Torch of Freedom

clusters, and I've lost two launchers out of the port broadside. Aside from that and the primary gravitic array, it's all pretty much cosmetic.'

Konidis managed not to snort, although it was difficult. Egert had a point about the minor nature of Chao Kung Ming's damage. Unfortunately, the heavy cruiser was only one unit of a force which had been unbelievably mauled.

Worse, we've been identified, Konidis thought grimly. They knew we were State Security before anybody even opened fire, and there must be thousands of life pods headed for the planet right now. Our life pods. If they make planetfall and the people inside them get captured, they'll talk, sooner or later, whether they want to or not. And when they do, there won't be any question in any one's mind about who we are. For that matter, I'm sure that bastard Theisman and that traitorous bitch Pritchart would be delighted to make positive identifications from our personnel files back home. And once the Sollies start spreading our ships' emission signatures around . . .

He kept his face expressionless, but his thoughts were grim as he considered the decision which had become his and the unpalatable options available to him.

We can break off without attacking the planet. We can take our losses and run, and no one will ever be able to prove we had an Eridani Edict violation in mind when we arrived. For that matter, Torch has formally declared war on Mesa. That would make us legitimate mercenaries in Mesan service, if that was what we wanted to claim . . . and if we don't violate the Edict. So, in theory, at least, our survivors should become prisoners of war if they do make it to the planet, which would put them under the Deneb Accords' protection.

In theory.

He tipped back in his command chair, thinking hard.

The problem was that he couldn't quite convince himself that a planet of ex-slaves, whose government contained quite a few theoretically retired members of the Audubon Ballroom, were going to just forgive and forget. If Rear Admiral Rozsak knew why the PNE had come to Torch, it was extraordinarily unlikely that the Torches didn't know it, too. Which suggested to Santander Konidis that they weren't going to be extraordinarily concerned about how the rest of the galaxy might regard the 'welcome' they extended to the people who'd been about to genocide their home world.

If we go ahead and take out the planet, we can hang around to pick up our life pods afterward. What's left of Rozsak's force isn't going to want to tangle with us, now that it's lost its ammunition ships. And I've still got eleven cruisers and sixteen destroyers. I don't care if the entire frigging 'Royal Torch Navy' is waiting in orbit around the planet, they aren't going to be able to stand up to thatwithout Rozsak's magic missiles to back them up! But if we do hit the planet, Rozsak's surviving ships are never going to let us get into range to take them out, too. And that means he'll get away clean with his sensor data . . . and the entire galaxy will know who did it.

He glanced at Jessica Milliken from the corner of one eye. Given the fact that both Citizen Commodore Luff and Captain Maddock were almost certainly equally dead, Commander Milliken was now the senior Mesan representative present. She looked just as shocked by what had happened to the PNE as the Havenite officers and ratings around her, but she still represented the price the PNE would pay if Konidis didn't attack the planet.

Manpower never backed us because it liked us, he thought harshly. It backed us because we represented a useful tool. If we don't hit Torch, that usefulness disappears, as far as it's concerned, and without Manpower, we lose any future logistical support.

Without some source of support, just repairing his surviving ships' damages would be out of the question. Any sort of sustained action against the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris would become impossible, unless they wanted to be seen as nothing more than common pirates. And if that happened, then everything they'd already done—the price they'd already paid—would have been for nothing.

But it'll be for nothing, anyway, if we do do this, he realized. The only reason Luff agreed to the operation in the first place was because it was supposed to be anonymous. No one was supposed to know it was us. Thanks to Rozsak, though, everyone will know, and no one in the People's Republic is going to rally to 'defenders of the revolution' they know violated the Eridani Edict for a bunch of genetic slavers.

He glanced at Citizen Commander Sanchez. His chief of staff was involved in an intense four-way conversation with Citizen Commander Charles-Henri Underwood, Chao Kung Ming's executive officer; Citizen Lieutenant Commander César Hübner, the heavy cruiser's tactical officer; and Citizen Lieutenant Commander Jason Petit, Konidis' staff operations officer. There was no question, no doubt, in Sanchez's intent expression, the citizen commodore thought resentfully. The chief of staff, unlike Konidis himself, had never entertained any doubts about Operation Ferret's justification. For him, it was a simple matter of buying the support the Revolution required, and that automatically validated anything that might be required of them.

I don't want to do this, the citizen commander admitted to himself. I've never wanted to do it. And now—

'Commander Milliken,' he heard himself say.

'Yes, Citizen Commodore?'

'It seems to me,' Konidis said, 'that the current situation lies far outside any possibility that was envisioned when this operation was planned.'

He paused. The blond-haired commander who had become the only official Mesan representative to the PNE in the same moment Konidis became its commander only looked back at him, her blue eyes and expression politely attentive.

'Completely disregarding the losses we've sustained,' he went on, 'it's evident that the enemy knows who we are and why we're here. They also know about Manpower's . . . sponsorship. If we proceed as originally planned, the consequences for the People's Navy in Exile will be extreme. By the same token, however, given the losses we've already inflicted on them, it strikes me as . . . unlikely, to say the least, that the Solarian League Navy is going to adopt a sympathetic attitude towards the Mesa System in general if it becomes known that a Mesa- based transstellar was behind everything that's happened here today. Would you agree with that assessment?'

Milliken said nothing for several seconds. Then she shrugged very slightly.

'Citizen Commodore, I think just about anyone would have to admit that what you've said so far is self- evident.'

Her voice was noncommittal, but Konidis felt a stir of hope, anyway. At least she hadn't started out by trying to argue with him.

'As I see it, we have two options,' he told her. 'First, we can go ahead and carry out the operation, then try to pick up all of our surviving personnel before leaving the system. Assuming we succeed in doing that—and that we've got sufficient shipboard life support for it—there won't be any prisoners for anyone to interrogate. Despite that, though, I feel confident there are going to be enough recoverable bodies for conclusive DNA identification if someone checks back with Nouveau Paris for matches against our personnel files. Which would mean that Rozsak's basic analysis of who we are and where we came from—and, therefore, who we came here for—would be clearly validated, as far as the galaxy at large is concerned. My understanding of our initial operational plan was that Manpower wanted to avoid that. That anonymity was a primary operational objective.'

He paused again, and, once more, she simply looked at him, waiting.

'Our second option is to abandon the direct attack on Torch,' he said. 'We have more than sufficient firepower to overwhelm anything Torch—I mean, Verdant Vista—has left. We could take out any warships they might have in orbit as we overfly the planet, then come back and take our time destroying their orbital infrastructure. Given the fact that the system's current regime has declared war on both Manpower and Mesa, that would be completely legal within the constraints of the accepted rules of war. We'd still have to worry about how the Solarian League might choose to react to what's happened to Rozsak's ships, but, legally speaking, Mesa and Manpower could make a strong argument that our actions were justifiable in light of Rozsak's announced intention to attack us if we didn't break off our completely legitimate operation against Verdant Vista.'