David Weber - Torch of Freedom

And it's the fact that you've finally realized that you, personally, are going to be directly responsible for bringing about those deaths , he thought despairingly.

He knew it was an unfair indictment, in many ways. He might be an alpha, but he was still only one tiny cog in the vast machine of the Mesan Alignment. His personal contribution to what was about to happen wasn't unimportant , but it was statistically insignificant. Yes, he'd contributed—efficiently, enthusiastically, and with a sense of satisfaction—to the wave of death about to sweep across the galaxy, yet his direct contribution to the killing would never even be noticed in the grand scheme of things, and it was supremely egotistical of him to think otherwise.

But that wasn't truly the point, was it? Not the point that was beginning to disturb his own sleep, at least. No, the point was that he had contributed to it. That he had ambled along, dedicated his own life to perfecting, protecting, and—ultimately—launching the Juggernaut of the Mesan Alignment. It had never even occurred to him not to, and that was what he truly found impossible to forgive himself. It wasn't even as if he'd confronted his doubts, his worries, and worked his way through them to a decision that the ultimate benefits to the race vastly outweighed the cost to the individual. He hadn't done even that much.

He tapped another brief command, and the close-up of Simões and his team disappeared from the smart wall. Another image replaced it—a file image of a single face, with huge brown eyes, an olive complexion, and the enormous, dimpled smile it had provided for its owner's father and his camera. He looked into those laughing eyes, at all the joy and all the love which had been stolen from them and from Francesca Simões' parents, and knew he should have confronted those questions. He'd never even met the little girl smiling at him from the center of his wall, and yet his heart twisted within him and his eyes burned as he gazed at her now.

She was only one child, only one person , he told himself. How much can any single life really count in the battle for the ultimate fate of the entire human race? It's insane , Jack. There's no way to even rationally compare what happened to her and to her parents to all of the literally inconceivable advantages we can provide to all of the rest of humanity!

It was true. He knew it was true. And yet, despite everything, he knew it was a truth that didn't really matter. Because, in the end, he was his parents' son, and he knew. Oh yes, he knew.

It's not about the advantages, about the "nobility" of our purpose—assuming the Board truly remembers what that purpose once was , he thought. Those things still matter, but so does your soul , Jack. So does the moral responsibility. There's right, and there's wrong, and there's the choice between them, and that's part of the human race's heritage, too. And it's about the fact that if we're really right—if Leonard Detweiler was really right—about how the entire species can choose to improve and uplift itself, then why haven't we committed even a fraction of the resources we've committed to building the Alignment to convincing the rest of the galaxy of that? Maybe it wouldn't have been easy, especially after the Final War. And maybe it would have taken generations, centuries, to make any progress. But the Alignment's already invested all of those generations and all of those centuries in our grand and glorious vision . . . and it had abandoned the idea of convincing other people we were right in favor of killing however many of them it took to make them admit we were right almost before Leonard Detweiler's brain function ceased. For that matter, the way we've embraced and used Manpower and genetic slavery has actually contributed to the prejudice against "genies," damn it!

Jack McBryde looked at that smiling face and saw the mirror of his own people's arrogance. Not the arrogance of which Leonard Detweiler had been accused, not the arrogance of believing a better, healthier, more capable, longer-lived human being was achievable. Not that arrogance, but another deeper, darker arrogance. The arrogance of fanaticism. Of the ability—of the willingness, even the eagerness—to prove to the rest of humanity that Detweiler had been right. To rub the rest of the galaxy's nose in the fact that, as Leonard Detweiler's descendents, they were right, too . . . and that everyone else was still wrong.

That in their own persons they already represented that better, more capable human being, which was proof of their own superiority and their own right to dictate humanity's future to every other poor, benighted, inferior "normal" in the universe. That they'd been right— had the right—to actually expand the genetic slave trade and all of the human misery it entailed not for profit, but simply as a cover, a distracting shield for the high and noble purpose which justified any means to which they might resort.

And to create, evaluate, and "cull" however many little girls had to be thrown away to accomplish that glorious purpose.

Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. He'd always thought the MSN's uniform, with its hectares of braid and its tall caps whose visors dripped old-fashioned "scrambled eggs, looked more like something out of a bad operetta than anything any real navy would have tolerated. Of course, no one had ever wanted anyone to take the MSN seriously, had they? It was supposed to be a pretentious Lilliputian force with delusions of grandeur—exactly what the galaxy would have expected out of a star nation whose government was totally dominated by outlaw, profit-driven transstellars.

And, by the oddest turn of fate, that was precisely what the Mesa System Navy actually was. It would never have done to create a force whose professionalism might inadvertently have given itself away, after all. And so the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the "navy" everyone knew about, the MAN was a deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.

And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat , Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else , too .

He took a deep and burning pride in that knowledge, and he looked forward to the rapidly approaching day when everyone else in the galaxy would know what he already knew. When the words "Mesan Navy" would be spoken with respect, even fear, instead of amused contempt.

But that day wasn't here yet, and aside from Commander Jessica Milliken, his own second-in-command, none of the other people filing into the briefing room aboard the battlecruiser Leon Trotsky knew the MAN existed. Which was why Maddock and Milliken wore the uniforms they did.

He waited while the newcomers took their places, standing behind their chairs as he stood behind his own, waiting. A few seconds ticked past, and then the briefing room door opened once again and Citizen Commodore Adrian Luff of the People's Navy in Exile strode through it, flanked by Citizen Commander Millicent Hartman, his chief of staff, and Captain Olivier Vergnier, Leon Trotsky 's commanding officer.