by David Weber
He'll know what to do from there." "Glad to." Stiegman finished his drink and set it aside, his face thoughtful. "And may I ask what you plan to do, Admiral?" "You may," Forsythe said with a wry smile, "but I'm afraid I haven't really decided, yet." "I see." Stiegrnan rose. "In that case, I'll get back to my ship, with your permission.
But, Admiral" he met Forsythe's eyes levelly his--comI'd recommend some caution. You haven't talked to these people; I have. They're serious, mighty serious." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I haven't seen your intelligence reports, but this is my normal run. I've felt the tension growing out here for months, and I can tell you this--the Fringe is a nuke about to go off, Admiral." "I know, Captain Stiegman. I know." There was a brief silence after Stiegman's departure. Forsythe and his juniors stared down at the carpet, wrapped in thought. Finally the old man raised his head.
"Ceaeaaptain Stiegman," he said, "is a most resourceful man.
"Yes, and he's got guts," Enwright's voice was tighter than usual, "but I can't help thinking he was a little too lucky, sir." "In what way, Willis?" "He got away with it," Enwright said bluntly.
"No one fired on him and no one chased him. If they had, they'd'ye caught him. A packet's fast, but so is a light cruiser--and a erniser's armed." "True. But if they haven't taken the Fleet base or Skywatch, the rebels couldn't have fired on him--assuming they had anything to fire with--without alerting those installations." "No, sir. But why didn't either of those bases ask Rising Moon where she was going and why? Don't tell me she had departure clearance!" "A point. You're suggesting, then, that the rebels control everything? The entire cluster, fortifications and all?" "We can't know that, sir. I'd say they hold Bigelow, but the rest of the cluster?" Enwright shrugged.
Everything I said then still holds true." "I know you think it does, Willis," Enwright said. "You may even be right. God knows I don't want to go down in history as the first Navy commander to fire on other Ter-rans! But I don't see that we have any choice. If Bigelow
Skyatch isn't in rebel hands, it's going to need all the help it can get, and the same is true of the Fleet base, the repeaair yards in Killiman--the entire cluster, for that matter.
"Admiral, please," Enwright's voice was urgent, "send in a few destroyers first. Find out what's happening before we barge in in force. The cans will have the entire task force behind them--and they can say so. That should stop any itchy trigger fingers long enough for a parley." "With respect, Admiral," Rivera said harshly, "I think that would be a mistake. If Bigeiow Skywatch is still loyal, it could touch off the very incident Captain Enwright wants to avoid.
Take the entire task force. Show them the odds, and they'll cave in." "Don't delude yourself, Commander," Enwright said colby. "If these people've gone this far, they're readv to go further. The actual presence of the task force won't achieve anything except to up the stakes for everyone!" "Perhaps," Forsythe said softly, "but if the entire task force is there, we can be certain anything that happens is over quickly, Willis." His heart ached at his flag captain's look of desolation.
"Face it, Willis," he said gently. "We can't afford delays. There's no way to keep this quiet--we can't even try to; we need to warn the other Fleet bases, warn the government, warn everyone--and the word is bound to leak. We need to be certain a resolution follows the news as quickly as possible, or other Fringe Worlds will be tempted to follow suit. You know that as well as I do." Enwright looked away from the thin, troubled face with the wise old eyes. Yes, he thought, some of the other Outworlds will follow suit if the Kontravians aren't stopped. But this is the wrong way to do it. He knew it was the wrong way. Or did he? Was that the TFN officer in him, or was it the Fringer? His intellect, or the confusion of his loyalties? He looked back.
"Please, sir. Talk to them first." "I'll talk to them, Willis." Steel showed through For-sythe's compassionate tone. "But from the flag bridge of this ship with the task force behind me." He rose, termi-rating the meeting.
"Gentlemen, check your departments.
I want a complete status report in one hour. We will then formulate our precise plans." His staff saluted and left. Willis Enwright walked slowly to the hatch and paused, then turned back to his admiral, his face older than his years.
"Sir, what if they don't surrender? What will you do ff they fight?" "Do, Willis?" Forsythe felt the cold of interstellar space blow down his spine. "I'll honor my oath to defend and preserve the Constitution -comany way I must." "You'll open fire, then," Enwright sid almost inaudibly. "If I must," Forsythe said steadily.
"But consider this, I beg of you. What you see as a personal choice may not seem like one to others." He seemed to be trying to tell Forsythe something, but the old admiral was too worried and heartsick to hunt for the meaning.
"I understand that, but I don't have an option. No one can ask more of any man than that he do his duty as he sees it." He shook his head sadly. "No matter how painful it is." "Yes, sir. I hope we all remember that," Enwright said quietly. Then he drew himself up and gave Forsythe the sharpest salute the admiral had ever seen from him. He stepped through the hatch, and it closed behind him.
DUTY "Captain Enwright and Admiral Forsythe are both dead.t" The gasping words came hoarse over the com channel, but the screens were blank with electronic hash. Commander Windriter didn't recognize the distorted, faceless voice. Who was it? Had they ever met?
'I'hey're all dead on flag bridge!" the voice went on desperately. "There's fighting evereavwhere... crew quarters... officer country... power rooms... We need help, for God's sake! We--was The snarl of a laser pistol slashed across the words and the voice went silent. The blinking light codes on Windrider's fire control screens chilled his blood, and his hands clenched on the gunnery, console of the monitor Enwright as the flagship fell away, the first mutiny in the Federation Navy's history raging: on her command bridges and in her drive rooms.
Jason Bluefield Windrider couldn't believe it. No, he told himself grimly, he could believe it; he just didn't want to. Mutiny was an obscenity to a man like him, but he understood the mutineers. Not long ago, some of them would have been guests in his quarters, discussing the crisis, wondering where their true duty lay. It seemed they'd decided aboard Anderson.
He looked into the strained faces of his control team. They knew what was happening aboard the flagshipbut what could thev do about it? For that matter, what could he do? He and ('is ratings sat at the very. core of a tremendous hull, 285,000 tonnes of alloy and armor wrapped around their fragile lodies and sensitive instruments. They were Enwright's fighting brain, controlling the power to vaporize a planetoid or sterilize a world, and soon they might have to perform actions which would scar their souls. He didn't know what the men and women of his crew would decide. He was certain of only one thing; he himself was about to face a moment of truth he did not believe he could endure.
The communicators muttered, ghostly voices blurring in his battlephone implant as frantic commanders conferred, afraid to expose their inner convictions, yet compelled by duty and training to act decisively.
And that was their true curse, Windrider thought savagely. Navy training and their own inclinations forced them to act. They weren't politicians (the word was a vicious epithet in his thoughts) who could confer and debate and duck responsibility. When you put on Navy black and silver, you put your judgment on the spot. "An imperfect response now is a thousand times better than recognizing the perfect response too late." That was what the Academy taught but there were only imperfect responses to this!
Windrider shook his head angrily. The universe was crumbling before his eyes and he was philosophizing? Yet what else could he do?
But now its hungry breath was in his face, hot and stinking as a pseudopuma's.
It wasn't fair! Hadn't the bureaucrats known? were they so blind to human needs and loyalties they hadn't even considered what might happen out here?
But of course they had. That was why the Marine contingents aboard the transports consisted almost ent
irely of Innerworlders.
Yet the politicos had miscalculated, he thought grimly. They'd guessed at the hatred they were about to unleash, but not how quickly the flames would erupt. Their planned show of force was supposed to nip rebellion in the bud, on the ground. They'd never dreamed the Kontravians might seize 'thEir local orbital defenses and Frontier Fleet squad-tons or have the guts to defy TF 1Ts might after they did.
Besides, the Navy's monumental dependability was the bedrock of the Federation; it had never occurred to them that the Fringers in the Fleet might be as conscious of planetary loyalties as any Corporate Worlder. So they hadn't "sanitized" the Fleet as they had the ground forces.
Perhaps they couldn't have, really, given the high proportion of Outworlders in the Fleet. Only a few ships had "reliable" Innerworld crews. Most had heavy Fringe contingents; some were completely Fringer-crewed. Now their officers were caught between their oaths and the dreadful prospect of turning their weapons on fellow Fringers, and it was intolerable.
Faced with the unfaceable, Enwright had acted, Forsythe had reacted, and laser fire had gutted Anderson's flag deck. But they were only the first casualties; WJ-NDRIDER could already taste the blood to come, and it sickened him.
"Captain! Admiral Singh is coming up on the all-ships channel!" "Throw it on the big screen, Mister Sung." Li Han held her face calm and her voice level as she waited for the screen to light, but she felt her bridge crew's tension. Even her imperturbable executive officer showed the signs; Tsing Chang's breathing vas harshly audible.
Thomas Singh had always struck Han as belonging to an earlier age. The neatly-trimmed beard in fashion among the Fleet's male officers somehow contrived to look fierce and predatory, on Singh, and never more so than now. His dark eyes flashed, and the lips under his hooked nose were tight. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and cold.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief.
Captain Willis Enwright and others aboard the flagship have mutinied against the lawful orders of their superior officers and against their oaths as officers and enlisted personnel of the Federation Navy. I will not permit this to spread! I believe Admiral Forsythe to be dead, and I hereby assume command. All Marine detachments will report to the armories and draw full combat equipment." Han tensed, and a soft sigh ran around her bridge. "Marines from the transport group will board Anderson. Any individual participating in this disgraceful violation of the Fleet's trust will be arrested to await tr--was "No!" Despite her iron control, Han jerked as the single word cut across Singh's cold voice. She thought it had come from one of her own people... until Singh whipped around to stare behind him. Then he was flinging himself aside, dropping towards the deck, and a laser bolt slashed across the pickup. His command console flared--plastics burning, metals melting--and the snarl of lasers continued for a fractional second before someone's fire incinerated the entire command station.
"Captain?" Tsing's normally passionless voice questioned, and Han felt his eyes, felt the burning questions in the minds of her bridge personnel. It was against this cataclysmic instant of ruin that she had prepared for all these months; against this decision that she'd selected her crew, trading ruthlessly on past debts and owed favors. Now her handpicked personnel looked to her, tense and straining as attack dogs, their fear and confusion checked only by their trust in her.
And how strong was that trust? They were Federation officers, trained and sworn, yet they were also Fringers. How could she--how could anyone hold them in a moment like this? For an instant, she felt as small and frail as her appearance suggested, but her finger touched a stud on her chair arm, and she heard Tsing's breath hiss as her eom panel to it with the face of Captain Wang Chung-hui, commander of Longbow's Marine detachment.
ISURRECT-OATION 89 Wang's cheeks quivered under her level regard, but there was no strain in her face, he thought almost resentfully. What was she about to demand of him?
He knew his duty.., but he, too, was a Hangchowese.
"Major Wang," Han's voice was cool, and Wang felt a stab of near hysterical mirth.
There could be onlv one "captain" aboard a warship, yet it was typical of Li Ian to remember a point of etiquette and give him his courtesy promotion at a time like this. She was the smallest person in Longbow's complement; she was also the largest.
"Yes, sir?" he said hoarsely, and his heart sank as he realized that when she ordered it he and his men would don their combat zoots and board Anderson, blasting down anything in their path. Not because of dutv or Admiral @u Singh, but because Captain Li had ordered them to, "You heard Admiral Singh, Major," Han said softiv.
"Ye*sir."
"Report to the armory, Major." Wang's heart plum- meted. "Draw combat gear for your men, then post guards on the boatbay and all auxiliary hatches.
Nobody leaves this ship. Is that clear?" His "Sir?" Wang blinked. Guard the boatbay and hatches? Seal them? Then she wasn't... "Yes, sir.r' Wang barked, and the salute he threw her would have done credit to the commandant of the Corps.
"Thank you, Major." Hah broke the circuit, her face still calm, despite the sweat beading her hairline. She continued to ignore her bridge crew, forcing herself to remain oblivious of the holstered lasers riding at every hip as she touched another stud.
"I am your commander. As a sworn officer of the Federation Naeaity, I have no choice but to obey my lawful superiors, just as you have none but to obev me. Yet some orders cannot be obeyed, and Admiral Sifigh's are such orders. I cannot order you to mutiny"--comshe used the word deliberately-- "but understand this: the only way Longbow will assist in suppressing the outbreak aboard Anderson is by mutinying against me." She paused, tasting the shock and confusion in some of her officers, the burning determination in others. She felt weak and shaken, as if her body were a hollow shell filled with air, and wanted desperately to lick her lips, but she didn't.
"I intend," she went on, her voice clear and strong, "to place this vessel at the service of the Kontravian Cluster. Any who disagree with that decision are free to leave. Report to Major Wang at the boatbay--without weapons. That is all." She released the stud and turned her chair slowly, meeting Commander Tsing's eyes squarely before she to et her gaze sweep her other officers.
Every holster was sealed. No one spoke in encouragement or condemnation. That wasn't the Hangchow way, she thought almost whimsically.
But there was a way to gauge their true feelings.
"Lieutenant Chu?" "Yes, sir?" Her navigator sounded breathless, but there was snap in his voice.
"Lay off a course to place us between Anderson and the rest of the task force, Lieutenant Chu." "Aye, aye, sir." And that was all there was to it.
Commander Windrider watched Basilisk peel off the edge of the formation--and she was only the first. The monitor Prescott slid drunkenly aside as fighting wracked her command deck and navigation spaces before the drive could be cut. The destroyers and cruisers of the screen went berserk as their complements turned on one another, and garbled scraps of chatter told him the fighting had become general aboard Enwright, as well. Only one ship was under complete command. He watched his display as a single battle-cruiser shot out of the scrambling formation to hover between Anderson and her consorts. The data codes gave her identity, and her shields were up, her weapons on line.
"Alert! Alert!" A computer voice wailed, then choked off, replaced by Captain Hodah's voice, and Windrider smiled" bitterly. There was no taped message for this madness.
"This is the Captain! All persons resisting their lawful superiors will cease immediately or face summary courts martial for mutiny! Marines will lay aft to the boatbay and prepare to board Anderson pursuant to the orders of Admiral Thomas Singh. Any person resisting execution of this order will be stopped. Marine officers are instructed to use weapons immediately in any ase of resistance. This is a direct order--and your final warning!" Windrider blanched. Hodah was a calm, humane man; for him to turn the Marines against his own people with a virtual license to kill and to announc
e it for all to hear--must mean he felt the situation could get no worse. And what the hell had happened to Admiral Singh? Why wasn't he on the eom?
A trident buzzer shrilled, and his eyes widened. The passages outside fire control were depressurizing... and that could happen only ff someone deliberately spilled atmosphere! God!
. or a nuke. Had Hodah done it to keep mutineers away? Or had the mutineers done it to isolate fire control from the loyalists? But the deck plates still pulsed to the rhythm of the drives, so Hodah had secured the power plants, or slaved their controls to the bridge. Was the power gang alive, or breathing space? What was happening out there? Who controlled what in the lunatic asylum which had once been a capital ship?
One of his ratings jerked on his gauntlets and reached for his helmet, and Windrider stabbed him with an angry stare.
"Where do you think you're going, Bearclaw?" "B -comb, sir! Those are ourfrstends out there! We've got to do something[" The missile tech was a product of Windrider's own world, an Amerind from Topaz, and his words tore at Windrider's soul.
He felt sweat under the tooled leather band at his temples and remembered the scent of the evergreen tomash trees above his home.
"What you're going to do, Bearclaw," he said harshly, "is stand away from that hatch and sit down." Bearclaw sat slowly, and his crewmates looked away in confusion. What was Windrider doing?
