So Fedor plowed and sowed, for the day would come when the er. men realized they couldn't succeed. It might be necessary to chastise them a little first, but in the end the Federation would take them back. And when it did, Fedbledr Kazin would have a crop ready, by Ged!

He looked up as thunder muttered and the squall line in the east swept closer. He wasn't going to finish today after all: best to stop at the end of this furrow and head home. rasha would have supper waiting.

Pieter Tsuchevsky looked around the quiet room at his fellow Kadets. So this was how it felt to be a rebel. He'd never really wanted to be one. He doubted any of the others had. But it was inevitable for those who controlled the old government to call their opponents "rebels." He'd known that from the start, just as he'd known where his first public expressions of discontent might lead.

They'd led here to the men and women who had de-dared themselves the new Duma of Novaya Rodina and stated their determination to withdraw from the Federation.., not without fear and trembling. There was something almost holy about the Federation, but a government was only a government, and surely its function must be to make the lives of its people better, not worse. The purpose of an elective assembly couldn't be to murder its own members!

Anything that rotten at its core deserved to die, and die it would.

If only communications were less chaotic!

Novaya Rodina had never had a relay system, and courier drones had become notoriously unreliable since the Kontravian Mutiny. No doubt many nav beacons had been shut down or destroyed, but it went further than that. The Corporate Worlds handled a tremendous percentage of the total drone traffic, just as they monopolized the freight lanes. Almost certainlv they were tampering with the drones to keep the "rebels'; disorganized.

Well, if he were in their position, he would probably do the same. But in the meantime, it left him with the devil of a problem! He cleared his throat, and the eyes around the table returned to his face.

"So there you have it, comrades," he said slowly.

"The Federation has declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus... among other rights. And we-comy and I, my friends--we are all rebels." He shrugged. "For myself, I realized this must come, but possibly some of yott did not. So it is only fair that we reconsider what we have done, I think. We have made our gesture, voiced our protest. Is that all we wish to do? If so, we had best dispatch a courier drone with apologies and renewed protestations of to ovalty at once! But ff we do not, ff we continue as we have bgun to follow the lead of the Kontravians, God alone knows where we shall end." "Pieter," Magda Petrovna stroked her prematurely silvering hair, "you say you knew this would come. Do vou think we were all fools, Pieter Petrovich?" She smiled in gentle mockery.. "How noble of you to give us a choice!

But tell us--whichat will tou do when we all run crying home to babushka Terra?" A soft laugh ran around the table, and Pieter smiled unwillingly; but he also shook his head.

"This is no laughing matter, Magda. This is life and death. Oh, we hold the cities and universities, but the farmers and ranchers think we're mad. They won't raise a hand if it comes to a fight--and we've little chance of defeating the Federation if they would!" "Mega shit!" The tart remark could come only from one man, and Pieter's eyes twinkled as he turned to Semyon Jakov, the single raegaovsts rancher in their Duma. The old man's blue eyes were fiery as he puffed his walrus mustache, looking as fierce as one of his huge, vaguely sheep-like herdbeasts. "No way we could beat the Federation, no," he mapped, "but we won't be fighting the Federation only an Innerworld rump, and well you know it, Pieter Petrovieh Tsuehevsky! And they won't even have the full Navy. Damnation, man, the Kontravians took a task force--- a task force--in one snap! D'you honestly think they haven't lost more ships? I wouldn't be surprised to hear they've lost half the Fleet by now, Pieter!" "True, ,Semyon, but Novaya Rodina is no Navy base. There wre no ships for us to seize; it was pure luck Skywatch supported us. They could'ye blown our leaky old tubs out of space and those are still the best ships we can scare up. No, Semyon Illyich, whatever the Kontravians may have taken, we can't fight what the Federation can send here." "But why send anything?" Tatiana Illushina asked plaintively. "We're not exactly the richest of the Fringe Worldsl' "No, Tatiana," Magda said gently, "but we are what the Fleet manuals call a "choke point."" The others listened carefully. Semyon Jakov had been a Marine for fifteen years, but Magda had reached the rank of captain in Frontier Fleet before resigning in protest.

"An especially valuable warp nexus," Magda explained. "The way the warp lines lie, some systems control access to several others. The Corporate Worlds are mostly on early choke points of the Federation. That's why they're so powerful; every ship to the Heart Worlds has to go through choke points they control." Tatiana nodded. When it came to the economic implications of the Corporate Worlds' galactic position, every Fringe schoolchild understood.

"Well, the same thing makes choke points militarily important," Magda said. "If Novaya Rodina goes over to the Kontravians, we'll block a whole section of the Fringe off from the Federation; they'll have to take this system before they can attack the others. But if we remain loyal to the Federation, the Fleet will have several possible avenues of attack into Fringe space to choose from, you see?" "But... but in that ease, they're certain to come here aren't they?" Tatiana asked very quietly.

"They are," Pieter told her gently, "and soon, I think. They wouldn't have sent this--was he waved the official message form gently his-comif they didn't mean to back it up. There's some pretty, stiff language in here; if they planned on talking us back into the Federation, they'd'ye taken a more flexible initial position." "I agree," Semyon said harshly. "and I say--fuck "em! Let them come] There's twenty, million people on this planet. It'd take half the Corps to hold us down!" "Except that only eight million or so of them are actively on our side," Pieter begun, but Magda interrupted.

"It doesn't matter an.vway, Semyon Illyich," she said with an affectionate smile.

"Just because you grunts spend tour time crawling around in the mud doesn't mean the Fleet does! They don't care about planets, only warp points and the normal space between them." "So? They still need someplace to base ships!" "Certainly," Magda nodded, "but what ff a monitor drops into orbit and zeros a few missiles on Novaya Petrograd? Or Novaya Smolensk? You think we shouldn't surrender to keep them from firing?" "Well..." "Exactly, you old cossack!" Magda punched the old man's arm lightly.

"Are you saying we should just give up?" Jakov demanded incredulously.

"Did I say that? Certainly not! We've already sent off our own drones, so the rest of the Fringe knows what's happening. I'm only saying that if it comes down to ultimatums, we'd better decide what we'll do ahead of time. I don't want to believe a TFN commander would fire on civilians; it goes against all we've been taught. But he might. And I want us to know now what we're going to say to him to keep any itchy finger off the button." "So what you're saying, Magda," Pieter cut in pacifically, "is that we should continue as we have, possibly even t fighting in space, but that if it's a choice between bombardment and surrender, we should surrender?" "Exactly." Magda's face was unusually grim. 'I don't like it any more than you do, Pieter--or you Semyon. But what alternative do we have?" "But what'll happen to us if we surrender?" Tatiana asked. "I don't mean the rest of our people, I mean us, right here in this room?" "Hard to say," Magda said with a shrug. "There's never.1.999 been a case like this, and it's not as ff we're the only planet to secede. I'd think the government would have to follow a fairly lenient policy especially with any of us 'rebels" who surrender--ff they have any hope of ever healing the break. Unfortunately, we can't depend on that." "They might execute us?" Tatiana asked faintly. "They, might," Magda agreed calmly. "Of course, even under fiartial law, any death sentence has to be confirmed by the civilian authorities.