Tonkovic swallowed. This was a nightmare. It couldn't be -happening-not to her .
"What should I-? I mean, how-?"
"You have to resign," Kanjer told her gently. Her eyes flashed in instant rejection, and he tightened his clasp on her hand. "Listen to me, Aleksandra! You have to resign. If you don't, they'll hound you out of office, anyway. It's going to happen. The only choice you have is how you leave."
"And why should I make it easy for the traitorous bastards?" she snapped with a return of spirit. "If they want to be rats scurrying over the side before the ship sinks, why should I give a single solitary damn about what they want?"
"Because if you don't, it's the end of your political career."
"And how much 'political career' does a President who resigns in disgrace have? No Planetary President's ever resigned, and you know it!"
"This is a panic reaction," Kanjer said. "The people who ought to recognize what you're trying to do are too frightened to defend you at the moment. But that doesn't mean they won't eventually realize you were right. That by stampeding into the Manties' arms under Alquezar's terms they've thrown away their best-possibly their only-hope of preserving our way of life and, not to put too fine a point on it, their own positions.
"But when that day comes, they'll still be a political force. Not as strong a force as before they threw away all their advantages, but still a force. And the only force dedicated to protecting what's left of our society. When they finally wake up and recognize what they've done, how bad the situation is, they'll need a leader. One who didn't stampede right along with them.
"You, Aleksandra. They'll need you ."
"What is this?" she demanded bitterly. "Some kind of cheerleader speech? Did they pick you to hand me my walking papers because they figured you could sugarcoat the pill, Mavro?"
"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. "But I'm not sugarcoating anything. It's going to be ugly, and it's going to be humiliating. For a while-possibly even for two or three T-years-you're going to be, at best, a voice crying in the wilderness. But I'm dead serious. Eventually, what's left of the Centralists and Moderates are going to realize they need a leader of stature. And you, as the woman who became a political martyr trying to protect them from their own panic, will be the only logical choice. That's why you have to resign now , before the impeachment bill's voted out. While it's still your choice, and you can tell the people who've abandoned you that you're walking away, with your head high, until the day they realize what a dreadful mistake they've made."
He paused, then shook his head.
"I can't promise you it'll work out the way I'm predicting," he admitted. "But you always said I was one of the best political strategists you knew. Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. But, in all honesty, what other choice to you have?"
She stared at him, listening to the sunny morning's wind popping the umbrella fringe like jubilantly clapping little hands, and tried to think of an answer to his question.
Chapter Fifty-Two
It was lonely in Snotty Row.
Aikawa was away in Copenhagen . Leo was still on Kornati. And Ragnhild was... gone. Only Helen and Paulo remained.
Helen sat in the observation dome, her heels on the edge of the seat cushion, her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins, and gazed out at the growing number of vessels in Montana orbit while she thought. It was very peaceful under the dome, and she let her eyes rest on Hexapuma's nearest orbital neighbor.
The heavy cruiser Warlock had been at Dresden when Ericsson arrived with Captain Terekhov's orders for any Navy ships in the system to join him in Montana. Captain Anders was junior to Captain Terekhov. As such, he'd had no choice but to obey, whatever he might think about his orders, and he and the destroyer Javelin had arrived in Montana two days before. Helen didn't know exactly what the Skipper had told Anders and Lieutenant Commander Jeffers, Javelin's CO, he had in mind. He might not have told them anything yet, she thought. But everybody aboard the Nasty Kitty had a pretty good idea by now, and she suspected the inter-ship grapevine must have carried at least a few hints to Anders and Jeffers.
Then, this morning, more ships had come in, this time from Talbott. Volcano had returned with Commander Eleanor Hope's Vigilant , another Star Knight -class cruiser, and the light cruiser Gallant , a sister of the Skipper's old Defiant , in tow, accompanied by two more destroyers— Rondeau and Aria , both old Chanson -class ships.
It was turning into a fairly respectable little squadron, she reflected. True, most of its ships verged on obsolescent, by Manticoran standards, but those standards were a bit high by anyone else's measure.
Of course, it was also, in many ways, a stolen squadron. All those ships were part of Rear Admiral Khumalo's "Southern Patrol," one of the mainstays of his anti-piracy strategy. Technically, the Skipper was within his rights to call them in, and communications delays over interstellar distances required that officers exercise their initiative. The more senior an officer became, the more initiative she was expected to demonstrate, but countermanding a superior officer's orders, and especially those of a station commander, wasn't something to undertake lightly. An officer who did so had damned well better be able to demonstrate that her actions had been justified.
Still, if she got herself killed in the process, she'd at least neatly avoid the all but inevitable court of inquiry her actions would provoke.
The thought made Helen smile with sour amusement. She wished she could share it with Paulo, but he was on duty. Which was one reason she'd come here now, when she could sit with her thoughts and the dim quiet without having to share them with him.
Her smile faded as she reflected on the fact that she was actually glad to be able to avoid him, at least for the moment. Not happy, just glad. Or, perhaps, the word she really needed was relieved . Although that, too, carried connotations that weren't quite right.
In some ways, she and Paulo rattled around like two lonely peas in Snotty Row. The midshipmen's quarters had been designed to house up to eight people. Just the two of them found themselves with almost too much space, although that was a concept they would have found difficult to visualize when they first joined Hexapuma's company.
In other ways, though, the space was entirely too confined. With no one to hide behind, there was no room for Paulo to be his old, standoffish self, even if he'd wanted to. Which posed complications of its own, especially in light of the Articles of War's ban on physical intimacy with other military personnel in the same chain of command.
The fact was that, now that she understood where Paulo's good looks had really come from, and even more since she'd gotten over her own silly prejudices and begun to know the person behind those features, she found him... attractive. Very attractive, if she was going to be honest, which she very much wished she could avoid. The comfort he'd given her after Ragnhild's death, she'd come to realize, was completely typical of him, despite his aversion to letting people get too close. Of course, Ragnhild had become his friend, as well as Helen's, but not in the same way. He'd known her for less than six T-months; Helen had known her for four T-years. He and Ragnhild had gotten just close enough for him to realize how much her death had hurt Helen, and for it to hurt him enough that he, too, had needed to draw comfort from another.
That sharing, when she'd wept on his shoulder and his own tears had kissed her hair, had changed the relationship between them. What had been growing into a friendship as close, in its own way, as her friendship with Aikawa and Ragnhild, had become something else. Something far more intense, and more than a little frightening.
Helen had been what she'd thought of as "romantically involved" before. Several times, in fact. Sometimes it had been fun; other times, sheer frustration had made her want to kill the idiot. Like most Manticoran adolescents, she'd been reasonably well instructed in the basics of human sexuality, and she'd found those lessons valuable in those romantic involvements. That, too, had been fun. On occasion, lots of fun, she admitted cheerfully.
But none of those relationships had begun as whatever was growing between her and Paulo had. She hadn't started out disliking the other person intensely, for one thing. And the other person had never carried Paulo's history and background around with him. Never possessed near godlike handsomeness... and despised its source. There was an ingrained, intense suspicion in Paulo. A defensive reaction against the attractiveness designed into his genes to make him a more sellable commercial commodity. He didn't want people to desire him for his appearance, and that jagged, wounded part of him was always only too ready to assume anyone who did desire him was, in fact, drawn to his physical attractiveness.