by David Weber
They're going to shit-can him, that's what's going to happen, McBryde thought grimly. Hard to blame them, really. He's turned into such a basket case no one in his right mind would include him in a new team if they could find anyone at all to use instead. He sees it coming, too. I think that's one of the reasons his temper's been even shorter-fused lately. But what the hell is going to happen to him when he loses even his work?
He grimaced as a still darker thought crossed his mind once again. Given the fact that Simões was aware of the countdown until he was removed from his current duties, the possibility that his anger and despair might drive him to some self-destructive (and ultimately futile) overt attempt at vengeance loomed large on McBryde's list of Things to Worry About.
And what about you, Jack? He asked himself, gazing at the enlarged imagery of Herlander Simões working at his terminal, all alone in his self-created pocket of isolation. You're not the basket case he is . . . yet, at least. But you're infected, too, aren't you? And Zack's starting to worry about you, isn't he? He doesn't know what's eating on you, but he knows something's gnawing away down inside there.
McBryde leaned back in his chair, rubbing his closed eyes with the fingers of both hands, and a feeling of bleak despair flowed through him. There was more than a little anger in that despair, and much of that anger was directed at Herlander Simões. Intellectually, McBryde knew it was as irrational for him to be angry with Simões as it was for Simões to flash into a white-hot rage at some innocent remark from one of his coworkers. It wasn't as if the hyper-physicist had set out to destroy Jack McBryde's peace of mind. For that matter, Simões wasn't really even the one who'd done it. But what he had done was to become the factor which had crystallized McBryde's own . . . ambiguities into a grim self-admission.
As he'd watched Simões' centimeter-by-centimeter dissolution, what had happened to the hyper-physicist and his daughter had become a microcosm for all of his own doubts, all of his own concerns about the Mesan Alignment and its ultimate purposes. And that, McBryde thought, was because the Simões family's fate was a microcosm. Not even a Mesan alpha's mind could truly grasp—not on a fundamental, emotional level—the concept of centuries of time, of thousands of inhabited planets and literally uncounted trillions of human lives. The scale, the scope, was simply too huge. The mind retreated into the concept of "one, two, three, many"—a conceptualization which could be manipulated intellectually, factored into plans and strategies, but not truly grasped. Not inside, where a human being actually lived.
But Herlander, Harriet, and Francesca Simões represented a merely human-scale tragedy. It was one which could be grasped, could be understood. Something which could be experienced, at second hand, at least, and which, even worse, could not be ignored. Couldn't be labeled "Not My Business" and swept under a convenient mental carpet while one got on with one's own life.
Not by Jack McBryde, anyway.
And as he'd grappled with the emotionally draining task of keeping Herlander Simões functional long enough for him to complete his work, the new set of lenses his empathy with the hyper-physicist had given McBryde kept mercilessly examining what the Alignment had become. Deep at the heart of him, he knew, he was still committed to the Detweiler vision he'd assimilated as a youngster. He still believed the galaxy-wide rejection of the notion of genetically uplifting the entire human race to become all that it could have been was deeply, fundamentally, and tragically wrong. It rejected so much, turned its back on so many possibilities, doomed so many people to be so much less than they might have been. He believed that, with every fiber of his being.
But, he admitted to himself now, letting himself truly face it for the first time, what you don't believe anymore is that we have the right to force those who disagree with us to submit to our vision of their future. That's too much for you now, isn't it, Jack? And it's what the Board did to Francesca—and Herlander—that made it that way.
No, that wasn't entirely fair, he thought. It wasn't just the tragedy of the Simões family. It was a lot of things, including the realization of how many billions of people the Alignment's strategy was inevitably going to kill along the way—the "collateral damage" the Alignment's master strategy was prepared to accept.
And it's the fact that you've finally realized that you, personally, are going to be directly responsible for bringing about those deaths, he thought despairingly.
He knew it was an unfair indictment, in many ways. He might be an alpha, but he was still only one tiny cog in the vast machine of the Mesan Alignment. His personal contribution to what was about to happen wasn't unimportant, but it was statistically insignificant. Yes, he'd contributed—efficiently, enthusiastically, and with a sense of satisfaction—to the wave of death about to sweep across the galaxy, yet his direct contribution to the killing would never even be noticed in the grand scheme of things, and it was supremely egotistical of him to think otherwise.
But that wasn't truly the point, was it? Not the point that was beginning to disturb his own sleep, at least. No, the point was that he had contributed to it. That he had ambled along, dedicated his own life to perfecting, protecting, and—ultimately—launching the Juggernaut of the Mesan Alignment. It had never even occurred to him not to, and that was what he truly found impossible to forgive himself. It wasn't even as if he'd confronted his doubts, his worries, and worked his way through them to a decision that the ultimate benefits to the race vastly outweighed the cost to the individual. He hadn't done even that much.
He tapped another brief command, and the close-up of Simões and his team disappeared from the smart wall. Another image replaced it—a file image of a single face, with huge brown eyes, an olive complexion, and the enormous, dimpled smile it had provided for its owner's father and his camera. He looked into those laughing eyes, at all the joy and all the love which had been stolen from them and from Francesca Simões' parents, and knew he should have confronted those questions. He'd never even met the little girl smiling at him from the center of his wall, and yet his heart twisted within him and his eyes burned as he gazed at her now.
She was only one child, only one person, he told himself. How much can any single life really count in the battle for the ultimate fate of the entire human race? It's insane, Jack. There's no way to even rationally compare what happened to her and to her parents to all of the literally inconceivable advantages we can provide to all of the rest of humanity!
It was true. He knew it was true. And yet, despite everything, he knew it was a truth that didn't really matter. Because, in the end, he was his parents' son, and he knew. Oh yes, he knew.
It's not about the advantages, about the "nobility" of our purpose—assuming the Board truly remembers what that purpose once was, he thought. Those things still matter, but so does your soul, Jack. So does the moral responsibility. There's right, and there's wrong, and there's the choice between them, and that's part of the human race's heritage, too. And it's about the fact that if we're really right—if Leonard Detweiler was really right—about how the entire species can choose to improve and uplift itself, then why haven't we committed even a fraction of the resources we've committed to building the Alignment to convincing the rest of the galaxy of that? Maybe it wouldn't have been easy, especially after the Final War. And maybe it would have taken generations, centuries, to make any progress. But the Alignment's already invested all of those generations and all of those centuries in our grand and glorious vision . . . and it had abandoned the idea of convincing other people we were right in favor of killing however many of them it took to make them admit we were right almost before Leonard Detweiler's brain function ceased. For that matter, the way we've embraced and used Manpower and genetic slavery has actually contributed to the prejudice against "genies," damn it!
Jack McBryde looked at that smiling face and saw the mirror of his own people's arrogance. Not the arrogance of which Leonard Detweiler had been accused, not the arrogance of believing a better, healthier, more capable, longer-
lived human being was achievable. Not that arrogance, but another deeper, darker arrogance. The arrogance of fanaticism. Of the ability—of the willingness, even the eagerness—to prove to the rest of humanity that Detweiler had been right. To rub the rest of the galaxy's nose in the fact that, as Leonard Detweiler's descendents, they were right, too . . . and that everyone else was still wrong.
That in their own persons they already represented that better, more capable human being, which was proof of their own superiority and their own right to dictate humanity's future to every other poor, benighted, inferior "normal" in the universe. That they'd been right—had the right—to actually expand the genetic slave trade and all of the human misery it entailed not for profit, but simply as a cover, a distracting shield for the high and noble purpose which justified any means to which they might resort.
And to create, evaluate, and "cull" however many little girls had to be thrown away to accomplish that glorious purpose.
Chapter Forty-Four
Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. He'd always thought the MSN's uniform, with its hectares of braid and its tall caps whose visors dripped old-fashioned "scrambled eggs," looked more like something out of a bad operetta than anything any real navy would have tolerated. Of course, no one had ever wanted anyone to take the MSN seriously, had they? It was supposed to be a pretentious Lilliputian force with delusions of grandeur—exactly what the galaxy would have expected out of a star nation whose government was totally dominated by outlaw, profit-driven transstellars.
And, by the oddest turn of fate, that was precisely what the Mesa System Navy actually was. It would never have done to create a force whose professionalism might inadvertently have given itself away, after all. And so the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the "navy" everyone knew about, the MAN was a deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.
And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.
He took a deep and burning pride in that knowledge, and he looked forward to the rapidly approaching day when everyone else in the galaxy would know what he already knew. When the words "Mesan Navy" would be spoken with respect, even fear, instead of amused contempt.
But that day wasn't here yet, and aside from Commander Jessica Milliken, his own second-in-command, none of the other people filing into the briefing room aboard the battlecruiser Leon Trotsky knew the MAN existed. Which was why Maddock and Milliken wore the uniforms they did.
He waited while the newcomers took their places, standing behind their chairs as he stood behind his own, waiting. A few seconds ticked past, and then the briefing room door opened once again and Citizen Commodore Adrian Luff of the People's Navy in Exile strode through it, flanked by Citizen Commander Millicent Hartman, his chief of staff, and Captain Olivier Vergnier, Leon Trotsky's commanding officer.
If I think my uniform is stupid, Maddock thought sourly, what about the one these lunatics are wearing?
It was a legitimate question, and one which had occurred to him more than once during the endless purgatory of his six-month assignment to his present duty. He'd experienced his share of idiocy during his occasional assignments to provide technical expertise to some operation being mounted by Manpower bureaucrats who knew no more about the truth of the Mesan Alignment than anyone else, but this one took the cake. It wasn't just Manpower loonies this time. Oh, no! This time he got to deal with an entire task force of people who were so far around the bend they wouldn't have been able to see it with a telescope . . . if it had ever so much as crossed their teeny-tiny minds to look back in the first place.
Luff marched to his chair at the head of the conference table and waited while Hartman and Vergnier stood behind their own. Then he seated himself, paused for two carefully counted heartbeats, and nodded regally to the lesser beings clustered about him.
"Be seated," he commanded, and Maddock made himself wait another half-second before he obeyed.
He and Milliken looked conspicuously out of place at that table in their black tunics and charcoal-gray trousers. True, the other uniforms around them sported almost as much braid as theirs did, but those other uniforms' tunics were red, and their trousers were black.
And no one else in the entire galaxy is crazy enough to wear them, either, he thought sourly, and shook his head mentally behind the expressionless façade of his eyes. I wonder, do even they still genuinely believe there's a single chance in hell they'll ever return victoriously to Nouveau Paris and deal with the counterrevolutionary scum whose backstabbing treason brought down the people's paladins of the Committee of Public Safety?
It seemed unlikely to Maddock that anyone could truly be that completely and totally out of touch with reality, but the People's Navy in Exile certainly acted the part. Even the names they'd assigned to the surplus Indefatigable-class battlecruisers Manpower had provided to them reflected that: Leon Trotsky, George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Paine, Mao Tse-tung, Maximilien Robespierre . . .
Well, I don't really care how far out to lunch they are, he reminded himself. All I care about is that they do what they're supposed to do . . . and that I get the hell off this ship before the button gets punched on Wooden Horse.
"First," Luff said as he surveyed the officers seated around the table, "let me say I'm extremely pleased with how well the most recent exercises have gone. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the best trained, most proficient naval force with which I have ever been associated."
There were murmurs of satisfaction, and Maddock made himself nod in sober agreement with the commodore's assessment. And it was probably accurate, too, he reminded himself. Unlike at least a few of the People's Navy in Exile's ship commanders, Luff himself had never served in the original People's Navy of the People's Republic of Haven. He'd attained his pre-Thesiman rank of captain (the self-granted promotion to "commodore" had come later—purely, of course, as an administrative necessity when he organized the PNE) because of his loyalty and reliability. And his function had been not to fight actual battles but to make certain that no one in the regular navy entertained any thought of resisting the Committee of Public Safety's orders. He'd been the regime's enforcer, not a naval officer, and it was unlikely any members of the regular "naval forces" to which he had been attached during his StateSec career would have considered him one of their "associates," either.
Still, there was some valid basis for Luff's current satisfaction, the Mesan officer reminded himself. Especially given the fact that for all their pretension to the status of warriors of the revolution, the men and women in this briefing room had spent the last six T-years as little better than common, garden-variety pirates. It was amazing to Maddock that they'd managed to hang on to any shared sense of identity, and he supposed their identification of themselves as a "navy in exile," however ludicrous it might be, helped account for it. Well, the fact that Manpower had subsidized the PNE generously enough for them to hold their ships' companies together had something to do with it as well, he imagined.
The consequences of their degeneration into ten-a-credit brigands had been painfully evident when they gathered here to begin drilling for the Verdant Vista operation, though. They'd never been what Maddock would have considered real naval officers, but they'd become even sloppier and more incompetent than he'd expected. Integrating the mercenaries Manpower had been forced to retain to flesh out their crews—especially when the additional SLN units had been added to
the PNE's order of battle—had made things even worse. Given the nature of this particular operation, Manpower had prudently avoided the more respectable mercenary outfits. In fact, the bulk of its new hires were basically common thieves, thugs, and murderers with a thin veneer of technical competence. Beating them into a semblance of efficiency had been a daunting task. It was fortunate Luff and his fellows had acquired so much experience in instilling terror-based discipline, he supposed, but even with the aid of Milliken and the other Manpower "advisers" provided by the "Mesa System Navy," it had taken every single day of the endless months spent orbiting this bleak, planetless red dwarf to get them ready.
But they really are ready, he told himself. However hard to believe that may be, they're actually ready to mount the operation. It's still probably a damned good thing they're only going up against a handful of frigates manned by a bunch of semiliterate runaway slaves with maybe a few Erewhonese cruisers in support, but I have to admit, they've worked up to a level of efficiency I never would have believed they'd get to.
"As all of you are aware," Luff continued gravely, "the execution date for Operation Ferret is almost upon us. This was our last exercise, which makes it particularly gratifying that it went so well."
He paused again, briefly, then cleared his throat.
"I'm sure we're all also aware that at least some of our personnel continue to cherish a few . . . reservations about the requirements of the ops plan. Under the circumstances, I suppose that's inevitable."
He glanced briefly at Maddock and Milliken from the corner of his eye, and Maddock blandly pretended not to notice.
"There are two points to bear in mind," the commodore went on after a moment. "First, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, our obligation to our . . . benefactors requires us to carry out this operation. Not to put too fine a point on it, and without intending offense to anyone," this time he nodded openly to Maddock, "this operation is our payment for the ships and the support the PNE requires to finally mount an organized, sustained offensive against the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris. I realize that even with the additional hulls we've added to our force, the counterrevolutionaries will substantially outnumber us. However, I also realize, as I'm sure all of you do, that not everyone in Nouveau Paris and elsewhere in the People's Republic has forgotten everything the Committee of Public Safety stood for. There are people in the People's Republic, even in the current Navy, who sympathize with us and are only waiting for an example. For some leadership. We will provide that example and that leadership, and the ships and the advanced weapons with which our benefactors have already supplied us—and promise to continue to supply to us—are what will make that possible."