But they worked forand in the name of Governor-General Trevayne, who, even though he was the sole member of the executive branch, wasn't even a member of the Assembly, much less responsible to it. He was responsible directly to the Federation Legislative Assembly on Old Terra--with which he was only infrequently and circuitously in touch by some means Han had yet to uncover. It was one of those legal tangles which homo sapiens secretly and guiltily loves, she'd decided, but it worked.., as her present captivity demonstrated all too well.
The major ushered her through the bustling outer offices and knocked at the Governor-General's private office doors. A voice from within called admittance, and the major pushed the old-fashioned doors open and stepped back, coming to a sort of half-attention as she passed him. He closed the doors quietly, not without a sigh of regret.
Normally he had no strong interest in the meetings of his superiors, but this time he couldn't quite suppress his curiosity. Somehow, he felt, any discussion between those personalities was bound to produce some very interesting by-products.
Trevayne sat behind his desk, wearing the carefully-tailored civilian dress he permitted his Governor-General persona. A broad window behind him overlooked Prescott City, and a cabinet below it held two holo cubes. One showed three women--noto, Han decided, a woman and two teen-aged girls. In the other, a dark young man in the black-and-silver of a TFN ensign tried not to look too pleased with himself. She looked away and came to attention before the desk, and a brief silence ensued as she and Trevayne regarded one another and both recalled another meeting in another office.
Trevayne spoke first. "Please be seated," he invited. "I prefer to stand, sir." "Just as you like," he nodded, sounding unsurprised.
"But please stand easy, Admiral Li." What he'd said registered as she went into a stiff "at ease," and Trevayne smiled briefly at the minute widening of her eyes--her equivalent, he suspected, of openmouthed astonishment.
"Yes," he continued, "we've received one of our infrequent messages from the Innerworlds. It seems the government has, for legalistic reasons with which I'll not bore you, has chosen to accord limited belligerent status to those worlds styling themselves "the Terran Republic."" He sounded as ff he'd bitten into something sour. "lis entails, among other things, recognition of all commissions bestowed by that. entity. I have, of course, no alternative but to conform to this policy." He allowed himself a wry smile. "I console myself with the 'thought that its purpose is 'n to confer a compliment but to secure a convenience," in the words of Winston Churchill, with whom you may not be familiar --was "On the contrary,, Admiral," Han interrupted. "Winston Churchill was a politician on Old Terra during the Age of Mao Tse-Tungwa very eloquent spokesman for an imperial system which was already doomed." Trevayne was momentarily speechless, but he recovered quickly and resumed. "We're also in receipt of one other bit of news which I think you'll find pertinent. The Federation has agreed to a general prisoner exchange to reclaim the loyalist personnel incarcerated by the various Fringe Worlds.
You'll be leaving Xanadu within the week." It was Han's turn to find herself completely at a loss. Trevayne awaited her response with curiosity.
"Admiral," she said finally, "I believe I will sit down." He motioned' her to a chair. "You will, I trust, be able to inform your superiors that you've been well treated?" "Yes," she admitted, still grappling with the stunning news. Then she shook herself. "In particular, I'd like to commend the compound medical staff for their skill and, even more, for their humanity." She thought of Daffyd Llewellyn on another planet, and smiled. "That quality seems to transcend political alignments-at least in the best doctors." Trevayne nodded, declining to mention the consderable care he and Doctor Yuan had given to selecting the prison camp medical staff.
"And," she continued, "please convey my respects and gratitude to Grand Councilor Ortega for the interest she has taken in our welfare." She watched curiously for his reaction, but he only nodded again.
"I will. And in return, I'll ask you to convey a message for me." He gazed at her over steepled fingers. "Certain medical personnel from Zephrain, whom we'd thought lost to Tangri corsairs, were repatriated by your government before the negotiations for the present exchange had been formally begun. From them, we've learned that they were in fact captured by humans, of a sort--former TFN personnel indulging in a bit of free-lance piracy." His words could have been light.
They weren't.
"Historically--was his eyes grew very hard his-combrigandage by renegades purporting to represent one side or another is one of the inevitable consequences of civil wars -comone of the many nasty consequences which the initiators of the breakups always seem to overlook, and for which they never accept the slightest responsibility. But I disgress." His expression softened a trifle.
"Please express to your superiors my thanks for repatriating our people. And," he added, leaning forward and smiling very slightly, "please accept my personal thanks for ridding the Galaxy of a partstcularly loathsome excrescence on the human race." Hah nodded, taken slightly aback, for she hadn't even known the doctors and nurses had been returned, though she'd urged the Admiralty to do so. On the other hand, her recommendations might have had more weight ff a certain portion of the Republican Navy hadn't disapproved of her handling of the situation. If Ruyard's surrender had been accepted, they pointed out, the Fleet would have gained five cruisers, plus his destroyers.
She and Tomanaga had argued that her actions had been good and prudent tactics, precluding any possibility of further treachery on Ruyard's part and so terrifying the pirates still on the planet as to prevent any last minute atrocities.
Nevertheless, Han had been officially censured, though the First Space Lord had told her privately that he approved her handling of the battle.
Personally, Han had never considered the episode "battle" at all, though it was now officially called the Battle of Siegfried. From her perspective, it had been a case of vermin extermination.
Silence stretched out across the desk as Trevayne toyed with a stylus, and Han sensed an unaccustomed hesitance, even an awkwardness, on his part.
"Admiral," she asked tentatively at last, "may I go?" "Eh?" He looked up quickly, as if caught off balance while trying to formulate a statement or question. "You may," he said gruffly.
Han stood and walked toward the doors. Then she stopped and turned back to face him.
"Admiral, if I may ask... why did you bring me here to tell me this, instead of simply sending word through Commandant Chanet?" Trevayne glanced back down at his desk for a moment, seeming to gather himself. Then he looked back up at her.
"Admiral Li,"" hb almost blurted, "were you, by any chance, involved in the raid on Galloway's World?" Han eyed him sharply. Now why, she'wondered, did he want to know that? There'd been some ugly repercussions over the strike, she recalled, despite the fact that every strategist had always known the Jamieson Archipelago was a primary strategic target. Still, both sides had been horrified by the heavy civilian casualties, and the raid had led to the de facto agreement banning nuclear strikes on inhabited planets. But why... his Understanding struck. Her glance switched quickly to the holos as she remembered a conversation in Admiral Rutgers" office, and her eyes widened in horrified understanding.
And then her gaze met Trevayne's.
His eyes were almost beseeching, and he read the shocked compassion in hers. For an insbled'ant, there was an intangible bond between them.
Han needed to say something--she knew not what-- to reach out to this man who'd lost so much. She opened her mouth to speak.
... and remembered the Second Battle of Zephrain, when Fourth Fleet hung beyond weapon range and the deadly HBM'S kept coming in spite of her desperately repeated surrender signals. As the missiles which had already been fired looped impossibly back, closing through the storm of counter missiles and point defense lasers, joined by fresh salvos from the enemy fleet, Han had sat in her command chair, giving her orders calmly, holding her people toget
her even as she waited to die with them.
And now she looked at the dark, menacingly bearded face across the desk and saw not a man whose family had died but the callous, murderous commander who had been willing to butcher her helpless crews.
"No, Admiral." Her voice rang in the still room. "I had no part in that heroic action!" She watched Ian Trevayne rise, his dark face expressionless despite the terrible fire that blazed suddenly in his eyes. She watched him walk around his desk, and the furious anger of his anguish came with him. She sensed the murder in his heart, but she held herself stiffly, her own eyes hard and hating as they burned into his, refusing to flinch.
He stopped, fisted hands clenched at his sides, and muscles trembled in his arms as he fought to keep them there--comfought to control the furious need to smash them into her suddenly hateful face.
And then he straightened, expelled a long breath, and was no longer a mere vessel of fury. He jabbed the button which summoned the Marine guards.
"Remove the prisoner," he told them, looking over her head. They did. And as they hustled her out of the door, she looked back, and in his face she seemed to see a reflection of herself, like a mirror of the soul. She couldn't explain the sudden surge of empathic understanding, for she herself had never felt what she saw in that face... except, possibly.
Comprehension came wrenchingly as she remembered Argosy Polaris and those child-bodies. And at that moment, she knew exactly how Ian Trevayne saw those to whom he'd almost done what she had done to Arthur Ruyard.
Their eyes met one more time, and for the barest instant the bond was back. But now their tenuous, shared understanding encompassed the unforgivable wrongs they'd done one another, the wrongs that were somehow a micrb-cosm of the whole, colossal tragedy in which they were caught up.
The understanding flared up between them, hideous with the deadly, conflicting tides of duty and desperation and hatred which could bring good and decent human beings to such a pass, but for only an instant... then it was cut off by the closing office doors.
Trevayne stared at the closed doors for a moment. Then he walked to his office's private washroom and stared into the mirror for a long, long time, as ff prolonging the hideous glimpse he'd gotten into his soul.
COUNTERSTRIKE The prisoners had departed and spring was turning into summer when the Orion courier craft emerged from the Zephrain-Rehfrak warp point. The commander of the picket stationed there gad explicit orders covering this rare occurrence, and a brief message was smoothly transferred before the Orions departed as quickly as they'd come. The message was beamed to TFNS Horatio Nelson in a high-speed squeal carried by a hair-thin laser, and Nelson's receiving dishes scooped it out of space and beamed it down to Government House with equal security, and Ian Trevayne called an emergency meeting of the Grand Council.
"The Orions are being even more uninformative than usual," he told them. "I'hev say only that an emissary will be arriving here from Rehrak in less than three standard weeks. Period." He shrugged.
"This w/il be the first time an Orion has come to Zephrain since the war began--more than that; as far as I'm aware, it will be the first time a highly-placed Orion official has paid an official call on any section of the Federation during that time. There's no hint as to the purpose of the visit, but I'll wager it's something big. Remember, the Orions don't prize prostix-ity the way we do. Among them, the more important an announcement is, the more terse it's likely to be." He hoped the implication wouldn't be lost on certain overly-verbal persons, but he suspected it would be. "So," he
concluded, "this emissary will probably be quite a high-ranking Orion. Possibly even Leornak himself." "Or someone even higher?" queried Barry de Parma. "There sts no one higher in this part of Orion space," Trevayne said flatly.
"Only five Orion mfiitary officers outrank Leornak'zilshisdrow, but that's only part of it.
Theoretically, the Khanate is an absolute monarchy, but the district governors are practically==== autonomous as long as they follow the Khan's policy guidelines. You might say Leornak has what we'd consider permanent emergency wartime powers, ff only because of the sheer distance between him and the Khan. No, anyone higher than he would have to come all the way from New Valkha itself; and ff we rate that kind of attention, God only knows what's afoot!
"At any rate, we have to decide on the nature of our welcome. I propose to greet the envoy aboard Nelson. It never hurts to impress the Orions--though, needless to say, I have no intention of inviting as knowledgeable an old cat as Leornak to examine our new weaponry!" They all nodded at that. "And I think we should have a high-powered political presence on board: Mister de Parma, Ms. Ortega, and Mister MacFarland." Again, there was no demurral. De Parma, as titular head of the Grand Council, was an obvious choice. So '" Bryan MacFadand, Grand Councilor for External Affairs. He'd always had little to do, inasmuch as the Provisional Government's only exchanges with other human polities had been restricted to nuclear warheads and the only nonhuman powers with whom the Rim had contact were the Orions (whose official policy was one of non-intercourse for the duration) and the Tangri (whose permanent policy was that humans were simply an exceptionally dangerous species of prey).
Now it seemed his hour might have arrived. Besides, Trevayne found him a refreshing personality. His world of Aotearoa, as its name suggested, had been settled initially by New Zealanders, but most of its subsequent immigrants had been from Australia.
Now the Aotearoans were more Aussie than the Aussies--just listening to MacFarland reminded Trevayne of his tour at the Navy's strikefighter pilot program at Brisbane on Old Terra.
There was ahother, unspoken reason for including him, though. So far, the pressure of the war effort had kept the other Rim Worlds from resenting the disproportionate role played by Xandies in the Provisional Government, but it was only a matter of time. Trevayne intended to forestall it by involving as many non-Xandies as possible in high-level functions. Miriam, though a Xandy by adoption, wholeheartedly approved. She herself had no obvious business aboard Nelson, but no one questioned his decision to include her.
It was odd, he thought. In most times and places, a relationship like their never-acknowledged but widely-known one would have damaged her politically.
But it hadn't done so here. Perhaps, he thought wryly, it was because no matter how tightly allied thev were, she never hesitated to disagree (sometimes violently) when she thought he was wrongp-and her disagreements weren't always announced in private. No one could ever think Miriam Ortega's politics belonged to anyone but herself, and it showed even more strongly against the virtually unbroken deference her fellow Grand Councilors extended towards his policies.
Miriam looked up and hid a smile as his musing glance slid past her. She knew what he was thinking, just as she knew his habitual blind spot kept him from seeing the answer. Part of her fellows" acceptance came from the fact that she refused to be awed by their governor-general, but at least as much stemmed from the unique status their relationship had couferred upon her. In the eyes of the Rim population, Trevayne's standing was such that he was, quite simply, above resentment, and she, by close association with him, shared in the mana. Yet he would never understand the way it worked, she thought. He was too intimately acquainted with what he considered his weaknesses to accept that the Rim could see him--or her -comin that light. And she'd be damned before she'd in any way suggest it to him.
The Orion cutter completed its docking sequence in Nelson's boatbay, where Trevayne stood before a group that included Vice Admiral Sonja Desai, Commodore Genii Yoshinaka, and Captain Lewis Mujabi of the Nelson in addition to the Grand Councilors. The officers (including Trevayne) wore full dress uniform for the occasion, and each left shoulder bore the distinctive patch which Trevayne had recently authorized for the Rim armed forces: a ring of stars (one for each Rim system) surrounding the planet-and-moon of the Federation. Miriam had suggested that the stars should encircle a human hand with the digitus impudicus upraised to express the t
rue spirit of the Rim. Trevayne was privately convinced she was right, but he had--comreluctantly-- vetoed the suggestion.
The hatch opened, and the emissary emerged.
Trevayne said, simply, "No." "But yes!" Kevin Sanders beamed, stepping down the short gangway ramp with a spryness that longevity technology alone couldn't explain. He was, as usual, clearly enjoying himself.
Trevayne stepped forward and bent slightly so he could speak softly into Sanders' ear. "You old sod! How the hell did you talk the Orions into letting you through? No, wait, let me guess: I daresay you had your spies dredge up something in Leornak's sex life to hold over him!" "Admiral! I am cut to the quick! I'll have you know that I've never approved of blackmail. I much prefer bribery; greed is more dependable than fear. The fact is," San.ders grinned hugely, "I brought him a case of Jack Daniels. Been keeping him supplied since the war began." Then he became, if not serious, at least sincere. "It was necessary for a cabinet-level official to come here, Admiral, and I pulled every string in sight to be the one. May I say that's it's a pleasure to see you again? As a token of my esteem, I've brought you a case of Glen Grant." Trevayne's face was momentarily transfigured. Then he glared. "At least have the goodness to tell me what I'm being bribed to do." "All in good time, Admiral," Sanders said with another of his disarming chuckles. "For now, let's not keep the reception committee waiting." Trevayne introduced the Gray Eminence of Terran Intelligence to the officers and politicians. Sanders bowed over Miriam's hand with courtly grace, addressing her as "Madam Ortega" and, incredibly, leaving her almost flus- INSU-AECTION tered. The buger plays the gentleman of the old school to the hilt, Trevayne thought dourly.