"I know. I know." Alquezar drew on his cigar again. "I sent a memo to Baroness Medusa this afternoon, right after the dispatch boat from Montana got here. I expressed very much the same concerns you just have, and I suggested to her that it might be time for Her Majesty's official representative here to take a more… direct approach."
Krietzmann looked at him with a hint of uneasiness, and the San Miguelian shrugged irritably.
"It's not an ideal solution, even if she does step in, and I know it. The problem is, I think we're fresh out of ideal solutions, Henri."
"… not an ideal solution, Milady," Gregor O'Shaughnessy said, "but I'm afraid of the way the situation's escalating."
"Madam Governor," Rear Admiral Khumalo said heavily, "I must reiterate my concerns about becoming overly involved on the local level in the Cluster's politics."
"With all due respect, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy shot back a bit sharply, "you were the one who wanted to intervene against Nordbrandt after the first Kornati bombing in Karlovac."
"Yes, I was, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Khumalo rumbled. "But that was rather a different situation from this, as I hope you'll admit. Nordbrandt is a killer, a murderess on a mass scale. Dropping Marines onto Kornati, assuming the local planetary government invited us to do so, to hunt down a cold-blooded, calculating killer would be one thing. Dropping Marines onto Montana to go after one of its most prominent citizens, who's apparently well on his way to becoming some sort of folk hero-or antihero-and hasn't killed a a stray dog yet, much less members of the local parliament, would be another thing entirely."
"But we're already engaged there on a day-to-day basis," O'Shaughnessy said. "We've had a presence in the system-and, arguably-a responsibility to support President Suttles' government ever since he gave us permission to station your support ships there. For that matter, we could provide the support direct from those ships."
"Those ships are neither designed for nor capable of providing that sort of support," Khumalo said frostily. " Ericsson is essentially nothing more than a freighter hull wrapped around machine shops and storage for spare parts. Her entire complement's under two hundred-technicians, not combat personnel. And Volcano's only an ammunition ship, with an even smaller crew. They've got military-grade impellers, compensators, and particle shielding and minimal sidewalls, but they aren't warships and they are totally unsuited to this sort of task. Even assuming that asking any of our ships to perform that task was a good idea. Which it isn't."
"I think- " O'Shaughnessy began, but Dame Estelle raised her hand. He closed his mouth, looking at her, and she smiled crookedly.
"In this instance, Gregor, Admiral Khumalo has a point," she said. "A very good point, in fact. There'd be substantial local popular support if we intervened in Split. So far, Nordbrandt's still at the stage of evoking far more horror, revulsion, and repugnance than widespread support. She's done a lot more damage to her own planet than Westman has, and she's made it perfectly clear she's escalated her strategy of pure terror to go after anyone who 'collaborates' with us or the elected Kornatian government on any issue, not just the annexation.
"She's using a sledgehammer, a brute force approach. Westman's using a rapier. So far, at least, his target selection's had exactly the opposite effect from Nordbrandt's. As far as I can see, there's no immediate danger of his turning around Montana's support for the annexation, but he's more likely to have that effect in the long run than she is. More to the point, from the perspective of the Convention, he's more likely to generate a significant shift in the balance of power between Alquezar's Constitutional Unionists and Tonkovic's Constitutional Liberals. But from our tactical perspective, the most significant difference between him and Nordbrandt is that we're the air cav, rushing to the rescue, if we go after her, whereas we become the sinister foreign conquerors on Montana if we intervene in their local affairs to go after him and make even the tiniest mistake."
"But, Milady," O'Shaughnessy protested respectfully, "I'm afraid we'll be making a mistake anyway, and not a tiny one, if we don't take action in regard to Montana."
"Personally," Khumalo said, "I'm still in favor of dropping a battalion or so of Marines on Nordbrandt's head. Let's go in fast and hard, yank her up, and hand her worthless, murderous ass to the Kornatian courts. Let them execute her after a scrupulously fair trial before a jury of her fellow citizens-God knows they've already got enough evidence to hang her two or three times! All we'd do would be to apprehend her, then stand aside and let the local legal establishment do its job. As you say, she's hardly a poster girl for the orderly political process on Kornati, and this steady expansion of her 'manifesto' shows a degree of creeping extremism that comes pretty damned close to classic megalomania. She's starting to remind me of Cordelia Ransom!"
He snorted, and several of his listeners, including Dame Estelle Matsuko, winced at the all too apt comparison.
"Dispose of her, first, and we free ourselves to go after Westman in the most effective manner and without distractions. And as a bonus, when we do, we'll already have buffed up our halo by helping take out someone who's obviously a stone-cold terrorist and assassin."
"It's tempting, Admiral," the Provisional Governor replied. "Believe me, it's very tempting. But I'm still leery of sending in our own troops, especially in that kind of strength. The domestic political situation is… complex, and as far as we can tell from here, very much in a state of flux. The only thing I can think of that could begin to legitimize Nordbrandt's efforts in the eyes of a significant percentage of the Kornatian public would be for us to go after her in a way that validates her charges about her own government's corruption and our imperial pretensions. If we appear to be supporting a suppressive regime simply because its opposition doesn't want to be 'taken over' by the Star Kingdom, we could lose any moral high ground in a hurry."
"With all due respect, Madam Governor," Khumalo said, deliberately using the same formula O'Shaughnessy had, "if we can't act on Kornati, where can we act? This is a clear-cut, unambiguous example of terrorism against the legally elected government of a sovereign planet. Mr. Westman, so far, has only stolen a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of Manticoran property, embarrassed a dozen or so of our nationals, and destroyed several hundred million dollars worth of private property, none of which was owned by his own government or any citizen of his planet. And, I repeat, so far he's been extraordinarily careful not to kill or even injure anyone ."
"You're right." Medusa really wished she could disagree. She had an uncomfortable suspicion that she wanted to do that because her private estimate of Khumalo was so low. Which, she admitted as she considered his analysis, might have been just a bit unfair of her.
"I think," she said, looking around the conference table at O'Shaughnessy, Khumalo, Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler, and Colonel Oliver Gray, the commander of her own Marine contingent, "we're all at least in agreement that, at the moment, the two star systems which present actual threats to the annexation and to the security of the Constitutional Convention are Montana and Split?"
"I'm sure we all agree on that much, Milady," O'Shaughnessy said. "I'd like to point out one additional difference between Westman and Nordbrandt, however."
"Go ahead," she invited.
"All reports from Split," her intelligence chief said, letting his eyes travel around the conference table, "indicate that, despite all the damage she's done, Nordbrandt's still operating effectively on a logistical shoestring. She's using civilian small arms and explosives, not military-grade weapons, and so far there's no indication she possesses sophisticated communications or antisurveillance gear. And, frankly, I think one reason she's launched this campaign of assassination against local landowners and industrialists is that she doesn't have the military wherewithal to take on really hard targets. She got away with her initial attack because of lengthy, meticulous preplanning and because no one saw it coming, and most of her successful bombing attacks since have been possible only because the local authorities are still gearing up to go after her and because she's chosen targets on the basis of their vulnerability, not their importance. She's going after the ones she can hit, not necessarily the ones she'd like to hit.