Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [82]
Basil cut him off with a nod. “Therefore, Mr. Cain, we must foster the belief that Roamers are unreliable. The clans have never been team players with the Hansa, even in this crisis, which affects all of humanity. Go ahead, prove your skills with propaganda and the media. It shouldn’t be hard to paint the Roamers as selfish. Ever since the hydrogue war began, they’ve been overcharging us for stardrive fuel.”
“They’re war profiteers,” Sarein said. Her nostrils flared.
“No need to be indignant on my behalf, Ambassador.” He kept his voice carefully formal. “I can be fully indignant for myself.”
When he saw the briefest flash of a stung expression on her face, Basil softened his voice, knowing that she often came up with schemes that he found particularly useful. “In the meantime, let’s put our heads together, you and I, and devise an effective strategy. We have looked the other way regarding their self-proclaimed independence for too long. There must be a political means by which the Hansa can absorb the Roamers and their assets, bring them back into the fold of humanity. We can’t let them be loose cannons. Not now—and preferably not ever again.”
Sarein gave him a thin smile. “They’ll be sorry they ever chose this path against us.”
Chapter 41—TASIA TAMBLYN
After Ptoro, Tasia and her Manta crew received a generous furlough from the EDF. Not since the disastrous battle at Osquivel had she been given so much time off from military duties. But there was a limit to how much rest and recreation a person could stand!
And Tasia had no place to go. She had companions in the EDF with whom she worked, but she considered none of them close friends. There had been no one since Robb Brindle.
Though discretionary space travel was limited because of ekti rationing, as an EDF officer Tasia was welcome to any available seat aboard an outbound spacecraft. She would have liked to go back to the frozen moon of Plumas and the water mines run by her clan. She hadn’t seen her brother Jess in ages, had heard no word from the Tamblyn family in the better part of a year. She did not know what was happening among the clans. But since Roamers kept the locations of their facilities secret, she could not simply hitch a ride on a normal Hansa transport to Plumas, or Rendezvous, or any obvious Roamer destination.
Given the choices, she decided to stay in the Earth solar system.
She made several more inquiries—as subtle as possible—to track down her missing compy. EA had gone off on her secret mission to warn Osquivel, using independent problem-solving routines to find transportation. Tasia could not make too much of an outcry about the compy’s disappearance, however, since EA had been performing an unofficial assignment at the time.
Because Roamer compies contained a great deal of information about the scattered clans, they each had internal security programming that would protect the data—at the expense of the compy itself. Tasia should have taken comfort from this, but EA was valuable, and beloved…and missing. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, Tasia could still do nothing about it, and she found herself alone with plenty of time on furlough.
She was most intrigued by the fleet of heavily reinforced “rammer” ships the EDF had started to build in the asteroid shipyards, so she requisitioned an intrasystem shuttle to go see the thick-hulled behemoths being constructed. Since a trip to the nearby shipyards did not require an Ildiran stardrive, she easily received clearance for her visit.
The scheme might have a chance of succeeding, if the rammers could emulate what the Ildiran Solar Navy commander had done at Qronha 3. According to reports, Adar Kori’nh had led forty-nine warliners on suicidal crash courses to wipe out hydrogue warglobes. And there had been no sign of drogues there since that devastating raid.
Seizing the opportunity, the Hansa had dispatched a cloud harvester to Qronha 3. The first shipment from the skymine had already arrived, and others were soon to follow. Tasia was amused at the