The Shadow of Saganami

and the FAK is going-certainly not without additional evidence. But the possibility obviously exists. And if it happens to be true, it would free us to turn our primary attention to Mr. Westman and his Montana Independence Movement.'

'Which,' Khumalo sighed gloomily, 'is a problem less likely to yield to simple solutions than Ms. Nordbrandt appears to have been.'

* * *

'Excuse me, Skipper.'

'Yes, Amal?' Aivars Terekhov looked up from his discussion with Ansten FitzGerald and Ginger Lewis as Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri poked his head into the bridge briefing room.

'Sorry to disturb you, but a dispatch boat's just arrived from Spindle, Sir,' Hexapuma's communications officer said. 'She's already uploaded her dispatches to us.'

'Really?' Terekhov tipped his chair back, turning it away from the table to face the hatch. 'May I assume we have new orders?'

'Yes, Sir, we do. I've copied them for you,' Nagchaudhuri said, extending a message board. But Terekhov shook his head.

'Just give me the gist of them.'

'Yes, Sir. We're to return to Spindle via Rembrandt, picking up Mr. Bernardus Van Dort from Vermeer en route .'

'Van Dort? Was there any explanation of why we're to collect him?'

'No, Sir. Of course, all I've done so far is to decrypt our orders. There was a lot more in the download, including news reports from Spindle and a hefty amount of private correspondence for you from Admiral Khumalo and the Provisional Governor. I'd say there's a fair chance something in there may give us a clue or two, Skipper.'

'You have a point,' Terekhov agreed, and turned to look at FitzGerald and Lewis again.

'Well, the good news is that at least the Celebrants don't seem to be experiencing the problems that Nuncio was. We can pull out in good conscience without worrying about abandoning them to some outside threat. Or, at least, any known outside threat.' He smiled thinly.

'True enough, Skipper,' FitzGerald agreed. 'I wish we'd had more than eight days in-system, though. Our astrogation database updates are just getting started, and I hate to stop now.'

'It's a pain, but it's not the end of the universe,' Terekhov said. 'We had to take the first couple of days to introduce ourselves to the Celebrants. Frankly, I think that was time well spent-probably better than if we'd launched straight into the survey, when all's said, Ansten. The relationship between the people who live here and the Star Kingdom's more important than the coordinates of some minor system body.'

'You've got me there, Skip,' FitzGerald said.

'Very well. Amal.'

'Yes, Sir?'

'First, a message to President Shaw's office. Inform them that we're under orders to depart as soon as possible for Spindle. This is only a heads-up for general information. I'll want to send him a personal message before we actually depart.'

'Aye, Sir.'

'Second, a message for the dispatch boat's skipper. Unless he has specific orders to continue on to some other system, I'll want him to return directly to Spindle. We'll upload our logs, including our reports on events in Nuncio, as well as any mail our people want to send ahead. The dispatch boat can shave three days, absolute, off our own arrival time, even assuming we don't have to lay over in Rembrandt while we wait for Mr. Van Dort.'

'Aye, Sir,' Nagchaudhuri repeated.

'Third, general broadcast to all our small craft and away duty and leave parties. All hands to repair onboard immediately.'

'Aye, Sir.'

'I think that's it for now. Get back to me as soon as you can on the dispatch boat's availability, please.'

'Yes, Sir. I'll see to it.'

Nagchaudhuri stepped back through the hatch on to the bridge, and Terekhov glanced at his two senior subordinates.

'What do you think they're up to, Skip?' FitzGerald asked after a moment.

'Not a clue in the universe,' Terekhov told him with a grin.

'Me neither,' Ginger Lewis said. 'But, in the words of an old prespace book I read once, 'Curiouser and curiouser.''

* * *

'Jesus Christ.'

Stephen Westman couldn't have said whether he meant it as a prayer or a curse. He sat in his underground headquarters with Luis Palacios, staring at the news footage which had finally arrived from the Split System. That footage was over forty days old; the Talbott Cluster wasn't served by the fast commercial dispatch boats the interstellar news services used to tie more important bits of the galaxy together, and the news had crossed the hundred and twenty light-years between Split and Montana aboard a regular freighter. Which meant it had crossed slowly. Not that the delay in transit had made it any better.

'My God, Boss,' Palacios said. 'She's got to be a frigging maniac!'

'I wish I could disagree,' Westman replied.

He looked down at his hands and was astounded to see they weren't shaking like leaves. They ought to have been. And he was vaguely surprised he wasn't actively nauseated by the gory imagery of the atrocity Agnes Nordbrandt had committed.

'They attacked their own parliament building while Parliament was in session!' Palacios muttered. 'What were they thinking ?'

'What do you think they were thinking?' Westman snorted bitterly. 'Look at this 'manifesto' of theirs! They're not trying to convince people to support them-they're declaring war against their entire government, not just the annexation effort. Hell, Luis-they've gone to war against their entire society! And it looks like they don't give a good goddamn who they kill in the course of it. Look at this body count. And it's from their very first damned operation. Operation! It was a goddamned massacre ! They wanted the highest possible casualty totals-that's why they had two damned waves of fucking bombs!'

He sat back, shaking his head, thinking about how hard he and his people had worked to avoid killing anyone , much less innocent bystanders. The spectacular destruction of the System Bank of Montana had antagonized a sizable percentage of Montana's electorate, exactly as Westman had anticipated. He hadn't really liked pissing off that many people, but it was inevitable that the majority of Montanans were going to oppose his objectives, at least initially. After all, almost three-quarters of them had voted in favor of annexation. So there wasn't a lot of point pussyfooting around and trying to avoid hurt feelings. He'd made his point that he was prepared to attack economic targets other than the hated Rembrandter presence on Montana. And he'd made his secondary point, that he was prepared to disrupt the entire star system's economy, if that was what it took to get all the assorted and accursed off-worlders off Montana once and for all. But he'd also managed to do it without killing, or even injuring anyone.

Frankly, he'd been surprised no bomb disposal experts had been sent into the bank's cellars in an effort to defuse his bombs. Delighted, but surprised. He'd expected that they would be, despite the airy confidence to the contrary he'd adopted for his followers' benefit. And he'd known that if the Marshals Service or the military had sent bomb disposal units into the tunnels, some or all of those men and women would have been killed by his antitampering arrangements. He'd anticipated that Trevor Bannister would know he wasn't bluffing, but he'd been very much afraid that halfwitted jackass Suttles and the rest of his Cabinet would reject Trevor's advice.

Yet they hadn't, and because they hadn't, he still wasn't a murderer.

It wouldn't last, of course. As Luis had pointed out, sooner or later people were going to be killed. But one thing he was grimly determined upon was that he would never resort to general and indiscriminate slaughter. His