Torch of Freedom

capable, longer-lived human being was achievable. Not that arrogance, but another deeper, darker arrogance. The arrogance of fanaticism. Of the ability—of the willingness, even the eagerness—to prove to the rest of humanity that Detweiler had been right. To rub the rest of the galaxy's nose in the fact that, as Leonard Detweiler's descendents, they were right, too . . . and that everyone else was still wrong.

That in their own persons they already represented that better, more capable human being, which was proof of their own superiority and their own right to dictate humanity's future to every other poor, benighted, inferior 'normal' in the universe. That they'd been right—had the right—to actually expand the genetic slave trade and all of the human misery it entailed not for profit, but simply as a cover, a distracting shield for the high and noble purpose which justified any means to which they might resort.

And to create, evaluate, and 'cull' however many little girls had to be thrown away to accomplish that glorious purpose.

Chapter Forty-Four

Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. He'd always thought the MSN's uniform, with its hectares of braid and its tall caps whose visors dripped old-fashioned 'scrambled eggs, looked more like something out of a bad operetta than anything any real navy would have tolerated. Of course, no one had ever wanted anyone to take the MSN seriously, had they? It was supposed to be a pretentious Lilliputian force with delusions of grandeur—exactly what the galaxy would have expected out of a star nation whose government was totally dominated by outlaw, profit-driven transstellars.

And, by the oddest turn of fate, that was precisely what the Mesa System Navy actually was. It would never have done to create a force whose professionalism might inadvertently have given itself away, after all. And so the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the 'navy' everyone knew about, the MAN was a deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.

And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.

He took a deep and burning pride in that knowledge, and he looked forward to the rapidly approaching day when everyone else in the galaxy would know what he already knew. When the words 'Mesan Navy' would be spoken with respect, even fear, instead of amused contempt.

But that day wasn't here yet, and aside from Commander Jessica Milliken, his own second-in-command, none of the other people filing into the briefing room aboard the battlecruiser Leon Trotsky knew the MAN existed. Which was why Maddock and Milliken wore the uniforms they did.

He waited while the newcomers took their places, standing behind their chairs as he stood behind his own, waiting. A few seconds ticked past, and then the briefing room door opened once again and Citizen Commodore Adrian Luff of the People's Navy in Exile strode through it, flanked by Citizen Commander Millicent Hartman, his chief of staff, and Captain Olivier Vergnier, Leon Trotsky's commanding officer.

If I think my uniform is stupid, Maddock thought sourly, what about the one these lunatics are wearing?

It was a legitimate question, and one which had occurred to him more than once during the endless purgatory of his six-month assignment to his present duty. He'd experienced his share of idiocy during his occasional assignments to provide technical expertise to some operation being mounted by Manpower bureaucrats who knew no more about the truth of the Mesan Alignment than anyone else, but this one took the cake. It wasn't just Manpower loonies this time. Oh, no! This time he got to deal with an entire task force of people who were so far around the bend they wouldn't have been able to see it with a telescope . . . if it had ever so much as crossed their teeny-tiny minds to look back in the first place.

Luff marched to his chair at the head of the conference table and waited while Hartman and Vergnier stood behind their own. Then he seated himself, paused for two carefully counted heartbeats, and nodded regally to the lesser beings clustered about him.

'Be seated,' he commanded, and Maddock made himself wait another half-second before he obeyed.

He and Milliken looked conspicuously out of place at that table in their black tunics and charcoal-gray trousers. True, the other uniforms around them sported almost as much braid as theirs did, but those other uniforms' tunics were red, and their trousers were black.

And no one else in the entire galaxy is crazy enough to wear them, either, he thought sourly, and shook his head mentally behind the expressionless façade of his eyes.I wonder, do even they still genuinely believe there's a single chance in hell they'll ever return victoriously to Nouveau Paris and deal with the counterrevolutionary scum whose backstabbing treason brought down the people's paladins of the Committee of Public Safety?

It seemed unlikely to Maddock that anyone could truly be that completely and totally out of touch with reality, but the People's Navy in Exile certainly acted the part. Even the names they'd assigned to the surplus Indefatigable-class battlecruisers Manpower had provided to them reflected that: Leon Trotsky, George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Paine, Mao Tse- tung, Maximlien Robespierre . . .

Well, I don't really care how far out to lunch they are, he reminded himself. All I care about is that they do what they're supposed to do . . . and that I get the hell off this ship before the button gets punched on Wooden Horse.

'First,' Luff said as he surveyed the officers seated around the table, 'let me say I'm extremely pleased with how well the most recent exercises have gone. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the best trained, most proficient naval force with which I have ever been associated.'

There were murmurs of satisfaction, and Maddock made himself nod in sober agreement with the commodore's assessment. And it was probably accurate, too, he reminded himself. Unlike at least a few of the People's Navy in Exile's ship commanders, Luff himself had never served in the original People's Navy of the People's Republic of Haven. He'd attained his pre-Thesiman rank of captain (the self-granted promotion to 'commodore' had come later—purely, of course, as an administrative necessity when he organized the PNE) because of his loyalty and reliability. And his function had been not to fight actual battles but to make certain that no one in the regular navy entertained any thought of resisting the Committee of Public Safety's orders. He'd been the regime's enforcer, not a naval officer, and it was unlikely any members of the regular 'naval forces' to which he had been attached during his StateSec career would have considered him one of their 'associates,' either.

Still, there was some valid basis for Luff's current satisfaction, the Mesan officer reminded himself. Especially given the fact that for all their pretension to the status of warriors of the revolution, the men and women in this briefing room had spent the last six T-years as little better than common, garden-variety pirates. It was amazing to Maddock that they'd managed to hang on to any shared sense of identity, and he supposed their identification of themselves as a 'navy in exile,' however ludicrous it might be, helped account for it. Well, the fact that Manpower had subsidized the PNE generously enough for them to hold their ships' companies together had something to do with it, as well, he imagined.

The consequences of their degeneration into ten-a-credit brigands had been painfully evident when they gathered here to begin drilling for the Verdant Vista operation, though. They'd never been what Maddock would