David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Oh, nonsense!" Tonkovic said sharply. Yet it was evident she was throttling her own deep surge of anger and trying to maintain at least some detachment. "Of course this was a horrible, horrible act! I've always known Agnes Nordbrandt was an idiot, but I never guessed she was a lunatic, as well. The woman has to be insane-she and her entire NRP! Not that an insanity defense's going to help her when we apprehend her! But blaming her actions on the fact that the Convention hasn't reported out a draft Constitution yet is ludicrous!"

"I didn't blame her actions on the delays. What I said is-"

"A moment, Joachim, please," Lababibi interrupted gently, and he paused, looking at her.

"Of course you're not saying that somehow Aleksandra's refusal to abandon her position created Nordbrandt or this 'Freedom Alliance of Kornati' nightmare of hers. But you are arguing that the extended debate here in Thimble helped create the opportunity for her to commit this atrocity. And that any failure to embrace your party's platform will only make things worse. Not to mention your implication that if things do get worse, Manticore will probably decide to reject our annexation request, after all."

Alquezar's jaw muscles clenched, and he glowered at her, his brown eyes hard. But then he flipped one hand in a gesture of unwilling assent-or at least concession.

"All right," he acknowledged. "I suppose I am. But I also think that whether Aleksandra agrees with me or not, these are serious concerns which need to be addressed."

"I think Joachim has a point," Krietzmann said in his most noninflammatory tones. Despite his effort to avoid any appearance of additional provocation, Tonkovic glared at him. And, he noticed, Lababibi didn't look especially happy, either.

"First," Tonkovic said, "let's remember whose planet this happened on. I'm not just the Split System's chief of delegation here at the Convention. I'm also the Planetary President of Kornati. Vuk Rajkovic is the acting head of state-my deputy, while I'm here on Thimble. And those people who were killed in the Nemanja Building were colleagues of mine. They were my friends , damn it! People I've known for decades-some of them literally all my life! And even the people I never met were my citizens, my people. Don't you ever think, not for one fleeting second, that I don't want Agnes Nordbrandt and every one of her butchering lunatics arrested, tried, and executed for this atrocity. And when the time comes, I'll put my own name in the hat when the court draws the lots for the firing squad!

"But you've seen the reports. I'm assuming you've read them as carefully as I did, and there's nothing in any of them to indicate that this Freedom Alliance of hers is anything but a tiny, super-violent splinter group. Yes, they planted bombs all over the capital. And yes, they got away with it. But not because they have thousands of members lurking behind every hedge, every door, with bombs in their hands. They obviously planned this all very carefully, and before she went underground, Nordbrandt was a member of Parliament herself. She had access to all our security data, all our contingency plans. Of course she knew where the loopholes were-where we were vulnerable! We should have completely overhauled all of our security arrangements as soon as she dropped out of sight. I admit that. And the responsibility for our failure to do so rests squarely on my shoulders. But they did it with homemade weapons. With commercially available blasting compound, and with timers and detonators any farmer on Kornati would have in the electronics bins in his barn. They planned it meticulously; they placed their bombs to inflict the maximum possible casualties and psychological shock; and much as I hate them, they showed as much skill as ruthlessness in carrying it out. They're obviously a serious threat, one we have to take seriously. But they're not ten meters tall, and they can't pour themselves through keyholes like vampires, and they damned sure aren't werewolves we're going to need silver pulser darts to kill!"

She glowered around the conference table, her nostrils flared and her green eyes hard.

"And your point?" Lababibi asked very gently.

"My point is that I'm not going to let myself be panicked into doing exactly what Nordbrandt wants me to do. I was sent to this Convention by the voters of Kornati with a specific mandate. A mandate supported by a clear majority of those same voters. I'm not going to permit this madwoman and her insane followers to manipulate me into violating that mandate. I can think of nothing which would be more likely to produce exactly the sort of polarization she's looking for. And to be brutally cold-blooded and honest about it, what's happened doesn't change a thing vis- -vis the political realities of this annexation proposal. Not unless we permit it to, and I refuse to do that."

Krietzmann stared at her, unable to keep his incredulity completely out of his expression, and she glared defiantly at him.

"Whatever it does domestically, in terms of the Cluster's 'political realities,'" Alquezar said after a moment, "its impact on the Manticoran political calculus is beyond our ability to affect by a sheer act of political will, Aleksandra. Queen Elizabeth's fighting a war for her Star Kingdom's survival. If a situation arises in the Cluster which causes her to believe she'd be forced to divert a significant military force here, to act in a morally repugnant suppressive role, she may very well decide that all she really needs is the Lynx Terminus. And if that happens, just how do you think Frontier Security is going to react to our efforts to avoid its embrace by courting Manticore?"

"I think you may be overstating the potential consequences, Joachim."

Alquezar's head snapped around in surprise, because the comment hadn't come from Tonkovic. It had come from Lababibi.

"I'm not saying you're creating threats out of whole cloth," the Spindle System President continued. Her voice and expression alike were troubled, as if she wasn't entirely happy with what she was saying, yet she went on without hesitation. "But what we're looking at at this moment is a single act of violence. Yes, a particularly-no, let's be honest; a horrifically atrocious act of violence. But it's only one incident, and Manticore isn't going to abandon the annexation process and risk the interstellar perception that it's broken faith with us without far more justification than that.

"Queen Elizabeth's appointed a provisional governor. She's -authorized and sanctioned our Constitutional Convention. In fact, she's insisted we tell her the terms upon which we seek annexation. She's also made it clear that if the Star Kingdom's Parliament finds our terms unreasonable, or unacceptable, they'll be rejected. But those were the actions of a monarch who believes in the political process and who's committed to making this annexation work. So as long as we're confronted by the actions of what are obviously marginalized maniacs, frustrated by their irrelevance to mainstream political opinion, and as long as our own law enforcement agencies are rigorously pursuing both the investigation and the perpetrators, she isn't about to pull the plug."

Krietzmann's eyes narrowed ever so slightly at Lababibi's argument. Intellectually, he was certain, the Spindalian head of state felt far closer to his own and Alquezar's positions. But he'd always sensed a certain ambivalence in her support, and that ambivalence suddenly seemed far more pronounced.

It's the economic factor. The class factor. The thought came to him abruptly, sharply, with an almost audible click. That bit in Nordbrandt's statement about "wealthy traitors" and selling the planet to the highest bidder and "obscene wealth." Lababibi's an oligarch. All of her friends and family, and all of her friends' -families-hell, every significant member of the entire damned political establishment here on Flax!-are oligarchs. It's the reason she's always been so much more comfortable with Joachim than with wretched, lower-class me.