The Insurrection

Hah watched Magda, feeling the way she drew both Windrider and herself towards her. Not since she'd been a little girl in the presence of her own mother had Han felt such an aura of peace, and at this moment in her life, she could feel only gratitude, for she well knew how desperately she needed it. She allowed herself to relax completely -coms completely that she barely noticed when the conversation turned to her injuries. She never could recall the exact words in which the information slipped out, but she never forgot Magda's expression. The brown eyes were soft, but they were also warm and supportive. Few people have the gift of offering complete sympathy without undermining the ability to deal wi pain. Magda, Hah realized, did.

"Yes." Han felt her mouth twist and straightened it, drawing her serenity about her once more.

Magda's support offered her strength, and she nodded. "I have about one chance in sixty of conceiving a normal child." "Shit." Windrider's single, bitter word might have undercut her self control, but she saw the anger in his dark, lean face and eyes. Anger over her loss, utterly unencumbered by self-consciousness.

In that moment, he became her brother.

"Have you decided what to do?" Magda's face was serene, and Hah felt she would have reached down to smooth her hair, had she still had hair, as she asked the question.

"I've arranged to have my tubes tied." She shook her head wryly. "Daffyd took it worse than I did, though he tried to hide it." "I imagine," Magda patted Han's sound thigh gently. "Fu

"Thank you for coming. And--was she found the words surprisingly comfort- able for one normally so reserved his-comthank you for being you. It... helped. It helped a lot." "Tubewash!" Magda chuckled, tucking her edp under her arm as Windrider opened the door. "Just an excuse to get dirtside, Hah!" She sketched a casual salute and stepped through the door, followed by Windrider. It elosed behind them, and Hah stared at it thoughtfully. Then she let herself settle back into her pillows as the familiar drowsiness returned.

"I'm sure it was, Magda," she whispered softly, lips curving in a smile. "I'm sure it was." "Courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior." General Karl yon Clausewitz, On War DRUMBEAT Zephrain, as humans rendered the name bestowed by its Orion discoverers, was a distant binary system.

Component Beaeaan orange K8 star, swung ponderously around its yellow G5 companion in an orbit of over fifty percent eccentricity, coming as close as three light-hours at perias-tron.

Both stars had small families of planets, and extensive asteroidal rubble marked the hypothetical orbits of stillborn gas giants which would have formed but for the gravitational havoc wrought by each star on the other's planetary system.

Zephrain A-II was Earthlike a small, dense world with abundant liquid water and free oxygen. Named Xanadu by a humorously inclined Terran-Survey ocer, A-II was home to a thriving human population, but Zephrain RDS was on Gehe

would that have given the Terran Republic pause, after all? Certainly the murderous bastards had already shown their willingness to inflict noncombatant casualties, he thought bitterly.

The Terran Republic! Trevayne recalled a cynical query concerning Old Terra's Holy Roman Empire: in what respect was it holy, Roman, or an empire? He almost voiced the thought to the older man beside him, but he knew he would have gotten a look of incomprehension and polite disinterest. Vice Admiral Sergei Ortega was no history buff.

At any rate, there were more urgent matters at hand. Like persuading Ortega to stay aboard this ship.

They stood on the flag bridge of the monitor Zoroff, Trevayne's flagship. Accompanying her in orbit around Xanadu were the other ships of the battlegroup he'd brought through the chaos of insurrection to Zephrain. He still couldn't contemplate the journey without a feeling of awe that he had actually gotten away with it.

Battlegroup Thirty-Two had been stu

Only then had there been time to come to terms with the other news the light cruiser Blackfoot had brought.

News of the bloody raid on Galloway's World, BG 32's home port, which had gutted the Federation's largest shipyards and destroyed, among other incidental items, Admiral's Row, where Natalya, with seventeen-year-old Courtenay and thirteen-year-old Ludmilla, had awaited his return.

Doctor Yuan, Zoroffs chief medical officer, had explained the "denial phase," when tragedy remains merely unacceptable. Luckily for BG 32, Trevayne had still been in that state when a rebel fleet followed Blackfoot through the same warp point.

His orders had come with a methodical precision as ship after ship emerged from warp. There were too many to fight--but none had been monitors, and nothing lighter IN-SUAAEC'NO than a monitor really wanted to catch a monitor. That natural hesitancy to invite self-immolation had given him the chance to disengage and run, but there were few places to run as the Fringe went mad. He remembered the weary progression of systems: Juarez, Iphigena, Lysander, Baldur where he'd hoped to break back to the I

The Orion commander at Sulzan had been a fool, and Trevayne was grateful for it.

The Khan's official policy of neutrality should have meant internment for any TFN refugee, but Small Claw Diharnoud'frilathka had dithered long enough for Trevayne to warp out for the district capital at lhfrak. The District Governor was no fool, but he, too, had turned a blind eye as BG 32 passed through. Probably, Trevayne suspected, because of the Khan's vested interest in an I

Zephrain, gateway to the region known as the Rim. Zephrain, the largest naval base humanity had ever built. Zephrain, where--to his relieved surprise--comthe Federation's writ still ran.

The people of Xanadu shared the same political and economic grievances as other Fringe Worlds, and they contemplated the proposed Federation-Khanate amalgamation with equal revulsion. But militant loyalty was bred into them, for their system had borne the brunt of the Fourth Interstellar War. Every man, woman, and child in the Zephrain System had been an expendable frontline soldier against an enemy who saw humans as culinary novelties.