The Insurrection Read online

  Where did their own officer stand? The click of plastic and metal jerked their eyes back as he laid his laser on the console.

  "No one enters or leaves this compartment without my permission," he grated. "No one. Is that understood?" He met each of his subordinate's eyes in turn, pinning them with a brown, bitter glare until they nodded. Then he turned back to the targeting screens, sick at heart at what he'd just said, and sicker still at what he might yet have to do.

  Red lights flared on status boards as whole computer sectors fell out of circuit. Shot out or cut, it made no difference to his own command station. They could cut the drives, they could cut the data net, they could blow the bridge to atoms; as long as Enwright had power, he controlled her weapons.

  But what of it? He asked himself that with all the pent up bitterness and helplessness--comand fear which filled him. It had seemed so simple in the bull sessions. Nothing violent. Just a refusal to fire ff the time came. Passive resistance. Not this!

  Never this mindless murder of fellow Navy men and women who were only doing their duty as best they understood it!

  His battlephone beeped a priority code, and he punched a console key, shifting to a secure intraship battle channel. It was Hodah.

  "Commander." The captain sounded harassed, but his voice was still crisp. "These damned mutineers must have planned this ahead of time. They've taken the armory and most of the Marines' quarters--we can't even get to the combat zoots, much less the boatbay! We still control the drive, and I think we still hold the power rooms, but I don't dare release the remotes to find out. I've confirmed the loss of auxiliary fire control and CIC, and all contact with flag bridge went out five minutes ago. We had a shoot-out in plotting, too, and there was a godawful explosion in datalink control right after we lost touch with flag bridge. I hold the command deck, and I've got armed Marines on the bridge elevators, but all I've got left up he'e friend hattie control is the auxiliary nay tank. Have you got all that?" "Yes, sir." Windrider felt sweat matting his eyebrows. "All fight. It comes down to this, Commander," Hodah grated. "I can still move this ship, but that's all I can do. You're the only man who can target and fire her weapons. So tell me, Commander Windrider--are you prepared to do your duty?" "My duty, Captain?" Windrider hesitated, his face ashen, then answered firmly.

  "Admiral Forsythe is dead, and Admiral Singh was appar* ently killed when they took out our flag bridge. Admiral Traynor may be dead; we've lost all contact with Vesuvius, so I have to assume she's either dead or a prisoner. I've got ntact with Admiral Hale, but the mutineers have all the engineering spaces in E1 Chichon; he can't even neuver. Admiral Ashigara apparently went over to the mutineers aboard Basilisk, so as near as I can figure it, Hale's the senior man left, and he's given me orders to terminate the fighting aboard Anderson--fast. Maybe we can bring the whole task force back to its senses ff we get some Marines in there quickly. But Captain Li and Longbow are in the way, and they've threatened to destroy the first boat launched against Anderson.

  I've got two superdread-noughts from Admiral Hale's group, and one attack transport is prepared to go in, but they can't launch until Longbow's neutralized.., one way or the other." Windrider heard the pain in his voice and remembered the evening Captain Li had dined aboard as his guest. "I'm going to give Li one last chance to move aside," Hodah said quietly. "If she refuses... Then, Commander, it's all up to you and your team." "I--understand the situation, sir," Windrider whispered.

  "Good. Switch to the intership channels, Commander.

  I want Captain Li to hear us if I have to pass you orders." "Yes, sir." Windrider shifted channels and ran his fingers over the cool plastic console, feeling the latent destruction and understanding Hodah's pain too well, for Windrider, too, knew Li Han's reputation.

  Han stared into her eom screen at Simon Hodah's worried, angry face, reading the fear and fury in his eyes and wondering if he saw the pain in hers. His mouth was a slashed wound and his voice was harsh.

  "Captain Li, you are in violation of the Articles of War. You will surrender your command and person at once, pursuant to the orders of Vice Admiral Eric Hale. You will heave to and await my boarding party. Officers designated by myself will relieve you of command and place you under close arrest to await trial. This is a direct order, logged and taped. You may authenticate with Admiral Hale." "Captain Hodah," Han said softly to her old friend, "I must respectfully refuse your order." "You have no authority to refuse!" Even the rage in Hodah's voice couldn't hide the pleading under his fury. "Now cut your shields and get out of my way, Captain, or by the living God, I'll blow you apart!" Hah looked around her bridge crew. Every set of shoulders was tense, every face knotted with tension, but not a voice protested as she turned back to her superior officer. God, she was proud of them! Yet her heart ached at matching their courage against their own fellows. It was such a waste--such a tragic, stupid waste--yet all of them were caught in the conflicting webs of duty, loyalty, and trust. Did her people suspect how much strength she drew from them? Or did they think they drew theirs from her?

  She glanced down at her plot almost idly, watching data codes flash as weapons and tracking systems came alive aboard the trio of capital ships, and the deadly threat of those weapons was her reality. Her mind flickered over her life, remembering the things she'd done, recalling those she'd meant to do. How would her father react to this? What of the children she'd always known she would someday bear?

  She knew him so well. He would fire--comindeed, she would leave him no option--and when Enwright and the superdreadnoughts fired, Longbow would die. No battle-cruiser ever built could survive that concentration of fire at this range.

  She hadn't anticipated when she handpicked her crew that she had chosen them only to die with her, yet Hodah's margin for error was razor thin.

  Longbow's destruction would clear the path to Anderson, but it was a deadlv expedient which might well recoil upon him, for it would left-brace give every mutineer his options, spell out the full, deadly consequences of resistance. It might awe them into surrender, but she thought not.

  Her face was calm as the death of her ship and crew looked back at her from Hodah's eyes.

  It was unfair. It was cruel. Yet in a sense, it was also the sublime completion of her life. She drew a deep breath, hoping no one would notice.

  "Go to hell, sir," she said very gently.

  The deck shivered as Enwright moved deliberately towards the slim, defiant Longbow, and the Corporate Worldrewed superdreadnoughts Nanda Devi and Pente- likon moved in beside her, shields glowing. The transport Chief Joseph slid in behind them, but she was unimport- ant in the confrontation of Goliaths, and Windrider's fin- gers flew over his own console even as his mind tried to reject the firing setup he was creating.

  Horror froze his subordinates into shocked, speechless immobility as the target codes appeared on their monitors, and he heard Han's reply and waited in a private hell for the words he kne, must come.

  "Fire Control!" Hodah's voice pounded in his brain.

  "Yes, sir?" He was astounded he could sound so calm.

  "Lock on all weapons. Prepare to fire at my cammand." "Aye, aye, sir. Locking on now." His fingers pressed the commit keys, and red lights glowed as weapon bays opened. Massive beam projectors snouted out and missiles slid into theirthe launchers, backup rounds dropping silently into the loading trays.

  The ranked missiles riding the external racks woke to malevolent life, and sweat burned his eyes. He was sealed in a cage of ice and fire, for he was both a Fringer and a Federation officer. What was his duty? It mattered, and his uncer- tainty was agony as his hands hovered above the firing keys.

  "Captain Li, this is your last chance!" Hodah snapped.

  "Go , Simon!" Li Han's His harsh at last, almost as ff she were deliberately goading her old friend. "Fire and be damned!" "Very well, Captain." Hodah's voice was as cold as space. "You leave me no choice.

  Fire Control, you have your orders. Open fire-- now.t" Wi
ndrider's hands trembled on the deadly snakes of his firing keys and he blinked his eyes, fighting to focus. Longbow and the superdreadnoughts were virtually shield-to-shield, floating in his targeting screens at suicidal range, the battle-erniser small and alone, frail despite her weight of armor and weapons. Visions and sounds filled his mind. Memories of his homeworld. The final parade at the Academy. Men and women he knew in the ships on his control screen. Men and women waiting to die when he touched those keys. All of them flashed through his mind, and his hands were paralyzed.

  "Damn it, Windrider! Open fire!" Hodah roared, his own grief flogging his fury. "Do your duty, man!" The word "duty" flared in Windrider's mind like a bomb, and he jerked spastically.

  "Aye, aye, sir," he said very softly, and his eyes flicked over the targeting codes, a professional double-checking his work even in his anguish. Then his fingers tensed, and Enwright's weapons spoke.

  The world of the eom channels shattered around him, battered by the roar of a hundred furious, denouncing voices and as many more that bellowed with triumph. A tide of destruction ripped from Enwright in a fury of beams and the impassioned streaks of missiles, and devastation rocked the vacuum as her weapons found their targets--Windrider's targets.

  Shields flared and died. Plating split, ruptured, disintegrated, vaporized. Atmosphere fumed from a gutted hull, and Jason Windrider clung to his sanity with bleeding fingernails while tears streamed down his cheeks and TFNS Nanda Devi died under his THE OF CAIN Naomi Hezikiah felt out of place in Pommern's command chair, for a heavy cruiser was not normally a lieutenant commander's billet, and even the thin Bible in the breast of her ,c suit was scant comfort as she contemplated what was about to happen.

  She punched up communications, and a painfully young ensign answered her. Yet another sign of the times; it should have been at least a full lieutenant.

  "Anything from the flagship, Harvey?" "No, sir." The young black man shook his head in mild surprise. "Standing orders are to maintain com silence, sir," he reminded respectfully.

  "I know." Naomi probed the ensign's face for any uncertainty and started to say more, but she'd set her hand to the plow, as Elder Habermaa would say. To everything there was a season... even to this, she supposed drear-fly. So she made herself smile, instead. "Carry on, Ensign." "Aye, aye, sir," the corn officer said, and the screen blanked.

  Naomi leaned back and closed her eyes. All she wanted was to be back on cold, bleak New Covenant. But she couldn't be there and after what had already happened @u.. after what was about to happen..

  . not even New Covenant would want her back.

  She remembered Abraham and prayed silently for God to send another ram before the blade fell. But he wouldn't.

  Her mind went back over the past, terrible two weeks

  that had started so wonderfully. She and Earnest had had the medic's official report; they'd actually been discussing ways to finagle their assignments so she could take her maternity leave at home on New Covenant when the scrambled transmission came over the relay net. An entire Battle Fleet task force--comn just a battlegroup, a task force--taken by its own personnel. Casualties had been heavy, and the few ships which remained loyal had been hunted down and captured or destroyed before they got far. But not before they got their courier drones away.

  .. and why. He should have known what would happen--and it had happened within hours. Desperate men and women had met, and the Fringers among his crews had risen against him.

  But not all of them. No, not all of them. The meetings had been too clandestine, too hurried.

  Everything had been improvised by isolated groups, trusting no one outside their own little band. Not until the first mutineer drew his weapon could anyone know who stood where outside whatever tiny group they'd discussed disx with, and the loyalists had fought back furiously. The carnage had been more savage than she would have believed possible; there were laser scars on the bulkheads around her, and the victorious mutineers had barely half the personnel they theoretically needed.

  And when the fighting ended, Naomi found Earnest sprawled over his fire control panel, laser in hand, and two dead mutineers before him.

  She had barely been able to read the funeral service through her tears. Had he known they were on different sides? Would he have fought beside her if he'd known? Or would his stubborn sense of duty, the courage she loved so much, still have ranged them against one another?

  She didn't know. She couldn't know, for Earnest had died, and she had inherited command of a heavy, cruiser @u.. and even Elder Haberman would never be able to convince her that God could forgive her.

  Not that the Elder would have the chance, she thought mordantly,, glancing at the nay tank. She would have the opportunity to plead her case before the Lord herself all too soon, for the pulsing pattern of the nay beacons was clear in the tank, and her astrogator turrved to her.

  "Thirty seconds to warp, Captain," he said quietly. "Very well," Naomi nodded curtly@u "Carry. on." "Aye, aye, sir." And so it was official. Toshiba wasn't going to relent@u "We have no choice," Captain Victor Toshiba had told his "captains." "We're too deep in Innerworld space. We'd never make it to the Fringe if we just ran, and we've burned all our other bridges@u We ali know why we did it, but that doesn't matter. We're all of us--come one of us--commutineers." He'd scanned his subordinates' facos, reading their despair, but, his eyes were determined as he went grimly on.

  "We'ret walking dead, ladies and gentlemen.

  Face it. Accept it and use it, because we're just as dead whether we spend our lives profitably or not. There is one, and only one, thing we can do for the Fringe now." His finger had stabbed the erazv quilt of warp lines in his nay tank. "Galloway's World. hat's what we ean give the Fringe @u.

  . by taking it away from the Federation!" Naomi had stared at him in horror, yet she was his senior "captain." "But, sir," she'd said softly, "we don't begin to have the strength to seize Gallowav's World. Surelv vou're not suggesting... hiswas " " His "That's precisely what I am suggesting," Toshiba had said coldly. "We can gut the shipyards if we get in unchallenged. It's gone too far to stop now. It's war, Commander, war between the Fringe and the Innerworlds, and we both know who holds the industrial trumps. Can we stand by while the Corporate WorMs beat our people to death? No! We're going to hurt them--hurt them nou and hurt them badsty. We're going to buy time for our people, the one way we can." He'd paused, as if steeling his own nerve. "This only way: a nuclear strike on Galloway's World." Naomi had wanted to vomit. They were the TFN, sworn to defend humanity against mass nurder! And yet, wrong as he was, he might also be right. They were doomedeaand they owed their people a chance. She remembered the winter wind howling around the dome on New Covenant and knew she could kill to defend the civilians of her world but could she kill other civilians for them? She'd looked up and her lips had parted, but Toshiba's voice had marched on ruthlessly, forestalling her objections.

  "But I als6 know what we're defending--and so do you! Our own homes, our own societies... the kind of societies that let humans be people, not just well-fed, two-legged domestic animals producing for Corporate World masters!" His vehemence had shaken them all, and Naomi had felt her resistance waver. Then he'd paused and looked at them sadly. When he resumed, his voice was very soft.

  "I know what you're thinking. Do we have the right to do this, even in self-defense? I don't know how you'll answer that, but I know how I will. They say a flower will grow toward sunlight through ceramacrete, and pe.rhaps they're right. But... what if everything is covered with ceramacrete? What ff the flower finally breaks through, but there's no one left who can recognize a flower when he sees one?" Naomi had bent over her hands, feeling his eyes on the crown of her head as his will beat against her, and realized how pivotal her own decision was.

  They'd endured one mutiny--perhaps they had another in them yet. But the first had cost her too much. Whatever God demanded of her, it couldn't be another spasm of the bloodshed which had taken Earnest. Her
head remained bent, her eyes locked on her fingers, and the moment for rebellion passed.

  "We've got a good chance of pulling it off," Toshiba had said softly as Naomi silently withdrew her opposition. "No one knows we've mutinied. We can put into Galloway's World for new orders, carry out the strike, and run. It's even possible "he'd tried to sound as ff he meant it --com?some of us may get home. We're fast and well-armed; we may be able to split up and avoid action.

  But"-- his voice had grown somber once more-- "that's not what's important. Whether we can get away or not, we have to do it." And every rebellious [email protected] in his cabin had nodded silently.

  "Warp in five seconds," Astrogation said softly. "Four @u.. Three... Two.

  One... Warp!" Naomi flinched as the indescribable surge of warp transit gripped her. She knew it was impossible, but in that instant she thought she felt the child within her. Thank God Doc Sevridge had understood. Losing her command would have left her a mere spectator, and no matter what her private purgatory, she had to do something. So he'd wiped the pregnancy report from the data banks with a tired smile@u, "Might's well carry mutiny to its logical conclusion," he'd said.

  "I have a challenge, Captain!" The voice in Naomi's implant jerked her back to the present.

  "Standard query for ID and purpose." "Stand by, Gunnery," she said through dry lips, watching the warp point forts on her tactical display. "Commodore Toshiba will roll the tape any minute now. Then we'll know." Her anxious eyes moved to a secondary screen as the carefully crafted composite of Prien's recorded messages went out over the corn channels. It was good, she thought distantly. The electronics boys had done a bang-up job.

  Shape your course for Skeavwatch Three. They'll have new orders cut by the time you get there."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the recorded composite said. "Commodore Prien out." "And thank God for that," someone muttered as the admiral disappeared. Naomi heard but didn't respond. If God were truly kind, that fathead would have been suspicious. They would have had to fight or flee well clear of the planet. She knew she could die happily in a ship-to-ship action, and she found that she'd been secretly hoping for just that.