Crown of Slaves

discovered the information on the computer screens-computers which many of them knew perfectly well how to operate.

Death. Death. Death. All of them! Now!

In some cases, the departing Mesans had had the foresight to destroy the equipment. But, more often than not, in their panicky haste to simply flee for a refuge, they had neglected to do so. And, once the com centers had started falling into the hands of the slaves, the slaves had rapidly begun establishing their own communication network across the planet. This was a rebellion which had all the pitiless rage of Nat Turner's-but whose slaves were very far from illiterate field hands. They had organized themselves just about as quickly and readily as the slaves on Felicia had done, after Templeton's seizure of the ship. And, like the slaves on Felicia, there had been enough undercover agents of the Ballroom to serve as an organizing and directing catalyst.

Berry drew a long and shaky breath. It was over now, at least-and, at least, she could remind herself that she had been the central figure in ending the slaughter. Before the second of Congo's twenty-seven-hour days had passed, she'd been able to establish contact with all the remaining Mesan enclaves, as well as the major slave organizing centers, and negotiate a surrender. Her terms had been simple: In exchange for their lives and whatever personal possessions they could carry, provided they surrendered immediately and made no attempt at sabotage, any Mesan who wanted to leave the planet would be allowed to do so with no further harm. Under Solarian Navy escort, and into the safekeeping of the Solarian Navy. She'd even offered to place the Felicia at the disposal of the Solarian Navy, to provide the needed transport.

That last decision had been one she'd made with some reluctance. As with everyone involved during those long weeks, Felicia had come to occupy a special place in her heart. She'd even been the one to give the ship her new name: Hope, she'd called her, repeating the name until she simply drove under all the competing names. Of which Vengeance had been the most popular.

She'd had to drive over even sharper opposition to get everyone's agreement to her proposal to use Hope as the transport for the departing Mesan personnel. Web Du Havel had sided with her immediately, but Jeremy had dug in his heels.

Let the swine make the trip in cubbyholes aboard Solarian warships.

The children, too?

Those are not children. Those are young vipers.

No. NO. There isn't enough room for all of them. Leave any behind…

Vipers.

Damn you, Jeremy! I will not be crowned standing in a lake of blood and vomit! End the slaughter now! NOW, do you hear!

It had been the first clash of wills between her and Jeremy. And…

She'd won, to her surprise. Mostly because, she decided afterward, even Jeremy had been a little shaken by the horror. Especially after one particularly savage group of slaves had gleefully broadcast a transmission which recorded for posterity the execution of three overseers. Insofar as the antiseptic term 'execution' could be applied to death by torture.

Web had helped, adding his quiet and calm reasoning to her own stubborn fury.

'We must end it now, Jeremy-as quickly as possible, whatever it takes-or we will suffer a monumental disaster in public relations. Bad enough that recording will be used by Manpower from now on, every chance they get. If we can at least demonstrate that the new government did everything in its power to bring the butchery to a halt, we can contain the damage. In the end, most people will accept the spontaneous fury of rebelling slaves. They will not accept the cold-blooded callousness of established power. Let them have the Hope.'

Rozsak had even helped. 'I'll see to it you get the ship back, after we've transported the survivors.'

* * *

Whether the Solarian captain would make good on the promise, remained to be seen. But now, as she watched the last survivors filing toward the waiting shuttles, Berry found herself not caring any longer. The Hope was a small price to pay, to end this.

Even worse than the expressions on the faces of the survivors, in some ways, were the expressions on the faces of the Ballroom members-any ex-slave, really-who stood near her watching them leave.

Pitiless. Utterly, completely pitiless.

Berry understood the reasons for that, true enough. There were many recordings in their possession now, which the triumphant slaves had seized. Some of them official recordings made by the Mesan authorities, but many of them private recordings left behind by now-dead or evacuating Mesan personnel. A number of the overseers had been particularly fond of keeping mementos of the atrocities they had visited on slaves, over the long years. Recordings which ranged from nauseating depictions of personal brutalities to the-in some ways even more nauseating-depictions of slave bodies being used as raw material for Mesan chemical vats.

Let Mesa try to use their few recordings of slave atrocities. Now that it was over-had been ended, as all could attest, as quickly as the new government could manage it-Mesa's propaganda campaign would be buried under an avalanche of their own recordings. Already, Berry knew, the galactic media's representatives in-system were practically salivating over the material. It was all… disgusting, really. But she could accept 'disgusting,' for the sake of the future.

That same future, moreover, was clear as crystal to her. She understood now, deep in her belly, everything that Web Du Havel had once explained to her and Ruth about the dangers which faced a successful slave rebellion. Fury and rage and hatred might be necessary to create a nation and drag it screaming and fighting out of the womb of oppression and cruelty, but they could not serve as its foundation. Those emotions, for a society as much as an individual person, needed to be leached away. Lest they become toxic, over time, and lead to madness.

It was odd, in a way. Berry herself had once had to go through that experience, after Anton had taken her from Terra's underground and brought her to Manticore. At Anton and Cathy's insistence-though Berry herself had protested it was an unnecessary expense-she'd gone through an extensive therapy program. Where she'd discovered, to her surprise, that her own horrendous experiences-especially the protracted beating and gang rape she'd suffered just at the end, before Helen rescued her-had left far greater wounds on her psyche than she'd realized.

She knew that her therapist had told Anton, after it was over, that Berry was perhaps intrinsically the sanest individual she'd ever treated. But 'sanity' was not a magic shield against the universe's cruelties. It was simply a tool. The same tool she would now spend decades using, to do what she could to heal a new nation.

She turned her head and looked up at Jeremy, standing to her right. He avoided her eyes, for a few seconds. Then, sighing, looked down at her.

'All right, lass. You were right. Although if that damn Solarian captain doesn't return the Hope…'

'You'll do nothing,' she said. Proclaimed, rather.

'Blast it, you're getting far too good at this proclamation business,' he muttered.

Berry restrained her smile. Indeed, she even managed to keep her face stern and solemn. 'You still haven't agreed to the other. I know you, Jeremy. You don't forget things. You also keep your word. So the only reason you haven't given me an answer is because you're stalling. You've stalled enough. I want an answer. Now.'

He made an exasperated little gesture. 'Will you cease and desist with this Catherine the Great imitation? I wouldn't mind, if it were a bad one.'

This time, she couldn't help but smile a little. But all she said was: 'Now.'

'All right!' he said, throwing up his hands. 'You have my agreement. My word, if you will. Any stinking lousy Mesans who choose to remain on the planet can do so. No repercussions, no discrimination against them, nothing.'

'You have to stop calling them 'stinking lousy Mesans,' too. Those who remain behind are now simply Torches.'