“Marcoyn had a good teacher,” Derec said. “His name was Captain Lord Fors. Marcoyn’s an amateur in cruelty compared to him.”
Collerne stiffened. Mean satisfaction trickled into Derec’s mind: he’d got a reaction from the man at last. He wondered if it was because he’d scored a point or simply had the bad taste to criticize one officer in front of another.
“The only order I’ve ever had questioned,” Derec said, “is the one that would prevent my people doing to you what you fully intended to do to them. Now”—he nodded—“you will follow me, Captain-General, and from this point onward you will address me as Captain. Maybe I wasn’t born to the rank, but I think I’ve earned it.”
Collerne said nothing, just rose from his chair and followed. Perhaps, Derec thought, he would say nothing at all rather than have to call Derec by his stolen title. Derec collected the rest of the officers in the cable tier and then climbed to the maindeck. Birdwing’s remaining small boat had been warped astern after the fight, and Derec had it brought alongside. He put a stock of food and water aboard, made certain the boat had mast, cordage, sail, and backstaff, then sent the prisoners into it. Collerne was last. The captain-general turned in the entry port, prepared to lower himself to the boat, curled his fingers around the safety line. His bandaged hand slipped uselessly, and Collerne gave a gasp of pain as he began to topple backward into the boat.
Derec leaned out and took the captain-general’s arm, steadying him. Collerne looked at him with dark, fathomless eyes.
“I acted to preserve the ship, Captain-General,” Derec said. “There was no other way. Birdwing was your dream, and it is alive, thanks to me.”
Collerne’s face hardened. He turned away, and with Derec’s assistance lowered himself into the boat.
“Cast off,” said Derec. He stepped up to the poop and watched the fragment of darkness as it fell astern, as it vanished among the gentle swells of the Sea of Luck.
He’d said what he’d had to, Derec thought. If Collerne refused to understand, that was naught to do with Derec.
“What now, Captain?”
Tevvik’s voice. Derec turned to the wizard.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll deal with Marcoyn in the morning.”
Derec rose at dawn. He wound his two pistols and put them in his belt, then reached for his sword. He stepped on deck, scanned the horizon, found it empty save for Torn II riding two miles off the starboard quarter. He brought Birdwing alongside, shouted at the other ship to heave to, then backed Birdwing’s main topsail and brought her to rest a hundred yards from the other ship. He armed a party of Birdwing’s sailors and had them ready at the entry port. Derec told Torn’s lookout to give Mr. Marcoyn his compliments, and ask him to come aboard Birdwing.
Out of the corner of his eye, Derec saw Tevvik mounting the poop ladder. The Tichenese seemed unusually subdued; his expression was hooded, his grin absent entirely.
Marcoyn arrived with a party of half a dozen marines, all dressed grandly in plundered clothing and armor. The big man looked savage; he was probably hung over. A brace of pistols had been shoved into his bright embroidered sash.
Derec could feel tension knotting his muscles. He tried to keep his voice light. “I need you to resume your duties aboard Birdwing, Mr. Marcoyn,” Derec told him. “I’m sending Sandor to take charge of the prize.”
There was a pause while Marcoyn absorbed this. He gave an incredulous laugh. “Th’ piss you will,” he said. “The prize is mine!”
Derec’s nerves shrieked. Ignoring the sharp scent of liquor on Marcoyn’s breath, he stepped closer to the big man. His voice cracked like a whip. “By whose authority? I’m captain here.”
Marcoyn stood his ground. His strange pale eyes were focused a thousand yards away.
“The prize is mine!” he barked. “I’m in charge of the sojers here!”
Hot anger roared from Derec’s mouth like fire from a cannon. “And I am in charge of you! he shouted. He thrust his face within inches of Marcoyn’s.”Birdwing is mine! The prize is mine! And you and your sojers are mine to command! D’you dispute that, Marcoyn?"
Do it, Marcoyn, he thought. Defy me and I’ll pistol your brains out the back of your head.
Marcoyn seemed dazed. He glanced over the poop, his hands flexing near his weapons. Derec felt triumph racing through his veins. If Marcoyn made a move he was dead. Derec had never been more certain of anything in his life.
Marcoyn hesitated. He took a step back.
“Whatever you say, Captain,” he said.
Readiness still poised in Derec. Marcoyn was not safe yet, not by any means. “You are dismissed, Marcoyn,” Derec said. “I’d advise you to get some sleep.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The words were mumbled. Marcoyn raised his helmet in a sketchy salute, then turned away and was lost.
Tension poured from Derec like an ebbing tide. He watched the burly marine descend the poop ladder, then head for his cabin. He looked at Marcoyn’s marines.
“Return your firelocks to the arms locker,” he said. “Then report to Randem’s repair party.”
“Sir.”
Derec sent Sandor and some of the armed sailors to the Torn, then looked up at the sails. “Hands to the main braces,” he said. “Set the main tops’l. Steer nor’-nor’west.”
Men tailed onto the braces, fighting the wind as they heaved the big mainyards around. Canvas boomed as it filled, as Birdwing paid off and began to come around, a bone growing in its teeth.
Relief sang in Derec’s mind. He had managed it somehow, managed not to have to become Marcoyn in order to defeat him.
Tevvik’s voice came quietly in Derec’s ear: “Well done, sir. But you should have let me handle him. Marcoyn’s still a danger.”
“To no one but himself.” Flatly.
“I disagree, Captain. What will happen when he discovers you’ve set Collerne and the others free?”
“Nothing will happen. He will drink and mutter and that will be the end of it.”
“I pray you are right, Captain.”
Derec looked at him. “I won’t have a man killed because he might be a problem later. That was Lord Fors’ way, and Marcoyn’s way, and I’ll have none of it.”
Tevvik shook his head and offered no answer. Derec glanced aloft to check the set of the sails.
Suddenly he felt his heart ease. He was free.
No more mutinies, he thought.
Birdwing heeled to a gust, then rose and settled into its path, forging ahead through a bright tropical dawn.
Afterword
Jerry Pournelle
The phony debate over strategic defense has taken a new turn with the publication of the Report to the American Physical Society of the Study Group on Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons in April of 1987. Supposedly an impartial study by a jury of qualified scientists, it was nothing of the sort: like the long discredited “study” by the Federation of American Scientists (FAR), the APS Report assumes its conclusions in advance, then manipulates its assumptions to make its case. It proves nothing.
The usual nonsense is there. The U.S.S.R. can “easily” protect their missiles by spinning them—although no one has yet spun an ICBM—or by coating them with some form of armor. In both cases the APS Report seriously underestimates the payload loss from spinning and coating, nor does it address the problem of whether an SS-18 missile coated with some six metric tons of armor can be built at all, much less spun.
The Soviets have invested enormously in their weapons inventory; so much so that their economy is in real trouble. If we can make that investment obsolete, why shouldn’t we? And even the APS Report, read carefully, shows that we can do at least that much. If the Soviets can in fact coat and spin their missiles, they haven’t done so, and it won’t be cheap; and every ruble spent refitting an old missile is a ruble not spent on buying new ones.
There are dozens of other errors of fact or assumption in the APS document, and like the FAR Report, they�
�re all in the same direction. All the errors lead one to suppose that the technology we have isn’t worth building, and what we’ll need is far in the future; and indeed that’s what the New York Times and other newspapers reported when the APS Report came out.
In fact it proves nothing of the sort. In the first place, the APS Report doesn’t even deal with kinetic energy weapons. The United States right now has not only the science but the engineering technology to put up a ballistic kill ICBM defense. We can build not just weapons, but an entire defensive weapons system. Of course, a system based on smart rocks won’t be anything like as effective as one built around high-energy lasers and other directed-energy weapons; but it can make a significant contribution to the protection of the United States.
No defense will ever be perfect. I know of no possible way to make everyone in the U.S. safe from nuclear attack; to build a leak-proof nuclear umbrella. Fortunately that isn’t what strategic defenses are supposed to do. The purpose of defenses is to make the attacker decide it’s not worthwhile to attack. If defenses can do that, they will have succeeded—and of course, if they do that, they will have been 100 percent effective without having been used at all.
Boost-phase ballistic kill ICBM defenses—smart rocks in space—can intercept 10-25 percent of the enemy ICBM boosters. Each booster can carry more than one warhead. Since the larger the booster, the easier it is to intercept, and the more warheads it is likely to carry, the proportion of warheads intercepted may be even higher.
Now no one questions that 90 percent of the Soviet ICBM force is more than enough to destroy the United States as a national entity. If the Soviets devote their entire ICBM force to wanton destruction of U.S. society, they’ll probably be successful, especially if they just launch out of the blue. I’ve never heard anyone explain why the U.S.S.R. would want to do that, since any such attack would pretty well disarm the Soviet Union while leaving the U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces intact and motivated to take a terrible revenge.
On the other hand, intercepting 10 percent of the Soviet ICBM boosters would be very effective in protecting large parts of the U.S. ICBM force—and indeed, protecting the land-based, highly accurate ICBMs, which are the weapons the Nomenklatura fear most. The real rulers of the Soviet Union probably care about the lives of their fellow citizens, but the record shows they care for their weapons and their mechanisms of social control a great deal more.
There’s only one way a nuclear first strike makes sense: if it’s so effective that the enemy has little or nothing left to retaliate with. Many “theorists” in the U.S. have said that’s impossible: they postulate invulnerable “second strike” weapons. The problem is that invulnerability is easier to get by assumption than by engineering. In these days of computer sufficiency, PGM, and increasingly accurate and effective weapons, there are no invulnerable weapons. There’s only one way to protect the retaliatory force; it must be actively defended.
That means protecting weapons, not cities; yet one argument for SDI has always been that MAD is immoral.
We needn’t abandon our conviction that Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD, is immoral; that holding hostage innocent Russian citizens to ensure the good behavior of the Nomenklatura is a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, although we learned in 1984 that strategic defenses were possible, we have done nothing about building them. SDI remains a study program. We cannot defend the U.S. with paper studies and laboratory experiments.
We need not abandon our moral opposition to MAD—but we now have no choices left. We need strategic defenses just to keep MAD operating.
It’s not hard to see what we must do. We begin with what we know how to do. Start with increasing our warning times by putting manned observation stations in space. (The Soviet MIR space station certainly can function that way.) Add new surveillance and warning capabilities. Deploy smart rocks, a few at first, then a hundred or so.
Even the APS Report concedes that we will, eventually, learn how to build effective high-energy weapons. We can quarrel with their timetable, but in fact even if we had those weapons today they wouldn’t be a weapons system. By starting early we put together the elements of a real defense that defends. Then as the new weapons technologies mature, we integrate those new systems into what will be an increasingly effective missile defense system based on what we know how to do now.
There are always two approaches to difficult goals. One is to try to solve all problems before deciding what to do. The other is to decide what you will do, then deal with the problems as they get in the way.
The second approach won World War II and put us on the moon. We’re now using the first approach, and it has yet to put a station in space—or even to build an O ring.
If you would have peace, be prepared for war. We are not prepared.
Military Science Fiction
There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. VI ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. VII ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. VIII ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle
Plague Wars 0: The Eden Plague by David VanDyke
Plague Wars 1: Reaper's Run by David VanDyke
Plague Wars 2: Skull's Shadows by David VanDyke
Galactic Liberation 1: Starship Liberator by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson
Galactic Liberation 2: Battleship Indomitable by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson
Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day
Science Fiction
Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright
City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright
The Corroding Empire 1: Corrosion by Johan Kalsi
Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson
Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller
Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker
Alien Game by Rod Walker
Young Man's War by Rod Walker
QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day
QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day
QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day
Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes
Fantasy
One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright
The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright
Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 4: Daughter of Danger by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 5: City of Corpses by John C. Wright
Moth & Cobweb 6: Tithe to Tartarus by John C. Wright
Arts of Dark and Light 0: Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day
Arts of Dark and Light 1: A Throne of Bones by Vox Day
Arts of Dark and Light 2: A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day
A Magic Broken by Vox Day
The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day
The Last Witchking by Vox Day
The Altar of Hate by Vox Day
The War in Heaven by Vox Day
The World in Shadow by Vox Day
The Wrath of Angels by Vox Day
Fiction
An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney
Hitler in Hell by Martin van Creveld
Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf
The Ames Archives 1: Brings the Lightnin
g by Peter Grant
The Ames Archives 2: Rocky Mountain Retribution by Peter Grant
The Missionaries by Owen Stanley
The Promethean by Owen Stanley
Non-Fiction
4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC
A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld
Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld
Clio & Me: An Intellectual Autobiography by Martin van Creveld
Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind
On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind
MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again by Mike Cernovich
The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne
Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons by Jeffro Johnson
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright
Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander
Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good
Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good
Push the Zone: The Good Guide to Growing Tropical Plants Beyond the Tropics by David the Good
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day
SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police by Vox Day
Collected Columns, Vol. I: Innocence & Intellect, 2001—2005 by Vox Day
Collected Columns, Vol. II: Conceit & Crisis, 2006—2009 by Vox Day
Collected Columns, Vol. III: Failure & Freedom, 2010—2012 by Vox Day
Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day
On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day
On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day
Do We Need God To Be Good? by C.R. Hallpike
The LawDog Files by LawDog
The LawDog Files: African Adventures by LawDog
There Will Be War Volume VII Page 40