Hell, they could actually go bush and live off the land while they tried to keep on evading capture. Honor and her allies had far too little manpower to hunt them down on an island this huge, and Styx had been so completely terraformed that, except for the warmer temperature and lower gravity, it actually made Honor homesick for Sphinx. Fugitives wouldn't even need to know a thing about edible wild plants, for the planetary farms covered scores of square kilometers.
Unfortunately for the Peeps, however, their slaves knew the island even better than they did. There had been a clandestine communication net between the sex slaves and the farms' slave laborers—many of whom had been playthings themselves before their 'owners' tired of them—for decades. In fact, over twenty escaped slaves had been in hiding when Honor attacked Styx. They'd contrived their escapes by faking their own deaths—suicide by drowning had been a favorite, given the currents and deep-water predators off Styx's southwestern coast—and the farm laborers had concealed and helped feed some of them for years. But escaping discovery had required them to find hiding places all over the island... which meant the liberated slaves were much better than Honor's people at deducing where their erstwhile masters might be hiding now. For that matter, they were better at it than the Peeps were at finding hiding places on the run, and some of them had no interest at all in waiting for the courts-martial Honor and Jesus Ramirez had promised them. Nor were they shy about dumping the results of their grisly handiwork where other fleeing Peeps might find it.
The good news, she thought, is that sheer terror is probably going to encourage the rest of the garrison to turn themselves in before someone catches up and murders them. The bad news is that I never wanted anything like this to happen. I promised them justice, not animal vengeance, and I won't let myself or people under my command be turned into the very thing I hate!
She drew a deep breath and looked up from the console. 'I suppose I can't really blame them for wanting to get even either,' she said quietly, and saw her friends' eyes flicker to the dead side of her own face. She ignored that and shook her head. 'Nonetheless, we have our own responsibilities as civilized human beings, and that means we can't let this pass unchallenged, however much we may sympathize with the killers' motivations. Warner,' she turned her good eye on the Peep officer, 'I want you to talk to the prisoners. I know they hate you... and I know you hate talking to them. But you're the closest thing we've got to a neutral party.'
She paused, watching him intently. His expression was pinched, but finally he nodded.
'Thank you,' she said softly. 'What do you want me to say to them, Ma'am?'
'Tell them what's been happening. Explain to them that I don't want it to go on, but that I simply don't have the manpower to stop it or patrol the entire island.'
McKeon twitched unhappily in his chair at that, and she gave him a crooked half-grin.
'It's not going to come as any surprise to them, Alistair, and it's not like we'll be giving away critical military information! Besides, prison guards are always outnumbered by their prisoners. The whole reason to build a prison is to economize on your guard force, and these people certainly know that if anyone does! And if they get any ideas, all they have to do is look up at the tribarrels in the watch towers around their compound to see why acting on them would be a serious mistake.'
She held his gaze for a moment, until he grinned back wryly and shrugged, then returned her attention to Caslet.
'Point out to them that the only way I can possibly guarantee their fellows' safety, even temporarily, is by bringing them in where I can put them under guard to protect them from their ex-slaves. And, Warner,' her voice turned much grimmer, 'you can also tell them that I really don't especially want to protect any of them, because I don't. But that doesn't change my responsibilities.'
'Yes, Ma'am,' Caslet said, but he also looked down at his hands for several seconds, then sighed. 'I'll tell them, Ma'am, and I know it's the truth,' he told her. 'But I'll feel like a liar, knowing what's waiting for them.'
'Should we just let the guilty walk away unpunished then?' she asked gently, and he shook his head quickly.
'No, Ma'am. Of course not. I've seen too much of what StateSec has done—not just to these people, but to you and your people. For that matter, to people I know were loyal officers who did their very best but—' He broke off with an angry grimace. 'Someone has to call them to account. I know that. It's just—'
'Just that you feel like you're inviting them to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire,' McKeon put in quietly. Caslet looked at the broad-shouldered commodore for a moment, then nodded. 'Well, I suppose you are, in a way,' McKeon went on. 'But at least they'll have trials, Warner. And the sentences of the guilty will be in accord with established military law. They won't be capricious, and you know as well as I do that Honor would never permit the kind of horror you and I just finished looking at. The worst they're looking at is a firing squad or a rope... and just between you and me, that's a hell of a lot better deal than some of them deserve.'
'I know, Alistair. I—' Caslet stopped himself and gave a tiny shrug. 'I know,' he repeated, 'and I'll tell any of the prisoners who ask exactly that.'
'Thank you,' Honor said. 'And when you do, tell them that I would appreciate the assistance of any of them who would be willing to record orders or pleas for their fellows to surrender themselves. Tell them that I will neither ask nor permit them to make any promises of immunity or pardon. If they wish to include a warning that courts-martial will be convened, they'll be free to do so. But you may also tell them, as Alistair just said, that I will not allow anyone under my command to engage in the sort of atrocities which are now being committed.'
'Yes, Ma'am.'
'And while Warner does that, Alistair,' Honor went on, turning back to McKeon, 'I want you, Jesus, and Harriet to try to work out some way to keep tabs on the slaves.' Her expression was grim. 'I'll speak to them again myself this afternoon, both to remind them that we've promised there will be trials... and to tell them that our people will be authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, to prevent this kind of vengeance killing. I hate to come the heavy, but they've been through so much I have to doubt that anything less drastic than that will get through to them. And if you and Jesus and Harriet think it's necessary, I'll be willing to proclaim an island-wide curfew, as well, in hopes of at least cutting down on this kind of thing.'
'That may not be a bad idea,' McKeon said thoughtfully. 'There are almost five hundred of them, counting the farm workers. We've managed to keep any weapons out of their hands—aside from anything they may have 'liberated' from Black Legs they've already... dealt with, at least—but there are still as many of them as there are of us.'
'I know.' Honor sighed. 'I just hate the idea of putting them back into some kind of lock-down after everything that's already been done to them. And I'm a little afraid it may turn us into the enemy, as well.'
'I wouldn't worry too much about that,' McKeon told her with a headshake. 'Oh, it'll piss them off, and it may make some of them hate us, at least in the short term. But there's a world of difference between proclaiming a curfew—even one backed up with physical force—and the kinds of things the Black Legs did to them! Things may be tense for a while, but once they realize you're serious about the trials, I think they'll come around.'
'As long as we can hold things together until they do,' Honor said with another sigh. 'We need more manpower, Alistair, and we need it badly.'
'Agreed.' McKeon slid down in his chair to sit on the end of his spine while he slitted his eyes in thought. 'Any progress on the data search?' he asked after a moment.
'There's a little progress, actually.' Honor tapped her terminal, where she'd just been reviewing the latest memo from her computer attack team.
'Harkness, Scotty, Anson, Jasper, and Ascher are having the time of their lives playing with the Peeps' secure data base, and these people were incredibly overconfident. The possibility of someone's taking the place over from the inside simply never occurred to them. It couldn't happen. And because it couldn't, the only people who could purge their files were Tresca or his exec... and they could only do it from the planetary defense command center.' She shook her head. 'I guess they figured that since the only real threat had to come from the outside, through the orbital defenses, whoever had the duty there would be in the best position to decide when to purge, so that was where they put their central data processing node, as well. But when Jesus took the command center out from the ground before either of the authorized COs could even get there—' She shrugged and held out her hand, palm uppermost.
'So we really did get their records intact?'
'It looks that way to our team of burrowers, anyway. And the security measures are even less sophisticated and up to date than the ones Harkness had to crack aboard
