The Insurrection

"B-but I'm not ready!" Han wailed. "I was only a captain four years ago!" Yet she seemed unable to resist as he fastened the badge in place. "I just got back from surrendering an entire battle fleet!" "Han," Windrider said severely, "sit down and shut up.

She sat obediently, too shaken to notice how brashly a rear admiral was ordering a vice admiral about.

"Better," he said. "Now listen to me. Every senior officer in the Fleet knows you and Bob wanted to attack earlier, and most of 'em know the panic that really beat us at Zephrain wouldn't have happened if you'd been senior to the bastards who-- Never mind." He shook his head sharply.

"But there's not a one of them who questions giving you thatstar. None. And no doubts will be entertained from you, either, young lady!

"Besides, we need you. Admiral Ashigara is dead, and so are Kellerman, Matucek, Ryder, Nishin, Shukov, Hyde- White, Mombora "His voice trailed somberly off, and she stared at him.

"That many?" "And more," he confirmed. "Hah, we never did have many admirals, and those we had have taken a terrible pounding; we've got to promote. I was a eomeawander four years ago, for God's sake] If I can take my medicine and wear one star, you can damned well wear two--got it?" "Yes, sir," she said meekly, touching her collar badges and smiling at last. "I just hope it isn't a mistake." "Hah, will you please get it through your radiation-jellied Oriental brain that you've got those stars--and that medal because you're one of the best we've got?" She eyed him doubtfully, and he gri

"Besides, ff we don't give 'em to you, somebody might try to give 'em to me, God help us!" The skimmer swooped downwards, and Han peered out at the lights blazing against the night. They marked a sprawling mansion, one-time home of the Corporate World manager of Bonaparte's largest chesht plantation, taken." over by the Republican military when the focus of opera- tions shifted to Zephrain.

Windrider grounded the skimmer and popped the hatches, and Han climbed out, wrinkling her nose as the reek of over-ripe chesht mingled with the fresh smell of marshes. It amazed her that something whose flavor had supplanted chocolate and vanilla alike in Terran estimation could smell so horrible in its native habitat.

Strange voices shrilled and clicked in the night, and wings fluttered as Bonaparte's equivalent of a bat flitted past. She glanced upward, but the two larger moons had set and the third, Joseph, was little more than a low-albedo lump of captured asteroidal rock. Its wan illumination barely brought a glow to the mists and hinted at rather than revealed the artificially precise spacing of angular machinery.

Chesht-pickers rusting in idleness, she thought as the cool breeze off the marsh rustled the chesht pods.

Bonaparte's F1 primary was hot, but the planet was near the outer edge of the liquid-water belt.

Even high summer was cool, which suited Han well, for it produced a climate very like that of her homewodd. Jason however, came from Topaz--a warm, dusty world with little axial tilt--and he preferred less chilly environs. He rubbed his hands briskly and tried to look patient as she sucked in the crisp air.

"Lead on." "Good!" he agreed quickly, and guided her through a doubleopaned door into what had been a palatial foyer before the Republican Navy took charge. A pair of Marine guards came sharply to attention as they stepped inside, and as Hah noted their unsealed holsters, she suddenly realized what those angular shapes in the marsh had been: not chesht-piekers, but heavy armored vehicles. And the thick glass entry doors weren't glass at all, but armorplast capable of resisting medium artillery fire!

"Good evening, Admiral Li. Admiral Windrider." A Marine major saluted them. "May I see some identification$7' He subjected their ID folios to the most rigorous cheek Hah lad seen since the war began. What in God's name was going on here?

"Thank you, sir." The major returned her ID and summoned an armed oi'derly. "Chief Yeoman Santander will escort you to the pla

"Admiral Li and Admiral Windrider, sir!" he said crisply, and stepped back as they passed him.

"Thank you, Chief Santander," a warm, easily-recognized voice said.

"Magda! Jason didn't say you were here!" "I know he didn't." Magda Petrovna smiled from behind her desk in the large, brightly lit room, and the paired stars on her collar mirrored Han's. "Very few people know I'm here, and they aren't talking." "But why all the secrecy?" "I'm about to Sell you, Han," Magda said with the chuckle Han remembered so well. "After which you'll disappear, too. Where's she off to, Jason?" Brown eyes rose to smile over Han's head at Windrider.

"Vice Admiral Li is returning to Novaya Rodina for debriefing," Windrider said smoothly. "In fact, I escorted her aboard ship myself." "You see?" Magda asked with a grin.

"No, I don't see at all!" "It's pretty simple, really. You and I, my dear, are the Republic's last great hope." Magda's voice was humorous; her eyes weren't.

"Meaning what?" Han demanded.

"Meaning that you and I--with the help of a few souls like Jason, Bob Tomanga, and Tsing Chang -comare now the Republic's answer to lan Trevayne." "We're going back to Zephrain?" Han was stu

"rrevayne is coming to us.

He's staging a breakout sometime in the next five standard months." Han sat down heavily. It had all come at her too fast, she thought dazedly. The homecoming, her medal and promotion, all the secrecy and security--notow this. She , couldn't have understood correctly. to.....

"Five months." She shook her head. "Magda, it isn't possible. He doesn't have enough hulls to mount a sustained offensivc not a decisive one now that we know what he's got and the panic factor's been eliminated, and there's no point in his taking losses for anything indecisive. Besides, those monsters of his take a long time to build they mass over a half million to

"But that's crazy, too," Han protested quietly. "rhere's no way they could coordinate.

I never figured out how they get messages back and forth, but it seems pretty clumsy, however they do it." "Right again," Magda nodded, "but let me show you something." She rose, and Han's eyes widened in amazement.

"Damn! I keep forgetting to allow for that." Magda stood back from her desk and patted her stomach with a wry frown. Her new figure, Han thought with a helpless chuckle, was definitelt non-reg.

"What's so fu