Bit of Analysis: HH Crown of Slaves

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think it's that simple.

A small caliber chemical pistol, such as is used in duels where the duelists theoretically have a good chance of surviving the gunshot wounds, is... let's say it has killing power X.

A heavy machine pistol (i.e. a submachine gun) firing heavy bullets that may actually be designed to penetrate light body armor will likely have rather higher killing power. Let's say, 2X

A light pulser is presumably one of the smallest, lowest-power type of pulsers available. It would be designed for the applications where extreme power is simply not needed.

A heavy pulser is a military-grade weapon designed to penetrate armors no reasonable chemical firearm could break, fire at rates no chemical firearm could sustain, and so on. It is very very deadly and very destructive. Let its killing power be, oh, 5X. Or 10X. Or whatever.

My point here is that the lightest pulsers might well be less dangerous than the heaviest machine pistols. Because the lightest pulsers are designed for a reason, to specifications set by real technical needs. The obvious needs are those of, say, civilian security guards, police who worry about innocent bystanders, and so on. They need a pulser (which has advantages like huge magazine capacity and reduced recoil), but not a pulser that will rip people in half or kill everything in the general vicinity of the target.

So a "light pulser" might well only have killing power of 2X or even less. Because, much like the dueling pistol, it's designed to cause wounds that are mostly survivable, and without causing a lot of collateral damage.
_________________________

In which case, it's reasonable to suppose body armor that can resist the high velocity but very low mass "light pulser darts," but which fails when shot by relatively massive armor-piercing slugs of lesser velocity.

[Vejut]

Problem with that is Honors standard duelling pistol, IIRC is a .45 acp. Sure, only takes a level II vest to stop, and not as penetrating as 9mm, but still fairly powerful and penetrating. Plus I'd think a light, presumably small diameter/high velocity pulser round would be more penetrating (more energy per area) but probably leave a smaller, less injuring wound channel...you'd think that'd be ideal for duels. The other option I'd think would be planetside duels being gunpowder pistols by tradition or intentional handicap not thought through, and military issue pulsers being different enough from civilian ones that theyccan't be adjusted enough, even if a civilian model could be. If you have to carry a second type just for duelling, then, may as well make it the traditional one. Of course, more likely is Weber just making a small gaffe where he didn't remember the previous bit.

[Batman]

Honor's personal weapon is a .45ACP. Dueling pistols are 10mm of unspecified muzzle velocity and projectile nature. And given that duels are an anachronism today, I think 'tradition' would weigh in even more heavily 2,000 years into the future. 'Pistol duels have always been fought with chemical burners, so we'll damn well keep fighting them with chemical burners.'

[Simon_Jester]

The other option I'd think would be planetside duels being gunpowder pistols by tradition or intentional handicap not thought through, and military issue pulsers being different enough from civilian ones that theyccan't be adjusted enough, even if a civilian model could be. If you have to carry a second type just for duelling, then, may as well make it the traditional one.

This is basically the explanation I'm pitching.

Of course, more likely is Weber just making a small gaffe where he didn't remember the previous bit.

Also possible of course.

[Terralthra]

I think it's likely that the power of a pulser dart is stepped down over the books, because when their lethality is described in Field of Dishonor, no bones are made about "light" this or "heavy that":

The Star Kingdom's military hadn't used chemical-powered firearms in over three T-centuries, for no firearm ever made could match the single-hit lethality of the hyper-velocity darts of a pulser or pulse rifle. A man hit in the hand by a pulser dart might - if he was very, very lucky - survive with the mere loss of his arm, and that made auto-loading pistols antiques, yet every Manticoran warship carried a few of them, precisely because their wounds were survivable. They were always available, and always in the traditional ten-millimeter caliber, yet never issued for duty use; they had only one function, and as long as duels were legel they were carried for those who wished to practice with them.

Single-hit lethality of a single dart: someone who's shot in the hand is lucky to just lose the entire arm. Yet in Crown of Slaves, Victor grazes a dude's ear with a pulser dart. Given the implied carnage of losing an arm to a shot in the hand, a shot in the ear should rip half his face off.

And the kinetic energy of a pulser dart would put even a .44 magnum or .45 ACP to shame. 2 km/sec muzzle velocity will do that, and that's what even small hand-pulsers are stated to have. You can play around with the KE equation yourself, but end result would be that in order to have a .45 ACP bullet have the same KE as a pulser dart going 2 km/sec, the pulser dart would have to mass significantly less than a gram. At 4mmx37mm (House of Steel), that gives it a density of 0.25 kg/m^3, less than 1/4000th of the density of water and less than 1/5 the density of air. What material would you even make that kind of thing out of? How could it survive being accelerated from 0 to 2 km/sec in 10 centimeters?

Making said dart out of metals like tungsten or steel gives even a tiny hand pulser an order of magnitude more KE than Honor's .45 ACP.

[Batman]

I always hated the 'hit in the hand=lucky to loose the arm' thing. How is that supposed to work, especially for a simple kinetic penetrator?
Especially as the pulse rifles used in 'OBS' didn't do anything a high-powered modern rifle couldn't do-drill holes through people.

[VhenRa]

I always hated the 'hit in the hand=lucky to loose the arm' thing. How is that supposed to work, especially for a simple kinetic penetrator?
Especially as the pulse rifles used in 'OBS' didn't do anything a high-powered modern rifle couldn't do-drill holes through people.

Well. The Jaynes war-game supplements and House of Steel indicate the Rifles (at the very least) fire either kinetic penetrators... or explosive darts. As in, they explode when they pass through you, Bolter style.

[Vejut]

Pretty impressive for something smaller than a .22LR. Simon, you'd know this better than me--would 2 km/s be getting up into whipple sheild/blows apart on contact territory? Checking Atomic rockets, its about half its mass in TNT in kinetic energy, so it may just cause such a big hydraulic shock, or blow apart into so much shrapnel, that it just mangles the arm, or fills it with shrapnel and requires medical removal to prevent gangrene? It does make Cachat's shot in this book a bit off though.

[Simon_Jester]

I think it's likely that the power of a pulser dart is stepped down over the books, because when their lethality is described in Field of Dishonor, no bones are made about "light" this or "heavy that":

The Star Kingdom's military hadn't used chemical-powered firearms in over three T-centuries, for no firearm ever made could match the single-hit lethality of the hyper-velocity darts of a pulser or pulse rifle. A man hit in the hand by a pulser dart might - if he was very, very lucky - survive with the mere loss of his arm, and that made auto-loading pistols antiques, yet every Manticoran warship carried a few of them, precisely because their wounds were survivable. They were always available, and always in the traditional ten-millimeter caliber, yet never issued for duty use; they had only one function, and as long as duels were legel they were carried for those who wished to practice with them.

Single-hit lethality of a single dart: someone who's shot in the hand is lucky to just lose the entire arm. Yet in Crown of Slaves, Victor grazes a dude's ear with a pulser dart. Given the implied carnage of losing an arm to a shot in the hand, a shot in the ear should rip half his face off.

The catch is that it's competely absurd to posit that there's no way to dial down a pulser. Or rather, to build it pre-dialed down.

Weber was less mindlessly verbose back in the mid-90s; I see no reason to assume he'd unnecessarily append "military-grade" or "high-power" or whatever to every single use of the word 'pulser' or 'pulse rifle' when referring specifically to pulsers designed to be far more powerful than conventional guns.

I mean, we could reasonably say "no crossbow can match the lethality of a rifle." Which certainly conveys the important truth that rifles are more dangerous than crossbows... but it isn't literally true if we take it to mean "every rifle in the world is deadlier than every crossbow in the world." What it means is that the 'generic' rifle is or can be far more dangerous than a crossbow could hope to be... which is true.

Likewise, the generic 'military' pulser that Honor and friends have been using as personal weapons for the last three and a half books is more dangerous than any man-portable chemical firearm. That doesn't mean every pulser in existence is equally dangerous, including ones designed for situations where it would make no sense to add that design feature.

And the kinetic energy of a pulser dart would put even a .44 magnum or .45 ACP to shame. 2 km/sec muzzle velocity will do that, and that's what even small hand-pulsers are stated to have. You can play around with the KE equation yourself, but end result would be that in order to have a .45 ACP bullet have the same KE as a pulser dart going 2 km/sec, the pulser dart would have to mass significantly less than a gram. At 4mmx37mm (House of Steel), that gives it a density of 0.25 kg/m^3, less than 1/4000th of the density of water and less than 1/5 the density of air. What material would you even make that kind of thing out of? How could it survive being accelerated from 0 to 2 km/sec in 10 centimeters?

Right, so you build the pulser with a lower muzzle velocity, comparable to a real life bullet. This is not a hard concept.

Making said dart out of metals like tungsten or steel gives even a tiny hand pulser an order of magnitude more KE than Honor's .45 ACP.

Yes. Therefore, it is easy for pulsers to be supremely deadly hand weapons if they are designed to do so. Build the same pulser with significantly less ability to accelerate its darts, and it becomes less deadly, more likely to inflict nonfatal wounds, and less likely to overpenetrate and kill people on the other side of walls.

Which are desirable features in a lot of situations.

Pretty impressive for something smaller than a .22LR. Simon, you'd know this better than me--would 2 km/s be getting up into whipple sheild/blows apart on contact territory?

It's... borderline. Given the strength of Honorverse materials, they can almost certainly build penetrator darts hard enough to survive an impact at those speeds.

Checking Atomic rockets, its about half its mass in TNT in kinetic energy, so it may just cause such a big hydraulic shock, or blow apart into so much shrapnel, that it just mangles the arm, or fills it with shrapnel and requires medical removal to prevent gangrene?

Not with a dart that's just a tiny sliver of metal, no- it'd be very damaging and probably rip your hand to shreds (unlike a .22LR round which probably wouldn't). But it wouldn't wreck your arm unless it was filled with some kind of stupidly powerful explosive, and even then would probably have to be considerably larger caliber.

It does make Cachat's shot in this book a bit off though.

As repeatedly noted, Cachat is probably using a pulser obtained from the armories used by guards on the station. There is no reason why such a pulser would fire hypervelocity rounds instead of using rounds more similar to real-life bullets. And there are good reasons NOT to fire hypervelocity shots in a crowded space station...

[andrewgpaul]

"Who's 'Victor'?" Georg demanded immediately. Suspicion didn't exactly "drip" from the words. But it did seep noticeably.

"Victor Cachat. He's an agent—of some kind, I haven't figured out the details—for the Republic of Haven."

Kathryn's eyes widened. "I know him!"

The other slaves fixed their gazes on her. Kathryn shrugged. "Well, not exactly. I wasn't there myself—where it happened—but I was on Terra at the time. So I never met him personally, but Jeremy X told me about it afterward."

Naturally, the slaves have heard of the Manpower Incident, one man slaughters a crowd of Manpower's Scrags single-handedly? And the Manpower headquarters on Earth gets leveled the same day? So even they have heard of Victor Cachat, and are duly impressed.

Which is actually a point against Cachat, famous spies not working out well and all that.

I'm half waiting for "The name's Cachat. Victor Cachat" at some point. Unless that's been done and I've missed it.

[Ahriman238]

Web chuckled. The one thing that made the press at the center manageable for the Committee was that the worst of the press wasn't surrounding them, in any event. The heaviest clustering of the crowd took place around a smaller table, located just a few meters away. Where sat a very young woman—not much more than a girl, really—listening carefully to something being said to her by five ex-slaves seated at the other chairs around the same table. As Web watched, Berry said something. He couldn't hear the words. But from the immediate looks of satisfaction which came over the faces of the five ex-slaves—and that of most of the ones hovering in the immediate vicinity—he was sure she'd made some small pronouncement regarding the logical handling of some immediate and probably petty problem. Not an order, but simply a calm, reasoned, practical suggestion.

Which, of course—coming from her—had all the force of a pronouncement by Solomon. All the better if it came from an open, young, warm girl's face instead of the face of a stern patriarch. Authority, still, but with all the lurking menace of authority leached away.

Web gets a brilliant, awful idea.

So he maintained the embrace, and let the tears flow freely. Knowing that, in the years to come, this moment—observed by all in the compartment—would enter the legends of the new star nation.

Soon enough, to be sure, scholars of the future would debunk the whole business and rambunctious youth would turn the debunking into criticism and even, here and there, outright scorn and rebellion.

So? By then, the generations would have done their work. A nation, once established and secure, can afford to laugh at itself—even jeer and ridicule. Must do so, in fact, from time to time, to retain its sanity. But it can only do so from the vantage point of maturity. Coming into birth, a new nation needed certainties as much as any infant. A mythology of its own creation, never mind that the bits and pieces were taken from anywhere.

Scrap metal, molded and beaten into plowshares and swords—and custom.

Web is very self-aware like that.

"I am not prepared to discuss—or even speculate—on what might be the best form of government for us to adopt," he said firmly, in response to a question raised by Harrell. "Nor will I be, until Jeremy X arrives. Which, as I told you, should be fairly soon. Jeremy, as it turns out, is currently residing on Smoking Frog—and word has already been sent there of the new developments, via one of Captain Rozsak's courier ships. So I expect Jeremy to arrive in Erewhon within ten days. Two weeks, at the outside."

Jeremy will be catching a ride with Anton, someone's going to be in a lot of trouble....

Seriously though, Web accepts that whatever government they set up is going to need the support of the Ballroom.

A courier has also been sent to Manticore, bearing both the Ambassador's report and Oversteegen's more accurate one. Ginny has gone home with Victor's report.

That left Honor herself, and, Nimitz, Samantha's mate. Neither of whom was glaring at the poor fellow, granted, but whom he also did not know personally. All he knew about Honor was the fearsome and (in her opinion) grossly over-inflated reputation the Star Kingdom's newsies had given her along with the nickname of "the Salamander." And all he knew about Nimitz was that he looked less enraged than Ariel . . . for whatever that was worth. Unless he were an expert on 'cat body language, he would never have guessed that what Nimitz actually felt was more amusement than anything else. But, then, Nimitz always had had an odd sense of humor.

The courier gets home, placing these events before Honor left for Silesia.

"While we're looking at the bright side—such as it is, and what there is of it—I suppose I should point out that, from what little I can tell at this distance, they've also managed to salvage something from what's obviously a disastrous situation. And by 'disastrous,' I'm not referring to the episode on the slave ship. I'm talking about the very real damage our relationship with Erewhon has obviously suffered."

That's true, at least since the Erewhon government is on the staged 'hostage crisis' and Oversteegen seems to have passed as much along. Ambassador Fraser, not being trustworthy enough to be in the loop, probably spent a lot of time in her report on the hostage crisis and how it isn't her fault.

"That's hard to say, Ham. The imponderable factor is that touchy Erewhonese sense of honor. That was something Allen was always very careful to treat with kid gloves," he said, referring to Allen Summervale, the assassinated Duke of Cromarty who'd been Manticore's prime minister for so long. Then he went on gloomily. "Whereas if High Ridge and his people were deliberately trying to provoke it, they couldn't have done a better job—or a worse one—than what they have done."

He shook his head. "That statement from Countess Fraser! Was the woman insane?"

Now that the Queen's anger had a different target—and a far more legitimate one—it came back in focus. Fortunately, an actual focus rather than a shriek of quasi-parental fury.

"No, 'insane' is being too charitable. She's a coward, Willie, like they all are. Passing the buck and shifting the blame comes as naturally to that High Ridge crowd as gorging does to a hog."

Erewhonese honor, which I hadn't really thought of precisely that way, oddly enough, beyond that they keep their word and expect the same from their allies.

"Me neither. The truth is that if my so-called 'Government' was worth a damn, I'd urge them to send a task force to ride shotgun for them."

Honor sighed. That would be the best response Manticore could make, at this point. And the chance that Baron High Ridge would order it done . . .

Started at "Hell freezes over" and went downhill from there.

Pretty much.

"Do the best possible, then. Elizabeth, I strongly urge you to send a private message—two messages—no, three—to the people you have on the spot. Urging them—since you can't give any orders, unfortunately, except to your niece—to throw their weight behind it as best they can. If the worst happens, I think we can at least salvage the dynasty's reputation from this mess. That may not shield us from the immediate damage, but it could help us—quite a bit, in fact—at some point in the future."

To the girls, Anton, and Oversteegen, naturally.

"Teach your grandmother—well, ours, I suppose—how to suck eggs. In the first place, Elizabeth could give him a direct order if she chose to. Technically speaking, the Crown's direct line authority in the military has never been revoked, whatever the unwritten part of the Constitution says, you know."

Alexander groaned, and White Haven chuckled.

"Don't worry, Willie! I'm not proposing that we add a fresh constitutional crisis to the mix, as well. On the other hand, there's no need to, because 'suggestions' from the Queen should push things along quite nicely in this instance."

Manticoran Crown retains direct control over the military as a matter of law, if not a matter of tradition.

"There is one thing, Admiral Harrington," he said, with unusual formality, "which I will ask you to remember in the years ahead. In case my daughter does not survive."

He stopped, and Honor faced him squarely. "Yes, Your Grace?" she asked with matching formality,

Michael's voice was hard and low. "My sister, as much as I love and respect her, is not entirely rational on the subject of the Republic of Haven." He held up a hand. "Don't say anything, Honor. I don't expect you to agree with me—certainly not to say so aloud. But I'll tell you that it's true. And the day may come when the damage that irrationality will do to our people needs to be contained, as best as possible."

Honor didn't know what to say. How to say it to the Queen's brother, rather. But she understood what Michael was saying. Had understood it for some time now.

She decided a nod was enough. It could be a nod of agreement—or simply one which acknowledged that the duke had spoken.

Elizabeth's temper and irrationality on the topic of Haven. On the one hand, Havenite agents murdered her father, on the other that was three regimes ago.

[Ahriman238]

Web chuckled. The one thing that made the press at the center manageable for the Committee was that the worst of the press wasn't surrounding them, in any event. The heaviest clustering of the crowd took place around a smaller table, located just a few meters away. Where sat a very young woman—not much more than a girl, really—listening carefully to something being said to her by five ex-slaves seated at the other chairs around the same table. As Web watched, Berry said something. He couldn't hear the words. But from the immediate looks of satisfaction which came over the faces of the five ex-slaves—and that of most of the ones hovering in the immediate vicinity—he was sure she'd made some small pronouncement regarding the logical handling of some immediate and probably petty problem. Not an order, but simply a calm, reasoned, practical suggestion.

Which, of course—coming from her—had all the force of a pronouncement by Solomon. All the better if it came from an open, young, warm girl's face instead of the face of a stern patriarch. Authority, still, but with all the lurking menace of authority leached away.

Web gets a brilliant, awful idea.

So he maintained the embrace, and let the tears flow freely. Knowing that, in the years to come, this moment—observed by all in the compartment—would enter the legends of the new star nation.

Soon enough, to be sure, scholars of the future would debunk the whole business and rambunctious youth would turn the debunking into criticism and even, here and there, outright scorn and rebellion.

So? By then, the generations would have done their work. A nation, once established and secure, can afford to laugh at itself—even jeer and ridicule. Must do so, in fact, from time to time, to retain its sanity. But it can only do so from the vantage point of maturity. Coming into birth, a new nation needed certainties as much as any infant. A mythology of its own creation, never mind that the bits and pieces were taken from anywhere.

Scrap metal, molded and beaten into plowshares and swords—and custom.

Web is very self-aware like that.

"I am not prepared to discuss—or even speculate—on what might be the best form of government for us to adopt," he said firmly, in response to a question raised by Harrell. "Nor will I be, until Jeremy X arrives. Which, as I told you, should be fairly soon. Jeremy, as it turns out, is currently residing on Smoking Frog—and word has already been sent there of the new developments, via one of Captain Rozsak's courier ships. So I expect Jeremy to arrive in Erewhon within ten days. Two weeks, at the outside."

Jeremy will be catching a ride with Anton, someone's going to be in a lot of trouble....

Seriously though, Web accepts that whatever government they set up is going to need the support of the Ballroom.

A courier has also been sent to Manticore, bearing both the Ambassador's report and Oversteegen's more accurate one. Ginny has gone home with Victor's report.

That left Honor herself, and, Nimitz, Samantha's mate. Neither of whom was glaring at the poor fellow, granted, but whom he also did not know personally. All he knew about Honor was the fearsome and (in her opinion) grossly over-inflated reputation the Star Kingdom's newsies had given her along with the nickname of "the Salamander." And all he knew about Nimitz was that he looked less enraged than Ariel . . . for whatever that was worth. Unless he were an expert on 'cat body language, he would never have guessed that what Nimitz actually felt was more amusement than anything else. But, then, Nimitz always had had an odd sense of humor.

The courier gets home, placing these events before Honor left for Silesia.

"While we're looking at the bright side—such as it is, and what there is of it—I suppose I should point out that, from what little I can tell at this distance, they've also managed to salvage something from what's obviously a disastrous situation. And by 'disastrous,' I'm not referring to the episode on the slave ship. I'm talking about the very real damage our relationship with Erewhon has obviously suffered."

That's true, at least since the Erewhon government is on the staged 'hostage crisis' and Oversteegen seems to have passed as much along. Ambassador Fraser, not being trustworthy enough to be in the loop, probably spent a lot of time in her report on the hostage crisis and how it isn't her fault.

"That's hard to say, Ham. The imponderable factor is that touchy Erewhonese sense of honor. That was something Allen was always very careful to treat with kid gloves," he said, referring to Allen Summervale, the assassinated Duke of Cromarty who'd been Manticore's prime minister for so long. Then he went on gloomily. "Whereas if High Ridge and his people were deliberately trying to provoke it, they couldn't have done a better job—or a worse one—than what they have done."

He shook his head. "That statement from Countess Fraser! Was the woman insane?"

Now that the Queen's anger had a different target—and a far more legitimate one—it came back in focus. Fortunately, an actual focus rather than a shriek of quasi-parental fury.

"No, 'insane' is being too charitable. She's a coward, Willie, like they all are. Passing the buck and shifting the blame comes as naturally to that High Ridge crowd as gorging does to a hog."

Erewhonese honor, which I hadn't really thought of precisely that way, oddly enough, beyond that they keep their word and expect the same from their allies.

"Me neither. The truth is that if my so-called 'Government' was worth a damn, I'd urge them to send a task force to ride shotgun for them."

Honor sighed. That would be the best response Manticore could make, at this point. And the chance that Baron High Ridge would order it done . . .

Started at "Hell freezes over" and went downhill from there.

Pretty much.

"Do the best possible, then. Elizabeth, I strongly urge you to send a private message—two messages—no, three—to the people you have on the spot. Urging them—since you can't give any orders, unfortunately, except to your niece—to throw their weight behind it as best they can. If the worst happens, I think we can at least salvage the dynasty's reputation from this mess. That may not shield us from the immediate damage, but it could help us—quite a bit, in fact—at some point in the future."

To the girls, Anton, and Oversteegen, naturally.

"Teach your grandmother—well, ours, I suppose—how to suck eggs. In the first place, Elizabeth could give him a direct order if she chose to. Technically speaking, the Crown's direct line authority in the military has never been revoked, whatever the unwritten part of the Constitution says, you know."

Alexander groaned, and White Haven chuckled.

"Don't worry, Willie! I'm not proposing that we add a fresh constitutional crisis to the mix, as well. On the other hand, there's no need to, because 'suggestions' from the Queen should push things along quite nicely in this instance."

Manticoran Crown retains direct control over the military as a matter of law, if not a matter of tradition.

"There is one thing, Admiral Harrington," he said, with unusual formality, "which I will ask you to remember in the years ahead. In case my daughter does not survive."

He stopped, and Honor faced him squarely. "Yes, Your Grace?" she asked with matching formality,

Michael's voice was hard and low. "My sister, as much as I love and respect her, is not entirely rational on the subject of the Republic of Haven." He held up a hand. "Don't say anything, Honor. I don't expect you to agree with me—certainly not to say so aloud. But I'll tell you that it's true. And the day may come when the damage that irrationality will do to our people needs to be contained, as best as possible."

Honor didn't know what to say. How to say it to the Queen's brother, rather. But she understood what Michael was saying. Had understood it for some time now.

She decided a nod was enough. It could be a nod of agreement—or simply one which acknowledged that the duke had spoken.

Elizabeth's temper and irrationality on the topic of Haven. On the one hand, Havenite agents murdered her father, on the other that was three regimes ago.

[Mr Bean]

Elizabeth's temper and irrationality on the topic of Haven. On the one hand, Havenite agents murdered her father, on the other that was three regimes ago.

Can't you toss on there and attempted to kill her and successfully killed her Prime minster and friends. And as something covered by Henkle she has a lot of family and friends in the military some of which I assume she's lost some over the course of the war.

[Ahriman238]

Elizabeth's temper and irrationality on the topic of Haven. On the one hand, Havenite agents murdered her father, on the other that was three regimes ago.

Can't you toss on there and attempted to kill her and successfully killed her Prime minster and friends. And as something covered by Henkle she has a lot of family and friends in the military some of which I assume she's lost some over the course of the war.

They're factors for sure, and the very real threat presented by Haven for all her adult life is another. But let's be honest, it was her father's murder that made her become Batqueen.

[Ahriman238]

"Where did they find this piece of crap?" Anton heard him mutter. "A toy store?"

-snip-

"As a matter of fact," he said, slandering the standard yard sled with cheery mendacity for his passenger's benefit, "I believe a lot of these jury-rigged sleds of the casino's were put together from stuff found in the space station's toy stores. The framework itself looks like plumbing supplies to me—non-metallic, of course—but the seats and handlebars are taken from children's tricycles. I'm quite sure of it."

He glanced down at the dinky little handlebar upon which the gloved fingers of his right hand rested lightly. It really did look like something from a kid's bike which had been glued, solely as an afterthought, to the flimsy-looking (but incredibly light and strong) composite tubing which made up the main shell of the sled. "In fact," he added, "this looks a lot like the kid's model—the VacuGlide, I think they called it—I bought for Helen, oh, maybe fourteen years ago."

He heard what sounded like a choking noise coming from Jeremy. Anton's grin widened and he proceeded on with great cheer. "Oh, yes. No reason to use anything heftier, of course. If we were in a gravity field or under any kind of real acceleration, it'd be different. But in the here and now, the principal concern is to have sleds which can transport people back and forth without being detected. In order to keep this masquerade going, of course. It'd be hard to convince the galaxy my daughter—sorry, 'the Princess'—was still in dire captivity if it became known that the Felicia had as much traffic coming and going as a small spaceport."

With very great cheer: "Oh, yes, it all makes perfect sense. Nice to see somebody's thinking clearly for a change. Of course, I admit it makes for flimsy transportation." He glanced back at the rear of the sled. "Propulsion, ha! That gadget back there is just an aerosol can with delusions of grandeur. Don't want anything big or powerful enough to push our radar signature too high, now do we?"

Sleds for discreet transit to and from Felicia, which has been renamed Liberation. Jeremy's first EVA and Anton's twigging him over his nervousness.

"I won't argue the point, given the role your daughter is playing in this mad affair. But I'll be interested to see if you retain your good humor when the holovids go berserk. Which they will, you know, once the news gets out. Ah, yes. Captain Zilwicki, Rogue of the Spaceways. I can see it now, splattered all over every display screen within five hundred light-years. A month from now—two, at the outside—your face will be the best known in the inhabited galaxy." Jeremy was almost cooing, now: "Do try to smile into the recorders, Captain."

The problem with teasing Jeremy is he's much better at it than you are.

Berry was seated on a chair not far from one of the walls. She was surrounded by people, some of them sitting on chairs, others standing, and was engaged in some sort of convivial conversation with all of them. Anton couldn't hear the words, but he didn't need to. He'd known Berry for years, and had met few if any people in his life who could converse so easily and comfortably. Part banter, part friendliness, part advice, part comfort—and, most of all, the girl's superb capacity for listening. Talking with Berry was a genuine pleasure.

As for the rest . . .

Yes, he could see it now. As an "audience," it bore no resemblance to any royal audience you'd have found anywhere else in the galaxy. Leaving aside the fact that Berry's chair was neither elevated nor any larger or fancier than any other, she was comporting herself far too casually and unpretentiously. But he had no difficulty—none at all—understanding how completely the ex-slaves would have taken her into their hearts, in the two weeks since she'd arrived on the Felicia and rescued them.

Berry's personable nature and natural charisma.

Anton didn't have Web Du Havel's encyclopedic knowledge of history, but he knew more than enough to recognize the pattern. This wouldn't be the first time that a scorned and despised people, finding a glamorous champion, adopted him—or her—for their own. If Berry wasn't actually a princess, she was close enough. Close enough, after all, to consort with princesses and pass for one—not to mention being the adopted child of Anton Zilwicki and Catherine Montaigne. Cathy had given up the Tor title, true, but that would be irrelevant to the ex-slaves. For them, she was and would always remain the Countess—the wealthy, powerful aristocrat who had made their cause her own. Who'd committed herself to the liberation of the most despised, abused, forgotten victims of the galaxy not because she'd had to, but because she'd chosen to. And who'd given those same victims, and the "terrorists" who fought for them, her unstinting support for so long and so fiercely, even at the cost of exile and the voluntary renunciation of her title when it got in the way of her work. Her adopted daughter would have basked in that stature alone, among these people, even if she hadn't played a central role in their rescue. Combine the two . . .

Then, he caught sight of Web Du Havel, sitting a bit aside from the conversation. Web was not participating, simply watching. And he had a very smug smile on his face.

Berry adoption by the slaves, Anton figures out what Web is up to.

"Whatever you and I decide here, Professor Du Havel, it'll all have to be ratified by a popular vote after the liberation. That goes without saying. But I don't foresee any problems so long as you and I can reach agreement. So I'll begin by laying down my first two conditions.

"One. You will be the first head of state of our new star nation. You're the only one who could give us the necessary interstellar legitimacy. I'm the only other one with sufficient authority among our people, and I'm simply too notorious. For the moment, let's call it the presidency.

"Two. There will be no restrictions whatsoever on the movement or actions of the Audubon Ballroom. I'm willing to discuss tactics with you—and I'll abide by any agreement—but there will be no presumed limits. Not one."

Web nodded his head. "I've no problem with the second provision, Jeremy, provided you accept one of my own. You will accept a position in my Cabinet. Specifically, as Secretary of War. And that's exactly what I insist the position be titled. No stupid nonsense about a 'Secretary of Defense.' We're at war with Manpower and Mesa, we'll make no pretense otherwise—and I can think of no better way to make that clear than for you to hold the position."

-snip-

Du Havel leaned back in his chair, smiled widely, and gestured to the empty chair next to him. "By all means, Mr. Secretary of War. Your Pres—ah, head of government, will give you his full support. You have my promise on that. I'll be more precise. There will be nothing 'covert' about this war. I propose to make the first act of the new government of the new star nation a formal and official declaration of war against the planet of Mesa. To hell with restricting it to an informal struggle against Manpower Unlimited. The entire planet of Mesa is our mortal enemy—and let's name them so before the entire human race."

Jeremy's conditions, easily met. Of course, as Secretary of War his tactics will need to change, sovereign nations can't engage in the sort of terrorism Jeremy is used to, and anyways, waging war on an interstellar scale against Mesa, Jeremy simply won't have time for individual, flamboyant executions.

"Splendid! Professor Du Havel, I believe this is the beginning of a long friendship."

Now that he was returning to his usual impish self, Jeremy's thought processes were also returning to their normal quicksilver pattern. "But what's this hemming and hawing about the 'presidency' business? Surely you're not going to go all modest on me?"

Du Havel cleared his throat, and gave Anton a nervous glance. "As it happens, I'd much prefer the title of 'Prime Minister.' And I'd prefer to think of myself as the 'head of government' rather than the 'head of state.' My reasoning is as follows—"

Web wants an actual Crown of Slaves, a monarchy with himself as the first PM, and Berry as their queen.

Jeremy winced. " 'Mister X' is ludicrous. The name is Jeremy, if you please."

It's the plain truth.

"I'll predict the following, Jeremy. Initially, our new government will be a marvelous 'government of national unity.' That will last not more than a few years. Soon enough—it always happens—our new nation will become politically factionalized. And that will be the most dangerous moment. Period, rather. Those years after the factions form, but before we've had time to develop our own customs for keeping factionalism harnessed and under control. Berry Zilwicki—Queen Berry, of the House of Zilwicki—will buy us that time. She'll be our anchor—or stabilizer—when we need it most."

Web ran fingers through his hair, and glanced back and forth between Berry and Jeremy.

"Let me put it this way, Jeremy. The day will come—I'm certain of it—when our current accord collapses. You and I will then be in political opposition, and perhaps quite sharp opposition. At some point in the course of that, the day will come—I'm sure of it, again—when you'll begin considering the use of armed violence to resolve the dispute. Or, if you don't, some of your supporters will urge it upon you. The same dynamic will be at work within my camp, of course. But for reasons which are blindingly obvious to both of us, it will always be your camp which controls the balance of sheer force." With a wry smile: "I'll have most of the old farts and the professors, and you'll have the experienced fighters and the young firebrands."

Jeremy chuckled and nodded his head. "Go on."

"Easy enough, really, to ponder my overthrow—or suppression, if you happen to be holding the reins of government at the time instead of me. By then, I'll be a tiresome old fart to you myself. Someone who'd look damn good with a pulser dart in the head." Quite dramatically, Web pointed a finger at Berry. "But how easy will it be for you to ponder killing her?"

Web is already looking ahead to the inevitable factionalization of the slaves around whatever issues come up, and hopes Berry will serve as a control to at least keep it from becoming a bloodbath. Somehow it always comes down to triumvirates, official or otherwise, and so Web, Jeremy and Berry between them shall control the infant Kingdom of Torch.

True enough, the head of the Audubon Ballroom was perhaps the galaxy's most cold-blooded killer. But he'd been bred and raised by Manpower to be something of a court jester—and, in this if nothing else, Manpower's plans had not gone awry.

Jeremy's eyes widened, his mouth made a perfect "O" of shock and surprise. Then, springing out of his seat, he flung himself on one knee before Berry. One hand outstretched to the girl, as if pleading for mercy, the other waving about dramatically.

"Your Majesty! Pay no attention to these foul calumnies! My accuser is a professor, an academic, a pedant and a scholar—which is to say, a scoundrel and a rogue! 'Tis all lies and traducement! I swear it on my sacred honor!"

Berry burst out laughing. So, a moment later, did everyone else.

Jeremy's pretty good himself at defusing tense situations.

"Oh, yes—but! I'll have no half measures here! I won't stand for it! If there's to be a crown of slaves, then a slave's crown I insist it be! Which is to say—shiftless, goes without saying, but also cunning. I demand a queen who can pilfer the pantry with the best of 'em!"

For a moment, he stooped and gave Berry a narrow-eyed examination which was half-glower, half-assessment. Then he rose, seeming satisfied with what he saw.

"She starts well, mind. Oh, very well indeed. A scamp from the Terran warrens, scurrying like a mouse through the underground. A good sign, that—and I shall have to insist that a rodent be included in the House crest."

"Done!" cried Berry, clapping her hands. "But it's got to be a cute little mouse. No nasty big rats. I hate rats—and I speak from experience."

And so it is, a mouse for the royal seal.

"I'm afraid I shall have to insist that the Queen retain some whimsical powers, Professor. Your equations be damned! I'll have no prissy constitutional monarchy for slaves! Damn me before I'll agree! I want a crown with some teeth!"

Before Du Havel could argue the point, Jeremy waved his hand. The gesture was histrionic, of course. "No, no, nothing preposterous. Ruling queens are usually a dull lot, after all. Tsarinas, even worse. Far better to leave government in the hands of politicians, who can at least entertain the populace with their knaveries. But I shall insist that the Queen has the right to have one person a year executed at her whimsy, just to keep the politicians unsettled. One every T-year, mind you, no slouching—I understand Congo's years are almost three T-years in duration."

Berry grimaced. Jeremy eyed her, still stroking his non-existent bead, and shrugged regretfully.

"Well, I suppose not. Alas, a tender-hearted queen. Pity. Catherine the Great was so much more colorful. Very well, then—a compromise! The queen gets to banish one person a year from the kingdom! No debates, no argument, no appeal. Out you go, lout! You've irked Her Majesty! Or—worse!—you've bored her."

Berry chuckled. So did Web. "Be careful, Jeremy," he cautioned. "She might banish you, you know."

"I'll take my chances," replied Jeremy smugly. "A sprightly young lass? Far more likely she'd banish a tiresome old fart of a professor who kept telling her 'don't do this, don't do that.' Whereas I am a lively, droll sort of fellow."

Don't know if they actually give Berry this power or not, having not yet read the next book.

"I'll miss you," he said, almost choking on the words. "More than I can tell you. Although . . ."

Anton was still catching up with things, and a new thought suddenly came to him. "Maybe not as much as we think. It occurs to me that an independent star nation of ex-slaves would make the ideal headquarters—central location, at the very least—for the Anti-Slavery League. Of which—" He made a modest cough. "—I think it's fair to say I'm the organizer of the muscle. So I might be seeing you quite often, now that I think about it."

That thought obviously cheered Berry up as much as it did him. Anton chewed on it a bit longer.

"Do it, girl, if you've a mind. You're an adult now, so far as I'm concerned, so the decision is entirely yours. But, leaving aside everything else . . ."

The conclusion, so hard to make, flowed through him easily and naturally once made. "You'd be awfully good at it, Berry, you really would. And I think you'd enjoy your life. However long it lasted."

Anton's seal of reluctant approval.

"I'll have no bodyguards. Not even one, much less a whole damn Praetorian Guard."

Both Jeremy and Du Havel winced. So did Anton. Ruth, on the other hand, nodded.

"None of you are thinking right," Berry said firmly. "The only point to this—only point at all, so far as I can see—is to give a new people a chance. My new people. And, that being so, let them also understand that their new Queen will place her safety in their hands alone. I haven't had a bodyguard since I came aboard this ship. Why should I start now? I'll share their life—perils and triumphs both—and move among them freely with no shield between me and them." She shrugged. "If that leads to my death at someone's hand, so be it. It's one life, measured against building a nation's hope and self-confidence. No contest, the way I look at things."

Before Jeremy or Web—or Anton—could say anything, Berry shook her head. "That's how it is. I'll insist on that. If you don't agree, fine. But find yourself another monarch, because it won't be me."

The words were spoken in Berry's normal tone of voice. Easily, almost gently—but with all the solidity and sureness of a continent moving across an ocean floor.

Oh, my, thought Anton. If she lives long enough . . . these fine gentlemen are in for some surprises, I think.

Not Web, perhaps. "Illusion becomes truth," Anton heard him murmur. "So does true custom arise." Then, more loudly: "Very well, Your Majesty. I won't argue the point."

No bodyguards for Berry, at her insistence.

"That leaves, however, the problem of the armed forces. Not to put too fine a point on it, Berry—uh, Your Majesty—"

"Keep it 'Berry,' if you would. I foresee that I'll also be establishing probably the most informal customs of any monarchy in history. Which suits me just fine. I wouldn't know one end of proper royal protocol from the other, anyway."

No bowing and scraping either.

The Ballroom's leader continued that ridiculous "beard" stroking. "Well . . . there's the matter of an armed force responsible to the crown, of course. I think that'd be a good idea. Something in the way of a Praetorian Guard to serve as a counterbalance to us bloodthirsty Ballroom types. We'll have to form the core of the new army, of course."

-snip-

"Berry, then. As I was saying, that still leaves the problem of the armed forces. Whether he intended it that way or not, Jeremy's proposal of a Praetorian Guard does have the advantage of giving us a certain balance of power in the new nation. Which is important in all things, but especially so with the armed forces." He cleared his throat. "Meaning no offense, but I have to speak bluntly here. I am not happy at the thought of the Ballroom having an effective monopoly over control of the military. Which, between Jeremy being Secretary of War and some other Ballroom member being head of the military—there's no one else with the experience—is what we'd wind up with. That's not a statement of suspicion toward the Ballroom, on my part. It's just a cold-blooded and objective assessment of a political problem."

-snip-

"I propose that we defer that issue for the moment," said Berry, almost brightly. "Let me think about it, for a bit. Since I'm apparently going to be the new Queen, I ought to do something useful for a living. I've gotten to know quite a few people over the past few weeks. Maybe I can think of someone."

The balance of military power issue, but Berry has a plan.

Jeremy and Du Havel gave her a look which bordered on suspicion.

"Please," she said, in that winsome voice with which, over the years, Berry had managed to cajole damn near anything she wanted out of Anton.

He watched the future head of government and his bloodthirsty secretary of war cave in just as fast. And tried—it was so hard—not to smirk.

Try to use MY girl as your tool, will you? Good luck, you chumps.

Pretty much.

[Simon_Jester]

Elizabeth's temper and irrationality on the topic of Haven. On the one hand, Havenite agents murdered her father, on the other that was three regimes ago.

"Hello. My name is Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

[absurd missile barrage ensues]

Web is already looking ahead to the inevitable factionalization of the slaves around whatever issues come up, and hopes Berry will serve as a control to at least keep it from becoming a bloodbath. Somehow it always comes down to triumvirates, official or otherwise, and so Web, Jeremy and Berry between them shall control the infant Kingdom of Torch.

A triumvirate may or may not be more stable than a duarchy or dictatorship, but it's more interesting from a literary standpoint.

Don't know if they actually give Berry this power or not, having not yet read the next book.

I'm... pretty sure they did.

[Batman]

They did, though I think Berry has yet to actually use it. She also insisted her official form of address be 'Her Mousiness'.

[Esquire]

Gotta respect a monarchy that insists on being called a mouse.

EDIT: A monarch who insists on being called a mouse, rather. My bad.

[Batman]

She doesn't insist, that's the beauty of it. She's perfectly fine with being called Queen Berry or just plain Berry or Ms Zilwicki. But if you insist on all the stupid trappings of diplomacy she couldn't possibly care less about, you'll have to address her as 'Your Mousiness.'

[Highlord Laan]

She doesn't insist, that's the beauty of it. She's perfectly fine with being called Queen Berry or just plain Berry or Ms Zilwicki. But if you insist on all the stupid trappings of diplomacy she couldn't possibly care less about, you'll have to address her as 'Your Mousiness.'

Cauldron of Ghosts mini spoiler: Spoiler

The top-end special forces unit that gets put together in Torch for doing things like storming Manpower enclaves and boarding slaver vessels while outnumberd end up being called "Royal Mousers" and use a grinning Cheshire cat as their unit patch.

[eyl]

"I'm afraid I shall have to insist that the Queen retain some whimsical powers, Professor. Your equations be damned! I'll have no prissy constitutional monarchy for slaves! Damn me before I'll agree! I want a crown with some teeth!"

Before Du Havel could argue the point, Jeremy waved his hand. The gesture was histrionic, of course. "No, no, nothing preposterous. Ruling queens are usually a dull lot, after all. Tsarinas, even worse. Far better to leave government in the hands of politicians, who can at least entertain the populace with their knaveries. But I shall insist that the Queen has the right to have one person a year executed at her whimsy, just to keep the politicians unsettled. One every T-year, mind you, no slouching—I understand Congo's years are almost three T-years in duration."

Berry grimaced. Jeremy eyed her, still stroking his non-existent bead, and shrugged regretfully.

"Well, I suppose not. Alas, a tender-hearted queen. Pity. Catherine the Great was so much more colorful. Very well, then—a compromise! The queen gets to banish one person a year from the kingdom! No debates, no argument, no appeal. Out you go, lout! You've irked Her Majesty! Or—worse!—you've bored her."

Berry chuckled. So did Web. "Be careful, Jeremy," he cautioned. "She might banish you, you know."

"I'll take my chances," replied Jeremy smugly. "A sprightly young lass? Far more likely she'd banish a tiresome old fart of a professor who kept telling her 'don't do this, don't do that.' Whereas I am a lively, droll sort of fellow."

Don't know if they actually give Berry this power or not, having not yet read the next book.

Apparently they do, according to Cauldron of Ghosts (although at least as far as I've gotten in the book at the moment, she hasn't actually used it)

[Ahriman238]

"Look, Lieutenant. It's obvious that the foreign policy of Berry's new nation is going to be simple, when it comes to war. Congo—whatever name they pick for it—will be scrupulously neutral toward everybody except Mesa. So, as commander of the armed forces, your task will not be that of leading large forces in a sprawling multi-sided war. Your task will be quite different. First, preparing and then leading a war against a planet of scumbags and adventurers—"

Thandi laughed. It was something of a caw. "Will I now? Don't you think Jeremy X will have something to say about that?"

Ruth shook her head, very firmly. Still pacing—scuttling, rather. "Of course he will. So what? He'll he perched to the side, as Secretary of War. Your immediate boss, sure—but not part of the military. Besides, Jeremy strikes me as a man who cares about results a lot more than he does the perks and petty privileges of being a big shot. Do you really think he'll meddle that much—especially after you start handing him some Mesan heads on a platter?"

They want Thandi as the ranking uniformed officer, to counterbalance Jeremy and Ballroom's undeniable influence on the military.

A memory came to her, of a Mesan outpost she'd passed through once as she was reporting to a new assignment. The planet was named Kuy, and wasn't much more than a large mining operation run by one of Mesa's major combines, using Manpower slaves as the primary work force. Thandi had been traveling via civilian transport, paid for by the Marine Corps. She'd spent two days there, after being dropped off, waiting for a connection to take her to her final destiny.

It had been a grim experience. Not a surprising one, of course, for someone born and raised on Ndebele.

Kuy's not far from here, now that I think about it.

For a few moments, images flashed through her mind. How she'd plan and lead an assault on the planet. To do it properly would require a battalion-sized force, but she was quite sure she could manage that. A few warships—small ones would do—to clear away any pickets and capture any Mesan commercial vessels in orbit.

-snip-

She could do it. She knew it. Easily, in fact. And that was a major mining operation, no dog hole. It'd hurt Mesa. And—still better—free at least two thousand slaves in the process.

Kuy, apparently a major mine worked by roughly two thousand slaves. I guess technology really does prove itself there.

"So what? Politics can be greased by personal influence, but it still runs according to its own logic. You're not thinking. An independent planet of ex-slaves fighting a war with Mesa can call in a lot of favors, Thandi. And, where favors won't do it, can play one end off against the middle. Manticore will send you advisers just to keep Haven—or the Andermani, or the Solarians—from doing it. Besides . . ."

-snip-

"That's assuming the truce between Manticore and Haven lasts. If war breaks out again, forget it."

"So? In that case, the pressure on either star nation to out-influence the other on Congo just increases. Either way, Thandi, there are so many angles you've got to be able to play one of them."

Both Haven and Manticore, and to a lesser extent Erewhon and the Maya sector Sollies, want a piece of Manpower, they'll be all to happy to provide advisors, volunteers, soldiers on shooting leave...

All the more so, if it helps them influence a baby Star Nation and burgeoning economic power. And no one wants their rivals to have a monopoly in that influence.

"It's hard to figure yet, but . . . I don't think you understand—not sure any of us do—just what an impact this is going to have on the Manticoran public. Especially the Liberals. And there are a lot of Liberals in the Star Kingdom, Thandi. Forget New Kiev and that crowd, I'm talking about the rank and filers, the average voter. The ones who're starting to gravitate toward—"

She pointed a dramatic finger at Berry. "Her mother. Goddamit, Thandi, think about it! New Kiev's been dragging the Liberals through mud for years. Now—suddenly—something bright and sharp and clean comes along. A cause. The kind of cause any Liberal—and plenty of other people, too—can get excited about." She was almost cackling, now. "I wouldn't be surprised to see volunteers start showing up on Congo. That's happened before in history, you know, plenty of times. And some of them will have military experience. Not to mention that High Ridge's policies have left plenty of officers on the beach—good ones, too. Some of them will come too, just from being bored if nothing else."

Volunteers and the likely effects of Torch's creation on Manticoran politics.

"But all that's something of a side issue, because the main reason Berry needs you as the head of her armed forces has nothing do with foreign affairs. She needs somebody she can trust. And whatever else you might or might not be capable of, the one thing Berry won't have to worry about is that you'll carry out a coup d'état."

To which Thandi replies that she's plenty ambitious and Machiavellian and.... yeah she breaks.

A very bad taste. Not the taste left by any specific act or deed in her past, but simply the sour, acrid taste of ambition itself. It came to Thandi Palane, with something of a jolt, that she really didn't like ambition. She'd latched onto it simply as a tool to escape her past—and, since then, because she had no idea what else to do with her life.

She was still staring into Berry's eyes. The tears in those eyes were gone, now. All that was left was that clear gaze which Thandi realized—with the same jolt—she would miss desperately once it was gone.

-snip-

Victor Cachat, whatever else might change about him, would always remain a partisan and a fighter for his own people. A Havenite, through and through. If Thandi gave her allegiance to the new star nation being born . . . a scrupulously neutral nation, except for its war with Mesa . . .

Whatever else, Victor and I would never find ourselves on opposite sides. And—I could keep seeing him!

Thandi's onboard. Now to give her two week's notice.

"I'd insist on incorporating my Amazons into the new army," she stated, as soon as the preliminaries were over. Firmly, almost harshly. "As well as any other former Scrags—or anybody else—who emigrates and wants to enlist. And not in their own separate unit, either. Take it or leave it. That condition is nonnegotiable. Assuming I decide to agree."

Jeremy shrugged. "No argument."

"From me, either," said Du Havel. "In fact, I support the idea. It'll cause us plenty of rough moments, of course, integration always does. But . . ." He eyed the very large and imposing woman sitting across from him, and smiled. "On the other hand, I dare say you'll manage to handle the disciplinary problems involved."

Integrated forces, including the Amazons.

"You'll need someone else in charge of naval forces. I'm not trained for that. Wouldn't even know where to start."

"I'll check with Anton Zilwicki," said Jeremy. "I know he's been training at least three Ballroom people. One of them could probably do it—on the scale we're talking about, anyway." He paused for a moment, frowning, then shrugged. "I could be wrong, too. But if he doesn't have one of our people he thinks is ready now, he and Cathy certainly have the contacts to find us someone who's up for the job. And who we can trust. It's not as if our new 'navy' is going to amount to much, anyway, so we should certainly have the time to grow our own officer corps from within, I'd think. Privateers, in all but name—and that's not going to change all that fast. Warships—real ones—are fiendishly expensive, and we're going to start off the way freed slaves always do. Flat broke."

It'll be a while until the Navy is much bigger than the ASL's. But that just gives them time to grow their officers into their jobs.

"It might change faster than you think," demurred Du Havel. "I've been studying the economic figures available for Congo, as many as I've been able to track down. Which isn't much—and that's significant in itself, because it means it's been a gold mine for Mesa and they're keeping it hidden. That planet is potentially rich, Jeremy. The market for pharmaceutical products isn't going to go away. And I don't believe for one minute that Mesa's brutal methods for extracting the wealth are necessary. They just use up people because it's easy for them, and it's their way of doing business. Give us a few years—fewer than you think—and we can start producing more wealth using civilized methods than Mesa ever did with whips and chains. We'll be able to afford warships, be sure of it. Enough to match Mesa, anyway."

So Manpower's methods on Congo are quite unnecessary, and possibly counterproductive. Somehow, pointless evil has always bothered me far more than evil done for the bottom line.

And while they've been making money hand-over-fist with pharmaceuticals, that doesn't even factor in the magic, money-raining space anomaly that is a wormhole junction.

"I shall be blunt, Lieutenant Palane. The one and only concern of mine is that you not meddle in the internal politics of the new nation we'll be creating. Professor Du Havel and I—God knows how many others—will be mucking up those waters quite sufficiently, thank you. The one thing we cannot afford, in the middle of it, is an armed force whose commander is doing the same."

Thandi set her teeth, mulishly. "I'm not taking my distance from Berry. Anything else, fine. Politics doesn't much interest me, anyway. But don't ever think for a moment that you'll be able to separate me from her."

Jeremy grinned, the flat-eyed killer's look vanishing like the dew. "I should hope not!" he exclaimed. "Or else this whole silly business of setting up a queen is a waste of everybody's time."

"He's right, Thandi," agreed Du Havel. "If you were familiar with the math, I could even prove it to you. Those equations are about as well-established and accepted as any in political science. There's nothing that gives stability to a nation—especially, keeps its military in line—than a solidly established pole of loyalty which stands above and apart from the fray of politics. It can be a royal house, or a revered constitution—anything, really, as long as it's solid in custom and tradition. In law, too, of course. But law is just custom and tradition congealed into code, and ultimately derives its strength from them."

Thandi's proximity to Berry, but she needs to stay out of politics. Why Web really, really wants a monarchy.

"It all bodes quite well, Lieutenant. Difficult enough for anyone—even ruthless killers like Jeremy or scheming maneuverers like myself—to seriously contemplate the overthrow and murder of a girl like Berry Zilwicki. Add to the mix a commander of the armed forces who is her big sister and goes by the nickname of 'great kaja' . . ."

Du Havel's smile was now the oddest one Thandi had ever seen. That of a cherub and a Machiavelli combined. "I dare say that, whatever else in the years to come, we won't have to worry about a coup d'etat."

"Don't even think about it," Thandi grated.

"You see?" demanded Jeremy. He shuddered, histrionically. "Look! I'm already purging the evil thought!"

Good.

"I'm wondering how much of your decision was determined by the last assignment I gave you. More precisely—I'm sure you didn't shed any tears over killing Masadans and Scrags—by what lay behind it." His voice was flat, harsh. "And I'm not going to pretend that we don't all know what I'm talking about. Yes, I was responsible for the murder of Hieronymus Stein. As well as a number of innocent people who were taken out at the same time, including, I discovered later, two kids. That was not part of the plan, by the way. That was the Masadans' doing. But—such things happen, especially when you employ maniacs like them, which doesn't relieve me of the responsibility for it."

Ze Murderer vas... Rozsak. On orders from Lt. Governor Casseti, hired out to Manpower's team of Masadans and Scrags.

"I don't. I understand what you're doing—even why you're doing it. And if you want to know the truth, I think you'll probably make a hell of a good ruler as well as conqueror. Way better than the swine we've got running the show in the Solarian League nowadays, that's for sure."

Seeing the stiffness those last words brought to everyone in the room—it was a subtle thing, but Thandi didn't miss it—she sniffed. "I am not stupid. Not even uneducated, any longer. I figured out some time ago what you—this inner circle, here—were up to. I knew it even before I figured out the truth about the Stein business. You're figuring the Solarian League is about to come apart at the seams—and you intend to grab as big a chunk of it as you can. Who knows? Maybe all of it."

The plan in Maya Sector, with Rozsak planning to be top of the heap when the dust settles.

"There's an option you'll want to think about, Thandi. We could—just for a time, and just for the record—keep you on the Marine Corps rolls. With an immediate promotion to whatever rank it'd take to make it plausible that you were leading a rather large unit of Marines in the assault."

The lieutenant colonel grinned, rather evilly. "I'd be your adviser. Staying in the shadows while you get the limelight. It'd give you a chance to lead a large unit in action, for the first time, under ideal circumstances. It's pretty much what we were planning to do, anyway. The only difference is that your public resignation comes afterward."

Rozsak has some people willing to take leave on sunny Congo.


Almost right after she leaves there comes a brief discussion on the merits of ensuring her silence beyond all doubt. This gets slapped down as it deserves.

"Exactly. But leave that aside. The woman's not superhuman, after all. With our resources, I'm sure we could figure out a way to do it. Which . . . might even work. And then what?"

Watanapongse shook his head. "Oh, yeah. A really bright idea. In order to protect ourselves—from a very remote threat, since Thandi Palane is almost certain to keep her mouth shut—we kill a woman who is simultaneously—"

He began counting off on his fingers. "The girlfriend of the Republic of Haven's best secret agent; a man who is—I've seen him in action—one of the deadliest men you'll ever meet.

"The protector and close friend of Berry Zilwicki, whose father Anton would probably be Manticore's best spy if the idiots hadn't fired him—and, whether in or out of uniform, has demonstrated several times just how dangerous it is to cross him.

"And—oh, perfect!—we'd also be assassinating a woman one of whose close associates now is a certain individual by the name of Jeremy X. You have heard of him? If you want more character references, just check with Manpower. Ask for their body count department."

He slumped back in his chair, the serene smile returning. "Just forget it, Captain. This is one time when doing the right thing and the smart thing happen to coincide. There is absolutely nothing I can think of you doing in this situation which would be stupider than killing Thandi Palane. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life—probably a short one—looking over your shoulder."

Quite aside from the morality of killing someone whose one of yours and you're fairly sure won't talk, it's unwise to try and assassinate such a dangerous person with so very many dangerous friends.

"Besides, it's probably a moot point from another angle, anyway. I'm quite sure that, by now, some other people have figured out the truth about the Stein killing."

"Who?" demanded Habib. "Our security's been tight as a drum, I'm sure of it."

"Victor Cachat, for one. About him, I'm positive." Catching Habib's quick angry glance at the compartment door, Watanapongse shook his head. "No, no, XO—he didn't get it from Thandi's pillow talk. He's smart, that's all. Better, being honest, at this kind of black ops than we'll ever be. And he was right in the middle of it, remember. He'll have figured it all out by now, don't think he hasn't."

"Who else?" grunted Huang.

"Hard to say. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that too-damn-smart Manticoran princess does—the real one, I mean, Ruth Winton. Anton Zilwicki certainly will. So will some of the Erewhonese. It's not as if it's all that hard to figure out. Not for someone who's good at this kind of work, and takes a look at the determination with which Thandi saw to it that no witnesses survived."

Others who have likely figured it out. We already know Victor did.

—"I have good news from Smoking Frog. I had my meeting with the governor, and he was most deeply upset at what I had to tell him. Confess to him, rather. Oh, yes. Shocked and distressed, he was. But he also agreed that this Congo situation provides us with a perfect way to sweep the dirt under a shiny public rug."

Everybody in the compartment was now looking cheerful. "Indeed so," said Jiri. "There are always conspiracy theories floating around, whenever somebody gets assassinated. Who but a handful of malcontents is going to believe them—when they see the glorious role played by Captain Rozsak's flotilla in the liberation of Congo? Especially when the people in the know—all of them—have every reason to keep their mouth shut. Given that, to a considerable degree, the liberation's success depends on maintaining the good will of Maya Sector and its governor."

Rozsak cleared his throat. It was a harsh sound. "And given, as well—the governor made a point of this—that Cassetti will have to take the fall. Quietly, of course. But that should be enough to satisfy everyone who knows the truth and wants a sacrificial lamb. Goat, rather. Cassetti was too nakedly in love with power to have been a popular man. He'll do very nicely, and it clears him out of the way."

He chuckled. "Odd, isn't it? The way things sometimes work out. Thandi Palane's the one I would have given that assignment to. And I don't think it would have bothered her at all."

Huang made a little noise, as if he'd started to say something and then choked it off. Rozsak glanced at him. Then, seeing the meaning in his eyes, looked away.

Oh, that's good, Kao. "Black ops" with a vengeance. And the truth is, I really don't think Palane would mind doing us that last little service.

Governor Barregos has ordered the elimination of Casseti, who ordered Stein killed. Casseti is on Erewhon right now, but would probably be pleased as punch to take part in the liberation of Congo, earn some goodwill and good PR.

[eyl]

So Manpower's methods on Congo are quite unnecessary, and possibly counterproductive. Somehow, pointless evil has always bothered me far more than evil done for the bottom line.

This actually becomes a plot point in the next book

[Simon_Jester]

So Manpower's methods on Congo are quite unnecessary, and possibly counterproductive. Somehow, pointless evil has always bothered me far more than evil done for the bottom line.

Actually, this gets analyzed in the later two books in this sequence. Anton Zilwicki (among others) notice that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Mesa Pharmaceuticals (or Manpower) to run Congo the way they did.

It turns out there IS an underlying reason, but it cannot be explained purely by looking at the actions of the relevant Mesan corporations as corporations, which is one of the first clues Our Heroes get that something like the Mesan Alignment exists. Because "evil people acting like a Captain Planet villain and willfully using inefficient methods to extract a natural resource just for the sheer evilness of it" isn't actually a realistic thing for a bottomline-conscious entity like a corporation to do. But it does start to make sense in certain other contexts.

[Ahriman238]

"He is still in command. Captain Michael Oversteegen. You may recall that he has something of a reputation. And if you're wondering if the reputation is overblown, I can personally assure you that it isn't. He spoke to me less than twenty hours ago over this same com, promising me that if the Princess comes to harm he's holding Manpower responsible. He was not pleasant about it, to put it mildly. And he took pains to remind me that the Eridani Edict does not apply to strictly commercial operations on privately owned planets."

-snip-

He hadn't spoken to Oversteegen over the com, as it happened; he'd spoken to him in person. And it had been six days ago instead of less than twenty hours. So what? In person, the Manticoran officer had been an icy aristocrat. He'd made it crystal clear to Diem that he would see to it that Manpower's installations on Congo would be so much slag if anything went wrong. Diem hadn't doubted him in the least.

The 'hostage crisis' has moved to Congo, the Felicia flying there pursued by Gauntlet and a flotilla of newsies in private ships. Loophole in the Eridani Edict, if there isn't a government and the planet is purely private held, the EE does not apply and anyone can glass the place from orbit, which appears to be Oversteegen's backup plan.

Not that Diem really cared that much. Long before Gauntlet could start taking Congo apart, Diem himself would be a dead man. Of that he had no doubt at all. The man standing near him on the bridge of the Felicia was not the religious maniac Abraham Templeton, even though Erewhon's nanotech engineers had done a good job with the physical resemblance. He was something a lot worse.

Victor Cachat. A man whom Unser Diem had had nightmares about—real ones, no poetic license here—since he first met him.

Cachat spoke up, right then. "Decide, Lassiter," he said, glancing at his chrono. His voice was hoarse, presumably due to the injuries he'd suffered in the course of abducting the Manticoran princess.

"I will give you two minutes, exactly," he rasped. "Then I will shoot Diem. Then, at fifteen second intervals"—the Havenite agent masquerading as Abraham Templeton nodded toward the people shackled to a console behind him—"I will kill the rest of them. Ringstorff first, then Lithgow, then the whore. Fifteen seconds after that, I will destroy the Felicia. Three minutes from now, if you continue to quibble, eight thousand people will be dead—including Ruth Winton, of the royal house of Manticore."

They used the same nano-transformation to make Cachat a physical double of the deceased Templeton, him being the perfect choice to play a fanatic. The rasp will be explained momentarily.

That was something else Oversteegen had been emphatic about, in his terse discussions with the Manpower officials on Congo. Any move toward the media ships by any of the light attack craft which Manpower had in orbit around the planet would be met with instant force. Nobody doubted for a minute that Oversteegen would make good the threat—and a Manty heavy cruiser was perfectly capable of destroying twice the number of LACs Manpower had on the spot

LACs protecting Congo, which would drive off the media but Oversteegen has announced them, and the ship with the princess aboard, under his aegis.

"Verdant Vista" was the private property of Manpower Unlimited, duly registered as such under interstellar law on the planet Mesa. As an independent and sovereign star nation, Mesa was empowered to recognize the claims of its citizens or business entities and, under existing interstellar law, Manpower had the right to appeal to the Mesan Navy for protection of its private property rights. But other star nations were not required to respect those rights as they would have been required to if Verdant Vista had, itself, been a sovereign star system.

Admittedly, it was something of a gray area, with competing interpretations of the precedents. What it boiled down to, however, was that a private corporation's claim to interstellar property rights was only as good as the naval strength which backed that claim. That was why Solarian trans-stellar corporations seldom had any problems (aside from the occasional raid by outright pirates). No star nation in its right mind wanted to provoke the SLN, so they tended to sit on their own potential troublemakers—hard—when there was a Solly corporation involved.

But while Mesa maintained a navy, it was nowhere near so grand as the SLN. Indeed, it was on the small side even by the standards of single-system star nations, although its individual units had excellent hardware. Despite its nationhood Mesa was, after all, essentially a conglomerate of business interests, and navies, by their nature, are expensive propositions which do not normally show a positive cash flow.

That was why some Mesa-based corporations, like Manpower, maintained private fleets. And another reason for Manpower, in particular, to do so was that the council which governed Mesa was hesitant to use military power too openly in Manpower's special interests. There was no point actively courting negative news coverage, after all.

Interstellar law regarding corporate claims on planets. Manpower has it's own private navy, as well as being supported by the Mesan one, there is a Mesan flotilla nearby, and an SOS has already been sent by Congo.

In this instance, however, thanks to Michael Oversteegen and Her Majesty's Starship Gauntlet, the cruiser force Manpower had assembled to back up its LACs in Congo had suffered a mischief. A rather terminal one, in fact. That was one of the odd little facts Ringstorff had been willing to confirm for them . . . along with the fact that Manpower had not replaced the destroyed ships. Which had become another factor in the planning of the unusual alliance of interests now moving in on Congo. If there were heavy ships in the vicinity at all, they were regular Mesan naval units, and they would be doing their dead level best to maintain a low profile, particularly in the face of such massive news coverage. That meant they would be somewhere else—close enough to reach Congo fairly rapidly, but not right on top of the system.

The four pirate cruisers Oversteegen waxed last year were the bulk of Manpower's naval strength in the region.

Diem heaved a little sigh. "What are you going to do if he goes past your deadline?" he asked nervously.

The answer, somehow, didn't surprise him. Cachat was still looking down at his chrono. "In one minute and twenty-five seconds, I'm going to kill you. Then, at fifteen-second intervals, Ringstorff and Lithgow." He glanced at the pale-faced young woman shackled to the console next to the Mesans. "I will not, of course, shoot Berry Zilwicki. Her father is likely to take umbrage." Cachat sounded vaguely miffed about it, the way a craftsman will when he is not permitted to do his finest work.

Victor can bluff with the best of them, but he also has zero problem killing Manpower's people.

"Pray to whatever gods you hold dear, Diem," Zilwicki murmured, just loudly enough to be heard. "If Lassiter's as careless and sloppy as his security, you're a dead man." He snorted again, as a new screen came up. "Bingo. We're in. And there's not even any internal encryption. God, I love carrier signals, especially when the people on the other end are idiots. Take it from here, would you, Ruth?"

And they've hacked the central comp at the space station governing Congo's defenses.

"All right, all right," Lassiter said hastily. "We agree. You can dock alongside the space station and we'll do the transfers there. Although I still think—"

"Forget it, Lassiter," rasped the religious fanatic. "There is no way I'll agree to a transfer using shuttles. That would give you too many opportunities for an 'unfortunate lapse.' You can still try to double-cross us once we're docked, of course. But I can guarantee you that I'll take out your very expensive space station as well as the Felicia, if you try it."

Lassiter had, in fact, planned to take out the Masadans during a shuttle transfer, if he could manage it without killing the princess. His security crew on the space station might not be quite up to the best professional military standards, but the technicians manning the space station's close-defense weapons were more than capable of swatting shuttles with ease.

Sheesh, some of these spies and slavers are downright untrustworthy.

Templeton didn't even bother to sneer. "Do I look like an idiot? I'll leave two of my men here, Lassiter, until the transfer is complete, the Princess is handed over to you, and we've got control of the ship we'll be leaving the system in. Then—I warn you—even after those two are transferred there'll still be both a remote-controlled detonator as well as a delayed-action detonator left on board the Felicia. You can probably block the remote-controlled one, once we're out of orbit, but I can guarantee you that you won't find the hidden one for at least several hours. Long enough for us to reach hyper-space, at any rate. I'll send you a message letting you know where it is, once I'm sure we're safe from ambush."

"How do I know you'll keep your word?"

Templeton bestowed on him a look which combined fury and contempt. "I swore on the name of the Lord, heathen. Do you doubt me?"

As it happened, Lassiter didn't. He found it hard to imagine himself, but on this subject his briefings had been clear. Crazed they might be, but the religious maniacs could be trusted to keep their word, if they took a holy vow.

Yeah, Victor was the perfect choice to play a Masadan fanatic. The arrangements with Congo, even if they are a ruse.

"Can't be helped, Victor. Nanotech will change your appearance or even adjust your vocal cords for the right timbre, but changing accents is harder. And—it's a bit shocking, really, for a secret agent—you've got a really thick Havenite accent and your attempts to mimic a Masadan one were pathetic. So, the rasp it is. Ah, the joys of combat injuries. Explains everything."

Victor would have scowled at her, but there was no point. Everything she'd said was true, after all. He'd tried for hours to get a Masadan accent down, and had failed just as miserably as he'd always failed at attempts to disguise his own. That had been one of the few subjects on which he'd been given a barely passing grade in StateSec's academy.

Victor can't really disguise his Nouveau Paris Dolist accent, bit of a failing in a super-spy like him. Hence the Christian Bale voice.

"We're still accessing, and the main security system looks like a stand-alone. But the com hierarchy ties it all together, and I've got access to the main system. And I've located the internal communications and surveillance systems. I'll be into them by the time she can get aboard the station, and I've already tapped the net between the station and Torch."

Cachat grimaced. The ex-slaves had settled on a new name for Congo, after the liberation. "Torch," the planet would be called thenceforth. The debate had come down to a final decision between "Beacon" and "Torch," and Jeremy had carried the day. A beacon of hope was all very well, he'd agreed, but their world was going to generate more than just light. It was going to ignite the conflagration which would finally reduce Manpower and all of its works to ashes and dust. From the perspective of an agent accustomed to operating in the shadows, Victor found the name a bit overly flamboyant, but the servant of the revolution inside him was firmly on Jeremy's side.

Extent of the hack, and how they came up with the name Torch.

"So notify Thandi that Operation Spartacus is ready to roll," he said almost curtly.

Spartacus, an operation in multiple parts.

It was ironic that the large bays Manpower had intended to permit the rapid murder of hundreds of slaves would also permit people wearing battle armor and Marine-issue armored skinsuits to launch a lightning mass assault on Manpower's space station. Anton Zilwicki called it "being hoist on their own petard," an archaic expression which Thandi understood once he explained, but still found a little silly.

More fun with contemporary sayings, but I'll give Thandi a by for not knowing this one. Just imagine what you could do with space-suited boarders in a ship designed to rapidly launch large numbers of people into space, assuming you could get close enough.

Bravo Company had been divided into its four platoons, and those platoons would be spearheading the assault on Congo's space station. In theory, they would do so as private volunteers acting as an integral part of company-sized units of the new "Torch Liberation Army."

It was a threadbare mask, perhaps, but not unheard of by any means. OFS frequently used the practice of "granting leave" to entire units which then "volunteered" to "assist" some out-planet regime in the suppression of dissent. Or, more rarely, even in the outright conquest of someone else. The regular SLN and Marines did not, perhaps, but the precedent was there.

Besides, it was supposed to be threadbare, she reminded herself. At the proper time, everyone in the civilized galaxy was supposed to see right through it . . . although, naturally, no one would officially admit that they had.

So "the Torch Liberation Army" it was. In theory. In practice—as Thandi had made crystal clear to the Ballroom gunfighters and Amazons who filled out the ranks of the battalion—her regular platoons would do all of the fighting. That was true for the assault on the space station, at least, whatever might wind up happening later when the assault on the planet itself occurred. The "friendly fire" casualties and indiscriminate damage which would be sure to occur with a mob of amateurs storming a space station were enough to give her nightmares. The Ballroom and Amazon troops could tag along behind—and get most of the glory—but she wanted them in the back and effectively out of the action.

Torch Liberation Army, largely provided by Rozsak. Shooting leave is sadly common in OFS.

That had been Captain Rozsak's proposal, which he'd advanced the day after Thandi's resignation at a meeting of all the central figures involved. Easily and smoothly, Rozsak had explained all the advantages to the ploy. Not the least of them being the mutual benefits to Torch and the Solarian League's Maya Sector of establishing a publicly close relationship from the outset. A benefit to Torch, because Maya Sector would provide the new nation with the safe and powerful neutral base which gave any liberation movement an invaluable reservoir.

From the other side, covering themselves with a thinly veiled halo of moral glory from their participation in the liberation of Congo would be of inestimable benefit to the Solarian political and military forces associated with Governor Barregos. Leaving aside the need to cover up the truth about Stein's murder—which only a few people knew about, after all—things were about to get very turbulent within the Solarian League. Barregos intended to stake out the moral high ground for himself, right from the beginning—and Congo was to be the proof of it.

Why the Sollies are putting so much on the line.

"Don't read the reality of the OFS planets onto the entire League. Yes, to be sure, actual control of the League—in the sense of day-to-day operations—rests in the hands of its bureaucrats and combines. But that's only true above the level of the great star systems in the Old League—and then, only on sufferance. The one thing which the powers-that-be in the League have always been careful about is not to get the huge inner populations stirred up about anything. Their luck is about to run out, however, unless I miss my guess. The liberation of Congo, followed immediately thereafter by the foundation of a star nation of ex-slaves and its declaration of war on Mesa, is going to shake everything up. That's why—"

He smiled cheerfully, glancing at Anton Zilwicki. "—I'm so pleased that Anton called in every favor the Anti-Slavery League has piled up with the media over the past few decades. This flamboyant military operation is going to be happening in front of the galaxy's holorecorders, not in some obscure frontier outpost where the bureaucrats can keep the media away until the cover story is in place. I guarantee you that it will be headline news all over the Solarian League—and wildly popular with a significant proportion of the population. For years, every Solarian official has clucked his tongue at the iniquities of genetic slavery, while making sure that absolutely nothing was done about it. Now, their hands will be forced—with Governor Barregos standing out as the dynamic League leader who played a key role in the affair. They'll want to cut his throat, of course. But . . . he'll have made that ten times harder to do."

Why they invited all the newsies, so Torch's violent birth will make headlines across the galaxy, and be far too big to dream of covering up.

Like most space stations of its size and type, Manpower's installation in Congo boasted modestly respectable space-to-space defenses. There was no point trying to build something which could hope to stand off an attack by regular fleet units, but out in the back of beyond, people had to look after themselves. More than one unarmed station had been overwhelmed and looted by the equivalent of barbarian raiders in space-going rowboats, so it was generally considered a good idea to provide valuable pieces of real estate with sufficient defensive capability to at least make them unattractive targets for low-budget pirates.

Why include point-defense and weapons on space stations, even if they're never going to stand up to proper ships without building something along the lines of the Junction Forts.

In addition, however, Lassiter's station served as not just the command center and freight transshipment point for the entire system, but also provided the primary defensive node for the planet of Congo itself, as well. Just as the guards in a prison were unarmed in order to prevent the inmates from seizing their weapons, the administrators and overseers on the surface of the planet had very few heavy weapons at their command. They scarcely needed them, with the equivalent of a battalion or so of Marines ready to drop on their heads at a moment's notice . . . supported by kinetic strikes from orbit. And especially not when Manpower had made it crystal clear that they would punish any rebellion attempt with a brutal ferocity that beggared the imagination.

While it would have been impossible for anything which happened on the surface of the planet to directly threaten the space station, it was always theoretically possible that, despite everything, a desperate slave uprising might succeed in capturing some of the system's heavy-lift cargo shuttles while they were planeted and using them to attack it. If that happened as the first stage in an insurrection, then the lightly armed enclaves on the planet would be essentially at the mercy of the slaves who hated their inhabitants with a blazing passion. So, remote though the threat might be, Manpower's planners had provided the space station with sufficient light weaponry to annihilate any such attempt.

Another look at the planet-as-prison concept. In this case, the slaves are kept in line because the administrative center is in orbit and will drop Rods from God on any enclave seized by rebellious slaves.

Then there were Manpower's LACs. By the standards of the Royal Manticoran Navy, they were hopelessly obsolete, but there were fifteen of them. Theoretically, they were simply Verdant Vista's "customs patrol," with a secondary legitimate function as additional pirate discouragers. They, too, could be used at need to suppress any insurrection by Congo's enslaved labor force, however. They could also have made mincemeat out of the Felicia if they'd chosen to do so. Of course, their commanders had also been informed of precisely what HMS Gauntlet would do to any LAC stupid enough to open fire on a merchant vessel whose passengers included a member of the House of Winton.

15 LACs providing another layer of defense against hostile attack and ability to destroy any slave uprising.

The docking tube had just touched Felicia's main personnel hatch when the huge doors of her specially designed "cargo bays" snapped open. Kamal Lassiter's eyes widened, but consternation turned almost instantly into panic as human beings began to spill through the gaping openings. Not the unprotected bodies of slaves, but armed and armored figures shooting across the gap between them and the gallery with bulletlike speed.

Surprise was total. Despite all the tension and anxious precautions Felicia's arrival had engendered, no one aboard the space station had even contemplated the possibility of an actual attack. Not after the way Victor Cachat's strategy had misdirected everyone's attention to the "terrorist Templeton's" demands. Lassiter's brain was still fumbling with the new data, trying to force it into some sort of coherency, when the first Marine breaching teams hit the gallery's armorplast.

The operations manager stumbled back a step or two as the Marines touched down on tractor-soled boots. They landed and clung as naturally as so many houseflies, and Kamal Lassiter's face went paper-white as he finally realized what he was seeing. He spun away from the sight, dashing madly for the gallery lifts, but it was far too late for that.

Six three-man teams of Marines slapped breaching rings on to the armorplast. Each of those rings was approximately three-meters in diameter. They adhered almost instantly, and the Marines stepped back and hit their detonators. Precisely shaped and directed jets of plasma sliced six perfect circles through the tough, refractory armorplast as easily if it had been no tougher than old-fashioned glass.

The consequences for the personnel inside the gallery, none of whom were in spacesuits, were as ghastly as they were predictable.

The initial boarding. They'll want the station intact, but care less for the people on it. Breaching charges.

Thandi, obedient to Berry's admonishment (and Lieutenant Colonel Huang's silent but pointed example), was in the third wave, not the first. But she was the first person to reach the control console at the center of the gallery. She studied the console for a dozen blazingly intense seconds, then grunted in satisfaction. Ruth and Colonel Huang had been correct during the planning sessions; it was a standard Solarian design. She looked back up, waiting impatiently as the last of her Audubon Ballroom personnel came through the breaches, then stabbed a button.

Alloy panels slid slowly downward, locking across the armorplast. The system was designed to protect against collision with minor debris, but it served a secondary function by sealing off the holes her Marines had blown. She waited, wishing she could tap her toe impatiently (not exactly practical for someone in battle armor), until the panels locked down. Then she punched another series of commands into the console and bared her teeth in truly wolfish delight as the gallery began to repressurize.

Repressurized the initial breach site. Metal panels to shield the clear parts of the station (armorplast?) from micrometeorites and the like.

"Ruth's done a little better than you know, Lieutenant. She's not just into their communications net now. She's managed to tap into the visual pickups of their internal security systems." Thandi could almost hear the savage smile in his voice. "We can actually see their troops moving into position."

"Can we, now?" Thandi murmured, and she had no doubt at all what Zilwicki heard in her voice.

"Indeed we can," Zilwicki assured her. "In fact, Ruth is still pulling in information, and it looks like she's just found the master schematic for the entire station. We're integrating now against the visual input from their security cameras. Give us another couple of minutes, and we ought to be able to begin giving you the other side's positions and movements."

Hacked the security cameras, great benefit in knowing exactly where the defenders are and what they're doing.

Thandi's Marines had been systematically knocking out the security scanners as they advanced, but by now it should have occurred to at least one of the Manpower morons that certain of her people had been dropping steadily out of sight.

Ruth Winton's penetration of the space station's surveillance net allowed her to do more than simply spy on the enemy. She'd also managed to compare the master schematic for the station to the surveillance coverage, and she'd discovered that the central ventilation system wasn't monitored at all. The access points were, but once the cameras in any given section of corridor had been knocked out, there was no way for anyone on the other side to know who—or what—might be slipping quietly into the ventilation shafts.

The Manpower defenders are about to star in a cheap knock-off of Alien, with 'monsters' appearing out the vents to drag them screaming into darkness.

He watched the imagery from the cameras covering the last hatch between his people and them, and his belly was a hollow, singing void. He'd never expected to face serious combat as one of Manpower's hired guns. That was one reason he'd taken the job. He was tired of getting shot at for the miserly pay of a Silesian Army lieutenant, and making sure that a bunch of slaves didn't get uppity had seemed a beguiling change of pace. Not to mention how much better the money was.

Yeah, you picked a bad career path there, buddy.

His attention flicked towards it, and both eyes began to widen in disbelief as he saw the deck-to-ceiling ventilation grate lying on the deck and the Solarian Marine, battle armor in heavy-assault configuration, striding out of the opening.

Zenas Maguire's eyes never finished widening all the way, and his brain never quite completed the identification of what he saw, because the trigger finger of Corporal Jane Borkai, Company Bravo, Second Battalion, 877th Solarian Marines, closed the circuit on her plasma rifle first. That "rifle" was a cannon in all but name—the sort of weapon only someone in battle armor could carry—and the ravening packet of plasma it sent screaming across the compartment wiped out Maguire, Kawana, six more of Maguire's personnel, eight bulkheads, two blast doors, three main power conduits, a sanitation main, two fire suppression control points . . . and all trace of central command among the defenders.

Five other ventilation grates were kicked open almost simultaneously, and five other Marines—two of them armed "only" with heavy tribarrels—bounded through the sudden openings and opened fire. They appeared in the midst of Maguire's carefully chosen defensive positions, like demon djinn conjured out of nothingness, and their fire was devastatingly accurate. Maguire's troopers outnumbered their attackers by at least three-to-one, and it didn't matter at all. Not when Ruth had been able to steer Thandi and her Marines into positions of such crushing advantage. Almost half the defenders were killed in the first four seconds of Thandi's attack, and the sudden, totally unexpected savagery was too much for the traumatized survivors. Their stomach for combat died with their commanders, and weapons thudded to the deck amid frantic offers of surrender.

Plasma rifle in action, the defenders critically outmaneuvered.

And then the illuminated schematic disappeared, and Takashi swallowed hard as a beardless face replaced it. He certainly hadn't ordered the display reconfigured for communications, and a cold, numb suspicion of just how the enemy had become so intimately familiar with the internal geography of his space station filled him.

Not that he had much opportunity to digest the thought. Even as he stared at the screen, the cold-eyed man on it opened his mouth . . . and stuck out his tongue.

Takashi's breathing stopped. Every voice in the command center fell instantly still. The only sound was the subdued beeping of com channels and emergency alarms. Then the face on the screen spoke.

"My name," it said, in a voice of liquid helium, "is Jeremy X."

"Oh my God," someone whimpered into the sudden, ice-cold silence. The galaxy's most notorious terrorist allowed that silence to linger for what seemed a small, deadly eternity. Then his lips moved in a smile which held no slightest trace of humor.

"Surrender, and you'll live," he said flatly. "Choose not to surrender, and you won't. Personally, I'd prefer for you to take the second option, but it's up to you. And you have precisely ninety seconds to make up your mind."

So much for Central Station.