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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Quit futzing with it.”

Alan Tolmach pulled back as his daughter adjusted a medal-laden sash over his dress uniform.

“If you’d stand still a moment, I wouldn’t have to keep futzing, Pa,” she said. “Same kit every year—we barely have to clean it.”

“I’ll be buried in it, so you’d best run it through the refresher for me.” He gave her a mock snarl and looked out the window to a gray sky. “Bless me, I hate this day.”

“Then stop standing for reelection,” Moira said. “Let someone else do it.”

“I’ll not let another take this pain,” he said. “Not when I still have the strength for it.”

Moira’s eyes misted, and she put the back of one hand to her mouth.

“What?” He looked at her. “That’s always been my reason.”

“But this year’s…just a wee bit different,” she said.

“Mr. President?” The door opened and a militiaman held it against the wall as frigid air poured in. “It’s time.”

“’Sides, sometimes the job has its perks.” Tolmach pinched Moira’s chin. “No one can start without me, so I’m never late!”

He cackled at his own joke as he exited the entry hall to a wave of applause.

The steps to the capital building were lined with rows of young men and women, all in the unadorned black overcoats of the Crann Bethadh Militia. A priest in white vestments stood next to a metal arch, and a Federation Marines officer—it should have been Army, but no one could recall the last time the Army had been seen in New Dublin—stood on the other side with a holo logbook floating in front of her.

The applause came from parents arrayed around the formation of young adults, and it was polite, perfunctory, not celebratory. This was no day to celebrate.

Tolmach stepped around the arch, its thin bars adorned with medallions, each with a year stamped into it. At this very moment, he knew, this same ceremony was being repeated in every county capital across the face of Crann Bethadh. He looked over the formation of young men and women. Every year, they got younger and younger, he thought.

A microphone drone hovered just in front of him.

“Crann Bethadh, as your President, I welcome the top class of 2551.” His voice echoed from the speakers spotted around Capital Plaza. “Let the Declarations begin.”

He rapped his cane against the pavement twice, and the drone flitted away.

“O’Brallaghan, Michael J.”

The Marine’s voice came from the same speakers, clear through the windy cold, and a fresh-faced young man walked up the stairs to Tolmach. He removed a medallion from his pocket and snapped it onto the arch.

“Your mother know you’re here, son?” Tolmach asked.

“Yes, Mr. President. She’s right over there.”

O’Brallaghan pointed to the crowd behind him.

“Congratulations on being top of your class,” Tolmach said. “I can’t say there’s much luck to it.” He looked the youngster in the eye. “You know what to do?”

“Of course, Sir. For God and New Dublin.” O’Brallaghan turned and raised his right hand. “Preference!”

A smattering of applause answered.

“Preference recorded,” the Marine said.

O’Brallaghan turned and stepped through the arch as the priest began a prayer. He dipped a silver tree branch in a bowl of blessed water and sprinkled some on the new recruit as the young man emerged from the far side of the arch.

Tolmach shook O’Brallaghan’s hand as he passed.

“Well done, lad. Welcome to the profession of arms.”

“Ansell, Erin!” the Marine called, shifting to alphabetical order for the remainder of the class, and the next recruit mounted the stairs. She announced for the needs of the service, and Tolmach shook hands again, concentrating on the young woman’s face. He’d kept memories of this day for so many years, and none of those he’d received had ever come back with the same light in their eyes.

A third recruit bounded up the stairs with a spring in her step. She reached the top and gave Tolmach a smile…and his heart stopped.

“Dewar, Christina D.,” the Marine said.

“Preference!” she shouted, and took a long step through the arch.

“Krissy.” Tolmach stared at his granddaughter. “But you’re not—”

“Eighteen on Monday,” she said. “The Federation accepted the age waiver. I’ll be a strike pilot. Sorry I won’t be infantry, like you and my uncles, but that’s not for me, Daideó.”

“No…you can’t…”

“Sir, if you please,” the Marine said quietly, her microphone muted.

Tolmach’s entire body was an icy, empty void. A voice somewhere deep inside that void wailed in protest, telling him he could not let this happen. But he had no choice, and so he held out a numb hand and his granddaughter shook it. Then she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried back into the capital building to continue the induction paperwork.

“She can’t,” the President of New Dublin whispered, his single eye burning as the wind blustered about him. “She can’t…”

“Fargig, Adrian R.,” the Marine continued.

* * *

Tolmach made his way down the dimly lit steps, one hand on the railing while the other used his cane to poke at the next lower step.

“Aren’t I just the finest example of strength in leadership?” He chuckled to himself as he felt the pain in his knees. The stairs ended at a basement door set into moisture-slick bricks. That basement was part of New Dublin’s first-wave construction, it had never been connected to the newer underground infrastructure—or its dehumidifiers—and it was one of the few places they could be certain contained no listening devices that might report to the wrong set of ears.

A pair of Cormag Dewar’s men stood on either side of the door.

“Mr. President,” one of them said, nodding respectfully. “All invitees are here.”

“Hope I didn’t keep them waiting too long.” Tolmach shuffled forward. “Else they’ll be drunk and nothing’ll get done. Men and women away from home, eh?”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” the other guard said with a slight smile.

“I know your father,” Tolmach told him. “Best watch yourself.”

He banged the door with his prosthetic fist and it opened to a smell of mustiness and sweat. A dozen men and women sat in leather padded chairs, all facing a single antique chair with a stool and glass of water. Most wore the plain, serviceable garments of typical Fringe Worlders, but one bear of a man wore fur-lined robes and one woman, her face covered by a porcelain mask, wore a silver and white kimono. Dewar stood at the back of the room, behind them, and a single seat amongst their number was empty.

They rose as one as Tolmach entered the room.

“Sit. Sit, all of you!” Tolmach wagged his cane at them. “We’ll have time for the formalities tomorrow. For now, I hereby call this unofficial and off-the-record meeting of the Concordia Sector leaders to order. Not that we’re keeping minutes, now are we?”

“We only get to see you every four years,” the man in the robes said. “And these off-the-records are the only reason many of us even bother to come. No harm being polite when you finally show up.”

“Thank you, Saul.” Tolmach sat down and twisted his artificial hand out of the socket, then hung it by the cane handle off the small table. “But we’re not all here, are we? Ms. Genovese of Scotia won’t be joining us. Shame to lose her to the League like that.”

“It wasn’t the League that killed her,” another man said. “It was the Federation’s cowardice.”

“Where’s your new overlord, Alan?” the woman in the mask asked. Her voice carried perfectly from the speaker beneath her painted lips. “Mine got called back on ‘urgent family business’ as soon as we got news of the massacre.”

“Tomiko, that you under there?” Tolmach squinted.

“Aiko.” The woman inclined her head. “My mother is ill. I wear her authority.”

“Such are Ryukyu’s ways,” Tolmach said. “In answer to your question, Murphy’s hunting slavers out past the blue line. You all may have noticed that we’ve got a few extra carriers in-system, but his isn’t one of them at the moment.”

“Slavers? A Heart who worries about slavers?” someone else said, and Tolmach shrugged.

“He’s a Murphy,” the President said. “Those of you old enough should remember his grandfather, the Murphy that got the Federation Navy’s act together barely in time before it turned out we needed it, and his father died in uniform. This one’s won a battle for the Federation, and now he’s doing his level best to piss me off by turning New Dublin upside down with new system defenses. You should hear the business owners squealing, but soon as I mention Inverness, all of a sudden they get a lot more cooperative.”

“Don’t care what his last name is,” a rail-thin man with a long white goatee said. “He’s a Heart, through and through. You know what family he married into.”

“We can gossip about him later.” Tolmach tapped his stump against the stool. “What’s more important is Inverness. The loss. What it means for us going forward. You’ve all had four years to think on our last proposal. Johns? You were the most opposed to secession last time. How have you and Gregor II fared since?”

A young-looking man with a ponytail stood.

“There are nine million people in Gregor,” he said. “The Federation has a small service and support yard there, but with barely more ships on station than it had in Scotia. If that butcher Xing came calling, we wouldn’t do any better.” He motioned to the empty seat. “I’ve demanded more from the Heart Worlds, year after year, and every year it’s ‘in committee’ or they tell me about ‘budgetary constraints.’ Yet, somehow, the Federation always has the funds to send their black ships to collect taxes and collect my sons and daughters for their war. They take blood and treasure and give back platitudes.”

A murmur of agreement flowed through the room.

“The Federation chooses its ships over its people!” Saul roared, then visibly pulled his emotions back under control. “Inverness is dead because they did exactly that,” he said flatly. “And they’ll make the same decision for our planets, too.”

The goateed man rose.

“If we leave the Federation, then what?” he asked. “We’ll never join those bastards in the League, but we all know what the Federation did when Gobelins rebelled.”

“But Gobelins was a single system,” Tolmach said. “One governor gone mad with power. We’re a sector, and a sector that’s been on the front lines of this war for years. And we’re not the only ones in this. The Siobhan Stars and Theseus Sector are taxed and drafted at even higher rates than we are. If we show backbone to the Heart—”

“Treason,” the goateed man said. “Let’s be honest.”

“Treason?” Tolmach rubbed a knuckle against his dead eye. “I remember the first Harvest Day, not that it had the name back then. A freshman in college, I was, and every last man of my class, and a fair number of the women—fifty of us, there were—we mobbed the recruiting stations the minute word of the war against the League reached New Dublin. What a time it was. We were the Federation, and those bastards in the League had dared to attack us? Had K-struck Minotaur and then lied through their teeth and laughed about it? War sounded like such a great adventure. Had to join up quick,” he moved a fist across his chest in a lazy cheer, “or it’d all be over before we got a chance to be part of it. Then there was Isonzo and all those days beneath the sun. Then the Battle of the Bloody Moon. Then Changsha.

“I came back home at the end of my five years. Came back with fewer parts than I left with, but I was luckier than most, it turns out. Came back and learned that of all my class that enlisted to fight the League…only eleven of us had survived, and just two of ’em not missing bits and pieces of their own. Then the black ships came for the next crop of our young men and women and took the other two along with them. Rian and Corey, their names were. They’d managed to score high enough on the exams to rate tech training, and ‘needs of the service’ got them back in uniform after they’d thought their obligation to the Federation was fulfilled. Never saw them again. Me, I was too broken to be of any more use.

“Then, ten years later, the annual tithes began. Every year we send the Federation our future, and every year they send back burned-out, scarred veterans. Three sons. I sent three sons to the war, all of them given to the Federation. All I got back was a certificate of service to pass on to my daughters-in-law. And I just recorded my eldest granddaughter’s oath of service.”

“We know your pain,” Saul said. “Every world in the Fringe knows that pain. But the Heart Worlds? Their poor may know the pain, pay the butcher’s bill, but the Five Hundred and anyone they decide is vital to their profits? They barely know there’s a war going on.”

“After fifty-six years. I don’t believe that pain’s going to end,” Tolmach said. “I can’t, because the Heart Worlds don’t care if it ends. They don’t need it to. I was loyal to the Federation, gave all I could to the Federation, and how did it repay me? Repay any of us? The Federation’s betrayed all of us. So are we going to just sit here and bleed, or are we going to stand up and take our future back?”

Cheers broke out from everyone but Johns and Dewar.

“It’s not that simple!” Johns shouted over the other voices. “We can’t just flip a switch and declare ourselves a new nation. The Federation can’t afford to lose us, if only because we’d be an example too many other sectors might choose to follow. And even if Olympia was willing to let us go, we’d be easy prey for the League, or for pirates beyond the blue line. Don’t act like this will be easy.”

“There’s a garrison force in every system,” Saul said, “and our people know how to fight. God knows the Federation’s taken enough of us away and taught us how! We can take the ships, consider it part restitution from the Federation for taxes, and be just as secure as the Federation ever made us!”

“The ‘garrison force’ here in New Dublin’s just a bit bigger mouthful than most,” Dewar said, “and with Murphy at the helm. What will the Federation do when we buck someone with that name?”

“He’s not his grandfather,” Aiko said. “But his family has money…Ransom?”

“It’s not even official, and you’re already thinking like a barbarian,” Tolmach said. “But what if Murphy comes back with a hull full of rescued slaves? We rebel against that? What will our people think? ‘Thank ye for saving all those women and children. Now kindly put these cuffs on and get in the nice cell.’ Bollocks.”

If he comes back with something better than a snipe hunt,” Dewar said. “We’d need the Federation to remove him, in that case. That…would play well to the feeds. Icing on the cake against the Heart Worlds.”

“Now, just why would the Federation do that?” Tolmach asked.

“They’ve got a snake in our grass—Captain Lipshen. Don’t know exactly why someone might have knives out for Murphy back home, but if Lipshen gets the right words whispered in his ear, he’ll pass them on to the right people back at the Oval. And then Bob’s your uncle.”

“I don’t know,” Johns said. “Murphy sounds like a good man. He deserves that?”

“His reputation might take a hit,” Tolmach said. “Might even get him retired. I suppose he’d just have to make do with being filthy rich back on Earth. Oh, he’ll suffer, no doubt.”

“Can this be done without shedding blood?” Johns asked. “With no martyrs for the Federation to rally behind?”

The room went quiet.

“Let’s make the decision first,” Tolmach said. “Then we’ll decide the best way to do it. Let’s make this official. Roll call vote in favor of secession from the Federation.”


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