"Namkha Pasang," she said, "that doesn't sound like Aubert's usual style to me." Her tone and manner were both much firmer than most of Pankarma's followers would have been prepared to show him, especially when he was obviously so angry, but she met his irate glare calmly.
"I know he's an unmitigated pain in the ass," she continued. "Even more so than most Empies. But one of the problems I've always had with him is the way he talks his way around problems instead of addressing them directly. Personally, I've always suspected that what he's really got in mind is just to keep us talking long enough to keep us out of the field until after the Incorporation vote. Either he's spinning things out to accomplish that, or else he really is a complete and total idiot. Or maybe it's a combination of the two. Either way, I've never heard him say anything quite that … direct."
"It's what he meant, whatever he may have said!" Pankarma shot back.
"That may be true. But if we're going to expect our people to follow our lead, we've got to be certain that what we tell them about our contacts with Aubert and his people doesn't get dismissed as exaggeration," Thaktu said firmly. "We can interpret all we want to, but we've got to give them the original text the same way it was given to us."
Pankarma's glare intensified, and she shrugged.
"Sooner or later what he actually said-his exact words, I mean, not what he may really have meant-is going to get out. Better that our people should hear those words from us, and not start to wonder if we've been … embroidering all along."
"All right," Pankarma said finally. He inhaled deeply, then let the air out explosively. "All right," he repeated. "You're right. I know that. But he just pisses me off with that sanctimonious, oh-so-civilized, nose-in-the-air attitude of his."
"Namkha, he'd piss you off no matter what his attitude was," Thaktu replied, smiling at him at last. "Admit it. You've never met an Empie yet that you didn't hate on sight."
"Maybe. All right," Pankarma actually chuckled, "certainly. But he's a special case, even for an Empie." The Liberation Front's leader shook his head. "At any rate, he did agree to sit down and 'discuss my position' with me again. But that was as far as it went. He's ready to 'discuss' till the sun goes nova, but he's not about to meet any of our demands. He's not even willing to come halfway! Basically, we can talk all we want, but in the end, we're going to go right on doing things his way."
"To be fair-which I don't want to be any more than you do-he may not have a lot of wiggle room," Thaktu observed. "The Empies' fundamental policy towards people like us is pretty well established, after all."
"But there's always been some room for local adjustments, Ang Jangmu," Pankarma argued. "He could modify the more objectionable aspects of his own policies if he really wanted to!"
"Probably," Thaktu allowed. "But Out-World Affairs has to sign off on that, even if it's only by looking the other way, and the ministry won't do it unless the local Governor convinces his boss that he's not going to get a vote in favor of Incorporation anytime soon."
"Exactly," Pankarma growled. "It's how they try to bribe the poor benighted locals into voting in favor next time around. Getting them to do that in our case is the whole point of the Movement!"
Thaktu nodded. Despite the fact that she was the senior of the dozen or so GLF leaders who'd gone off-world for training under the FALA's auspices, she didn't actually share Pankarma's belief that they could ultimately convince the Terran Empire that Gyangtse was enough more trouble than it was worth for it to simply go away and leave them alone. Whatever the Freedom Alliance might think it could ultimately accomplish, that simply wasn't going to happen. But if the GLF and its adherents could produce enough resistance to Incorporation, they might at least be able to win enough concessions to prevent the total disappearance of their traditional way of life and liberties into the Empire's voracious maw.
"From what you're saying," she said, after a moment, "Aubert made it pretty clear he doesn't intend to give any ground at all, right?"
"I think you might say that," Pankarma agreed in a tone of massive understatement. "From what I can see, he expects the Incorporation referendum to pass this time. Which means there's not a chance in hell of our ever getting our independence back, as far as he's concerned. And there's sure as hell not any reason for him to ask his own masters to let him grant us any greater local autonomy as a Crown World if he thinks we're all about to vote to become good little helots living on an Incorporated World."
"Well," Thaktu said, her expression suddenly darker, "I suppose that means it's time we decided just how far we're really prepared to go to change his mind about us, isn't it?"
Chapter Four
"I don't think this is exactly what the mission planners had in mind, Leo," Alicia said, looking out across the rugged valley.
"Sure it was," Medrano said with a slow grin. The thickset PFC lay comfortably on his back, head pillowed on his backpack, chewing on a strand of the local ecosystem's tough alpine grass. Gyangtse was a mountainous planet, the river valley below them was high in those mountains, and their present perch was almost two hundred meters above the valley floor. That put it high enough that Alicia's lungs felt a bit tight, even after two weeks of acclimating morning runs, as they labored to provide her with sufficient oxygen, but it also gave them an outstanding field of view.
"I thought we were supposed to be pretending to be guerrillas," Alicia said, looking over her shoulder at him.
"Which we are," Medrano said virtuously, and waved one hand at Gregory Hilton, Bravo Team's senior rifleman. "Tell our larva we're being good guerrillas, Greg."
"We're being good guerrillas," Hilton said obediently, turning his head to grin at Alicia.
"With plasma rifles?" Alicia raised one eyebrow skeptically, and Hilton chuckled.
"Hey, I'm not in charge-he is!" he said, and a jab at a thumb at the reclining Medrano.
A rifle squad normally consisted of thirteen Marines, divided into two fire teams, each built around a plasma rifle, a grenadier, and three riflemen, all under its own corporal, and a sergeant to command the squad. At the moment, Third Squad was still three warm bodies understrength. Alicia's arrival had brought Bravo Team's riflemen up to strength, but Alpha Team was short a grenadier, and Sergeant Metternich was also short one corporal. Which was why Medrano, as Bravo Team's plasma gunner, was filling in as the team leader.
"Anything worth doing is worth doing well," Medrano said now, with a grin.
Alicia looked at him, still more than a little dubious, but she decided it was time to keep her mouth shut. Despite the degree of good-natured grief the rest of her squad had visited upon her as part of the initiation process, Sergeant Metternich-and Medrano-had proved quite approachable. At the same time, she was the newest newbie imaginable, all too well aware that she was grossly inexperienced compared to all of her fellows.
Medrano watched her expression, then sat up with a sigh.
"Look, Larva," he said patiently, "you were there when the militia got their brief on what's supposed to happen today, right?" Alicia nodded, and he shrugged. "Did they strike you as real competent?"
"Well … ."
"What I thought," Medrano snorted. "Overconfident, undertrained, thickheaded 'weekend warriors,' right?"
"I'm sure they do the best they can with the training time available," Alicia replied, but she heard the edge of excuse-making in her own voice, and Hilton and the other Marines on the position with her chuckled harshly.