by Scalzi, John
Szilard waited for my answer, his expression placid.
“I had no reason to suspect he would surrender, no,” I said.
“But you asked him to anyway,” Szilard said. “Ostensibly to allow your colony to survive. I find it interesting that you asked for his surrender rather than begging for him to spare your colony. If you were simply looking to him to spare the colony and the lives of the colonists, wouldn’t that have been the more prudent course? The information the Colonial Union provided you about the general gave you no reason to believe surrender would be something he’d entertain.”
Careful, some part of my brain whispered. The way Szilard had phrased his comment seemed to suggest that he thought I might have had information from other sources. Which I had, but it seemed impossible that he would know that. If he did and I lied, I would be deeply into a world of shit. Decisions, decisions.
“I knew of our planned attack,” I said. “Perhaps that made me overconfident.”
“So you admit that what you said to General Gau could have indicated to him that our attack was imminent,” Berkeley said.
“I doubt that he saw anything more in it than the bravado of a colony leader, trying to save his own people,” I said.
“Nevertheless, you can see how, from the perspective of the Colonial Union, your actions could have jeopardized the mission and the safety not only of your colony but of the Colonial Union,” Butcher said.
“My actions could be interpreted any number of ways,” I said. “I can’t give credence to any other interpretation aside from my own. My interpretation is that I was doing what I thought was necessary to protect my colony and my colonists.”
“In your conversation with General Gau you admit that you shouldn’t have made him the offer to withdraw his fleet,” Berkeley said. “You knew that what you were offering the general was contrary to our wishes, which implies rather strongly that we had made our wishes known to you. If the general had had the presence of mind to follow your line of reasoning, the attack would have been obvious.”
I paused. This was getting ridiculous. It wasn’t to say that I wasn’t expecting a railroading in this inquiry, just that I had expected it to be a little more subtle than this. But I suppose Butcher had noted that things were hectic and rushed recently; I don’t know why my inquiry would be any different. “I don’t know what to say to that line of reasoning,” I said. “I did what I thought was the right thing for me to do.”
Butcher and Berkeley gave each other a quick sidelong glance. They had gotten what they wanted out of the inquiry; as far as they were concerned the inquiry was over. I focused on my shoes.
“What do you think of General Gau?”
I looked up, entirely surprised. General Szilard sat there, once again blandly awaiting my answer. Butcher and Berkeley also looked surprised; whatever Szilard was doing, it was apparently off the script.
“I’m not sure I understand the question,” I said.
“Sure you do,” Szilard said. “You spent a reasonable amount of time with General Gau, and I’m sure you have had time to reflect and speculate on the nature of the general, both before and after the destruction of the Conclave fleet. Given your knowledge of him, what do you think of him?”
Oh, fuck, I thought. There was no doubt in my mind that Szilard knew I knew more about General Gau and the Conclave than the information the Colonial Union gave me. How he knew that was a matter I could table for now. The question was how to answer the question.
You’re already screwed, I thought. Butcher and Berkeley were already clearly planning to punt me to Colonial Affairs Court, where my trial on whatever charge (I was assuming incompetence, although dereliction of duty was not out of the question, and for that matter, neither was treason) would be short and not especially sweet. I had been working under the assumption that Szilard’s presence was his way of making sure he got a result he wanted—he couldn’t have been pleased at the idea of me potentially messing with his mission—but now I wasn’t at all sure. Suddenly I hadn’t the first damn clue what Szilard really wanted, from this inquiry. Only that no matter what I said here, I was already done for.
Well, it was an official inquiry. That meant it was going into the Colonial Union archives. So what the hell.
“I think he’s an honorable man,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Berkeley said.
“I said, I think he’s an honorable man,” I repeated. “He didn’t simply attempt to destroy Roanoke, for one thing. He offered to spare my colonists or allow them to join the Conclave. None of the information the Colonial Union gave me indicated that these were options. In information I got—that all the colonists at Roanoke got, through me—was that Gau and the Conclave were simply wiping out the colonies that they discovered. It’s why we kept our heads down for an entire year.”
“Simply saying to you that he was going to allow your colonists to surrender doesn’t mean that he would do any such thing,” Berkeley said. “Surely as a former CDF commander you understand the value of disinformation, and providing such to your enemy.”
“I don’t think Roanoke colony would have qualified as an enemy,” I said. “There are fewer than three thousand of us against four hundred twelve capital ships. There were no defenses we could bring to bear, no possible military advantage in securing our surrender simply to destroy us. That would have been profoundly cruel.”
“You’re not aware of the psychological value of cruelty in warfare?” Berkeley said.
“I’m aware of it,” I said. “I wasn’t aware from the information the Colonial Union gave me that it was part of the general’s personal psychological profile or of his military tactics.”
“There’s much you don’t know of the general,” Butcher said.
“I agree,” I said. “Which is why I chose to go with my own intuition of his character. But I seem to recall that the general noted that he had overseen three dozen of these colony removals before he got to Roanoke. If you have information about those incidents and how the general acted toward those colonies, that would be instructive regarding his honor and his position on cruelty. Do you have that information?”
“We have it,” Butcher said. “We are not at liberty to provide it to you, as you’ve been temporarily removed from your administrative position.”
“I understand,” I said. “Did you have any of this information before I was stripped of my administrative status?”
“Are you implying that the Colonial Union withheld information from you?” Berkeley asked.
“I’m not implying a thing,” I said. “I was asking a question. And my point was that in the absence of information provided to me by the Colonial Union, I have only my own judgment to guide me, to complement the information I have.” I looked directly at Szilard. “In my judgment, from what I know of the man, General Gau is honorable.”
Szilard considered this. “What would you have done, Administrator Perry, if Gau had appeared in your sky before the Colonial Union had its attack plan finalized?”
“Are you asking if I would have surrendered the colony?” I asked.
“I’m asking what you would have done,” Szilard said.
“I would have taken advantage of Gau’s offer,” I said. “I would have let him take the Roanoke colonists back to the Colonial Union.”
“So you would have surrendered the colony,” Butcher said.
“No,” I said. “I would have stayed behind to defend Roanoke, I suspect my wife would stay with me. Anyone else who wished to stay could stay.” With the exception of Zoe, I thought, although I didn’t like the scene of Zoe being dragged, kicking and screaming, to a transport by Hickory and Dickory
“That’s a distinction without a difference,” Berkeley said. “There’s no colony without colonists.”
“I agree,” I said. “But one colonist is enough for the colony to stand, and one colonist is enough to die for the Colonial Union. My responsibility is to my colony and to my colonists. I would refuse t
o surrender the colony of Roanoke. I would also do everything in my power to keep the colonists alive. From a practical point of view, twenty-five hundred colonists are no more able to stand up to an entire fleet of warships than a single colonist would be. My death would be sufficient to make the point the CU would wish for me to make. If you think I would force every other Roanoke colonist to die to satisfy some arcane accounting of what defines the destruction of a colony, Colonel Berkeley, then you’re a goddamned fool.”
Berkeley looked as if he were ready to come over the table at me. Szilard sat there with the same damned inscrutable look he’d had through the entire inquiry.
“Well,” Butcher said, trying to get the inquiry back under control. “I think we’ve gotten everything we need from you, Administrator Perry. You are free to go and to await the resolution of our inquiry. You will not be allowed to leave Phoenix Station prior to the resolution. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said. “Do I need to find some sort of lodging?”
“I don’t expect it will take that long,” Butcher said.
“Understand that everything I’ve heard is off the record,” Trujillo said.
“At this point, I don’t know that I would trust information that is on the record,” I said.
Trujillo nodded. “Amen to that,” he said.
“What have you heard?” I said.
“It’s bad,” he said. “And it’s getting worse.”
Trujillo, Kranjic, Beata and I sat in my favorite commissary at Phoenix, the one with the truly spectacular burgers. We had all ordered one; the burgers cooled, neglected, as we talked in as secluded a corner as we could find.
“Define bad,” I said.
“There was a missile attack on Phoenix the other night,” Trujillo said.
“That’s not bad, that’s stupid,” I said. “Phoenix has the most advanced planetary defense grid of any of the human planets. You couldn’t get a missile larger than a marble past it.”
“Right,” Trujillo said. “And everyone knows it. There hasn’t been an attack of any size against Phoenix in over a hundred years. The attack wasn’t meant to be successful. It was meant to send a message that no human planet should be considered safe from retaliation. That’s a pretty big statement.”
I thought about this while I took a bite of my burger. “Presumably Phoenix wasn’t the only planet to get a missile attack,” I said.
“No,” Trujillo said. “My people tell me that all the colonies have been attacked.”
I nearly choked. “All of them,” I repeated.
“All of them,” Trujillo said. “The established colonies were never in any danger; their planetary defense grids picked off the attacks. Some of the smaller colonies saw some damage. Sedona colony had an entire settlement wiped off the map. Ten thousand people dead.”
“You’re sure about that,” I said.
“Secondhand,” Trujillo said. “But from a source I trust, who spoke to the Sedonan representative. I trust my source as much as I trust anyone.”
I turned to Kranjic and Beata. “This fits in with what you’ve heard?”
“It does,” Kranjic said. “Manfred and I have different sources, but what I’m hearing is the same.” Beata nodded as well.
“But none of this is on the news feeds,” I said, glancing down at my PDA, which lay on the table. I had it open and active, awaiting the determination of the inquiry.
“No,” Trujillo said. “The Colonial Union has slapped a blanket prohibition on information about the attacks. They’re using the State Secrecy Act. You’ll remember that one.”
“Yeah,” I winced at the memory of the werewolves and Gutierrez. “Didn’t do me a whole lot of good. I doubt it’ll do the CU much better.”
“The attacks explain the chaos we’re seeing here,” Trujillo said. “I don’t have any sources from the CDF—they’re clammed up tight—but I know that every single colony representative is screaming their head off for direct CDF protection. Ships are being recalled and reassigned, but there’s not enough for every colony. From what I hear, the CDF is doing triage—deciding which colonies it can protect and which colonies it can afford to lose.”
“Where does Roanoke fit into that triage?” I asked.
Trujillo shrugged. “When it comes down to it, everyone wants defense priority,” he said. “I sounded out the legislators I know about increasing Roanoke’s defenses. They all said they’d be happy to—once their own planets were taken care of.”
“No one’s talking about Roanoke anymore,” Beata said. “Everyone is focused on what’s happening at their own homes. They can’t report it, but they’re sure as hell following it.”
We focused on our burgers after that, lost in our own thoughts. I was preoccupied enough that I didn’t notice someone standing behind me until Trujillo looked up and stopped chewing. “Perry,” he said, and glanced meaningfully over my shoulder. I turned to see General Szilard.
“I like the burgers here, too,” he said. “I’d join you, but given your wife’s experience, I doubt you’d be willing to eat at the same table as me.”
“Now that you mention it, General,” I said, “you’d be entirely correct about that.”
“Then walk with me please, Administrator Perry,” Szilard said. “We have a lot to discuss, and time is short.”
“All right,” I said. I picked up my tray, giving a glance over at my lunch mates. Their expressions were carefully blank. I dropped the contents of my tray into the nearest receptacle and faced the general. “Where to?” I asked.
“Come on,” Szilard said. “Let’s go for a ride.”
“There,” Szilard said. His personal shuttle hung in space, with Phoenix visible to port and Phoenix Station off to starboard. He motioned to indicate both. “Nice view, isn’t it?”
“Very nice,” I said, wondering why the hell Szilard had taken me here. Some paranoid part of me wondered if he were planning to pop the shuttle’s access hatch and toss me into space, but he didn’t have a space suit, so this seemed somewhat unlikely. Then again, he was Special Forces. Maybe he didn’t need a space suit.
“I’m not planning to kill you,” Szilard said.
I smiled in spite of myself. “Apparently you can read minds,” I said.
“Not yours,” Szilard said. “But I can guess what you’re thinking well enough. Relax, I’m not going to kill you, if for no other reason because then Sagan would track me down and kill me.”
“You’re already on her shit list,” I said.
“Of that I have no doubt,” Szilard said. “But it was necessary, and I don’t plan to apologize for it.”
“General,” I said, “why are we here?”
“We’re here because I like the view, and because I want to speak frankly to you, and because this shuttle is the one place I’m entirely sure where anything I say to you is not going to be overheard by anyone else in any way.” The general reached over to the control dash of the shuttle and pressed a button; the view of Phoenix and Phoenix Station disappeared and was replaced with a depthless black.
“Nanomesh,” I said.
“Indeed,” Szilard said. “No signals in, no signals out. You should know that being cut off is unspeakably claustrophobic for Special Forces; we’re so used to being in constant contact with each other through our BrainPals that dropping the signal is like losing any three of our senses.”
“I knew that,” I said. Jane had recounted to me the mission in which she and other Special Forces hunted Charles Boutin; Boutin had devised a way to cut off the BrainPal signal of the Special Forces, killing most of them and driving some of those who survived completely insane.
Szilard nodded. “Then you’ll understand how difficult something like this is, even for me. Honestly I have no idea how Sagan was able leave it behind when she married you.”
“There are other ways to connect with someone,” I said.
“If you say so,” Szilard said. “The fact I’m willing to do this shou
ld also communicate to you the seriousness of what I’m going to say to you.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”
“Roanoke is in serious trouble,” Szilard said. “We all are. The Colonial Union had anticipated that destroying the Conclave fleet would throw the Conclave into a civil war. That much was correct. Right now the Conclave is tearing itself apart. The races loyal to General Gau are squaring off against another faction who has found a leader in a member of the Arris race named Nerbros Eser. As it stands there’s only one thing that has kept these two factions of the Conclave from destroying each other entirely.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“The thing the Colonial Union didn’t anticipate,” Szilard said. “And that is that every single member race of the Conclave is now bent on destroying the Colonial Union. Not just containing the Colonial Union, as General Gau was content to do. They want to eradicate it completely.”
“Because we wiped out the fleet,” I said.
“That’s the proximate cause,” Szilard said. “The Colonial Union forgot that in attacking the fleet we weren’t only striking at the Conclave but at every member of the Conclave. The ships in the fleet were often the flagships for their races. We didn’t just destroy a fleet, we destroyed racial symbols. We kicked every single member race of the Conclave hard and square in the balls, Perry. They’re not going to forgive that. But beyond that we’re trying to use the destruction of the Conclave fleet as a rallying point for other unaffiliated races. We’re trying to get them to become our allies. And the Conclave members have decided that the best way to keep those races unaffiliated is to make an example out of the Colonial Union. All of it.”
“You don’t sound surprised,” I said.
“I’m not,” Szilard said. “When destroying the Conclave fleet was first considered, I had the Special Forces intelligence corps model out the consequences of that act. This was always the most likely result.”
