by Eric Flint
That first engagement had been unintentional, at least on Earth's part. The Democratic Progressives had sent an exploratory force through the solar system, mapping resources, choosing possible locations for new colonies and outposts.
"It's what so-called 'progressives' do," Ardet had said in a speech to every member of the Worthy colony. "They spread, and exploit, and take what they want. We cannot let them steal our homes! We dare not let them disrupt our grand experiment. We must prove the strength of our principles." His voice grew deeper and more powerful; it had been so stirring that Rex found himself moved in spite of the implant. "The DPs are barbarians—they will pillage, and rape, and destroy everything we hold dear!"
The Worthy men had howled, the women had cringed, and the newts had listened carefully. The men gathered every possible ship, cobbled together anything that could be used as a weapon, then set an ambush in the rings to protect their way of life.
The DC exploratory force had come to Saturn with escort ships and scientific vessels, intending to use the plentiful ice in the rings to replenish their fuel and water supplies. Rex had studied the records of their arrival, and (as far as he could tell) the DPs had taken no aggressive action; it seemed possible that they hadn't even known about the tiny hidden colony. But fiery-eyed Ardet called it an incursion, a criminal trespass by plunderers. After overcoming birth pains and terrible difficulties, the colony had begun to thrive, exactly according to the design. They wanted nothing to do with the people of Earth.
The DC scientists and pilots were astonished when the Worthy men attacked. Though the DC exploratory fleet was not a military force, they had fought back, killing most of the young men and Ardet Hollings himself before being destroyed themselves.
"Nothing here we can't fix," Commander Heron said, rapping on the arm of the captain's chair. "We can get the Dutchman flying again!" He looked around the bridge as if expecting the newts to cheer, but they continued their tasks with silent efficiency. He turned to Rex. "You. You're Ardet's own son. Doesn't anything get you riled up?"
Rex shrugged in his bulky suit. "That's not possible, sir." He reset a panel and was gratified to see that all systems were now functional. "But I do my job to the best of my abilities. Is there something inadequate about my performance?"
Discouraged, the commander let out a long sigh that was audible across the helmet radio. "We won't be able to last five minutes against the forces from Earth."
* * *
Back at his familiar work in the greenhouse domes, comfortable with the routine despite the imminent arrival of the DPs, Rex was glad to be doing something worthwhile. "There is no more glorious work than providing food for our people," Ardet had said to all greenhouse workers. And since Rex also worked on the illumination and irrigation systems, he felt he was doing even more than his part. It gave him a warm satisfaction to know he fit in so well.
Overhead, bright stars and outlying ring fragments moved like fireflies. Some of the women harvesting produce looked up nervously, as if expecting them to be braking jets from Earth ships; Rex saw only lovely lights as bright as diamonds.
He hummed a tuneless song to relax himself, though the implant did most of the job. Crews of newts and women picked ripe vegetables and fruits, never letting anything go to waste. The recycled air smelled fresh, moist, mulchy. Overhead lamps poured out warm, buttery light to nourish the plants. Coming around the gauzy limb of Saturn, the sun also rose, adding its distant light and life. Bees transported from Earth buzzed around the flowers, sexless drones doing their work for the betterment of the hive.
Two years ago, encouraged by his father, Rex had improved the hydroponic trays and then the nutrient-delivery irrigators in the planted rows. Now he drew a deep breath and sighed as he looked out at the colorful patterns of growth, all the shades of green. Each species was planted in the proper order for optimal food production, everything in its place, everything productive. Ardet Hollings had been such a genius.
Rex ruffled his fingers through the velvety leaves of enhanced strawberries. Ripe and red, they would make a sweet dessert; perhaps Mother would serve some tonight. She had been more extravagant with her cooking in the past few weeks, as if to reassure everyone that nothing was wrong.
As he moved the leaves aside, Rex spotted a darting lizard. The original colonists had brought no large animals with them from Earth, but along with the bees they had released numerous small animals such as birds, shrews, and tiny lizards. The birds and rodents had died; only the lizards had survived, and thrived, finding an entire ecological niche for themselves.
Rex tried to catch it, but he wasn't quick enough. The lizard vanished among the strawberry plants, showing only a flicker of a tail that was a different color—obviously broken off and then regrown. Lizards had that amazing regenerative ability. Rex went back to his work picking the berries.
In the beginning, Worthies had planted only the fastest growing and highest-energy-density foods, then used reprocessing chemistry to break down even the waste vegetation into edible mass. They'd had nothing else to eat. Because of Ardet's innovative survival measures, that crisis had passed when Rex was just a child, and now the Worthies had the luxury and the inclination to plant decorative flowers and ornamental shrubs from stored genetic samples.
This place had become a home instead of just a subsistence colony. But it wouldn't last.
In their fourth year away from Earth, one of the three primary greenhouses had failed; a piece of rogue stony debris thrown from an impact in the rings had sailed at high velocity into the armored dome, shattering several panes and hemorrhaging atmosphere. Most of the air was gone, the temperature plunged, the greenhouse sent into an unstable wobble. Seven people died, and all the plants perished—one third of the crops to feed the settlement. Adding to the disaster, a blight had swept through the corn crop in one of the other greenhouses, decimating that harvest as well.
On the relatively new colony, their survival had already been hanging by a thread. Most of their preserved supplies were already gone. Devastated by the loss, the Worthies watched their perfectly planned future crumble. Though workers scrambled to build another greenhouse dome and create subsidiary growing areas, they faced the very real prospect of dying—or returning, beaten, to repressive Earth.
Ardet rallied them. "Return is never an option! We have fought too hard to establish a perfect society. I have provided the road map. Do we dare take our children back to that hellhole? How could we betray them in such a way?" He had lifted his young son Rex for all his followers to see. Now, when Rex watched the tapes and studied his father's words, he was glad that in his small way he had helped Ardet make his point. "We have given our citizens their places, defined their roles, offered them security instead of cultural pandemonium. Men and women fill the niches for which they were bred, without the confusion of too much freedom and too many pressures." It was a famous speech that all students were required to memorize. In the recording, the people were bleak, gaunt and hollow-eyed—with fear, as much as from hunger.
After the greenhouse failure, knowing they would barely have enough to eat for the next few years, Ardet had assessed the big picture and repainted his grand social landscape. "As Worthies, we must watch ourselves. We did not ask for an easy life, nor will we ever have one. Our population must always be carefully controlled. We will grow, and we will triumph, but out here we must do it in a properly planned fashion. This is not Earth."
"Peace, despite hardship," the crowd had mumbled.
"Thus, for the time being, we must stabilize our population. We must shore up our society, keep our roles intact, keep our people happy. We cannot have strife, nor can we have uncontrolled breeding. Thus, as a gesture to strengthen all of us in our resolve, we must make sure that no more than two children in each family will reproduce."
This announcement had been met with dismay, since Worthies had, until now, been encouraged to have large families in order to increase their numbers. The people muttered.
"Most of us already have more children than that, Ardet. Do you . . . want us to kill them?" someone asked from the audience. Watching that interchange over and over, Rex was sure that the questioner would have done it, if Ardet had asked.
Their leader shook his head and gave a broad, paternal smile. "Of course not. We love our children. They are the building blocks of our great society. But, we must use them with great care, to a noble purpose." Ardet had looked at them all with his intense visionary glare. "While I am confident we have the strength to survive, this crisis is only an example of our possible tribulations. By our own design, we are in a new situation here at Saturn. We came to escape the anarchy and gluttony of Earth, and to do that we must change ourselves . . . and that is a good thing, though it will be hard.
"For this generation, we must take interim measures. Difficult measures, but vital ones. After the first two children, our extra sons and daughters will remain important parts of our perfect society, but they will also make the sacrifice so that we can remain strong and stable." He had looked at them all. Rex still felt a chill when he recalled the historical tapes. "They must be neutered."
As an educated adult, when Rex considered the details of the solution, he didn't think the mathematics worked out. Neutering the additional children had not decreased the number of mouths to feed. But, as became clear later, that had only been the first part of Ardet's brilliant plan. Using the greenhouse accident as a springboard, he had led his people past another watershed, pushed his new society to an entirely new level.
Because he was their leader, because his followers would do anything he asked, they had not argued. To show his sincerity, Ardet had won their hearts by offering up his own young son as the first to be castrated. Rex was told again and again what a great thing he was doing, though being only four years old at the time he had understood nothing about what was really being taken from him.
After a large group of children was neutered and properly raised—girls as well as boys—Ardet had quietly revealed his deeper motivation to create an entire layer of society without aggression, without destructive competitiveness. Newts were cooperative and friendly, productive, and completely reliable, if not ambitious; the boys being the most prominently changed. The castration itself was not sufficient for Ardet's purpose, though. With carefully metered implants, the newts remained on an even emotional footing, causing no trouble. Each family was allowed two viable children, and the rest became a new caste, the strong and stable foundation for a great Worthy civilization. Rex had listened to the rationales over and over. He thought it was breathtaking. . . .
Now, as Rex and the newts continued their work in the greenhouse, the women reacted to a signal piped in over the dissemination channel. The words were spoken in a crisp voice with just a tinge of fear. "An outpost on the fringe of the outer ring has picked up radio chatter, and long-distance sensors have just discovered the Earth military force on its way. The Democratic Progressives will arrive at the rings of Saturn within a week, two at the most."
Hearing this, Rex missed his brothers more than ever. He had never understood them, but he loved them nevertheless. In their youth, Lee and Ian had fought and wrestled with each other, so full of life. Fairly bursting with energy, they had always exhausted their little brother. They had tried to include Rex in their roughhousing play, but even as a boy he had never enjoyed it—due more to the implant than the actual neutering. What if he had been more like them?
As he finished filling his container with strawberries, Rex looked up through the transparent dome. He thought about Jen, desperate for him to be something he wasn't, then felt sorry for Ann and her little boy. For their sakes, he tried to imagine himself in a Worthy soldier's uniform. What if it came down to that?
Would he grab a projectile repeater rifle and stand at the habitat doorway with Mother, Ann, and Jen behind him? Snarling, would he point the hot barrel of the weapon toward oncoming DC invaders, scream like a madman and blast away one enemy after another? Maybe he would use the weapon as a club if he ran out of ammunition. He would bare his teeth. He would claw at them with his hands. The women would treat Rex as a hero, a savior. Then he would hop aboard the Flying Dutchman and streak off into space, using the ship's weapons to destroy more of the DC attackers. He would make them pay dearly. . . .
Rex wiped away the faint sweat that had broken out on his forehead, shaking his head at the strange ideas. The implant struggled to banish the thoughts as fast as they came into his head. None of it felt like something he could do, something he should do. Rex was a newt, with his specific role to play—just like every Worthy. Ardet would have been gravely disappointed to learn his son had even entertained such fantasies. It was not at all what the great leader had designed newts to do. They served another purpose.
Rex emptied his container of strawberries, then went to pick soybeans. Even after the women had rushed off, he and four newt companions stood together chatting. Their conversation didn't touch on the approaching Democratic Progressives. Rex was confident that everything would work out for the best.
* * *
The family huddled together in the living quarters for their final hours. Rex held a squirming Max as he stood at the window, but even his uncle's attentions could not calm the boy against the palpable storm of panic. Rex felt the boy's misery and held him close, but they could not help each other.
Intellectually, he knew their dire straits, though the implant worked overtime to keep him quiet and anchored. Now he needed it more than ever. With a glance at the pale, wide-eyed faces of his mother, of Ann and Jen, Rex wondered if they envied him his calm.
With Max clinging to him, he pondered what it might have been like if he'd had a child of his own. If things had been different, would he have felt the longing to reproduce, the endless ticking of a biological clock?
Rex kissed the toddler's cheek, then looked toward the upswept rings, where he could see the glimmers of inbound DC ships. Some families were using telescopes to watch the defensive measures Commander Heron was struggling to implement. Rex saw all he needed to see with his own eyes.
Each weapons launch, each explosion, was a tiny spark. The Earth forces had come with more than a hundred fully armed military vessels, more than enough to overwhelm any resistance the Worthies could mount. Even so, Heron had taken the Flying Dutchman into battle; the other intact men had a few ships, little more than tiny cargo shuttles loaded with explosives. They faced off against the DPs in a brave but hopeless last stand. Fifteen newts had been recruited to man some of the defensive posts, but the Worthies did not have enough weapons for them. Rex wondered if his neutered comrades were experiencing any fear in their extreme circumstances. Was this what Ardet would have wanted them to do?
As they approached, the DC ships issued numerous warnings—they sounded like pleas—for the Worthies to stand down. From listening to the battle chatter, it seemed to Rex that the enemy fired only after Commander Heron had launched his weapons. Once the battle began, however, the DPs quickly obliterated the resistance.
The Earth ships were visible now as distinct blips closing in on the isolated colony. There seemed to be as many hospital ships as armed military vessels. Decoys? With their superior forces, why would the DPs expect so many casualties? And if they meant to slaughter the Worthies, why bother with medical aid?
"We do not intend to harm you," said a strangely accented but gentle-sounding voice over the dissemination channel. A female voice, in command. That startling fact alone demonstrated to Rex how different these invaders were.
"They're lying," Ann growled. Now she tried to take Max, but the boy clung to his uncle. Rex soothed him, and Ann withdrew to her terrified pacing.
As the DPs passed the outer supply depot, it exploded, booby-trapped with proximity bombs. Flying shrapnel tore open one of the Earth battleships. Rex knew that the depot had been manned by two newts assigned there by Commander Heron.
Tears streaked Jen's lovely face. "That one was for Ian,
" she whispered, her voice cold and bitter.
Mother sat grimly in her favorite chair. "At least the damned Capitalists won't be able to take our supplies."
"Cease your resistance!" The female commander's voice sounded sterner now. "We cannot allow you to threaten peaceful ships. After you are disarmed, you will be given an opportunity to explain yourselves and air any grievances in world courts. But we must protect ourselves."
"Then stay away!" Jen shouted. Her once-luxuriant dark brown hair was stringy; her eyes grew red as she kept crying. Rex was sure his brother would still have found her beautiful.
When the ships surrounded the habitation complex, there were no more flashes, no more desperate attempts to block them. The crackling accented voice continued, "Please stand down. We do not wish to hurt anyone else. We will not harm you. You have our word."
Jen moaned from the other side of the room. "They're going to kill us all! They'll drag us back to Earth and make us their slaves." Ardet had painted that picture many times, convinced his followers what monsters the DPs were. Rex couldn't let himself believe that his father might have distorted the truth, exaggerated the threat.