The Insurrection

"Missiles away from Oslabya, sir!

Tracking for the Yard!" But Naomi's attention was riveted to her gu

"Oslabya: Cede Omega!" communications reported. So IN-SVSNSCORQ 105 LieutenantJolson's first command was no more.

Well, he'd soon have company.

"Oh, dear God!" Naomi's eyes jerked toward her white-faced sca

"Oslabya's missiles mst'ye been under shipboard control, sir! They're going to a standard dispersion pattern]" Naomi's heart chilled as she stabbed a quick look at Battle Two. It was true. With her computers out of the circuit, Oslabya's missiles were spreading to cover the target with maximum devastation, and what was supposed to be a precision strike had become an atrocity. They were only actical nukes, but they'd land all over the Reservation and dependent housing.

"Good hits on target." Gu

Pommfrn screamed as the lasers raped her.

Naomi had always known ships had souls--comshe felt it now, in her own soul, as the cruiser's armor puffed to vapor and vanished under the radiant energy.

"Forward launchers gone!" Gu

Naomi looked away from her looming executioner, her own eyes burning as Oslabya's missiles ('aid their artificiMore suns across the Navy base. How many were dying down there? How many whose husbands and wives and fathers and mothers wore the same uniform as she? Yet they were only a few more deaths against the civilians dying around the other yards. How many would there be? A million? Two million?

Three? Against that kind o pounds devastation, what could a few thousand Navy dependents matter?

Kris slid alongside at point-blank range, and Naomi watched almost incuriously in an outside screen as the battle-cruiser's surviving hetlasers swiveled across her ship. Kris poured fire into the gutted, mutinous cruiser.

Naomi had a tiny fraction of a second to see the end of her bridge explode into vaporized steel. Only a fraction of a second before the fury came for her--but long enough to feel the mark of Cain in her soul again and know that death would be sweet.

"I ask you, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," Taliaferro went on, "where is the reason in thsts?" He waved his hard copy of the report which had originated this secret session.

"Even if, as I do not for an instant believe, amalgamation is an unmeant threat to the Fringe Worlds' representation, is this the way to contest it? Where are the Fringe World delegates, ladies and gentlemen? Where are the petitions? We see none of them. Instead we see this!" He crumpled the sheet of paper contemptuously, and Dieter winced as the theatrical gesture evoked a spatter of applause.

It was sadly scattered applause, for the Chamber of Worlds was sparsely populated, the blocks of assemblymen and women separated by the empty delegation boxes of Fringe Worlds no longer represented here.

The Fringer delegations had been small, but there were many Outworlds, and their absence cut great swathes through the larger, less numerous I

"They have made no effort to oppose amalgamation," Taliaferro went on.

"They have not even bothered to discover whether or not it has in fact been ratified! They have fastened upon it--fastened upon it as a cheat and a pretext for treason, and let us not delude ourselves, my friends] The act of the Kontravian Clustersts treason, and when Admiral Forsythe has brought these traitors to their knees, we must show them that the Federation is not prepared to brook such criminality." Here it came, Dieter thought grimly.

Taliaferro had spent forty years maneuvering for exactly this slash at the Fringe's jugular.

"My friends," Taliaferro said soberly, "we must face unpleasant facts. The Kontravian rebels are not the only treasonously inclined members of the Fringe.. If we falter, ff we show weakness or hesitation, the Federation will vanish into the ash heap of history. Only strength impresses the immature political mind. Only strength and the proven will to use itl We must demonstrate our will power, whatever it may cost us in anguish and grief.

We must punish ruthlessly, so that a few salutary lessons will prevent the wholesale bloodshed which must assuredly follow weakness. I therefore move, ladies and gentlemen, that we draft special instructions to Fleet Admiral For-sythe and all other commanders, instructing them to declare martial law and empowering them to convene military courts to try and punish the authors of this treason. And, ladies and gentlemen, I move that we inform our eom-manders that the sentences of their courts martial stand approved in advance!" Dieter was on his feet in a heartbeat, fists clenched in shocked outrage. He'd known Taliaferro was ruthless, prepared tO provoke civil war to gain his own ends-but this was simple judicial murder!

Dieter forced himself to use his anger, burning the fury. from his system and replacing it with frozen calm. He must speak out, must inject an element of opposition and carry at least a minority with him, so that when the fit passedeathere would be someone free of Taliaferro's blood guilt.

He drew a deep breath and touched his attention button as David Haley opened debate on Taliaferro's motion.

"The Chair recognizes the Honorable Assemblyman for New Zurich," Haley said, and Dieter heard the relief in his voice.

"Thank you, Mister Speaker." Dieter's huge face stared out over the delegates, showing no sign of his i

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," he heard his own stiffness and prayed no one else did.

"Mister Taliaferro proposes to recognize the depth of this crisis by enacting extraordinary legislation. He argues--and rightly so--comt this is a moment to show strength. The Federation has withstood many external threats, yet today we face an internal threat to our very existence. Indeed, Mister Taliaferro may well be too optimistic, for he overlooks the composition of our militar.v. As chairman of the Military Oversight Committee, I can assure you there are enough Fringe Worlders in the military to make the ultimate loyalty of our own armed forces far from assured." He felt the surprise as he admitted even a part of the Gallowayan's arguments. The Dieter-Taliaferro enmity had been a lively topic of Assembly gossip for months, and he knew the wagers in the ante-rooms were heavily against him. But they'd reckoned without the years of favors he'd desperately called in among the hierarchy of his homewodd. And without the recorder his briefcase had concealed during his final, parting-of-the-ways meeting with the Taliaferro Machine's leadership. He'd hung on, emerging as Taliaferro's only real opposition, and though his Assembly membership still hung by a thread, that thread grew steadily stronger as his warning penetrated deeper into the fundamentally conservative minds of the bankers who owned New Zurich.