David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"I could say the same of you, Captain," Westman replied, letting his eyes shift to Mr. Van Dort's face. "The fact that your Star Kingdom's seen fit to associate its policies with someone like the Trade Union strikes me as sufficient reason to question its ultimate objectives."

"I understand that." The Captain actually chuckled with what seemed genuine humor. "You made that clear enough the first time we met, Mr. Westman. I've done my best, as has Mr. Van Dort, for that matter, to answer your concerns on that head. But I strongly suggest you consider the scale of our find. We captured or destroyed a thousand tons of weapons, Mr. Westman-in one base. Whether we got all of them or not, I honestly can't say at this point, although I suspect it was probably the majority of those landed for her so far . But we know you invested in at least some weapons yourself before you went underground, so obviously, you've had to make your own contacts and come up with the cash to pay for them. Based on that experience, how likely do you think it is that the FAK managed to pay for that much modern hardware out of its own resources? And if it didn't, if someone's prepared to subsidize someone like Nordbrandt on the scale those weapons represent, what might his objectives be?"

Westman felt his shoulders tighten as the Manticoran's level-voiced questions recalled his own doubts about "Firebrand's" honesty.

You were never stupid enough to believe all he was spouting about how much of what he and his "Central Liberation Committee" were doing was based on "altruism," Stevie, he reminded himself. And it's not like you were signing up to follow him wherever he led. But still…

He made himself sit back in his chair, looking across the table at Terekhov, and inhaled deeply.

"And just who do you think might be prepared to -subsidize… someone like Nordbrandt?" he asked.

Not a muscle in Terekhov's face so much as twitched, but a fierce bolt of exultation ripped through him as Westman asked the question he'd prayed for.

"I'd start," he said calmly, "by considering who-aside from patriots such as yourself, of course-might think the Star Kingdom's presence in the Cluster was a bad thing. And I'd also ask myself who they might prefer to see here instead of the Star Kingdom. If whoever supplied Nordbrandt is also prepared to supply weapons to… someone else, on a similar scale, then the supplier must have both extensive resources and extensive contacts with those weapons' source."

He gazed into Westman's eyes, pausing, waiting with the same precision he would have used to time a missile salvo. Then-

"And I'd reflect on the fact that every one of those weapons, every round of ammunition, every bit of equipment, came from somewhere in the Solarian League."

I really, really never want to play cards against the Captain, Helen reflected as Hawk-Papa-One sliced across the boundary between Montana's indigo atmosphere and the still blackness of space.

She didn't know where or how it was all going to end, but the Captain had obviously gotten to Westman. Whether the Montanan would be able to step far enough back from his own commitment to Montanan independence to really consider what the Captain had suggested remained to be seen, but she suspected the odds were good.

Whether or not Westman would be prepared to give up his vendetta against the annexation-and the Rembrandt Trade Union-no matter who he might unknowingly have allied with was, of course, another question entirely.

"I do n't believe this shit."

"What?" Duan Binyan looked up, startled by the sheer venom in Zeno Egervary's voice. The Marianne was thirty days out of Split, decelerating towards the last planet on her delivery schedule, and Egervary sat glaring at his tactical display.

"That bastard Manticoran," Egervary snarled, and Duan frowned, wondering why Egervary sounded so upset.

"What about them?" he asked. "We knew they had a couple of support ships stationed here."

"Not them," Egervary grated. "That frigging cruiser from Split!"

"What about her?" Duan demanded. He was getting past surprise at the security officer's obviously frightened fury to alarm, and his tone was considerably sharper.

"She's here, too," Egervary spat. "Right here in Montana orbit!"

"What?"

Duan bounced out of his command chair and across to Egervary's station almost before he realized he was moving. Not for the first time, he made a mental note to insist that if Marianne was going to be sent out on this sort of mission he really wanted a proper tactical repeater where he could get at it without leaving his own chair. It was only an absentminded flicker at the bottom of his brain, however. His attention was too firmly fixed on Egervary's plot to spare it any more than that.

"Are you sure?" he demanded as he gazed down at the icons of the ships in orbit around the planet. There weren't many. The icon representing the warship floated in a parking orbit all its own, and there were only two merchantmen-one a Rembrandter, and the other a Solarian, from their transponder codes, the two service ships they'd known about, and half a dozen Montanan LACs to keep it company.

"Unless you know some reason for two Manty cruisers to both be squawking the same transponder code, then, yeah, I'm pretty goddamned positive."

Egervary's tone was scarcely what anyone would have called respectfully disciplined, but Duan paid that little attention. If Egervary's identification was accurate, he had every reason to be worried as hell.

"I don't like this, Binyan." Annette De Chabrol's voice was sharper than usual, if not quite as taut as Egervary's.

"I'm not particularly crazy about it myself, Annette," he replied acidly, still staring down at the plot while his mind whirred.

"They must've spotted the goddamned drop after all," Egervary said. "The bastards nailed the fucking terrorists, then ran on ahead to grab our asses when we showed up here! We're fucked , people!"

Duan glanced sideways at him. Zeno Egervary's language wasn't exactly what you'd care for your sweet old grandmother to hear at the best of times, but he was obviously under more stress than usual. Which could be bad. Egervary was good at his job-both his jobs-but he was also the least stable of Marianne 's officers.

"Calm down, Zeno," the captain said as soothingly as he could. Egervary gave him an incredulous look, and Duan shrugged.

"They did not spot the drop, Zeno. If they'd spotted that, they would have nailed us at the same time. We didn't break orbit for over four hours after we made the delivery and recovered the shuttle. You think they would've let us just sit there that long, then actually leave the system, if they'd known what we'd been doing?"

He held Egervary's eyes with his own, and the security head seemed to settle down a bit.

A very tiny bit.

"Then they must've picked up one of the locals with some of the new guns right after we left," he said. "They busted him, and he sang like a bird. That's how they knew to come on ahead and wait for us."

"And just how do you figure that? I didn't tell anybody where we were going next-did you?"

Egervary was still glaring at him, but he gave his head a choppy shake, and Duan shrugged.

"Well, if you didn't, and if I didn't, I'm damned sure Annette didn't. So how do you think they could have figured it out."

"What about the port agent?" Egervary demanded. " He knew what we were doing. If they picked someone up and whoever it was turned him in, he could've told them."