Peter stood up and looked around at the control suite and the surrounding modules of the transceiver nodes, an array of tens of thousands of communication wormhole termini. It was awe-inspiring, frightening, and so very, very sad-all the capability and resources devoted to fear and the suppression of freedom.
He refused to let the stupid, futile irony of the ministry's self-defeating plan pass without challenge. Peter turned on her. "Do you have any idea how much this has cost us? And not just in money or luckies, but in potential too? With the amount of trouble and expense it took to put this in place, you could have built three times the number of longships to carry away all those 'pitiful' folk on the dole. You could have better outfitted the colonies so they would have been happier as subjects of the empire! This all could have been avoided!"
She switched from calm and proud to livid insanity in the space of a heartbeat. Peter took a step back from her advance as she spat out, "You don't know that! The ministry and the empire did as it thought necessary! This only proves we were right to do it!"
At that moment, he realized he had always been wrong about her. She was something altogether more pitiful and frightening than the sadist he had always thought her to be. She was a zealot, a true believer. New Poland was endangering her empire and it had to be put down.
She had more to say, though. "And don't preach to me about waste and lost opportunities. I've seen your work! Your real work, not the shit you do now! I've seen the Rippers dance with you as their REMO, burning homes and shooting anyone who got in your way, man or woman, soldier or civilian. You're not clean. You're not pure. You weren't just a cog in the machine, doing what was required like a good little soldier. You did it because it was who you were. And it doesn't matter how many years you've denied your nature, or how many times you've lied to yourself, it's still who you are. It's what you are."
It disturbed him to feel her barbs strike with such accuracy. Years of shame and regret bubbled up. Peter told himself that what he had done had been done under her orders. He told himself that it was the fog of war, the confusion of combat. But her comment about his Rippers resonated too well with him. The people he worked with now made their AIs dance in the acts of creation and industry. What if they only danced for him in the act of destruction?
When he said nothing, she stood straight and smoothed non-existent wrinkles from her pants, using her momentary triumph to regain some equanimity. "Revolt was inevitable, no matter how much money we put into the colonies. It was just a matter of time. The only real question was who would be the first to muster the guts to do it. Now we have a responsibility to the Empress to quell this revolt and provide an object lesson to any other colony that thinks it has the safety of distance. Once a loyal subject, always a loyal subject."
"I need a minute to think."
"Down the hall from my office there's a balcony. Take all the time you need, Peter."
He walked back in a daze, his mind churning with memories and concerns over what she wanted him to do. Outside, a hot breeze blew around the tower, and he was soon dotted with beads of sweat. Peter was surprised the sun still shone through the churning clouds. It felt much later in the day than it seemed to be, emotional weariness supplemented by bodily fatigue. His gaze settled on the chaotic jumble of man-made structures that stretched past the horizon, with barely a swath of green to break up the monotony.
He hardly gave a thought to the money she was offering. The luckies meant a more comfortable life, but it was not as if he intended to retire and live on the dole. Anyway, the money was a lure, not the hook. The real draw was the job itself, a job which appealed to both logic and the baser instincts that he thought he had buried when he left the colonel's employ. Peter was unsure which was having more of an effect on him, though: the logic or his own rejected desires. Since he could do nothing about the demons of his past and their struggle to gain purchase on his future, he focused on her arguments instead. Peter wanted to distrust her. To him, she was the devil incarnate . . . but if the devil tells the truth, what then?
Walking away was not a realistic option. If he did, she would simply hire someone else, and that person might give into their inner darkness with abandon, turning a bad situation into an atrocity, an atrocity which Peter would be indirectly responsible for. It all came down to answering questions he had avoided even asking for years.
Where did honor and valor lie? Was it in rejecting what he truly was and either letting someone else commit an atrocity upon New Poland, or letting New Poland dictate terms to Earth, along with all the chaos and horrors that would entail? Or did it lie in doing the job, in releasing his hidden demons, in killing a bunch of farmers who just wanted a better life, in order to save an empire that might not be worth saving?
What would the Sweeper choose?
What should Peter Highsmith choose?
Was there truly a difference?
In the end, there was really no choice at all. He walked back into Hornet control room, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I want payment first," he said.
She half smiled, and he thought he could detect her first genuine emotion that day. "Forget it. You get half now, half when it's done. Feel lucky you're catching me on a trusting day."
One small transaction later and the miniscule sum of LLC's marked on the surface of his ration card had jumped by five thousand. Nodding, he asked, "What now?"
She waved a hand at the REMO connection chair and he sat, preparing the restraints and inductive pickups for maximum comfort. He would be in the hot-seat for quite a while.
Sylvia pointed to the largest of her displays. "You'll see the target list when you boot up, but I want to make sure there's no confusion."
He just nodded, his thoughts and memories swirling about too rapidly for him to formulate a response.
"First priority is to prevent them from redirecting the longships. You'll need to hit their wormhole comm sites repeatedly to ensure none of their ZPL termini survive. Miss one and we go hungry. Next in importance are their orbital facilities and satellites. That will prevent them from coordinating any response to the next wave of attack."
"Won't you need to keep some of their comms up so you can accept their surrender?"
She frowned and shook her head. "The empress isn't that interested in what they have to say. We can wait to talk to them when the next outbound longship arrives in about two years. Next target set is for all the major government buildings and the homes of the governing council. After the leaders and their families are dead, you hit their manufacturing centers, warehouses, and hospitals."
"Hospitals?"
"Yes. I want every single piece of imperial nanotech and every drop of imperial medicine destroyed. I want the next two years on New Poland to be hellish. We have to be overwhelming with our response so the other colonies will think twice before issuing us an ultimatum."
"Won't I kill a lot of innocents in strikes on hospitals and houses?"
She was quiet for a moment, as if she had forgotten there were people on the planet and not just rebels. Then she waved it away. "We didn't start this. It's unfortunate that the populace pays for the hubris of the government, but they brought this upon themselves."
"I don't know. It seems to me that I'm the one bringing it on them."
"Deal with your conscience later. You've been paid and you'll do your duty. Understood?"
He laid back in the chair and let it mold itself to him. "Understood, ma'am." Peter stared up at the ceiling of steel braces and bare conduits, high above him. With a tap of his finger, the cortical relay settled over his head like a skullcap. Its gentle fields engaged the microscopic filaments that had been nano-deposited within his brain and spinal cord. He began to feel a familiar pressure from within, as if his body was too small to contain his soul. The pressure rose until it was at the threshold of pain, and then he was through the interface.
His mind stretched out over nineteen light years in a fleeting moment of null time. Peter doubted that an
yone had ever done this before, because he had no idea how they would have kept themselves quiet about it. He almost shouted out in delight. Engaging AI's as a REMO always felt strange, but this seemed downright bizarre!
Peter noted a moment of discontinuity, and then he found himself embedded within thirty-eight war machines, hungry for battle. The connection through the wormholes was stronger and faster than any he had ever experienced before. Even during the war, when all the Rippers and he were in the same general area, there had still been a slight delay between thought and sensation, action and reaction. Here there was nothing but the powerful, immediate sensation of being wrapped up in a twenty-ton, c-fractional spaceship, Armageddon at his fingertips, multiplied thirty-eight times over. It was a godlike sensation. Peter feared that he would lose all he had gained in his transition from the Sweeper to plain old factory worker.
He waited until the dangerous euphoria began to abate and then he took stock of his situation. Five of the Hornets had failed to come online. He tried a wake up call to the thirty-eight he did have. "Hello?"
HELOOOO hELLO hello hElLo Hola Hi Yo HOWDY Hello-Their eager voices camein a reverberating cacophony throughout the entire group. Then they began to greet one another, and then to greet him again.
He made an adjustment or two and tried again. "Hello?"
Hello, Peter. Thirty-eight voices in complete harmony. Better. Many new, inexperienced REMO's made the mistake of anthropomorphizing their AIs. Individuality required creativity, and the AI's lack of creativity and advanced judgment skills was why they needed REMO's in the first place. An AI was a very clever operating system and interface, which took away the need to worry about the small stuff, but it did not live. Peter had no need for individuals. He wanted soldiers who did what he told them to.
"Are you mission ready?"
A chorus of Yes, Peter followed by two slow, disappointed No, Peter's. He delved deeper into those two Hornets and data swam in his vision before him, mingling with his view of the ceiling. Peter closed his eyes and gave a quick scan of the info. They were two of the older model units to which he only had a slow, tenuous connection. Time had not been kind to the Hornets, stuck far out in the Kuiper Belt of the New Poland system. Numerous hits by micrometeorites and cometary dust over the years had rendered them unusable. He guessed that was what had happened to the five units that had failed to check in, but he had neither the time nor the need to find out for certain. Peter dismissed the damaged units and then spent a few minutes discussing the target list with the Hornets, adjusting his plans as the AIs informed him of the differences in their individual capabilities.
Soon enough, he had completed all the planning and prep work. Their drives and weapons were all warmed up from decades of dormancy, and the eager Hornets seemed to chafe against their orbits like attack dogs held at bay on a leash. He gave one final instruction. "Your highest priority is accuracy. When you are done, I want the colonists to have no doubts about what the empire is capable of."
No problem, boss. You point us and we'll hit it. No problem. Their voices were in exact sync, and had even been modulated to sound more like him. They were Peter-and he was on the prowl.
The unsuspecting colonists of New Poland never stood a chance. Hornets streaked inward from points all around the solar system, using their DMT drives to trade momentum with any convenient body along their line of flight, accelerating at the equivalent of hundreds of gravities in order to all reach the planet at the same time. The New Polish colony floated in Peter's mind's eye, a blue and green sphere for which peace was about to become a memory.
Before the first wave of Hornets hit the atmosphere, they launched their kinetic missiles. Self-guided spikes of ceramic and tungsten pierced the skies around the globe and struck the locations of every single wormhole transceiver on record, plus a few that had been secreted away in a futile attempt to fool imperial sensors. The first indication the colonists had that they were not in fact beyond the reach of Mother Earth, that they were not safe from harm, was the fiery destruction of their comm centers, as the spikes converted their orbital speed to massive plumes of heat and explosive force. With that, the immediate threat the colonists posed had been removed, but his work was not done.
The second wave of Hornets made short work of the satellites in orbit, and then joined their brethren to shriek across the skies of the terrified planet, raining down destruction and ruin upon every city and community the New Polish had carved out of the alien forests. The kinetic missiles ran out long before he was through half the target list, but it mattered little. The lasers and particle beams would suffice for what remained to be done.
He had his mission, his responsibilities. Peter made continual minute adjustments to the Hornets' attacks, holding back where one seemed overzealous and wasteful, admonishing and redirecting when one missed a target of opportunity. As the platoon sergeant was to his grunts and the commander to his squadron, he was to his Hornets. It was the very essence of being a combat REMO, but this was far more complex, far more difficult than any op he'd ever engaged in before. It was hard work being everywhere at once, but it all came together for him.
Soon, the images of key homesteads, hospitals, warehouses, and factories on their screens were replaced by the stark video of fire, smoke, and settling dust. Ironically, after rejecting his past for so long in search of solace, for the first time in many years he was totally at peace. He realized, while making the Hornets dance around the planet, that perhaps being the Sweeper was not such a bad thing.
Peter felt almost serene, at least until the battle damage assessments started rolling in.
Moments after the smoke and dust cleared from the target areas, he felt someone strike him, pummeling his chest and arms while he lay in the connection chair. Dimly, he could hear Sylvia's cries of outrage and he knew his time was up. He gave final instructions to all of the Hornets. All but one flew out of the atmosphere and then made a suicidal reentry straight into the ocean, their shattered power cells and violent kinetic energy combining to produce a giant mushroom cloud and shockwave. He hoped it would dissipate before it reached shore.
The last remaining Hornet flew to Warsaw, the colony's capitol, and landed upon the steps, just in front of the shattered remains of the government house, ready for the next step.
With a tap of his hand, the cortical interface lifted off his head and he was free. Peter caught Sylvia's striking hands and gave her a spin that sent her sprawling on the floor. She rose to her knees and appeared ready to charge at him again, but a look of defeat began to supplant the apoplectic rage that had turned her face into a mask. She stayed on the floor and leaned against the supervisor's console as she tried to regain both her breath and her composure. He was glad for it. He had been in the chair for too many hours and could barely move to stop her.
She looked to the large display at the frozen images of the secondary target areas. The sites for the wormhole transceivers were completely destroyed, as were the main government buildings on the night side of the colony planet. However, on the daylight side, when they would still have been manned, the buildings stood completely undamaged. Instead, around those buildings and around every single imperial warehouse, factory, hospital, and leadership home, he had used the Hornets' weapons to excavate a deep trench surrounding each structure. It was a degree of precision for which he felt a certain pride, for himself and the Hornet AI's.
She turned away from the unexpected lack of destruction and toward Peter, her face twisted in both confusion and disgust. "Why?"
"You said it yourself. I've never been very obedient, but I always do my duty."
"You call that doing your duty? You've wasted our one best opportunity to regain control!"
Shaking his head, he began to extricate himself from the chair. "I've given you the opportunity to do the right thing. I've given you time." Peter gestured to the images. The precision of the violently unearthed trenches would send an unmistakable message to the New Polish: it wou
ld have been far easier to simply destroy these sites.
"You wanted me to show them they shouldn't screw around with the empress, that their distance doesn't accord them automatic safety. I've done that. I've also removed the immediate threat they posed to the empire. You now have a thirty-two year buffer where you can't touch them and they can't starve you. That's thirty-two years to figure out the right way to resolve things, thirty-two years to figure out if you want allies or enemies, colonists or partisans."
She said nothing, so he went on. "You said you wanted me to destroy them, to stave off any further thoughts of independence, but you also said that revolution was inevitable. You were right on both counts, but destroying them won't take away the threat of revolution. It'll just tell all eleven colonies and all the hundred-plus billion people on Earth that the empire is without reason. You would have had me turn the New Polish into martyrs that would inspire the next revolution. What I've done instead is shown them what we're capable of, and sent the clear message that it could have been much worse. I've reopened the door to diplomacy. I kept one Hornet alive so you would have a way to contact them. I think they're probably waiting for your call.
She rose to her feet, her hatred of him palpable. "I should have you executed for what you've done," she sneered.
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