Chapter 28: Persecution and Prosecution

The two message torpedoes might as well have been loaded with nuclear warheads as with mere correspondence for all the impact they had.

The Solaria Federation could do no more than hold its collective breath. TK made sure that the press were brought up to speed post-haste, and got the Fleet to authorize use of the SFS Firespike to transport the prisoner to Deneb Algenib, but other than that there wasn't much they could do.

Mike found himself in an embarrassing position. First, he liked the Ambassador for Arcturus, despite his rather pedantic speech pattern and his occasional social gaffes. He liked the family, too.

But Deneb Algenib was painfully aware that this was the only point of common diplomatic contact between their representatives (the Solaria Federation) and Arcturus. So Mike found himself and Charles playing a fascinating game, where Mike would receive a message of demands from Deneb and present them to Charles, who would then request instructions from Arcturus, from whence yet another message torpedo would come back with insane counter-demands.

"I am but a lawyer, Friend Michael, with no experience of diplomacy. Is this typical?" demanded Charles one sunny afternoon on the back porch of the Embassy, as they once again pretended to rant against each other.

Mike grinned at the Arcturan. "It is when they want to delay things as long as possible, which quite frankly your Planetary Council does. I think they're still naive enough to hope the Denebians will just go away."

"And will they?"

"Of course not. Arcturus doesn't have strong defences; Deneb has some gunboats. Gunboats plus gravity gage equals overwhelming superiority. I can see a Denebian gunboat eventually heading to Arcturus piggybacked onto some freighter. They really aren't intended for surface bombardment, but they'll work in a pinch."

Meanwhile, back on Arcturus...

Brother Jed strode in to the Council meeting, furious. He could not believe that on top of the Lawson lad screwing up his assignment so badly – mostly, by still being alive – that now he was facing pressure from a group of nobodies like the Denebians to surrender himself for trial. Him – HIM – patriarch of one of the greatest of pioneering clans in the universe, accused of attempted mass murder. The fact he was in fact instrumental in planning meant nothing, of course; he was on a Holy Mission, for which anything was acceptable and opposition was tantamount to treason, if not apostasy.

And now Brother Henry's security agents were reporting that rumours of the latest developments in the Bucyrus Affair were flying through Arcturus City and the Latecomers' settlements. This had to be stopped.

"Brother Elijah," he advised the new Councillor for Justice, Elijah Tibbetts, his predecessor's former assistant, "we need a plan."

Elijah had a plan, one he'd worked out with his cousin Henry Tibbetts, Councillor for Security. He handed the plan over to Jed. "Brother Henry proposes he lead a Frontiersman squad to kidnap a look-alike to Brother Joshua. We will publicly execute this man and claim that it were Brother Joshua."

"And how does this solve our other problem?" Jed asked scornfully. "We still have a Frontiersman out there who is apparently letting our enemies know the exact details of Operation Dynamo."

The look of satisfaction rapidly fled from Elijah's face.

Henry took up the cudgel. "Brother Jedediah, our most pressing worry is the Latecomer mob here on Arcturus. We must deal with them first. That was why Operation Dynamo was proposed in the first place, to handle the Latecomers, by killing their most likely leaders. Executing a Latecomer ... we can paint him as being the bomber, not us."

Jed's brother was the only one who could get away with addressing him so firmly. Jed considered Henry's advice, and calmed down – if only sightly. "And when the universe finds out? And when the Latecomers find out?"

"The Latecomers find out what we want them to, as does the rest of the universe. The outworlders won't know, and the Latecomers will only know what we deign to tell them."

No-one in the room was aware of the back-door news source that the Dissenters had arranged with their Solarian-based trade representatives. Jed Tibbetts nodded in acceptance. "Proceed, my Brothers."

Once again, the Committee (as Mike had taken to calling it) was meeting in the Solaria Federation Embassy's main meeting room. Mike and Yuki represented the authority of the Solaria Federation, Charles and Carole were present representing Arcturus, Mindy and Shirley were there as the official representatives for Deneb, and Kurt was kibitzing, although officially he was there just in case any assistance from Spica was required.

"So, we've interviewed the passengers of the Bucyrus, and they've all said the same thing," Mindy observed, reviewing the file. "They got offers of housing and good pay from the governor of Pi Virginis, and the possibility for advancement and responsibility that are blocked on Arcturus. It seems those jobs were reserved for the Old Boys of these six 'Founding Families'."

"We'd been assuming they were going to establish a colony, not expand an already established one," Mike related. "We've found there's a problem with that story: Pi Virginis has no colony."

The naked Denebian representative raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "And they didn't know? You're sure about this?"