Grantville Gazette 37

wormholes?'

'Among other things.' She moved away from the wormhole transceiver modules and took her old spot as REMO supervisor. A few taps of her control board and the teardrop shaped schematic of a Hornet appeared on the main screen. 'These Hornets are special. The fusion thrusters were replaced with differential momentum transfer drives. The armaments were upgraded to suit their new c-fractional flight profiles, and the best AIs available were installed. Add in the new interstellar control capability, and you can handle the whole sorry business today, from this very building. Our former colonists-who imagine themselves to be untouchable-will never suspect a thing.'

Peter felt numb, and he couldn't think of what to say.

She left her console and brought him the slate again. 'Every time we sent a longship to one of the colonies, we'd drop off one or two Hornets in a wide solar orbit while the settlers were still in suspension, slowly adding to the pool of Hornets on every subsequent journey. The century-long lead-time for this project has resulted in a lot of variation for the Hornets put on station.' She grinned. 'I figure that will complicate things, but if anyone can control such a complex assault force, you can . . . Sweeper.' That last twist of the knife caused her grin to turn feral.

The slate displayed the specs for all the variants of the Hornet that had been sent to New Poland for the last century. There were twelve relatively limited models and thirty-one with which he could build a complete connection. Peter tried to imagine the expense it had taken to build forty-three such machines-each with an AI that gave it more intelligence than a chimp, and the bloodthirsty will of a rabid pit bull; each armed to bursting with lasers, particle beams, and kinetic missiles; each with a fabulously expensive DMT drive; all outfitted with the hundreds of parallel-processed wormhole circuits to provide the bandwidth he'd need for control-an exorbitant expense that entire planets could not afford. The numbers were staggering, and when he multiplied that by eleven different colonies, the number became too large for him to even conceptualize.

Peter stood up and looked around at the control suite and the surrounding modules of the transceiver nodes, an array of tens of thousands of communication wormhole termini. It was awe-inspiring, frightening, and so very, very sad-all the capability and resources devoted to fear and the suppression of freedom.

He refused to let the stupid, futile irony of the ministry's self-defeating plan pass without challenge. Peter turned on her. 'Do you have any idea how much this has cost us? And not just in money or luckies, but in potential too? With the amount of trouble and expense it took to put this in place, you could have built three times the number of longships to carry away all those 'pitiful' folk on the dole. You could have better outfitted the colonies so they would have been happier as subjects of the empire! This all could have been avoided!'

She switched from calm and proud to livid insanity in the space of a heartbeat. Peter took a step back from her advance as she spat out, 'You don't know that! The ministry and the empire did as it thought necessary! This only proves we were right to do it!'

At that moment, he realized he had always been wrong about her. She was something altogether more pitiful and frightening than the sadist he had always thought her to be. She was a zealot, a true believer. New Poland was endangering her empire and it had to be put down.

She had more to say, though. 'And don't preach to me about waste and lost opportunities. I've seen your work! Your real work, not the shit you do now! I've seen the Rippers dance with you as their REMO, burning homes and shooting anyone who got in your way, man or woman, soldier or civilian. You're not clean. You're not pure. You weren't just a cog in the machine, doing what was required like a good little soldier. You did it because it was who you were. And it doesn't matter how many years you've denied your nature, or how many times you've lied to yourself, it's still who you are. It's what you are.'

It disturbed him to feel her barbs strike with such accuracy. Years of shame and regret bubbled up. Peter told himself that what he had done had been done under her orders. He told himself that it was the fog of war, the confusion of combat. But her comment about his Rippers resonated too well with him. The people he worked with now made their AIs dance in the acts of creation and industry. What if they only danced for him in the act of destruction?

When he said nothing, she stood straight and smoothed non-existent wrinkles from her pants, using her momentary triumph to regain some equanimity. 'Revolt was inevitable, no matter how much money we put into the colonies. It was just a matter of time. The only real question was who would be the first to muster the guts to do it. Now we have a responsibility to the Empress to quell this revolt and provide an object lesson to any other colony that thinks it has the safety of distance. Once a loyal subject, always a loyal subject.'

'I need a minute to think.'

'Down the hall from my office there's a balcony. Take all the time you need, Peter.'

He walked back in a daze, his mind churning with memories and concerns over what she wanted him to do. Outside, a hot breeze blew around the tower, and he was soon dotted with beads of sweat. Peter was surprised the sun still shone through the churning clouds. It felt much later in the day than it seemed to be, emotional weariness supplemented by bodily fatigue. His gaze settled on the chaotic jumble of man-made structures that stretched past the horizon, with barely a swath of green to break up the monotony.

He hardly gave a thought to the money she was offering. The luckies meant a more comfortable life, but it was not as if he intended to retire and live on the dole. Anyway, the money was a lure, not the hook. The real draw was the job itself, a job which appealed to both logic and the baser instincts that he thought he had buried when he left the colonel's employ. Peter was unsure which was having more of an effect on him, though: the logic or his own rejected desires. Since he could do nothing about the demons of his past and their struggle to gain purchase on his future, he focused on her arguments instead. Peter wanted to distrust her. To him, she was the devil incarnate . . . but if the devil tells the truth, what then?

Walking away was not a realistic option. If he did, she would simply hire someone else, and that person might give into their inner darkness with abandon, turning a bad situation into an atrocity, an atrocity which Peter would be indirectly responsible for. It all came down to answering questions he had avoided even asking for years.

Where did honor and valor lie? Was it in rejecting what he truly was and either letting someone else commit an atrocity upon New Poland, or letting New Poland dictate terms to Earth, along with all the chaos and horrors that would entail? Or did it lie in doing the job, in releasing his hidden demons, in killing a bunch of farmers who just wanted a better life, in order to save an empire that might not be worth saving?

What would the Sweeper choose?

What should Peter Highsmith choose?

Was there truly a difference?

In the end, there was really no choice at all. He walked back into Hornet control room, wiping the sweat from his brow. 'I want payment first,' he said.

She half smiled, and he thought he could detect her first genuine emotion that day. 'Forget it. You get half now, half when it's done. Feel lucky you're catching me on a trusting day.'

One small transaction later and the miniscule sum of LLC's marked on the surface of his ration card had jumped by five thousand. Nodding, he asked, 'What now?'

She waved a hand at the REMO connection chair and he sat, preparing the restraints and inductive pickups for maximum comfort. He would be in the hot-seat for quite a while.

Sylvia pointed to the largest of her displays. 'You'll see the target list when you boot up, but I want to make sure there's no confusion.'

He just nodded, his thoughts and memories swirling about too rapidly for him to formulate a response.

'First priority is to prevent them from redirecting the longships. You'll need to hit their wormhole comm sites repeatedly to ensure none of their ZPL termini survive. Miss one and we go hungry. Next in importance are their orbital facilities and satellites. That will prevent them from coordinating any response to the next wave of attack.'

'Won't you need to keep some of their comms up so you can accept their surrender?'

She frowned and shook her head. 'The empress isn't that interested in what they have to say. We can wait to talk to them when the next outbound longship arrives in about two years. Next target set is for all the major government buildings and the homes of the governing council. After the leaders and their families are dead, you hit their manufacturing centers, warehouses, and hospitals.'

'Hospitals?'

'Yes. I want every single piece of imperial nanotech and every drop of imperial medicine destroyed. I want the next two years on New Poland to be hellish. We have to be overwhelming with our response so the other