The Insurrection

He drew a deep breath. His wildest dreams had never included becoming prime minister--and certainly never like this! And yet, ironic as it was, he had no choice. He opened his eyes and looked at President Zhi.

"Very well, Mister President," he sighed.

"I'll try." DECLARATION "Novaya Rodina, eh?" Ladislaus Skjoruing watched the blue nd white planet as the crew of the TFNS Howard AnderSon brought their ship into orbit. "I take it you're finding this a strange spot for a convention of traitors, Admiral Ashigara?" His eyes touched briefly upon the empWill right cuff of the woman standing beside him. Analiese Ashigara was every bit as taciturn and unyielding as her severe exterior and precise Standard English suggested, but he felt a strange kinship for the hawk-faced woman with the al-m

"I would have expected the convention to convene on Beaufort," she said calmly. "Beaufort is, after all, the home of the rebellion." It was like her, Ladislaus thought wryly, that she never resorted to euphemisms.

"Aye, I can see why you might be thinking that, but Beaufort is too far from the frontiers. We've no command structure at all the now, and until we've had the creating of one, we're to need the shortest courier drone routes we can be finding. Novaya Rodina's well located for that." "Yes, I can see that. But I think perhaps there is more to it than that, Mister Skjorning." "Aye, there is. As you've said, Beaufort's to be a logical place--comff it were a Kontravian rebellion we're after having. But we're after making this a Fringe-wide movement, so holding our convention somewhere else should be helping

along a sense of unity, you see. I've the thinking it's Beaufort's to be the capitol of whatever it is we're to have the buiffeading of, but it's not the place to be declaring what we are.

"That seems sensible," Ashigara said, nodding slowly.

"Aye. But there's to be another reason.

Have you had the hearing of the term 'bloody shirt," Admiral Ashigara?" "'Bloody Shirt"? No, Mister Skjorning, I ca

"I am more happy than ever to be a simple Fleet commander, Mister Skjorning. My mind does not work the way this business of creating a government appears to require." "Don't be feeling any loss over it," Ladislaus said very quietly. "It's not to be something I ever thought to have the doing of, either." He fell silent, watching the planet a moment longer, then to eft the bridge, and Admiral Ashigara turned her attention to the final approach maneuvers of her under-ma

Magda Petrovna stood at his elbow, her mobile face quite still. Only Ladislaus knew she intended to resign from the Duma to accept a commission in whatever they were going to call their navy., and only Magda sensed how much he envied her freedom to do just that. But it wasn't freedom for her; it was flight.

She knew her own strengths: a flair for organization, to evel-headedness, moral courage, and compassion. But she also knew her weaknesses: blunt-spoke

She'd been able to accept her own sentence of death, but not the brutality of Pieter's murder.

Not the cruelty which had nearly snapped Tatiana Illyushina's sanity. That had been too much, yet as long as she'd believed that only Waldeck's madness was responsible, she'd maintained a degree of detachment.

But then the provisional government had found the special instructions from the Assembly in his safe.

Waldeck need not have acted on them, but giving men like him such an option was like giving a vicious child a charged laser, and she would never forget that the Assembly had done so. She would never be able to flush the hatred from her mind ff ever she must deal with that governmbledtiont. Besides--she felt herself smile affectionately--there was a better choice to head the Duma now. Well, two, perhaps, but Fedor would kill himself first! No, only one person had emerged from the day of the riots as Pieter's true successor, and that person was Tatiana Illyushina.

Magda glanced at the slim young woman.

Daughter of one of Novaya Rodina's very few wealthy families, Tatiana had never faced the hard side of life before the rebellion. Then the earthquake shocks had come hard and fast, but Tatiana, to her own unending surprise, had met them all. Her oval face was still as beautiful, she looked as much like a teen-aged child as ever, but there was flint behind those blue eyes now.

Flint and something else, something almost like Magda's own compassion, but not quite.

But now, as acting Duma President, Magda had been granted a unique moment in history, and she stepped up to the lectern at Ladislaus' tiny nod. She drew a deep breath, and her gavel cracked on the wooden rest under the microphone. The sound echoed through the auditorium.

"rhe first session of this convention of the provisional governments of the Fringe will come to order," she said.

"Well, Ladislaus, what do you think?" Magda refilled their vodka glasses and hid a smile as he picked his up cautiously. "Will it work?" "Aye, I'm thinking it will." Ladislaus sipped his second glass far more slowly as Magda threw back her own in approved Novaya Rodinan fashion.

"But it doesn't necessarily follow we can act together," Tatiana said. "Agreeing to hate the Corporate Worlds, yes." She smiled tightly.

"But we're all so different! What else do we have in common?" "Don't be underestimating the strength of hate, Ms Illyushina." Ladislaus' answering smile was bleak. "But that's not all we're to be having. I'm thinking we're to have a better understanding of what the Federation is supposed to be than the Rump has. We're agreed in that." "True." Magda's cold voice raised eyebrows, but she leashed her rage and leaned back.

Then she laughed. "Has it occurred to anyone else that we're not the radicals? We're the conservatives--they're the ones who've played fast and loose with the Constitution for over a century!" "Aye, so Fio

So it's something old we must be building on." "So that's why you brought this along," Li Kai-lun mused, tapping the sheet of facsimile on the table and nodding slowly. His reaction pleased Ladislaus. Hangchow's diminutive chief convention delegate was not only her planetary president but a retired admiral, as well. His support--political and military--would be literally priceless in the weeks ahead.

"Aye." Ladislaus ran a fingertip over the ancient lettering. "It's a federal system we're needing, Kai-lun. Centralization was the Corporate Worlds real error. It's to give the government the most power, but it's to concentrate too much authority in one place and even with relays, slow communications are to make it clumsy in responding to crises.., or people." "Agreed," Li said, then smiled. "And at least this constitution's got a good track record. If I remember my history,, the United States did quite well for itself before the Great Eastern War." his... ad ff fight we must, let it be under a common standard! I move to appoint a committee to select a suitable device for our batfie flags." The stocky delegate from Lancelot swirled the brilliant cloak of his hereditary rank and sat, and Magda sighed. She found the barons and earls of Durandel rather wearing, but he might have a point--even ff he was inclined towards purple prose.