The convoy also brought news that a major political upheaval was underway in the Central System that could impact how everyone did business. The “Born Agains” were rising in the polls and taking one district after another.
The Federation forces had regrouped and were taking back the planets the Swordsmen had captured. They were preparing to continue the drive to the heart of Swordsman space. The Swordsman forces were in disarray following the collapse of their command structure caused, in large part, by the raid Rachel had run on their headquarters. The Federation High Command expressed its gratitude to Stellar for funding Rachel’s initiative. However, there was no mention of gratitude to Rachel or any of the people who carried out the mission.
Saul continued to destroy the strongest of the Swordsmen outposts with devastating results. The Swordsmen appeared to be ready to surrender and had made overtures to that effect. However, the “Born Agains” who were even more conservative than the corrupt Conservative party currently in power would not allow the Swordsmen to surrender until they agreed to return all territory included in the secession to the Federation and convert to the “Born Again” religion. If the Conservatives were to avoid being branded “liberal” they had no choice but to keep the pressure on the Swordsmen.
Saul’s continued predation on the Swordsman military installations presented a political problem for the “Born Again” leadership. He was doing what they wanted done, but he was not of their religion and that was problem. They had no control over him and no advance knowledge of his targets. They feared that if they did not contain him somehow, when they rose to power, he was as likely to attack them as he was the Swordsmen. They were wrong. Unless they did something very stupid, Saul had no issues with them and would continue to press his campaign against the Swordsmen as long as he had personnel and ordinance with which to fight.
But then, given their arrogance and their closed minds, it was only a matter of time before they did something extremely stupid.
In those areas where the “Born Again” party had dominance on the planets of the Central System, new restrictions on religion and life style were imposed and a wave of refugees flooded to the outermost regions of the settled galaxy. Not since the early days of the Swordsman rise to power did the Colony Service see so many people willing to uproot to travel to the wilderness.
The Queen Elizabeth was redeployed to Stellar Headquarters and refitted for her role as a colony ship exploring new places for people to settle.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WAR BETWEEN THE SWORDSMEN and the Federation dragged on for another four years. After four years, both sides were weary of war and the Swordsmen virtually admitted defeat, but they could not accept the terms imposed by the wealthy incoming “Born Again” politicians who had everything to gain and little to lose by the war continuing.
Timothy and the Stellar board of directors ended the war by fiat. They were tired of losing ships, cargoes and personnel to this needless conflict. They declared that if hostilities did not end by a certain date, their freighters would return to port and park until a treaty was signed. Since Stellar carried over three quarters of all interstellar freight, such a move would have shut down interstellar commerce and the over populated planets in the Central System which depended on imports of food from the colonies in other star systems would be faced with mass starvation.
By Timothy’s order, Rachel’s legal officer, David and his team were dispatched to negotiate the treaty. This was especially painful for both sides in the conflict since the only thing they agreed on was that they both hated the Jews and Muslims. The negotiations were held at a Stellar depot on an airless moon of a large planet under heavy guard by Stellar security forces. The only people happy with the selection of the negotiating team were those third parties who knew that David would negotiate a reasonable agreement which would not deteriorate in a few years to another war. David announced early in the process that there would be no reparations since reparations were often the cause of secondary wars which were in some cases more costly than the war that originated the reparations.
The negotiations took six months during which time the cease-fire appeared to hold. Even the pirates seemed less willing to risk attacking a convoy or a settlement until they knew the outcome of the talks. Saul stopped his attacks and the colony service operated unimpeded transporting settlers to new homes at the edges of civilization.
The day the treaties were signed, the “Born Again” military tribunal issued a warrant for Rachel's arrest on the charge of leading a military invasion without authorization. In fact, they issued a hundred warrants that day for officers who had served against the Swordsmen. All the officers were Jewish.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BETRAYED BY THE GOVERNMENT she had worked so hard to defend, Rachel ordered all but her family and the remnants of her original battle group off the ship at the nearest Stellar depot. She off-loaded the three large cargo modules that regularly carried colonists and left them in care of the harbormaster. She would not be coming back for them. The ship was reduced to its central core, but it was still a powerful weapon when wielded with the skill that Rachel and few others possessed. Rachel compromised and allowed those people who wanted to go directly to Eretz to travel with them. When the Queen Elizabeth departed for the long straight shot for Eretz she carried four PI ships and a couple score of people including Kim and Wren’s four children all of whom had been born on the Queen Elizabeth.
Once Elizabeth had cleared the space around the freight depot, she was perfectly capable of making the run without human intervention. Rachel, severely depressed, came out of her cabin only as her discipline required her to check the logs of the bridge watch crew. She did spend time with Wren, Kim and the babies, but they came to her quarters and not she to theirs. She appeared to enjoy reading to them and being with them, but her overall mood was still very dark.
Eretz held a unique place in the Federation. Eretz and the half dozen allied planets in its vicinity were the home to the most technologically advanced communities in the galaxy. Many of the systems the Federation used in its weapons were developed at Eretz. The shipyard at Eretz produced convoy escort ships and in-system interceptors. Fifty or more such ships could be expected to occupy the Eretz defense system’s space since the initial shake-down cruises and crew training was accomplished with fully armed warships. All of the pilots who commanded ships built at Eretz were trained at Eretz. As several forces with more arrogance than sense had discovered, attacking Eretz was suicidal.
The engineers at Eretz designed the control systems for the majority of the weapons used by the Federation and there was an urban legend that inside the software that guided the weapons was a few lines of hidden code that would allow the Eretz defense command to take over a hostile missile or ship and subvert it to attack the people who had attacked Eretz. No proof of this contention was ever discovered, but the story kept many Federation commanders in line.
And then there was the Eretz intelligence service, as Admiral Sherman was often quoted, “The most fanatical, efficient, best organized intelligence gathering organization in the history of the human race. Centuries of paranoia on a cultural level honed to a level inconceivable a few decades ago. With more people in deep cover than any other service.” They came by their paranoia honestly.
Eretz had never signed an extradition treaty with anyone although criminals from within the allied defense group were often returned for prosecution. People who requested asylum at Eretz were routinely granted it and absorbed into a community that knew how to deal with the kinds of people who might have sought refuge for political reasons.
Wendy had no idea how to deal with her sister. Rachel had always been the leader. Wendy had supported her, but in this, there was nothing Wendy could do. Her husband, Joshua and Rachel’s husband, Isaac, did what they could, but their hearts were not in it. Even Faye Anne, the “Tinkerbelle” of the group was subdued and could offer little comfo
rt.
When Rachel came “home” to Eretz, the warrant for her arrest which would have prevented her from staying anywhere else, would have no impact on her ability to stay at Eretz. In fact all of the officers sought by the “Born Again” tribunal except Saul reached Eretz and sought asylum there. Saul could not be found.
The Queen Elizabeth was escorted to the dock at the Eretz lunar freight yard where she had been parked when she first returned badly damaged from the battle with the Third Force in which she had changed the direction of Federation history. The extended family who had remained at Eretz planned an elaborate homecoming for Rachel and her team at the equestrian center where Greg and Avi had held many parties. Kim’s family came and was delighted to meet the four newest members of the family.
Still, with all the attention, Rachel’s heart was not in it. She wandered off to the field outside where they had played that crazy made up game her father had invented for them. She sat on the bleachers and cried. Isaac sat beside her. There was nothing he could do. His medical transponder reader told him that Rachel had lost the will to live. All the medical technology he had at his disposal could not save his wife from her decision to allow herself to die.
* * * * *
Six months after their arrival at Eretz, David and Isaac met with Kim and Wren.
“Wren, you need to take Elizabeth and get out of Federation space,” David said.
Isaac said, “I have provisioned Elizabeth with enough food for you and the kids for ten years. Rachel is not likely to live much longer, and when she dies, possession of Elizabeth becomes legally problematic.”
David continued, “It is possible that Saul could claim her and we can’t allow that to happen. Since the charges against him were announced Saul has been attacking “Born Again” colonies as well as Swordsman bases and he has expanded to civilian targets. In Saul’s hands there is no telling what damage Elizabeth would cause.”
“Wren, no one can find Saul let alone stop him. Elizabeth stopped him once right after your sister was killed, but we don't think even she could do it again. You need to find him and stop him,” Isaac said. “I know he is my son and your father, but you may have to kill him to stop him. The worst part is that I know that only you are capable of doing it.”
The next day, Rachel was sitting amongst a group of small children at the hospital’s pediatric common room reading to them when she slumped down. By the time anyone realized what had happened she had died.
Wren, Kim, Elizabeth, Tracker, Huntress and the four children were already wending their way out from the freight yard when Isaac called to inform them of Rachel’s death. While they would not hear about it until much later, Wendy went to bed and stopped eating. Two weeks after Rachel died, Wendy died in her sleep. Issac and Joshua went back to work in the hospital’s trauma center and lived for another few years before they, in turn, passed away in their sleep.
David represented all of the Jewish officers wanted by the “Born Again” tribunal at their trials in their absence and succeeded in getting all the charges dropped but not before ten of them had committed suicide. He invoked the memory of the way American veterans returning from Vietnam and the wars in the middle east were so shabbily treated by an ungrateful government more intent on giving tax breaks for its wealthiest supporters than it was in properly funding programs for veterans. He reminded the court that the “Born Again” party had run on a platform to end such abuses and yet it was guilty of the very abuses it pledged to stop. Less than half of the officers charged lived long enough to learn that their cases had been resolved.
David stayed on Earth representing people who had been persecuted by the “Born Again” government until he and his wife were gunned down on the courthouse steps following his winning an acquittal for a teacher accused of promoting “unauthorized doctrines” in a comparative religion class. The teacher, her husband, two journalists and a little girl who was there for a custody hearing were killed in the hail of gunfire from a pair of automatic assault rifles. The killers were neither found nor prosecuted. The killing touched off a wave of violence that lasted five years. No one was prosecuted in any of these killings even though the victims included many inept top ranking police officials placed in the jobs, not for their skills, but for their willingness to persecute opponents to the “Born Again” political party. The victims on both sides of the conflict were routinely killed in their homes in front of their families.
Competent law enforcement officers who had been replaced by the “Born Again” faithful returned to their former duties and the killings gradually stopped.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE PLANET SLOWLY ROLLED into daylight revealing to the naked eye what the ancient battleship’s sensors had already determined. The planet’s largest population center lay physically intact but lifeless giving off so much radioactivity it almost glowed in the dark.
The person responsible for the carnage had left his mark on this as he had on other planets devastated in like manner. Etched with a combat laser array into the pavement of the spaceport’s flight apron, the bold letters stood out in stark relief visible from orbit.
YOU SHALL NOT BOW DOWN TO THEM OR WORSHIP THEM; FOR I, THE LORD YOUR GOD, AM A JEALOUS GOD, PUNISHING THE CHILDREN FOR THE SIN OF THE FATHERS TO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION OF THOSE WHO HATE ME.
YOU SMOTE MY CHILD AND I HAVE SMITTEN YOURS. REVENGE IS MINE.
Warren Elias Mahoney Solomon Rothschild Cohen (“Wren”, like the bird) and his wife, Kim, read the words with dismay. Fewer than fifty ships remained in service with laser arrays powerful enough to carve the letters that deep fast enough and accurately enough to compensate for the planet’s rotation. Wren knew the approximate location of all but one of those ships. He knew who owned them and he knew many of the pilots.
“Elizabeth, what is your assessment?” Wren asked his ship.
“Sensor readings approximate the readings from the other planets. Everything within twenty kilometers of the larger city centers has been killed. The method of death appears to be the same as the other planets we have seen. It appears to be a variant on the neutron bomb.”
“Did anything survive?” Kim asked.
“Yes, the hydro electric plants and some of the power grid away from the main population centers still function. Many of the smaller population centers are untouched.”
“This is the first planet where we have seen more than a smattering of isolated survivors. Do you think he didn’t finish?” Wren asked.
“That would be my assessment,” Elizabeth replied. “It is as if the assault was interrupted. The level of radiation would indicate that the attack was more recent than was the case in other planets.”
“Is it possible we interrupted him?” Kim asked.
“Probably,” Elizabeth agreed.
“So, working this through,” Wren said. “If our assessment that he has a limited number of Disruptor missiles with which to disable the defense system is correct, we probably interrupted the assault between the first and second waves.”
“That would explain the high levels of residual radioactivity and the large numbers of remaining survivors,” Kim said.
“If he gathered the disruptor missiles after the first wave to recharge them for a second wave, he would likely have left the system until he was ready to attack it again lest there still be a few random defensive ships out on patrol that had escaped the first assault,” Wren continued.
“While he was gone, the population would come out of their hiding places to assess the damage and while they were vulnerable, he could return and finish the job,” Elizabeth added.
“And when he finished there would be fewer than a hundred survivors scattered across the face of the planet with no way to get off the planet and no way to call for help,” Wren said. “Or at least until the Swordsman Council noticed that they had not paid their taxes that year and sent someone to investigate.”
“That assumes they have someone left to send,”
Elizabeth commented. “The council is fragmented. The Swordsman church has been destroyed. We had a hand in that.”
“True enough,” Wren said.
“It’s been almost half a century since the Swordsmen killed your sister,” Kim said. “You would think your father would have had his fill of revenge by now.”
“Apparently not,” Wren replied. “The Swordsman war should have been enough killing for all of us.”
“Will it never end?” Kim asked.
“Not until we find him and kill him,” Wren said. “Or he kills us.”
In the oblivious manner uniquely common to teenagers, as Greg entered the flight deck he said, “Dad, so we’ve discovered another planet full of dead people. Can we go home now?”
Wren turned to his son who bore a stunning resemblance to his ancestor after whom he was named, the patriarch of the Solomon warrior clan. “Greg, we have no home to go to. This ship is our home.”
“I want to live on a planet like normal people,” Greg protested.
“Those people down there wanted to live on a planet like normal people,” Wren said.
“And someone killed them because they followed the Swordsman religion,” Kim answered.
“Who killed them?” Avi asked as she followed her brother on to the fight deck.
“And why?” Peter asked. “Dad, I think we’re old enough to know.”
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