"About a third of his own delegation would cheerfully shoot him on the Convention floor," O'Shaughnessy observed, and she nodded.
"They certainly would. And they could make a nice profit selling tickets. Did you see Lababibi's expression when she realized his motion was going to fail?"
"Yes, Milady." O'Shaughnessy smirked. Undeniably, he smirked. "I'll almost guarantee you her instructions were to support him. She must've been delighted that Spindle's position as host meant she had to vote last."
Medusa nodded. She'd been watching Yvernau's expression almost as closely as Lababibi's when the Spindle System President rose to cast her vote. The New Tuscan had obviously counted hers as being in the bag, and his furious consternation when she voted against his motion had been almost as obvious as her own delight.
"It's been obvious for weeks-months-Lababibi despises Yvernau," she said. "He's probably the only person in the entire Convention who didn't know it. And you're right about her instructions. But the motion had already failed before the vote got to her, so she's not even going to have to pay the price of disobeying orders. She's the woman who put them firmly on the winners' side instead of death-locking them to the losers, the way she'd been told do to. And she got to kick Yvernau publicly in a particularly sensitive spot in the process. Talk about having your cake and eating it, too!"
She and her analyst smiled nastily at one another. Then she shook her head.
"It should be evident to anyone with a measurable IQ that Yvernau's policy's been proven a disastrous failure, Gregor. Sheer, cynical pragmatism, as well as principle, ought to turn his supporters back home against him. But the members of the New Tuscan political elite-I use the term loosely, you understand-have more than a little lemming in their own genotypes. Why else would they have set up the rules for their delegation the way they did?"
"It probably seemed like a good idea at the time."
"So did the first Peep attack on Grayson," the baroness said dryly, and the analyst chuckled. But his humor was fleeting, and he frowned.
"You may be right, Milady," he said slowly. "Everything I've managed to put together about Yvernau suggests that even now, he's not going to relinquish control of the delegation without direct, nondiscretionary orders from home. And as long as he wants to stay obstinate, there's nothing the rest of the New Tuscan delegates here on Flax can do about it. I'd like to think the system government's bright enough to send instructions from home to override him, though."
"You'd like to think that, but do you?"
The analyst sighed after considering it for several seconds. "Not really."
"I'm not overly optimistic myself. I thought Tonkovic was bad, but at least the Kornatians called her home and hammered her hard enough for her to resign." The dispatch boat from Split had brought the news the day before. "But I'm afraid the New Tuscan oligarchs are even more stubborn and a lot more monolithic than the Kornatians."
"Yes, Milady, they are. My best prediction at the moment is that there's about an eighty percent chance they'll leave Yvernau here, still heading their delegation. I figure there's a seventy percent chance they won't send him any new instructions, either. They'll let him continue standing in front of the air lorry until it runs him down, hoping for the best. After that, though, I don't know what they'll do. That's why I was asking you. It looks to me as if it's too close to call at this point. There's almost an even chance they'll buy into this notion of his that they can do just fine without us, thank you."
"That's my reading of the situation, too," Medusa said. "And he's probably right that we'll find ourselves obliged to prevent anyone else from moving in on them. But for the rest of it-" She shook her head. "Either New Tuscany's going to turn into some sort of police state, or else the current management's going to get bounced out on its collective posterior when the New Tuscan electorate sees what's happening to the rest of the Cluster without their participation."
"Which could be even messier than Nordbrandt's efforts on Kornati," O'Shaughnessy said grimly.
"That's what happens to closed, exploitative ruling classes which insist on trying to tie the cork down more tightly instead of reforming themselves or at least venting the pressure in some controlled fashion," Medusa agreed sadly. Then she shook herself.
"There's not much we can do if they're going to insist on some sort of mutual suicide pact," she said. "On the other hand, it looks like the rest of the Cluster's falling into line behind Alquezar and Krietzmann quite nicely."
"Yes, it does." O'Shaughnessy made no particular effort to hide his satisfaction, and the Provisional Governor returned his broad smile with interest. "Given what Terekhov and Van Dort did to Nordbrandt and the FAK, and now the approval of the Alquezar draft Constitution virtually in its entirety, I'd have to say the annexation logjam seems to be breaking up. The one thing I was most worried about-once the Government finally decided to go ahead and impose a hard and fast deadline-was the effect all of the death and destruction on Kornati was going to have on domestic political opinion back home. Tonkovic and Yvernau's delaying tactics never had a hope of standing up to the threat of exclusion, but I had my doubts about whether or not Parliament would approve the annexation, even with the Queen getting behind and pushing hard, if it thought we were going to be looking at a constant, running sore in Split."
"I think you might've been underestimating both Her Majesty's grip on the present Parliament and the electorate's intestinal fortitude," Medusa said. "On the other hand, you might not have been. Either way, I'm glad there's not going to be any more spectacular bloodshed and explosions coming out of the Cluster."
"Very well, Amal," Terekhov said. "General signal to the Squadron. All units prepare to depart Montana orbit and proceed in company to Point Midway."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri acknowledged, and Terekhov glanced around his bridge.
Hexapuma was understrength, what with the Marines she'd left on Kornati, the casualties she'd suffered when Hawk-Papa-One was destroyed, and the detachment of Ansten FitzGerald's party to Copenhagen . The same number of casualties and detached personnel would have made a relatively minor hole in the company of an older ship, like Warlock or Vigilant . Aboard Hexapuma , it represented a significant reduction in manpower. He'd been tempted to "borrow" a few people from the other ships, but not very strongly. He knew the temper of his weapon. He preferred to see it slightly understrength rather than risk introducing flaws into it at this critical moment.
He turned his attention to the main plot. The green icons of twelve ships gleamed upon it now. In addition to Hexapuma's own, there were two other heavy cruisers— Warlock and Vigilant -and three light cruisers— Gallant and Audacious , both sisters of his dead Defiant , and Aegis , one of the new Avalon -class ships, almost as modern as Hexapuma . That was the core of "his" squadron's combat power, but they were supported by four destroyers— Javelin and Janissary , both relatively modern, and the ancient (though neither of them was really any older than Warlock ) Rondeau and Aria . The ten warships were accompanied by the dispatch boat he'd impressed from its assignment to the Montanan government and by HMS Volcano .
He let his attention linger on Volcano's light code for a moment, then laid his forearms precisely along the armrests of his command chair and rotated it to face Lieutenant Commander Wright.
"All right, Tobias," he said, his voice calm, unshadowed by any trace of uncertainty. "Take us out of here."
Chapter Fifty-Three
HMS Ericsson erupted over the hyper wall into the Spindle system in a starbust of blue transit energy twenty-seven days after leaving Dresden.
She sent her identity and notice that she carried dispatches to HMS Hercules via grav-pulse as soon as she made translation, and a trickle of consternation flowed uphill as the news of her arrival wended its way towards the superdreadnought's flag deck. Ericsson was a depot ship. She wasn't a dispatch boat, and she was supposed to be permanently stationed in Montana, supporting the Southern Patrol.
No one knew what she was doing here, but no one expected it to be good.
"Dispatches?" Captain Loretta Shoupe frowned at Hercules ' com officer. "From Montana?"