Thoughts of the weather turned his mind to the storm ripping through the entire Federation. He couldn't believe the tales coming out of Novaya Petersburg! Did those madmen think they were all back in the days of the tsar? That the Federation was run by Rasputin? And who were they, these men who called themselves 'Kadets' once more? Kerensky? Trotsky? Fedor had no more love for the Corporate Worlds than the next man, but the Federation was the Federation! It had risen from the flames of Old Terra's Great Eastern War and reached out to the stars, protecting its people as it placed them on worlds light-years from their birthworld. It was the Federation of Howard Anderson and Ivan Antonov. Four centuries it had stood-what were a hundred years or so of mistakes against that? And Novaya Rodinans were Russians: they knew a thing or two about endurance.
But these crazy Kadets-! Madness! Even if they succeeded, where would his wheat go? There had to be some form of foreign exchange-and who in the Fringe needed foodstuffs? What Fringe farming world could sell Novaya Rodina the manufactured goods she needed?
So Fedor plowed and sowed, for the day would come when the crazy men realized they couldn't succeed. It might be necessary to chastise them a little first, but in the end the Federation would take them back. And when it did, Fedor Kazin would have a crop ready, by God!
He looked up as thunder muttered and the squall line in the east swept closer. He wasn't going to finish today after alclass="underline" best to stop at the end of this furrow and head home. 'Tasha would have supper waiting.
Pieter Tsuchevsky looked around the quiet room at his fellow Kadets. So this was how it felt to be a rebel. He'd never really wanted to be one. He doubted any of the others had. But it was inevitable for those who controlled the old government to call their opponents "rebels." He'd known that from the start, just as he'd known where his first public expressions of discontent might lead.
They'd led here-to the men and women who had declared themselves the new Duma of Novaya Rodina and stated their determination to withdraw from the Federation . . . not without fear and trembling. There was something almost holy about the Federation, but a government was only a government, and surely its function must be to make the lives of its people better, not worse. The purpose of an elective assembly couldn't be to murder its own members!
Pieter had never met Fionna MacTaggart, but he'd corresponded with her over the light-years, and even from her recorded messages he'd felt the intelligence and determination which had made her the Fringe's leader. Had she done her job too well? Was murder the fate small minds always reserved for great minds they could not silence? He didn't know, but from the morning the news arrived, he'd known the Federation was doomed. Anything that rotten at its core deserved to die, and die it would.
If only communications were less chaotic!
Novaya Rodina had been supplied with a relay system during the Fourth Interstellar War, but the system had been much more important to the rest of the Federation then. The planet's most famous son, Ivan Antonov, had commanded the Grand Alliance's fleets during the critical, early days of desperate resistance to the Arachnids, and a lot of Fringe systems had been tied into the net for purely military reasons. But the postwar Assembly had given maintaining the civilian relays a far lower precedence, especially after the Corporate Worlds began manipulating the Assembly so blatantly, and, one by one, the Fringer components had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Fleet communications continued to move with reasonable speed, but only the far slower courier drones remained to service the civilian-and political-needs of worlds like Novaya Rodina.
And even those drones had become notoriously unreliable since the Kontravian Mutiny. No doubt many nav beacons had been shut down or destroyed, but it went further than that. The Corporate Worlds handled a tremendous percentage of the total drone traffic, just as they monopolized the freight lanes. Almost certainly they were tampering with the drones to keep the "rebels" disorganized.
Well, if he were in their position, he would probably do the same. But in the meantime, it left him with the devil of a problem! He cleared his throat, and the eyes around the table returned to his face.
"So there you have it, comrades," he said slowly. "The Federation has declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus . . . among other rights. And we-you and I, my friends-we are all rebels." He shrugged. "For myself, I realized this must come, but possibly some of you did not. So it is only fair that we reconsider what we have done, I think. We've made our gesture, voiced our protest. Is that all we wish to do? If so, we'd best dispatch a courier drone with apologies and renewed protestations of loyalty at once! But if we don't, if we continue as we've begun to follow the lead of the Kontravians, God alone knows where we shall end."
"Pieter," Magda Petrovna stroked her prematurely silvering hair, "you say you knew this would come. Do you think we were all fools, Pieter Petrovich?" She smiled in gentle mockery. "How noble of you to give us a choice! But tell us-what will you do when we all run crying home to babushka Terra?"
A soft laugh ran around the table, and Pieter smiled unwillingly; but he also shook his head.
"This is no laughing matter, Magda. This is life and death. Oh, we hold the cities and universities, but the farmers and ranchers think we're mad. They won't raise a hand if it comes to a fight-and we've little chance of defeating the Federation if they would!"
"Mega shit!"
The tart remark could come only from one man, and Pieter's eyes twinkled as he turned to Semyon Jakov, the single megaovis rancher in their Duma. The old man's blue eyes were fiery as he puffed his walrus mustache, looking as fierce as one of his huge, vaguely sheeplike herdbeasts.
"No way we could beat the Federation, no," he snapped, "but we won't be fighting the Federation-only an Innerworld rump, and well you know it, Pieter Petrovich Tsuchevsky! And they won't even have the full Navy. Damnation, man, the Kontravians took a task force-a task force-in one snap! D'you honestly think they haven't lost more ships? I wouldn't be surprised to hear they've lost half the Fleet by now, Pieter!"
"True, Semyon, but Novaya Rodina is no Navy base. There were no ships for us to seize; it was pure luck Skywatch supported us. They could've blown our leaky old tubs out of space-and those are still the best ships we can scare up. No, Semyon Illyich, whatever the Kontravians may have taken, we can't fight what the Federation can send here."
"But why send anything?" Tatiana Illyushina asked plaintively. "We're not exactly the richest of the Fringe Worlds!"
"No, Tatiana," Magda said gently, "but we are what the Fleet manuals call a 'choke point.' "
The others listened carefully. Semyon Jakov had been a Marine for fifteen years, but Magda had reached the rank of captain in Frontier Fleet before resigning in protest over the Assembly's policies.
"A choke point?" Tatiana asked.
"An especially valuable warp nexus," Magda explained. "The way the warp lines lie, some systems control access to several others. The Corporate Worlds are mostly on early choke points of the Federation. That's why they're so powerful; every ship to the Heart Worlds has to go through choke points they control."
Tatiana nodded. When it came to the economic implications of the Corporate Worlds' galactic position, every Fringe schoolchild understood.