The Shadow of Saganami

excellent chance a unified, Cluster-wide resistance movement could convince the Manties they'd poked their noses into the wrong hornet nest. They're already at war. If we make it too expensive and difficult to hold us all down, they're likely to decide they have more important fish to fry closer to home.'

Firebrand took another, longer sip of beer. Then he set the stein aside with a decisive air.

'You're right,' he said simply. 'Whatever you or I might like, the truth is that we're on the short end of the balance of political and military power at the moment. There's no way, realistically speaking, we could hope for wholesale changes of government throughout the Cluster. But you're also right that if we make the game too unpleasant, the price too high, the Manties probably will decide to take their marbles and go home. They can't afford to do anything else. And if we can manage to send them packing, we may just be able to convert the prestige and momentum of that into the ability to run the collaborationists out of town, after all.'

He nodded slowly, his expression somber.

'I'll be honest with you, Ms. Nordbrandt. You aren't the only person here on Kornati we've considered contacting. There's Belostenic and Glavinic, for example. Or Dekleva. But I'm impressed. The combination of perceptiveness and pragmatism you've just demonstrated is exactly what I came looking for. I don't need dewy- eyed idealists, and I don't want raging fanatics. I want someone who can differentiate between fantasy and what's possible. But I still need to know how far you're prepared to go. Raging fanatics are one thing; people who aren't willing to do what's necessary are just as bad. So are you an ivory tower analyst, able to theorize with the best but unwilling to get your hands dirty... or bloody?'

'I'm prepared to go as far as it takes,' she told him flatly, her wiry body coiled about its tension as she met his eyes steadily. 'I'm not in love with the concept of violence, if that's what you mean by 'raging fanatics.' But I'm not afraid of it, either. Politics and political power are all upheld by force and the readiness to shed blood, in the final analysis, and the independence of my star system is important enough to justify anything I have to do to protect it.'

'Good,' Firebrand said softly. 'Very good. At the moment, it's still a matter of putting the pieces into place. Just as I'm here on Kornati, I have colleagues having similar conversations on other planets across the entire Cluster. Within a few weeks, a couple of months at the outside, we should be in a position to begin making concrete plans.'

'So all of this, all your talk about what 'I need,' is only a hypothetical exercise?' Nordbrandt's eyes were suddenly cold, but Firebrand only shook his head calmly.

'Not in the least. It's just still at a very early stage. Do you really think I'm in a position to make spur-of- the-moment decisions for my entire organization, solely on the basis of a single firsthand conversation? Would you want to have anything to do with me if you thought that was the case?'

He held her eyes until she shook her head slowly, then shrugged.

'I'll take my report back to our central committee. I'll recommend strongly that we establish a formal alliance with you and your people here on Kornati. And as we find similar allies on other planets, we'll either coordinate operations for you, or possibly even put you into direct contact with one another, as well as with us. In the end, what we hope to accomplish is the creation of a central coordinating body-one on which you would almost certainly hold a voting seat-to organize and support a Cluster-wide resistance movement. But building that, especially if we want to prevent the local authorities, like your President Tonkovic, from infiltrating us and taking us out before we can accomplish anything, is going to take some time.'

She nodded, obviously unwillingly. Her eyes were hot with disappointment, with the frustrated desire to do something now , but there was discipline behind the frustration. And an awareness that what he'd said made sense.

'In the meantime,' he continued, 'I may be in a position to begin providing a strictly limited amount of financial and material support. Eventually, obviously, my people hope to provide more substantial assistance, including access to weapons and intelligence. If we manage to create the central coordinating structure we're trying to put into place, we ought to be in a position to receive intelligence from all of our planetary members without jeopardizing the security of any of them. We'll be able to put all the pieces anyone gives us together into a single, coherent whole which ought to allow all of us to formulate more effective strategies. And we also hope to pool our financial resources. Speaking of which, I hope you realize it may be necessary for us to do some things none of us would really like to do in order to finance our operations?'

'That's understood.' Nordbrandt's voice carried more than a touch of distaste, but, once again, her eyes were unflinching. 'I'm not looking forward to it, but resistance movements can't exactly send out Revenue Service agents to collect income tax.'

'I'm glad you understand that,' Firebrand said gravely. 'To begin with, though, it looks as if we're going to be able to secure at least the seed money we need through a little judicious electronic manipulation.'

'Oh?' Nordbrandt perked up visibly.

'Oh, yes,' Firebrand said with a nasty smile. 'I'm obviously not at liberty to give you any details. For that matter, I don't have many details to give, at this point. But come the end of the current fiscal quarter, Bernardus Van Dort is going to discover that the Trade Union is running an unanticipated deficit.'

Nordbrandt clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a delighted peal of laughter, and her brown eyes danced devilishly. Firebrand grinned back like a little boy who'd just gotten away with cutting an entire week of school without being caught. He'd thought she'd like the notion of pilfering from the coffers of the powerful, theoretically nonpolitical trade organization which had taken the lead in organizing the annexation plebiscite in the first place.

'There is a certain poetic justice involved, isn't there?' he said after a moment, and she nodded enthusiastically.

'As I say, I don't know any details,' he continued, 'but if the operation comes off half as well as I've been led to expect, we ought to be able to begin providing some discreet additional funding to you and your organization in the next couple of months. Possibly even a bit sooner, though I don't think you should count on that. Of course, before we can do that, we're going to have to have some idea of just how large and how active your own organization is likely to be.

'I'm not going to ask for any details,' he went on quickly, one hand waving the thought aside. 'But obviously we're going to have to have some idea of the relative needs and capabilities of the various organizations we hope to bring together if we're going to make the best use of what are inevitably going to be limited resources.'

'I can see that,' she agreed. 'But I'm obviously going to have to discuss this with my people before I can commit them to anything.'

'Naturally.' Firebrand grinned again. 'I'm sure it's going to seem like it's taking forever for us to get this up and running. But I truly believe that once we have it in place, it's going to make the difference between success or failure for the entire Cluster.'

'Then let's hope we do get it organized,' Agnes Nordbrandt said, and raised her beer stein in salute to her new allies.

* * *

'Are you out of your mind?!' 'Firebrand's' companion demanded quietly as the two of them strolled down the sidewalk together twenty minutes later. Any casual observer would undoubtedly have dismissed them as no more than two friends, making their way home from an evening of conviviality and looking forward to a night's rest before facing another day of work.

'I don't think so,' Firebrand replied, then chuckled. 'Of course, if I were out of my mind, I probably wouldn't realize it, would I?'

'No? Well Eichbauer never authorized us to go that far, and you know it. For God's sake, Damien, you all but promised that lunatic funds!'

'Yes, I did, didn't I?' Captain Damien Harahap, known to Agnes Nordbrandt as 'Firebrand,' chuckled. 'I thought my explanation for their origin was downright inspired. She certainly liked it, didn't she?'

'Goddamn it, will you be serious?' His fellow's exasperation was obvious to Harahap, although it wouldn't have been to that putative casual observer, and the senior agent sighed. He'd worked with the other man before-not often, but two or three times-and he supposed he ought to be accustomed to his partner's stodginess. But it was rather sad that he had so little sense of how the Great Game was played.