In Her Name

planet and major moon in the system at a distance from the sun where water could exist as a liquid, and thus support carbon-based life. There were other targets in the system, including the asteroids, but the fourth planet from the star was obviously the primary target, along with its orbiting moon.

There was no mistake, no room for doubt. They had found it.

“My God,” she whispered. Turning to the officer of the deck, who was heading her way to see what was going on, she said, “Commander, I want this information to be held closely until I say otherwise. No one – no one – else is to see or hear of this report until I have a chance to discuss it with Admiral L’Houillier. Is that clear?”

“Aye, ma’am,” the commander replied crisply.

Satisfied, Laskowski turned on her heel and hurried out of CIC. But she had no plans of telling L’Houillier, at least not until after she had told the president himself.

* * *

“Tony?” Enya called above the murmur of the crowd. “Tony Braddock?” Her shuttle had arrived scant moments ago. After being led away from the landing zone by the courteous crew chief, she found herself among the crowd of dignitaries and other military and civilian personnel who had assembled in the Warspite’s starboard landing bay.

“Enya!” Tony shouted, waving his arm for her to join him. He stood off by himself, his glum face brightening at her appearance. “What are you doing here?”

“I was chosen to represent Erlang on the Council,” she told him, her eyes wide at the sight around her, the hundreds – thousands? – of people filling the great ship’s landing bay.

But the sight of Tony Braddock and the look on his face diverted her attention to the here and now, as well as reaffirming her suspicions about the dark nature of the gathering of people around her. Looking around quickly, deciding that it was safe amid the background noise, she quietly told him, “We were told to supply a representative for the expedition or be cut off from all Confederation aid. Borge’s hands around our throat are as tight as ever.”

Braddock nodded grimly. “You aren’t the only ones. He made the same speech to the entire Council, telling us all that anyone who doesn’t toe the line is going to be cut off. Or worse.”

Enya shook her head incredulously. The Kreelans had done damage enough. Now, humanity had inherited a maniacal leader, as well. “Where is Nicole?” she asked, hoping to brighten the conversation.

Tony frowned. “I don’t know. They have me billeted with the rest of the politicos, and I haven’t been able to spend much time with her since we left Earth.” He craned his neck around, his eyes searching. “I haven’t spotted her in the crowd, but I’m sure she’s here somewhere.”

“What is going on?” Enya asked. “Why is everyone gathering together like this? Is Borge going to address everyone, or what?”

Braddock was incredulous. “You didn’t know?”

“Know what?” From the look on his face, she was sure she was going to regret finding out.

“They’re transferring some Kreelan prisoners from the Furious,” he paused, “along with Reza and Jodi Mackenzie. They were captured on their way to Erlang.”

“I had heard a rumor, but didn’t believe it. You don’t believe it, do you?” she asked him. “I know that Reza is different from anyone I’ve ever known, but he would not have killed Nathan. I just can’t accept–”

A glance and a frown from a nearby councilwoman caught Braddock’s eye.

“Yes, I know,” he said, raising his voice to make sure the eavesdropping councilwoman heard, “it amazes me that President Borge is even going to bother with a tribunal.”

“Tony?” Enya said, confused at his turn of his speech, but stopped when his hand gripped her arm tightly, almost painfully.

Braddock watched out of the corner of his eye as the councilwoman turned back to her conversation, apparently satisfied. Then he guided Enya to the open space beneath a nearby Corsair’s wing. “Enya,” he whispered after they’d moved out of earshot of their neighbors, “you’ve got to be very careful about what you say and who hears you. Since Nathan died, the changes on the Council have been nothing short of terrifying.” He glanced around quickly, and she recognized the look from her time in the resistance: he was making sure the area was secure.

“Almost all the old members of the Council – everyone who supported Nathan and his policies – are gone,” he whispered. “Since he declared martial law after Nathan’s death, Borge has dismissed most of the Senate and Council. He’s installed sympathetic supporters or simply eliminated representation for some worlds in the legislature. Some of them, the most vocal opponents, have died suddenly and inexplicably.” He looked around again. The crowd had grown larger, closer. “The checks and balances system is gone. Even the judiciary has been subverted since Savitch was killed. We’ve got a dictatorship with a rubber-stamp body masquerading as a democracy.”

“And what about you?”

A look of shame crossed his face. “I’ve tried to make a stand for the things I’ve felt are really important, but it’s no use,” he said wearily. “My only hope is to try and gain enough support in an underground movement to restore some kind of order to the government. In public, I have to appear as just another lackey, or I face the same fate as the others. Then none of us will have any hope.”

Enya took his arm. “Don’t be ashamed,” she told him. “Sometimes there is no alternative but to dress like the enemy so you can defeat him.” She, of all people, knew the truth of that. She had worked against Belisle’s corrupt government on Erlang by masquerading many times as a Ranier. Some of the things she had to do…

He managed a grim smile. “That’s what worries me,” he told her. “I don’t want to become the thing I’m trying to destroy.”

“May I have your attention, please!” a voice suddenly boomed over the PA system. Braddock recognized it immediately: Voronin Hack, the Council’s Master-at-Arms and ceremonial mouthpiece. The crowd quieted down immediately. “Ladies and gentlemen,” his smooth baritone voice continued, “honored guests and dignitaries… the President of the Confederated Alliance of Humanity!”

A massive cheer went up as Borge took his place at the podium, the white presidential robe billowing about his ample stomach, his face flushed with supreme confidence. He raised his hands to the crowd, basking in their adulation.

The applause, Braddock noted sadly, was enthusiastic and sincere. There were no guns at people’s backs, no cue cards or faked admiration. With the exception of those on the Council or in the upper circles of the military, few people here knew or understood the implications of the transformation that had occurred in the Confederation government at Borge’s hand. Most of them saw him as the inheritor of Nathan’s tragic legacy, as the man who had pursued a humble life in the unglamorous world of creating and guiding the law, but who now was determined to end the war and bring peace to the galaxy.

After what was to Braddock an interminable interlude of applause, Borge finally gestured for the crowd to be silent. Slowly, unwillingly, they began to comply.

“Fellow citizens of the great Confederation!” he declared as the crowd at last was still. “Fellow humans, hear me:

“For many long years we have suffered and died at the hands of the alien enemy, losing our loved ones, our children to the claws of this insidious infestation that has swept across our galaxy like a plague. Campaign after campaign have we fought, not for glory or bounty, but for our very survival.” His voice deepened, his tempo slowed as he went on, “For nearly a century have we lost world after world, colony after colony invaded, burned, destroyed. Neither man, nor woman, nor child has been spared this agony, this devastation.”

He looked down at the podium, as if in communion with the now-thoughtful members of the audience, as if offering a silent prayer to those who had died in the century-long invasion. “But, my friends, the tide has turned,” he said, looking up, casting his gaze upon the crowd before him. “The aliens have lost their strength, their will to fight,” he told them. “They have run in full retreat from our worlds, fleeing to the sector of space from which they were spawned. We may never know the nature of the divine intervention that has driven them from our homelands, but know you this…” He paused, his brow wrinkling in righteous fury. “They cannot run far enough to escape our vengeance!”

The assemblage broke into a roar of cheering and whistling, voices taking up the challenge that Borge had laid before them.

Borge patiently waited for the tremendous reaction to subside, the shower of voices finally falling into silence