Crown of Slaves

by David Weber

  Corporations and combines headquartered, quite often, on Mesa, as it happened.

  "The 'citizens' to whom you refer," Navarre said, after a long, silent pause, "were transported to this planet, housed, and fed by Manpower. They are, in effect, the employees of the corporation. As such, they have no legal standing as 'citizens,' and certainly no legal right to . . . expropriate the company's property."

  "The citizens of Torch," Roszak said, and this time his voice was just as cold as Oversteegen's had been, "were transported to this planet by Manpower not as employees, Commodore, but as property. And I would remind you that the Constitution of the Solarian League specifically rejects and outlaws the institution of slavery, whether genetically based or not, and that the League has steadfastly refused ever to recognize any legal standing for the institution or its practice. As such, the League views the present inhabitants of Torch as its legal citizens and owners and has negotiated in good faith with the provisional government which they have established."

  "And that's your final position, is it?" Navarre's hazel eyes glittered with fury and hatred, and Roszak smiled.

  "Like Captain Oversteegen, I'm only a naval officer, Commodore, not a diplomat, and certainly not a sector governor. I am obviously not in any position to tell you what Governor Barregos' final official position will be. At the moment, however, Lieutenant Governor Cassetti, as Governor Barregos' personal representative, has provisionally recognized Torch's independence and entered binding treaty relationships with it. I suppose that it's always possible Governor Barregos will determine that the lieutenant governor exceeded his authority in taking those actions and repudiate them, but until such time as he does so, I remain bound by the existing treaties." His smile disappeared. "And I will enforce them, Commodore," he added in a very cold voice, indeed.

  "The two of you together wouldn't stand a chance against my task group," Navarre said flatly.

  "You might be surprised by how much of a chance we'd stand," Roszak replied. "And while you might very probably win in the end, the cost would be . . . considerable. I rather doubt that your admiralty would be very happy about that."

  "And speakin' purely as a backward and benighted neobarb," Oversteegen observed with deadly affability, "I really suspect, Commodore, that your government would be most unhappy with the officer who managed, in one afternoon, t' get them into a shootin' war with both the Solarian League and the Star Kingdom of Manticore."

  Navarre deflated visibly. It was rather like watching the air flow out of a punctured balloon, Oversteegen thought. The commodore was clearly picturing what a squadron or two of modern Manticoran ships-of-the-wall could do to the entire Mesan Navy. Especially if the Solarian League wasn't simply giving them free passage to reach Mesa but actually acting as a cobelligerent.

  Rozsak saw the same thoughts flow across Navarre's face and smiled once more, ever so slightly.

  "I think, Commodore," he suggested gently, "that it might be best, all things considered, if you left the sovereign star system of Torch.

  "Now."

  Chapter 47

  Berry found it difficult not to wince, watching the Mesan personnel filing past her into the building which served Congo—no, Torch, now—as the assembly area for its shuttle grounds. The faces of the children, of which there were more than she'd expected, were especially hard to watch. Their expressions were a combination of exhaustion, terror, shock—in some cases, what looked like borderline psychosis.

  Those people were the survivors of the savage slave rebellion which had erupted on Congo as soon as word began to spread that the space station had been seized by . . .

  Whoever. It didn't matter, really, as long as they were anti-Mesan. Congo had been a prison planet, in essence. Once all of the really powerful military forces at the disposal of Mesa, including the kinetic missiles with which the planet could be bombarded in case of extreme necessity, had been taken out of the equation, the Mesan personnel on the planet had been, for all practical purposes, in the same position as British clerks had been when the Sepoy Mutiny swept over them. Dead meat, if they didn't get to an enclave quick enough. The light weaponry in the hands of the overseers, by itself, was simply not enough to cow slaves filled with the fury of generations of oppression and exploitation.

  Not even close. Those overseers who did try to stand their ground had been overwhelmed—and their weapons turned to the use of killing other overseers. Not just "overseers," either. Anyone—even a child—associated with "Mesa" or especially "Manpower" had been under sentence of death, everywhere on the planet's surface. A sentence which had been imposed immediately, mercilessly, and in some cases accompanied by the most horrible atrocities.

  There had been some exceptions, here and there. Mesans whose duties had not involved discipline over the slaves, especially those who had established a reputation for being at least decent, had been spared in a number of cases. There was even one instance where an entire settlement of Mesan scientists and pharmaceutical technicians and their families had been protected by an improvised slave defense guard against slaves coming in from the outside.

  But, for the most part, any Mesan who hadn't gotten himself quickly enough to one of the enclaves where armed Mesans had been able to fort up and hold off the slaves until the surrender was negotiated had simply been slaughtered. The entire surface of the planet had been engulfed, for two days, in a wave of pure murder.

  And it hadn't taken long for the word to spread, either—nor the further word that the space station was now in the hands of the Audubon Ballroom, which had simply poured fuel on an already spreading conflagration. Death to Mesa. Death to Manpower. Now.

  Once again, Berry realized, the economic reality of slavery based on a high level of technical advancement had manifested itself. There were simply too many ways for literate slaves, in a modern technical society, to gain access to information once the opportunity arose. Which it had, in most cases, when dumbfounded slaves suddenly saw Mesan overseers and staff personnel piling into vehicles and abandoning the area—their faces making their own panic obvious. The slaves, after an initial hesitation, had simply walked into the communications centers and discovered the information on the computer screens—computers which many of them knew perfectly well how to operate.

  Death. Death. Death. All of them! Now!

  In some cases, the departing Mesans had had the foresight to destroy the equipment. But, more often than not, in their panicky haste to simply flee for a refuge, they had neglected to do so. And, once the com centers had started falling into the hands of the slaves, the slaves had rapidly begun establishing their own communication network across the planet. This was a rebellion which had all the pitiless rage of Nat Turner's—but whose slaves were very far from illiterate field hands. They had organized themselves just about as quickly and readily as the slaves on Felicia had done, after Templeton's seizure of the ship. And, like the slaves on Felicia, there had been enough undercover agents of the Ballroom to serve as an organizing and directing catalyst.

  Berry drew a long and shaky breath. It was over now, at least—and, at least, she could remind herself that she had been the central figure in ending the slaughter. Before the second of Congo's twenty-seven-hour days had passed, she'd been able to establish contact with all the remaining Mesan enclaves, as well as the major slave organizing centers, and negotiate a surrender. Her terms had been simple: In exchange for their lives and whatever personal possessions they could carry, provided they surrendered immediately and made no attempt at sabotage, any Mesan who wanted to leave the planet would be allowed to do so with no further harm. Under Solarian Navy escort, and into the safekeeping of the Solarian Navy. She'd even offered to place the Felicia at the disposal of the Solarian Navy, to provide the needed transport.

  That last decision had been one she'd made with some reluctance. As with everyone involved during those long weeks, Felicia had come to occupy a special place in her heart. She'd even been the one to give the ship her ne
w name: Hope, she'd called her, repeating the name until she simply drove under all the competing names. Of which Vengeance had been the most popular.

  She'd had to drive over even sharper opposition to get everyone's agreement to her proposal to use Hope as the transport for the departing Mesan personnel. Web Du Havel had sided with her immediately, but Jeremy had dug in his heels.

  Let the swine make the trip in cubbyholes aboard Solarian warships.

  The children, too?

  Those are not children. Those are young vipers.

  No. NO. There isn't enough room for all of them. Leave any behind . . .

  Vipers.

  Damn you, Jeremy! I will not be crowned standing in a lake of blood and vomit! End the slaughter now! NOW, do you hear!

  It had been the first clash of wills between her and Jeremy. And . . .

  She'd won, to her surprise. Mostly because, she decided afterward, even Jeremy had been a little shaken by the horror. Especially after one particularly savage group of slaves had gleefully broadcast a transmission which recorded for posterity the execution of three overseers. Insofar as the antiseptic term "execution" could be applied to death by torture.

  Web had helped, adding his quiet and calm reasoning to her own stubborn fury.

  "We must end it now, Jeremy—as quickly as possible, whatever it takes—or we will suffer a monumental disaster in public relations. Bad enough that recording will be used by Manpower from now on, every chance they get. If we can at least demonstrate that the new government did everything in its power to bring the butchery to a halt, we can contain the damage. In the end, most people will accept the spontaneous fury of rebelling slaves. They will not accept the cold-blooded callousness of established power. Let them have the Hope."

  Rozsak had even helped. "I'll see to it you get the ship back, after we've transported the survivors."

  * * *

  Whether the Solarian captain would make good on the promise, remained to be seen. But now, as she watched the last survivors filing toward the waiting shuttles, Berry found herself not caring any longer. The Hope was a small price to pay, to end this.

  Even worse than the expressions on the faces of the survivors, in some ways, were the expressions on the faces of the Ballroom members—any ex-slave, really—who stood near her watching them leave.

  Pitiless. Utterly, completely pitiless.

  Berry understood the reasons for that, true enough. There were many recordings in their possession now, which the triumphant slaves had seized. Some of them official recordings made by the Mesan authorities, but many of them private recordings left behind by now-dead or evacuating Mesan personnel. A number of the overseers had been particularly fond of keeping mementos of the atrocities they had visited on slaves, over the long years. Recordings which ranged from nauseating depictions of personal brutalities to the—in some ways even more nauseating—depictions of slave bodies being used as raw material for Mesan chemical vats.

  Let Mesa try to use their few recordings of slave atrocities. Now that it was over—had been ended, as all could attest, as quickly as the new government could manage it—Mesa's propaganda campaign would be buried under an avalanche of their own recordings. Already, Berry knew, the galactic media's representatives in-system were practically salivating over the material. It was all . . . disgusting, really. But she could accept "disgusting," for the sake of the future.

  That same future, moreover, was clear as crystal to her. She understood now, deep in her belly, everything that Web Du Havel had once explained to her and Ruth about the dangers which faced a successful slave rebellion. Fury and rage and hatred might be necessary to create a nation and drag it screaming and fighting out of the womb of oppression and cruelty, but they could not serve as its foundation. Those emotions, for a society as much as an individual person, needed to be leached away. Lest they become toxic, over time, and lead to madness.

  It was odd, in a way. Berry herself had once had to go through that experience, after Anton had taken her from Terra's underground and brought her to Manticore. At Anton and Cathy's insistence—though Berry herself had protested it was an unnecessary expense—she'd gone through an extensive therapy program. Where she'd discovered, to her surprise, that her own horrendous experiences—especially the protracted beating and gang rape she'd suffered just at the end, before Helen rescued her—had left far greater wounds on her psyche than she'd realized.

  She knew that her therapist had told Anton, after it was over, that Berry was perhaps intrinsically the sanest individual she'd ever treated. But "sanity" was not a magic shield against the universe's cruelties. It was simply a tool. The same tool she would now spend decades using, to do what she could to heal a new nation.

  She turned her head and looked up at Jeremy, standing to her right. He avoided her eyes, for a few seconds. Then, sighing, looked down at her.

  "All right, lass. You were right. Although if that damn Solarian captain doesn't return the Hope . . ."

  "You'll do nothing," she said. Proclaimed, rather.

  "Blast it, you're getting far too good at this proclamation business," he muttered.

  Berry restrained her smile. Indeed, she even managed to keep her face stern and solemn. "You still haven't agreed to the other. I know you, Jeremy. You don't forget things. You also keep your word. So the only reason you haven't given me an answer is because you're stalling. You've stalled enough. I want an answer. Now."

  He made an exasperated little gesture. "Will you cease and desist with this Catherine the Great imitation? I wouldn't mind, if it were a bad one."

  This time, she couldn't help but smile a little. But all she said was: "Now."

  "All right!" he said, throwing up his hands. "You have my agreement. My word, if you will. Any stinking lousy Mesans who choose to remain on the planet can do so. No repercussions, no discrimination against them, nothing."

  "You have to stop calling them 'stinking lousy Mesans,' too. Those who remain behind are now simply Torches."

  Jeremy's lips quirked. "I still think 'Torches' is a silly expression."

  "It's better than 'Torchese,' which sounds like a breed of dog," she replied firmly. "And stop changing the subject."

  "A tyrant! A veritable tsarina!" He glared at Web Du Havel, standing to her left. "It's your fault. You created this Frankenstein's monster."

  Web smiled, but made no reply. Berry decided that she'd probably been imperious enough, and it was time for royal wheedling. Teenage queen style.

  "Oh, come on, Jeremy. There aren't that many, first off. And almost half of them live in that one settlement that the slaves themselves protected. They're nothing but biologists, for pity's sake. According to the reports I've heard, they didn't even realize where their contract was going to wind up placing them. And, after they got here, they were too engrossed in the fascination of their work to pay much attention to anything else. If nothing else, we can use their talents. They brought their whole families with them, they've now been here for years, and this is their home. That's enough. The same's true, one way or another, for all the others who want to stay. Which, as I said, isn't more than a few hundred anyway."

  Now, imperiously again: "So the issue is settled. You agreed."

  Jeremy took a deep breath, then nodded. Then, after glancing at the assembly building and seeing the last of the survivors passing through the doors, he shrugged. "As you say, it's settled. And now—Your Majesty—I need to be off. Cassetti's coming down tomorrow for his precious little 'victory tour' and I need to make sure my, ah, not-entirely-respectful Ballroom detachment has a proper attitude about their duties."

  "I though the Solarians were providing Cassetti's bodyguard?" asked Du Havel.

  Jeremy's lips quirked. "Oh, they are. Quite a sizeable one, in fact, with none less than Major Thandi Palane in charge of it. Her last assignment, before her resignation takes effect. But it seems the honorable Ingemar Cassetti feels that a native contingent is needed as well. Apparently the man has firm o
pinions on the subject of his own security and prestige."

  * * *

  After Jeremy was gone, Berry smiled up at Du Havel. "What do you think, Web? Is my 'Catherine the Great' impersonation really all that good?"

  "It's pretty impressive, as a matter of fact. But . . ."

  He studied her for a moment. "I'm glad it's just an act."

  She made a face. "So am I. Even leaving aside what Ruth told me about the rumors concerning her sexual habits."

  Web grimaced. "The famous horse? That's almost certainly a legend invented by her enemies. Not that Catherine was exactly what you'd call fastidious in her personal habits. But that wasn't really what I meant. I'm not worried about you, actually. I'm concerned about how your new people decide to look upon you. Especially in light of the poll taken yesterday."

  The proposal to make the new star nation of Torch a constitutional monarchy, with Berry as the founding queen, hadn't been voted on by the populace yet. Nor would it be, for several more weeks, to allow everyone scattered across the planet time to ponder the matter. But Web had taken an initial poll the day before, using standard techniques which usually gave good results. He'd been a bit shocked when he saw the results. Eighty-seven percent in favor, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus four percent.

  He hadn't expected better than seventy percent, he'd told Berry. He wasn't sure yet, but he thought two factors had made the difference. First, the enthusiastic recommendation of the thousands of ex-slaves from the Felicia, who were quickly spreading across the planet as the new government's informal organizing cadre. Second—perhaps even more importantly, and certainly something he hoped was true—because now that the slaves had sated their initial bloodlust, they were a little shaken themselves at the experience. Berry's holo image had been broadcast widely across the planet's com web. Her real one, since the weeks aboard Felicia had also been used by Erewhonese biotechs to reverse the nanotech disguise. And if there was any human image Web could imagine that might help people claw their way out of a pit of rage and hatred, it was that calm, intelligent-looking, pretty young girl's face. It was simply impossible to look at Berry and think her a threat or a menace, to anyone.