,” the president said, tipping back his chair. “Obviously, there’s no way we can send dispatches to all of the FWA’s systems to consult with them, but that’s why we have the Council of Delegates here in Tara, and I have talked to them. In fact, I put a proposal before them, and they voted to approve it.”

Karalaki blinked behind her calm expression. She’d reached Tara, the capital of Crann Bethadh, only the day before, and Dewar’s astonished surprise had been obvious when she walked into his office. If he’d put together a “proposal” this quickly, then what—?

“As I told you Tuesday,” he continued, “no one here in New Dublin anticipated this little bonfire spreading as rapidly as your arrival suggests it may. Governor Murphy certainly didn’t, although—” he smiled a trifle sadly “—that may be because he genuinely hopes that somehow this can all be ‘worked out’ over the conference table somewhere.”

Despite herself, Karalaki frowned, and Dewar let his chair tip back forward again.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Ms. Karalaki. Governor Murphy will take this wherever it goes, as far as he has to. He doesn’t want to kill the Federation, and he’ll do almost anything to avoid that…except to betray or abandon anyone he’s given his word to. We’ve seen a lot of Hearts here in New Dublin, and we’ve our own vets who’ve seen the elephant up close and ugly, and there’s not a lot of trust left in us where the Heart and the Five Hundred are concerned. In fact, most of us would sooner see the Five Hundred burning in hell than across any conference tables.

“But we’ve seen Murphy, too, and we’ve no fear at all of what that man means when he gives his word. And he’s given his word to us—and to Alan Tolmach, when he lay dying in Murphy’s arms—that he’ll not betray New Dublin. He may fail, but only because he’s died trying. And that leaves us some pretty big boots to fill in his absence.”

“We don’t know much about Governor Murphy in Bellerophon,” Karalaki said into the silence, after a moment. “Only what Captain Anthellis could tell us when he got home with word of the Free Worlds Alliance. In all honesty, I have to tell you that at least some of President Xeneas’s advisors back home in Kórinthos are a little…uneasy over the notion that he might be another Butler ready to run out on another Gobelins if the fire gets too hot.”

Every other visible expression in the office stiffened, and Yukimori Aiko snapped upright in her chair.

“I think you can put your mind at ease about that, Ms. Vice President.” There was an edge of ice in Dewar’s tone. “In fact, I’m sure you can.”

“What I was going to say, Mr. President,” Karalaki in a level voice, “is that it’s already obvious to me that those advisors were mistaken. I don’t think anyone could possibly blame them for their fear that he might. All of us know what the Heart will do to any Fringe World that stands up for its people, so of course they were afraid. They are afraid. I think it would take an extraordinarily stupid or at least unimaginative person to not be afraid.”

“You’re right about that,” Dewar acknowledged, and Yukimori sat back in her chair with a slight nod of her own. “Don’t think anyone in this office isn’t afraid—terrified—of where this could end. But we’ve seen enough of our blood, our kids, pissed away by the Hearts, and there comes a time you have to decide what you’re ready to do to put a stop to that. It sounds like President Xeneas has reached the same conclusion. And let’s be honest here. Adding all our populations together, the FWA’s got less than half a billion people all told, but Bellerophon’s got over a billion all by itself. Even with Bellerophon—hell, even if the entire Cyclops Sector came over to us!—we’d have fewer warm bodies than a single Heart system like Sol. So anybody we can get to join us has to be welcome, and President Xeneas’s analysis of what’s going to happen when the rest of the Fringe hears about all of this is probably accurate as hell.”

“I wish I didn’t agree with you,” Karalaki said sadly. “Because even assuming we win in the end, it’s going to be bloody.”

“Perhaps even bloodier than you already think it could,” Yukimori Aiko told her quietly. “The Hearts aren’t the only threat we have to worry about, and no one knows what the Leaguies are likely to do about all of this. There’s no way they can fail to see the possible opening any sort of Federation civil war would present.”

“And if they somehow do, the Lizards won’t,” Dewar said grimly, and snorted as Karalaki’s eyebrows rose.

“Yes, Ms. Karalaki, we believe the Governor about that, too. We’ve seen the evidence—some of our people have actually been to the Diyu System and walked the shipyards. Without that, I probably wouldn’t have believed it, either, but it’s true. And that means we have to be worrying about the damned Rish on top of everything else. The only good news there is how long it’ll take the Sphere to find out what happened to their little pet project.

“But that’s an entirely separate matter. What matters right this minute is that President Xeneas sent you to us with an offer to join the FWA and a request for assistance.

“The bad news from your perspective is that Governor Murphy isn’t here, which means we have to decide what to do in his absence. And the corollary of that bad news is that he took his entire carrier strength with him when he pulled out for Jalal. We do have a single FTLC in-system, though. Aurora turned up just three days before you got here, and Captain Errezola’s placed her under FWA command.”

Karalaki nodded, trying to keep her dismay from showing. Assuming every single carrier in the Cyclops Sector mutinied to support Bellerophon, Aurora would represent a twelve percent increase in the sector’s naval strength. Which, if the Oval responded in strength, would mean only that the spit on the griddle might last a few seconds longer. And that was assuming Dewar and the FWA were willing to send her into such a hopeless confrontation in the first place.

“I realize a single carrier isn’t a lot,” Dewar continued, as if he’d read her mind. “We’ve got…a bit of an equalizer to send along, but I’d be lying if I said anyone in the FWA thinks Bellerophon would have a chance in hell of standing off the sort of heavy attack the Heart’s likely to send your way as soon as they find out what’s happened. Hopefully, President Xeneas will be able to keep word of that from getting out. Bad things happen to good people, though, so we’re not planning to depend on that. Which brings me to the proposal the Council of Delegates has approved.

“Yesterday,” he went on levelly, “immediately after the vote, I sent a courier to Governor Murphy at Jalal, telling him the Free Worlds Alliance has agreed to support Bellerophon and anyone else in the Cyclops Sector who chooses to join us. I realize none of us knows at this point what’s happened at Jalal, but there’s no doubt in my own mind that our courier will find Governor Murphy in possession. It’s virtually certain that he got there before anything the Five Hundred and the Oval might have chosen to send, and, trust me, Ms. Karalaki, Terrence Murphy will pin back the ears of any Heart admiral they send to ‘deal with him.’ So I’m confident he’ll receive our message and, knowing him, he’ll respond quickly—and strongly. Most likely, he’ll slice off a detachment of his own carriers and send them directly to Bellerophon to reinforce your defenses. And given the geometry, he can reach Bellerophon a lot more quickly than anything from the Heart could. If he has any head start at all, his detachment will be there before any attack from the Heart, in which case—” his smile was icy cold and razor thin “—that attack will find out exactly what happened to Admiral Xing when she decided to K-strike Crann Bethadh.”

Karalaki’s heart rose. Dewar actually knew Murphy, and if he truly believed—

“I understand it’s easy to talk a good fight,” the FWA president continued, “but we believe in putting our money where our mouths are. So, within twelve hours, Aurora will depart for Bellerophon, followed by Charlotte and Andiron, the only two FTL freighters we have in-system. They’re a little slower than a carrier, so it’ll take them a few days longer to make the passage. Commodore Cerminar would prefer to move his flag to Aurora and command the detachment himself, but he can’t. There are still three FTLCs unaccounted for in Acera, and somebody has to stay home to mind the store until we know if they’re going to turn up here in New Dublin. And what they’ll turn up in New Dublin to do, of course. So we’ll be sending Captain Carson—although I suppose she’s Commodore Carson, now—instead.”

“Mr. President, I deeply appreciate what you’re saying,” Karalaki said, “but can you really risk sending away the only carrier you’ve got under those circumstances?”

“Oh, trust me!” Dewar actually grinned. “All of us are just hoping some arrogant prick of a Heart flag officer will turn up and decide he can take New Dublin back with two or three carriers.”

Karalaki’s eyes widened as the other Fringers sitting around that table smiled in agreement with the president.

“Well, I’m certainly not going to object to anything you think you can spare for us,” she said frankly.

“It’s not as much as we wish we could send directly.” Dewar’s expression and voice alike were sober now. “It’s only all we can—all we have the lift for. But hopefully, it’ll help hold things together until the Governor gets there. And, trust me, Ms. Karalaki, he will get there.”



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