The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [56]
“You’re referring to the systemwide warp-field detection grids the Vulcans have offered to help us install, both here and at Alpha Centauri,” she said. “Although some in my profession have described these measures as mere burglar alarms.”
Burglar alarms, Qaletaqu thought, shaking his head sadly. He was already willing to bet money that this early description of Vulcan’s defense initiative was going to stick. That did not bode any better for the future of Coalition unity than did Vulcan’s disconcertingly hands-off reaction to the growing Romulan threat.
“What the Vulcans are providing is significantly more sophisticated than a ‘burglar alarm,’” he said. “Would I rather have half the Vulcan fleet posted across the system to discourage the Romulans? Of course I would. But that’s not going to happen. And politics is the art of the possible, after all.”
“Still, I imagine most people on Earth are going to be profoundly disappointed by Vulcan’s decision,” Brooks said. “Do you expect the people you represent in the Martian Colonies to react any differently?”
With Mars significantly more vulnerable to any outsystem attack simply by virtue of its being millions of miles closer to the edge of human habitation in its native solar system—Jupiter Station was currently the only outpost of any significant size between Mars and the Alpha and Proxima Centauri settlements—the people of the Martian Colonies, from high officialdom right down to the grunt-level terra-forming laborer, were all but certain to be furious. Though Qaletaqu knew that Brooks hailed from San Francisco, he also knew there was little chance that she could be ignorant of this simple reality.
“Can I assume that was a rhetorical question?” he asked.
She nodded, conceding his point. “Perhaps the proper question is this one: What will the confederated government of the Martian Colonies do in response to Vulcan’s decision?”
He chuckled. “Just what do you think we can do?” She had to know as well as he did that Mars, though nominally autonomous despite the bloody, half-century-past war for independence that had preceded the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, had become over the years essentially a political satellite of the United Earth government. The recent signing of the Coalition Compact had only further marginalized Mars in favor of the far more populous political centers on Earth and Centauri III, earning the Red Planet such sardonic sobriquets as “the cosmic Canada.” The voice of the people whose ancestors had once rocked Earth’s economy by initiating the Gundersdottir’s Dome Rebellion and a series of Red Planet general strikes had become simply another voice in humanity’s ever-expanding interstellar choir.
Hell, we’re so unimportant that even our official Coalition delegates have to take commercial flights, Qaletaqu thought wryly.
“All right,” she said, nodding. “I know that Mars isn’t in any position to twist Administrator T’Pau’s arm with gunboat diplomacy, or even trade sanctions. But some of your countrymen have a lot of political clout just the same. For example, Katowa, your father.”
He sighed again and turned back toward the window. The transport vessel he had seen approaching earlier was on the ground now, and was making its way toward the jetway that connected with the transit lounge. An announcement on the public address system confirmed that the vessel would shortly be ready for boarding even as the other passengers present began to queue up before the counter that stood beside the jetway door.
“Katowa is the chief of the independent Martian Hopi-Pueblo nation you come from, isn’t he?” Brooks prompted.
Qaletaqu nodded. “He is. But the Assembly of the Martian Colonies is not a dictatorship, and neither is our tribal government.” Like the Iroquois confederacy of eastern North America, Mars’s Hopi-Pueblo nation—an amalgam of southwest tribes that had