Chapter One
GALE WARNING
"Politics is the womb in which war is developed."
General Karl von Clausewitz, On War
Ladislaus Skjorning frowned at his watch and re-scanned
the sparsely-peopled late-night anteroom of Federation
Hall, but there was no sign of Greuner. It was unlike him
to be late, and, from the code phrase, his news was
urgent, so where was he?
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned slowly,
one hand moving unobtrusively to the small slug thrower in
the sleeve of his loose tunic of Beaufort seawool. A man
faced him in the conservative informal dress of New
Zurich's upper classes-but it wasn't Greuner. Greuner was
a little man; this fellow rivaled Skjorning's own 202
centimeters, and, unlike many Corporate Worlders, he
looked fit and mean. Ladislaus eyed him with hidden
distaste, and the muzzle of the invisible slug gun settled
on the newcomer's navel.
"Mister Skjorning?"
"Aye, I'm to be Skjorning." Ladislaus' deep voice sawed
across the thin New Zurich accent like a doomwhale catcher
through fog.
"Mister Greuner sends his regrets."
"Not to come?" Ladislaus asked slowly, broad face
expressionless as scorn for his uncouth dialect flared in
the Corporate Worlder's mocking eyes. He plowed on like an
icebreaker, pandering to the man's contempt. "Would it
chance he's to be sending a wording why not?"
"Illness, I believe." The Corporate Worlder's mouth was a
thin slash of dislike as he eyed the bearded giant.
Skjorning was a Titan for any world-especially a heavy
grav planet, even one whose chill temperatures favored
large people-but the one huge hand he could see was a
laborer's, thick-knuckled and scarred by a childhood with
the nets and a young manhood with the purse seines and
harpoons.
"Not to be serious, I'm hoping," Ladislaus said sadly.
"I'm afraid it may be. In fact, I believe he's decided to
return to New Zurich for... treatment."
"I'm to see. Well, grateful I'm to be for your wording,
Mister-?"
"Fouchet," the tall man said briefly.
"Aye, Fouchet. Remembered to me you'll be, Mister
Fouchet." Skjorning turned away with a bovine nod, and
Fouchet watched him enter a deserted washroom. He started
to follow, then stopped and turned on a scornful heel.
Whatever Greuner might have thought, that thick-witted
prole was no danger.
The washroom door eased slowly open behind him, and one
brilliant blue eye followed his retreating back. The slug
gun eased back into its sleeve clip regretfully, and
Skjorning stepped out of the washroom.
"Aye, Mister Fouchet," he said softly, barely a trace of
accent coloring his voice, "I'll remember you."
* * *
Fionna MacTaggart looked away from her terminal and rubbed
her eyes wearily, then glanced at the clock and allowed
herself a crooked grin. Old Terran days were tiresomely
short for someone reared to the thirty-two hour Beaufort
day. The air was bothersomely thin, and the gravity was
irksomely low, but one could grow used to anything,
including feeling tired at such a ridiculously early hour.
She rose and poured a cup of Terran coffee, one of the
only two things about the motherworld she would truly miss
when she finally returned to Beaufort for good.
A chime sounded, and she crooked a speculative eyebrow and
pressed the admittance key. The door hissed open, and
Ladislaus Skjorning towered on the threshold, his blue
eyes bright with annoyance.
"Damn it, Chief!" Mister Fouchet would never have
recognized his tone. "You're still not checking IDs!"
"No, I'm not," Fionna said coolly. "Not inside our own
enclave, anyway. Nor am I meeting guests at the door with
a laser in my hand." She shook her head with mock
severity. "Sometimes I think all this security nonsense is
going to your head, Lad."
"Do you, now?" Ladislaus sank into one of the recliners,
his anger ebbing, and closed his eyes wearily. Fionna's
face tightened with sudden concern. "I wish our friend
Greuner shared your opinion."
"He didn't show?" Fionna knelt on the recliner next to him
and massaged one taut shoulder.
"No," he said softly.
"They got to him, is it?" she asked, equally softly.
"Aye. Hustled him back to New Zurich-I hope. But there's
little to be putting past a Corporate Worlder who smells
gelt, Chief." She felt him relaxing as her strong fingers
dug the tension from him, then frowned and stopped
massaging, leaning her forearms on his massively muscled
shoulder.
"You're right, Lad. I just wish I knew what he had for
us!"
"I feel the same," Ladislaus rumbled, allowing himself a
frown, "but let's be grateful for what he already gave us.
He turned from his own to be helping us because he thought
it right; now I've the thinking he's to be paying for it
soon and late."
"I know, Lad. I know." She patted his shoulder, smiling
contritely, and he felt a surge of guilt. It was hard
enough heading a Fringe World delegation without your own
people snapping at you. Besides, Fionna was right to
worry. The one clue they had to Greuner's message was the
phrase "Gale Warning," and that was the code he and the
little man had arranged to indicate a major Corporate
World offensive against the Fringe.
"I did pick up something a mite useful," he proffered as a
peace offering. "The name of the new New Zurich bully boy,
I'm to be thinking. Fouchet. A tall, mean son-of-a sand-
leech with a face like boiled blubber."
"He's their new security chief?" Fionna asked, eyes
narrowing.
"Chief, you know they're not to be using such titles!
They're not so crude as that-hell to be called
Computerman's Syndic or some such. But, aye, he's the one.
And had he just a little more curiosity or a little less
brain-mind, I'm not sure which it was-it's squeezing
Greuner's information from him I'd be the now."
"Lad," Fionna said sternly, "I've told you we can't
operate that way! They already call us 'barbarians'. What
do you think they'll call us if you start acting like
that?"
"Aye? I don't have the thinking it's to mind me the much,"
Ladislaus said, laying the accent with a trowel. "It's
maybe 'Corporate Worlder' they're to call me if I have the
doing of their own against them. And where's the
difference to lie? Yon Corporate Worlder flays his whales
with money, Chief; I'm only after the doing of it by
hand."
Fionna started to reply tartly, then stopped. She and
Ladislaus had grown up together on the cold and windy seas
of Beaufort, and she knew it irked him to play the
homespun fool for men like Fouchet-but she also knew he
recognized the advantages of his role. During his time in
the Federation's navy, Ladislaus had acquired a
cosmopolitanism at odds with the Innerworld notion of a
Fringer, though, like anyone, he tended to revert to the
speech patterns of childhood under stress. The slow
Beaufort accent had drawn attention even in the Fleet,
where such idiosyncrasies were far from rare, and Lad had
learned the hard way to speak excellent Standard English.
But his sense of humor had stood him in good stead, and
he'd also learned to ape the stereotype so well few of his
victims ever realized they were being hoodwinked. He found
his hayseed persona useful as head of security for the
Beaufort delegation, and he usually enjoyed it. Yet it
seemed this latest episode had cracked his normal shield
of humor. He'd evidently become closer to Greuner than
she'd thought... and he was right, damn it! The little
banker had jeopardized his career, certainly, and possibly
his life, to help worlds he'd never even visited-and now
he'd pay for it. She felt a sudden hot stinging behind her
own eyes, and her hands squeezed his shoulder in silence
until she felt the new tension run slowly out of them both
once more....
* * *
A low, murmuring rumble filled the chamber, and Fionna
MacTaggart looked across from her console at the tall
podium in the center of the vast hemispherical room. It
stood over two hundred meters from her seat in the center
of the Beaufort delegation, separated from the ranked
tiers of delegates by a floor of ebon marble shot with
white veins like tangled skeins of stars. After twenty-
five years in the Assembly-twenty of them as head of her
planet's delegation-Fionna had learned the bitter, sordid
realities of the Federation's government, but the Chamber
of Worlds still took her breath away. She wished she could
have seen it when the Assembly had lived up to its
promise, but not even the gangrenous present of
partisanship and exploitation could diminish the grandeur
of the ideal this chamber had been built to enshrine.
Her eyes swept over upward-soaring walls hung with the
flags and banners of scores of planetary systems, all
dominated by the space-black Federation banner with its
golden sunburst and the blue planet and white moon of the
homeworld. The air stirred coolly against her skin as she
adjusted her hushphone headset over her red hair.
Ladislaus was going to be late if he didn't get a move on.
A tiny light glowed on her panel as the Sergeant at Arms
warned her a member of her delegation was on his way, and
she looked up, hiding a smile as Skjorning lumbered down
the aisle. Thank God none of their constituents ever
visited Old Terra! They'd have a fit if they ever saw the
role Ladislaus had assumed so well.
The big man sidled bashfully through the crowd in a state
of perpetual embarrassment, then sank gratefully into the
chair at Fionna's left hand and leaned forward to fumble
clumsily with his hushphone.
"Any clues, Lad?" she asked softly.
"No, Chief." Ladislaus' lips barely moved. "Only the code,
and it's a seaharrower's own luck that much got to us."
Fionna frowned and nodded in agreement. She started to say
something more, but the echo of a soft chime cut her
short.
The Legislative Assembly of the Terran Federation was in
session.
* * *
Fionna fidgeted uneasily as the opening formalities
filtered past her. She could see the Galloway's World
delegation from where she sat, and Simon Taliaferro wasn't
in his usual place. The New Zurich delegation was less
than ten meters away, and she noted sinkingly that Oskar
Dieter wasn't with his fellows, either. Whatever Greuner
had tried to warn them of, those two would be at the heart
of it. Her fingers flew over her information console,
keying their names and punching up a cross index of the
committees on which they sat, for she'd learned long since
that it was in the closed committee meetings that the
Corporate Worlds wove their webs.
The screen lit, confirming her memory. Both men were from
populous worlds; combined with their personal seniority in
the Assembly and the "representative membership" committee
rules the Corporate Worlds had rammed through twelve years
ago, that gave them membership on dozens of committees...
including shared membership on Foreign Relations and
Military Oversight. She frowned. Not only was each a
member of both, but Taliaferro chaired Foreign Relations
and Dieter chaired Military Oversight. It was an ominous
combination.
The Clerk finished the formalities of the last session's
minutes and stepped aside for David Haley. By long
tradition, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly was a
citizen of Old Terra, and Fionna listened to his beautiful
Standard English as he turned the Assembly to business,
wishing his office still had the power it once had. Unlike
most of his Heart World fellows, Haley had traveled to the
Fringe; he knew the hostility and hatred for the Corporate
Worlds festering on the Fringe Worlds-and what was
happening under the false cordiality of the delegates'
relations. Unfortunately, there was little he could do
about it.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," Haley said, "the
Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has requested
a closed session of the Assembly sitting as a committee of
the whole. Are there any objections?"
Fionna keyed her console and saw Haley glance down as her
light pulsed on his panel. Then he looked out over the sea
of faces to the Beaufort delegation, and his face vanished
from the giant screen behind the podium, replaced by
Fionna's, though his image continued to stare up from the
small screen before each delegate.
"The Chair recognizes the Honorable Assemblywoman for
Beaufort," he said, and Fionna's headset beeped to
indicate a live mike.
"Mister Speaker, this is highly irregular," she said
quietly. "I would ask why the Chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee feels the need for a closed session?
And why we were not informed in advance?"
The face on her console screen was clearly unhappy. Haley
was too experienced to show his emotions openly, but the
assemblymen were too experienced not to read him anyway.
"Ms. MacTaggart, I can only tell you that the Chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee and Minister of Foreign
Affairs Assad jointly have requested the Assembly's
attention to a matter of grave import. That is all the
information I have. Do you wish to object to the request
for closure?"
Fionna certainly did, but it would accomplish little,
since she would know no more about Taliaferro's plans
after blocking the secret session than she did now. Damn
him! Despite the warning, he'd managed to keep her
completely in the dark!
"No, Mister Speaker," she said softly. "I have no
objection."
"Is there any debate?" Haley asked. There was none, and
the Speaker gaveled the Assembly into secret session.
* * *
The chamber buzzed with side conversations as the Sergeant
at Arms and his staff escorted the news people out. The
great doors boomed softly shut, and sophisticated anti-
snooping defenses were set in motion. There would be no
way for the outside world to discover what was said or
done here unless a delegate leaked the word.
Such "accidental leaks" were far from uncommon these days,
though they once had been. As the Fringer population base
had slowly grown to challenge the Corporate Worlds'
domination of the Assembly, the campaign of secret slander
and counter-slander had taken on vicious overtones.
Initially, the Outworlders had been at a considerable
disadvantage, but Fionna was almost saddened by how well
they'd learned to play the game since. Only this time,
leaks wouldn't be enough. Greuner's disappearance proved
that.
Two new figures appeared beside Haley. One was Oskar
Dieter, though he was as careful as ever to stay in the
background. The other was Simon Taliaferro, possibly the
man the Fringers hated most of all.
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