Torch of Freedom

by David Weber

  PART III

  Late 1921 and 1922 Post-Diaspora

  (4023 and 4024, Christian Era)

  Leonard Detweiler, the CEO and majority stockholder of the Detweiler Consortium, a Beowulf-based pharmaceutical and biosciences corporation, found himself with a great deal of money and not a great deal of sympathy with the Beowulf bioethics code which had emerged following Old Earth's Final War and Beowulf's leading role in repairs to the brutally ravaged mother world. Almost five hundred years had passed since that war, and Detweiler believed it was long past time that mankind got over its "Frankenstein fear" (as he described it) of genetic modification of human beings. It simply made sense, he believed, to impose reason, logic, and long-term planning on the random chaos and wastefulness of natural evolutionary selection. And, as he pointed out, for almost fifteen hundred years, mankind's Diaspora to the stars had already been taking the human genotype into environments which were naturally mutagenic on a scale which had never been imagined on pre-space Old Earth. In effect, he argued, simply transporting human beings into such radically different environments was going to induce significant genetic variation, so there was no point in worshiping some semi-mythic "pure human genotype."

  Since all that was true, Detweiler further argued, it only made sense to genetically modify colonists for the environments which were going to cause their descendants to mutate anyway. And it was only a small step further to argue that if it made sense to genetically modify human beings for environments in which they would have to live, it also made sense to genetically modify them to better suit them to the environments in which they would have to work.

  From Anthony Rogovich,

  The Detweilers: A Family Biography.

  (Unpublished and unfinished manuscript,

  found among Rogovich's papers

  after his suicide.)

  Chapter Sixty-One

  November, 1921 PD

  Queen Berry looked a little bewildered by the flag bridge of the Chao Kung Ming. The Spartacus, rather, as the government of Torch had decided to rename her.

  "Let me get this straight. You manage battles from here?"

  "I can assure you, Your Majesty, that after you've spent some time in one of these"—Admiral Rozsak swept his hand around—"all of this actually makes sense, instead of seeming like a gazillion flashing lights and weird-looking icons. With experience, for instance, this"—here he pointed to the tactical plot—"is a most handy gadget. And quite easy to interpret, believe it or not."

  Berry study the gadget in question, very dubiously. "It looks like a vid I saw once. A documentary about deep-sea luminous fish, looking really bizarre and moving around completely at random, so far as I could tell."

  He chuckled. "I know it's a bit much, at first sight. I was nineteen years old the first time I came onto a flag bridge—that was the old Prince Igor—and I almost walked into the tactical plot, I was so confused. One of the worst ass-reamings I ever got followed, if you'll pardon the crude expression."

  Berry smiled, but the smile faded away soon.

  "You're sure about this, Luiz?"

  She spoke informally because in the weeks since what had come to be called the Battle of Torch, a quiet but profound sea change had swept through the small number of Torch's leaders who knew the truth about the Stein assassination and the events that had followed on The Wages of Sin and elsewhere. A change in the way they looked at Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak.

  Before the battle, they'd considered Rozsak an ally, true enough. But it had been purely an alliance of convenience and not one of them had personally trusted the admiral. No farther than I could throw him—when I was a toddler, was the way Jeremy had put it. Indeed, not only had they not trusted Rozsak, they'd been deeply suspicious of him.

  Today, it was still unlikely (to say the least) that anyone was going to confuse the admiral with a saint. But it was impossible to match the previous assessment of Rozsak as a man driven solely, entirely and exclusively by his own ambition with the admiral who'd led the defense of Torch at such an incredible cost to his own forces and risk to his own life.

  A man driven by a fierce ambition, yes. Solely by ambition, however . . . No. That, it was no longer possible to believe.

  At that, the growing warmth of Torch's inner circle toward the admiral was a candle, however, compared to the enthusiastic embrace with which Torch's population had greeted the Mayan survivors of the battle. Any officer or enlisted person in the fleet who went down to the planet—and there none who didn't, except for those still too badly injured to make the trip—swore then and thereafter that there was not, never had been, and never would be a shore leave better than the one they enjoyed on Torch in the weeks that followed the battle.

  No one on Torch doubted that those Mayan fighting men and women had saved the planet's population from complete destruction. Not once the StateSec officers who survived the battle and the ones who surrendered afterward started talking.

  And they started talking very quickly, and they talked and talked and talked. Their immediate fear had been that Torch would hand them over to the Republic of Haven. Then Jeremy X and Saburo started interrogating, and within two days it was the profound hope of every StateSec officer that they would be turned over to the Haven navy.

  Jeremy X's notions concerning "the laws of war" and the proper rules governing the treatment of POWs would have met with the approval of Attila the Hun. And while Berry Zilwicki might have squelched Jeremy, she wasn't going to squelch Saburo.

  He started every interrogation by placing a holopic between himself and the person being interrogated. "Her name was Lara. And her ghost really, really, really wants you to tell me everything you know. Or her ghost is going to get really, really, really peeved."

  So, within a few days, they knew everything—at least, everything that had been known by Santander Konidis and the other surviving officers. But that was enough to know the three critical items.

  First, that Manpower had surely been behind the whole plot. Second, that the Mesa System Navy had played a major part in providing training and logistical support. And, third, and beyond any faintest shadow of a doubt, that Manpower had planned and ordered a complete violation of the Eridani Edict.

  Thereafter, however—quite to the surprise of Konidis and his subordinates—all threats and mistreatment had stopped. Within a month, all of the StateSec survivors had been relocated onto an island and provided with the wherewithal to set up reasonably comfortable if austere living quarters, along with a sufficient food supply brought in once a week under heavy guard.

  The armed forces of Torch placed no guards on the island itself, and didn't even maintain a naval patrol beyond a small number of vessels. But the more adventurous of the StateSec forces who experimented with the possibility of trying to escape by sea soon gave it up. It turned out that the lifeforms in Torch's warm oceans were every bit as exuberant as the ones in its tropical rain forests. Especially the predator that looked like a ten-meter long cross between a lobster and a manta ray, and whose dietary preferences seemed to exclude rocks but absolutely nothing else.

  * * *

  That measure had been taken at Rozsak's request.

  "I'd really be much happier if I knew that none of those survivors was in a position to tell anyone—and that includes Haven—exactly what happened here and what weaponry I possessed and what tactics I used."

  "Certainly, Admiral," Web Du Havel had said. "But . . . ah . . . that still leaves the population of Torch itself. Which, at last count, numbers a little over four and a quarter million people and grows—this is immigration alone—by almost fifteen thousand people every T-week."

  Rozsak had shrugged. "It's not a perfect world. But the State Sec survivors would have an incentive to talk—spill their guts, rather, once Haven gets hold of them—and your people don't. In fact, from what I've heard, you've launched a very effective public campaign to establish and maintain tight security."

  "Yes, we have," Hugh had said.r />
  Berry had glanced at him, smiled—and then made a face. "I still think 'loose lips sink ships' is a corny slogan."

  "It is. It also works." There were some subjects concerning which Hugh Arai had no shame whatsoever. "How long do you want us to hold them, Admiral?"

  "To be honest, I don't know. There are still too many variables involved in the equation for us to know yet what'll be happening. If it's a financial strain to maintain the prisoners, I can talk to Governor Barregos and see if—"

  Du Havel had waved that aside. "Don't worry about it. The one thing Torch is not, is poor, even with having to provide initial support for most immigrants, who usually arrive with nothing much more than the clothes they're wearing. But the support doesn't normally last long, because the job market is booming. Plenty of pharmaceutical companies have been quite happy to come here and replace Manpower's operations with their own."

  Web had exchanged looks with Jeremy and Berry and Thandi Palane.

  "Consider it done, Admiral," Palane had said then, with one of her simultaneously dazzling and ferocious smiles. "We'll keep 'em on ice for as long as you want."

  * * *

  "Are you sure, Luiz?" Berry repeated now. "You paid a terrible price for this ship, and the others."

  For a moment, Rozsak's face looked a bit drawn. "Yes, we did. But there are some very good reasons why it'd be better if the surviving StateSec ships were pressed into Torch service rather than Mayan service."

  "Such as?" Berry asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged.

  "Trust me, it's not a case of misplaced gallantry on my part, Your Majesty!" He snorted in obvious amusement, then sobered. "The truth is, that they'd be white elephants as far as we're concerned. There are . . . reasons we'd just as soon not have anyone from Old Earth poking around in Maya, Berry, and if we start taking ex-Havenite ships into service, someone's likely to do just that."

  "And they're not likely to when word of the battle gets there? Or were you thinking you could get away with just not mentioning it?" Berry knew she looked skeptical. "We're willing to keep our mouths shut, Luiz, but don't forget all of those pharmaceutical companies. I imagine we're going to have newsies out here from the League sometime real soon now, and there's no way we're going to be able to keep the fact that there was a battle here in the system under wraps when that happens! Weapons and actual losses are one thing, but . . ."

  She gave a little shrug, and he nodded.

  "Understood. But we're going to tell the galaxy it was the Erewhon Navy that did the real fighting. Our ships were limited to the flotilla everyone knows about, watching the planet against any missiles that might have come your way. And we don't plan on advertising how heavy our losses were, either." It was his turn to shrug, with a flicker of pain in his eyes. "We can't keep the rest of the galaxy from knowing we lost some people out here, but all our official reports are going to indicate that the people we lost were acting as cadre to help fill out the Erewhonese crews. The only people who could tell anyone different are stuck on your island, and no newsie—or League flunky—is going to get to them there, now are they?"

  "No, they're not," Berry agreed with a certain flat steeliness. Then she drew a breath and nodded.

  "Okay, then. If you're sure." When she looked around the flag bridge this time, she seemed a little less bewildered. "I still can't figure out most of what's happening here. But I know Thandi's happy about getting this ship—it's a heavy cruiser, right?—and the rest of them."

  She smiled. "Well . . . 'happy' isn't quite the right term. 'Ecstatic' might be better. Or 'beside herself with joy.' Or 'delirious.' "

  Rozsak smiled also. "I'm hardly surprised. She'll have a fleet that goes almost overnight from having a frigate as its flagship to—yes, it's a heavy cruiser, Your Majesty."

  "Please, Luiz. Call me Berry."

  * * *

  She returned from the Spartacus in a pensive mood. Visiting that ship had driven something home to her in a way that the inconvenience of living in what amounted to a bunker had not. Life—even with prolong—was simply too damn short to dilly-dally around the fundamentals.

  So, when she returned to the palace, her first words were to Saburo.

  "You're promoted, starting immediately. Now please leave Hugh and me alone, for a bit."

  Saburo nodded, and left the room.

  Hugh's face had no expression at all. As the months had gone by, Berry had learned that he was very good at that. It was one of the things she planned to change.

  "Have I displeased you, Your Majesty?"

  "Not hardly. I just can't deal with this any longer. I want your resignation. Now."

  Hugh didn't hesitate for more than perhaps a second. "As you wish, Your Majesty. I resign as your chief of security."

  "Don't call me that. My name is Berry and you damn well don't have any excuse any longer not to use it."

  He bowed, slightly, and then extended his elbow. "All right, Berry. In that case, may I escort you to J. Quesenberry's?"

  The smile that came to her face then was the same gleaming smile that had captivated Hugh Arai since the first time he'd seen it. But it was as if a star had become a supernova.

  "Ice cream would be nice. Later. Right now, I'd be much happier if you'd take me to bed."

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  December, 1921 PD

  "So you've finished your analysis?" Albrecht Detweiler asked after his son had settled—still a bit cautiously—into the indicated chair.

  "Such as it is, and what there is of it," Collin Detweiler replied, easing his left arm down. "There are still a lot of holes, you understand, Father." He shrugged. "There's no way we're ever going to close all of them."

  "Nobody with a working brain would expect otherwise," Collin's brother, Benjamin, put in. "I've been pointing that out to you for—what? Two or three weeks, now?"

  "Something like that," Collin acknowledged with a smile that mingled humor, resignation, and lingering discomfort.

  "And did your brother also point out to you—as, now that I think about it, I believe your father has—that you could have delegated more of this? You damned near died, Collin, and regen"—Albrecht looked pointedly at his son's still distinctly undersized left arm—"takes time. And it also, in case you hadn't noticed, is just a teeny-tiny bit hard on the system."

  "Touché, Father. Touché!" Collin replied after a moment. "And, yes, Ben did make both of those points to me, as well. It's just . . . well . . ."

  Albrecht regarded his son with fond exasperation. All of his "sons" were overachievers, and none of them really ever wanted to take time off. He practically had to stand over them with a stick to make them, in fact. That attitude seemed to be hardwired into the Detweiler genotype, and it was a good thing, in a lot of ways. But as he'd just pointed out to Collin (with massive understatement), the regeneration therapies placed enormous demands upon the body. Even with the quality of medical care a Detweiler could expect and the natural resiliency of an alpha-line's enhanced constitution, simply regrowing an entire arm would have been a massive drain on Collin's energy. When that "minor" requirement was added to all of the other physical repairs Collin had required, some of his physicians had been genuinely concerned about how hard he'd been pushing himself.

  Albrecht had seriously considered ordering him to hand the investigation over to someone else, but he'd decided against it in the end. Partly that was because he knew how important it was to Collin on a personal level, for a lot of reasons. Partly it was because even operating in pain and a chronic state of fatigue, Collin—with Benjamin's assistance—was still better at this sort of thing than almost anyone else Albrecht could have thought of. And partly—even mostly, if he was going to be honest—it was because the chaos and confusion left in the wake of the massive destruction hadn't left anyone else he could both have handed the task over to and trusted completely.

  "All right," he said out loud now, half-smiling and half-glowering at Collin. "You
couldn't hand it over to someone else because you're too OCD to stand letting someone else do it. We all understand that. I think it's a family trait." He heard Benjamin snort, and his smile broadened. Then it faded just a bit. "And we all understand this hit pretty damned close to home for you, Collin, in a lot of ways. I won't pretend I really like how hard you've been driving yourself, but—"

  He shrugged, and Collin nodded in understanding.

  "Well, that said," his father went on, "I take it you've decided Jack McBryde really was a traitor?"

  "Yes," Colin sighed. "I have to admit, part of me resisted that conclusion. But I'm afraid it's almost certain that he was."

  "Only 'almost'?" Benjamin asked with a sort of gentle skepticism. Collin looked at him, and Benjamin arched one eyebrow.

  "Only almost," Collin repeated with a rather firmer emphasis. "Given the complete loss of so many of our records and the fragmentary—and contradictory, sometimes—nature of what survived, almost any conclusion we could possibly reach is going to be tentative, and especially where motivations are concerned. But I take your point, Ben, and I won't pretend it was an easy conclusion for me to accept."

  "But you do accept it now?" his father asked quietly.

  "Yes." Collin rubbed his face briefly with his good hand. "Despite the scattered records we found that would seem to indicate Jack was making a desperate, last-minute effort to thwart some kind of conspiracy, there's simply not any way to account for those recordings Irvine made at the diner except to assume he was guilty. Certainly not once we confirmed that the waiter he was meeting with was Anton Zilwicki. And then there's this."

  He drew a personal memo pad from his pocket, laid it on the corner of his father's desk so he could manipulate it one-handed, and keyed the power button.