Torch of Freedom

Again, he paused. Again, she said nothing, and he grasped the dilemma by its horns.

'It's my thought that the first option would be disastrous for the People's Navy in Exile, and probably equally disastrous for Manpower and, quite possibly, the Mesa System itself. The second option would fail to accomplish our full operational objectives, but it would still inflict massive damage on the current Verdant Vista regime. It's even possible that we'd catch a significant portion of the regime's government aboard the space station. For that matter'—he allowed himself a slight smile, although he was far from feeling amused—'orbital debris is going to fall somewhere if we take out their station. It would be a pity if it happened to fall on any major population centers as a result of any . . . encouragement we might give it, but that sort of collateral damage would not constitute a violation of the Edict.

'Given all of that, I believe the second option is by far the better of the two. We'll go ahead and finish off their 'navy' and all of their orbital infrastructure and industry, but I'm not going to commit a clear violation of the Eridani Edict when it's bound to come back against not just me and my people but against Manpower and Mesa, as well.'

Jessica Milliken gazed back at the Havenite with merely thoughtful eyes while her brain went into overdrive. Every word he'd just said was unarguably accurate. Of course, he didn't know about Wooden Horse, so he wasn't aware of just how little anyone in the Mesa System was going to care about what happened to the 'People's Navy in Exile.' Which didn't change the fact that he was absolutely right that Manpower's deniability had clearly been badly damaged. That wasn't the same thing as saying the Alignment's deniability had been damaged, but bringing the League's official displeasure down on Mesa, especially at this particular time, didn't exactly come under the heading of what her superiors would consider a good thing.

She thought about it for several seconds, and found herself wishing fervently that Gowan Maddock were here to take the responsibility off her shoulders. He wasn't, though. She had to make the call.

And, really, she reflected, it's not my call to make after all. For that matter, it wouldn't be Gowan's, if he were here. I can't make Konidis do anything he doesn't choose to do,and Gowan couldn't, either.

'Citizen Commodore,' she said, 'I can't argue with anything you've just said. I'm sure my own superiors, as well as Manpower, would have been much happier if our original intelligence estimates and planning had held up. Obviously, they haven't, and your people's losses have already been far, far greater than anyone could possibly have anticipated. And you're right about the fact that the current regime has declared war on us, as well, and about that declaration's implications under interstellar law and the rules of war. So, under the circumstances, I agree with you that the second option you've described is far and away the better of the two.'

'I'm glad you agree.' Konidis suspected he hadn't quite managed to keep his relief out of his voice, but he didn't much care, either. He wasn't going to become a genocidal mass murderer, after all. Not today. And, he discovered, for right now at least, the enormous relief of that fact outweighed the potential consequences for the PNE's future.

But it's not like I'm completely willing to just forgive and forget, he thought more grimly. We may have just lost the entire future of the Revolution along with Citizen Commodore Luff, and if we have, I want some of our own back. His eyes flicked to the master astrogation plot, where the planet Torch drew steadily nearer. I'm glad we won't be bombarding the planet, but I think I'm even gladder that these people won't know that. That they'll come out and fight where I can get at them instead of just running away.

'Citizen Commander Sanchez,' he said, raising his voice to attract the chief of staff's attention. 'We have some planning to do.'

'Of course, Citizen Commodore.'

'Ludivine,' Konidis continued, turning to Citizen Lieutenant Ludivine Grimault, his staff communications officer, 'I'm going to want a com conference with all of our squadron and divisional commanders. Get that set up ASAP, please.'

'At once, Citizen Commodore.'

Unlike Sanchez, who still seemed totally focused on the task in hand, Grimault was clearly relieved to have something to do, and Konidis smiled briefly at her. Then he turned back to Sanchez and his com link to citizen Captain Egert.

'There's been a change of plans,' he told them both. 'We're not going to hit the planet directly.'

Egert's eyebrows rose, but he thought he saw the reflection of his own relief in her eyes. Sanchez, on the other hand, frowned . . . predictably, Konidis supposed.

'We're not just going to go home, though,' he continued grimly. 'We owe these people, and we're going to take out every ship, every space station, every resource extraction center, and every communications and power collection array they have. We're going to completely trash their extra-atmosphere infrastructure, and if we've got time, we're going to take out any infrastructure they have on the planet with precision strikes, as well. We're not going to be committing any Eridani Edict violations now that the bastards know who we are, but we're going to do absolutely the next best thing. And, frankly,' he bared his teeth, 'after what's already happened to us, I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.'

Sanchez still seemed less than delighted at Konidis' decision to abandon what had been the primary mission objective from the outset, but his expression showed his complete agreement with the citizen Commodore's last sentence. For that matter, Egert nodded emphatically, as well.

'All right,' the citizen Commodore went on briskly, 'first, I think we—'

'Excuse me, Citizen Commodore.'

Konidis frowned at the interruption and turned his head.

'What is it, Jason?' he asked rather more sharply than he normally spoke to his ops officer.

'I'm sorry to interrupt, Citizen Commodore.' Something about Citizen Lieutenant Commander Petit's expression sent a sudden icicle down Konidis' spine. 'I'm sorry to interrupt,' Petit repeated, 'but CIC's just picked up three fresh impeller signatures breaking planetary orbit.'

'And?' Konidis asked when Petit paused. The planet was still well over a hundred million kilometers away, far outside any range he would have had to worry about even if he'd still had Cataphracts in his magazines.

'And CIC's has tentatively identified them, Citizen Commodore,' the operations officer said quietly. 'They make it two more of those Erewhonese cruisers . . . and another ammunition ship.'

It took Santander Konidis almost five seconds to realize he was staring numbly at Petit, and the silence on PNES Chao Kung Ming's flag bridge was absolute.

PART III

Late 1921 and 1922 Post-Diaspora.

(4023 and 4024, Christian Era)

Leonard Detweiler, the CEO and majority stockholder of the Detweiler Consortium, a Beowulf-based pharmaceutical and biosciences corporation, found himself with a great deal of money and not a great deal of sympathy with the Beowulf bioethics code which had emerged following Old Earth's Final War and Beowulf's leading role in repairs to the brutally ravaged mother world. Almost five hundred years had passed since that war, and Detweiler believed it was long past time that mankind got over its 'Frankenstein fear' (as he described it) of genetic modification of human beings. It simply made sense, he believed, to impose reason, logic, and long-term planning on the random chaos and wastefulness of natural evolutionary selection. And, as he pointed out, for almost fifteen hundred years, mankind's Diaspora to the stars had already been taking the human genotype into environments which were naturally mutagenic on a scale which had never been imagined on pre-space Old Earth. In effect, he argued, simply transporting human beings into such radically different environments was going to induce significant genetic variation, so there was no point in worshiping some semi-mythic 'pure human genotype.'