The Insurrection

"Thank you, sir. I make our rendezvous in approximately eighteen minutes at our present speeds. Is that acceptable?" "It is," Hah nodded. "I'll expect you for di

"Fifteen light-seconds, sir," Reznick reported. "Very well. When we drop to twelve light-seconds, cut the ECM." "Cut the ECM, sir?" Reznick was startled into asking the question.

'hat's correct, Lieutenant," Han said calmly. She wanted Ruyard to know what he faced. She punched up Shokaku.

"Captain Onsbruck?" "Sir?" "Prepare to launch fighters when our ECM goes down." "Aye, aye, sir!" 'rhank you." Hah leaned back and watched the outlaw ships inch closer at their reduced speed. Even now Ruyard/khulman's pre-pla

The last message he would ever have, she thought coldly: the dropping of her deception the instant before she fired.

She remembered her cold-blooded destruction of the Swiftsure at Aklumar and recognized the similarity, yet the resemblance was only superficial. Swiftsure's people had been enemies, but they had been honorable foes, worthy of a far better end. These enemies were scum.

'lhirteen light-seconds, sir," Reznick reported softly. "Standing wasto disengage ECM.

Disengaging... now!" The battlegroup's ECM died, and the monitors and carrier stood revealed. Han watched the fighters spitting from Shokaku's catapults, but only with a corner of her eye. Her attention was on the dots of the enemy.

"Sir! Message from Kearsarge!" Reznick sounded star-tied. "They want to surrender, sir!" Ruyard was fast on his mental feet, Han thought grimly. He knew he couldn't outrun her missiles, so he wasn't even trying. He was banking on the fact that the Terran Navy--Federation or Republican--always gave quarter ff it was asked pounds rather. It might he another trap or simply other example o pounds his using the Navy's honor against itself. She watched the last of the fighters launch, and her face was bleak and cold.

"Captain Schwerin." "Yes, sir?" Schwerin responded, his voice neutral.

"Open fire, Captain," Rear Admiral Li Hah said softly.

WAR WARNING Leornak'zilshisdrow, Lord Sofald, Sixteenth Great Fang of the Khan, and District Governor of the Rehfrak Sector by proclamation of hirilolus, appeared on the Orion passenger liner's eom screen, and lan Trevayne looked for the first time at the being who had held his life in his hands thirty-one standard months before. Studying the tawny-furred, felinoid face, he noted admiringly that Leornak's whiskers were spectacular even by the standards of well-endowed Orion males. Rumor had it that the Orions approved of the current Terran fashion of growing beards; they felt it lent human faces a certain much-needed character.

Trevayne shook the inconsequential thoughts aside as 262 INSUPEAECTION the translator on Leornak's jeweled harness used his ship's sophisticated computers to produce pedantically exact English, complete to properly interpreting Leornak's formal tone and nuance.

"Welcome to Rehfrak, Admiral Trevayne. I am glad for the opportunity to meet you in person--although you will understand that the welcome must be entirely unofficial, l trust you are not in quite so much of a hurry as you were on your last visit?" Trevayne smiled back, careful to hide his own teeth as good ma

"No, Governor, this time I'm not trying to make good an escape-wh I managed only as a result of your good offices. But, as you so rightly point out, these proceedings are unofficial--and, in my case at, least, clandestine. The sooner I can meet with my govement's representative, the better for all concerned." "Of course, Admiral. He has already arrived and is here aboard my flagship, Szolkir." With further exchanges of courtesies, arrangements were made for Trevayne to be picked up by one of Szolkir's cutters.

Trevayne watched Leornak's flagship gleam in the reflected orange light of the gas giant she orbited as the cutter approached her.

Like all Khanate officers with sufficient pull, Leornak flew his lights aboard one of the Itzarin- class assault carriers. The Orions and the Terran rebels were as one in the prestige they accorded strikefighters and the starships which carried them, he thought dryly. In fact, for all their noisy anti-amalgamation invective, the Fringe Worlders were a lot like the whisker-twisters in many ways. Some twentieth-century wit had observed that the really great hatreds are between peoples that are alike and can't stand to admit it. Apparently that held as true between species as between human groups.

Trevayne gazed at the lovely killing machine and smiled faintly. After the next battle, the Khanate, as well as the "Terran Republic," would have some reassessing to do. He watched the cutter dock, and his mind slid back in time to the day, almost exactly a standard month before, when his journey had truly begun....

Trevayne sat in a familiar conference room in Prescott City and looked around the table at the Grand Council of the Rim Provisional Government, which people were begi

His Councilors were chosen by the Legislative ssem-bly from among its own members. Their function, in theory, was to advise the Governor-General; in practice, they governed the Rim when Trevayne was in deep space, which was often. It was ali very novel to these Outworlders, but Trevayne had read enough history to know he'd set in motion a reenactment of the birth of parliamentary government in his native England seven centuries before. In fact, this was what cabinet government was supposed to be like, for there were no structured parties in the Rim. That, he thought glumly, would come later, along with organized voting blocs, mass-media electioneering, and the rest. And would the people of the Rim, having tasted home rule, be willing to give it up when (the word "if" did not even cross his mind) the Federation won the war?

Her eyes met Trevayne's. They'll been lovers for over a year.

He looked away, sweeping the other Councilors with his gaze once more.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I've called this meeting to confirm the rumor: we've received, through the Orions, a reply to our message to the Federation!" He waited for the inevitable hubbub to die down.

The Rim's only warp co

Afterwards, the Khan had dosed his frontiers to ahuman entrv. Even the raw materials purchased by the I

"All the Orions will say," he resumed, "is that the Federation is sending a representative to Rehfrak, which is as far as they'll let him come, in one standard month. They'll allow me to go to him-- alone, secretly, in one of their own unarmed civilian craft. I'm frankly amazed that they're willing to violate their self-imposed neutrality even to that extent." "Do I understand, sir, that you intend to accept this, uh, invitation?" Barry, de Parma, chairman pro tern of the Grand Council, looked shocked at Trevayne's nod. "But the risk! You're indispensable.... his "The Orions," Miriam Ortega cut in, "favor the Federation. They're neutral only because they know overt help from them would give our side an "alstien" taint." She smiled wryly, knowing that much of the resentment felt by the rebelling Fringe Worlds was shared by the people of the Rim, including some in this room. The Corporate Worlds had been wrong to accuse the Fringers of "xenophobia," but there was no doubting the Outworlders' grim determination to remain independent of the Orions. She hid a sigh of impatience with her fellow Councilors, saying only, "Fhy have no motive for treachery." "Precisely," Trevayne agreed, "and as for my o.. classified knowledge," he added, knowing they all took his meaning, "I'm not a technician, and no hard information could be got out of me. Besides, we have no reason to think they know there's any to get." He changed the subject before any cautious souls like de Parma could spot the gaping holes in his rationalization.