The Shadow of Saganami

whether they admit it to anyone else-or even themselves-or not. Or, at least, for the grays and General Suka's people to relax and lower their guards just a little. Which ought to make the wave of attacks I'm planning to punctuate my statement of continued health even more effective.'

'Can you afford to take the pressure off for that long?'

'For two weeks, certainly. Three?' She shrugged. 'That may be a bit more problematical. Not so much here on Kornati, but on Flax. I don't want the Constitutional Convention too comfortable with the notion that they don't face any opposition.'

'I see your point,' he said. 'On the other hand, I've just come from Montana. You've heard about Westman and his Independence Alliance's attack on Rembrandt's facilities there?'

'No. Last I heard, he was still playing around stealing people's clothes.'

Her disdain for Westman's opening operation was obvious... and, Harahap thought, proved that whatever her own strengths might be, her understanding of the full possibilities of psychological warfare were, in fact, almost as limited as he'd first thought they were. Or perhaps it would be more fair to her to say she suffered from tunnel vision. She was too enamored of the raw violence of her own chosen tactics to consider the possibilities inherent in any other approach.

'Well, that might have been a bit silly,' Harahap conceded, catering to her prejudices. 'If it was, though, he's decided to take a rather... firmer approach since.'

He proceeded to tell her all about Westman's attack on the RTU's Montana headquarters. By the time he was done, she was chuckling in open admiration. Of course, Harahap had chosen not to stress the careful precautions Westman had taken to avoid casualties.

'I love it!' she announced. 'And, to be honest, I never thought Westman would have it in him. I always figured him for just one more useless cretin of a Montanan aristocrat-like Tonkovic and her cronies here on Kornati.'

It occurred to Harahap, not for the first time, that the citizens of the Talbott Cluster, including an amazing number of those who should have known better, were sadly ignorant about the societies of their sister worlds. True, Westman was what passed for an 'aristocrat' on Montana, but the mind boggled at the thought of him as, say, a New Tuscany oligarch. Whatever their other faults, the Montanans would have laughed themselves silly at the very prospect.

'He did seem to be taking things lightly, just at first,' he said. 'But he's gotten more serious since. And he's decided to sign on with our Central Liberation Committee. That's what we finally decided to call ourselves. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?' he added with a smile.

'He has?' Nordbrandt demanded, eyes narrowing as she ignored his humorous question.

'He has,' Harahap said more seriously. 'Which is one reason I suspect that even if you decided to take the full three weeks before announcing you're still alive, someone else'll help keep the pressure on. And we'll be providing him with modern weapons and support to do it with. As I told you we might the last time I was here, we seem to've come into a bit of an unexpected stock dividend from Van Dort's RTU, and our contacts have come through with modern weapons, night vision optics, communications hardware, and military-grade explosives. May I assume you'd like a few of those goodies yourself?'

'You certainly may,' she said with the fervency of someone who, since their last conversation, had experienced the realities of operating from the wrong side of a capability imbalance. 'How soon can we expect to see them?'

'They're in transit,' he told her, and watched her eyes glitter. 'Unfortunately, it's still going to take them about sixty T-days to get here. Freighters aren't exactly speed demons, and we need our delivery boys to be so ordinary-looking they slide in under the authorities' radar.' She looked disappointed at the thought of taking that long to get her hands on her previously unanticipated new toys, and he smiled crookedly. 'Besides,' he continued, 'I imagine you'll be able to make good use of all that time. After all, we're going to have to figure out how to land- and hide, here on the planet-something on the order of a thousand tons of weapons, ammunition, and explosives.'

'A thousand?' Her eyes glowed, and he nodded.

'At least,' he said gently. 'And it could be twice that. That was the minimum quantity I was assured of when I set out. They were still assembling the shipment, though, and the numbers may well have gone up since. Can you handle and hide that big a consignment?'

'Oh, yes,' she told him quietly. 'I think you can rely on that!'

* * *

'Celebrant Traffic Control, this is HMS Hexapuma requesting clearance to an assigned parking orbit.'

Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri sat patiently at his communications panel after transmitting Captain Terekhov's request. Like all the other systems out here, Celebrant certainly didn't possess any FTL com capability, and Hexapuma had just crossed the G4 star's 20.24-light-minute hyper limit. The star system's habitable planet, which also rejoiced in the name Celebrant, was directly between the ship and its primary, with an orbital radius of just under eleven light-minutes, so it would be at least eighteen minutes before any response could be received by Hexapuma .

That was perfectly all right with Terekhov. At this range, even the sorts of sensors available in the Cluster should have gotten a clear fix on Hexapuma' s hyper footprint and impeller wedge, so they knew someone was coming. And it was only courteous to let them know as soon as possible who that someone was.

He gazed into his maneuvering plot, watching his ship's green bead move steadily closer to the planet of its destination, and, somewhat to his own surprise, discovered that he felt... content. They'd done good work in Nuncio. It might not be as dramatic and glorious as charging into combat against the Republic of Haven's massed fleet, but it was good, useful work. Work that was going to have profound, positive consequences for the future of the entire Star Kingdom in the fullness of time.

And let's be honest. Even if we were serving with Eighth Fleet, we'd probably spend most of our time sitting around in parking orbit, waiting for an enemy attack or preparing for one of our own. That's what duty with the Fleet is-ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent sheer, howling terror. I suppose the same is true enough out here, but at least we can spend some of that ninety-nine percent of the time doing useful things, like survey work to update our charts. Besides, these people need us an awful lot worse than the Star Kingdom needs one more heavy cruiser serving with Eighth Fleet or Home Fleet. And every single thing we do lays one more brick in the notion that the Star Kingdom is worth something. That its protection and freedoms actually mean something.

How odd. He'd known he'd taken a savage satisfaction in destroying Anhur and her consort. But exactly when had he slipped over from being here because someone had to be here to being content that he was the one who actually was here?

He didn't know, but as he gazed at the blue and white icon indicating an inhabited world named Celebrant, he actually found himself looking forward to discovering what new routine, boring, absolutely vital and essential tasks awaited them here.

Chapter Thirty-Two

'You know, Boss, we can't keep this up forever,' Luis Palacios remarked as he slid the final charge into its hole.

'You think Suttles and his yahoos can actually find their ass with both hands?' Stephen Westman shot back with a chuckle.

'Matter of fact, they can, Boss. Well, maybe not Suttles , but Trevor Bannister's no fool, and you know it. Reckon that's why we're taking all these precautions you insist on.'

Chief Marshal Trevor Bannister commanded the Montana Marshals Service, the police force with jurisdiction over the entire star system. Like their fellow Montanans, the marshals made something of a fetish out of appearing as calm and unhurried as was physically possible. Unfortunately, appearances could be deceiving, and the marshals had an enviable record for cracking even the most difficult of cases. Prior to the recent unpleasantness, Bannister