David Weber - Insurrection

"Please, sir. Talk to them first."

"I'll talk to them, Willis." Steel showed through Forsythe's compassionate tone. "But from the flag bridge of this ship with the task force behind me." He rose, terminating the meeting. "Gentlemen, check your departments. I want a complete status report in one hour. We will then formulate our precise plans."

His staff saluted and left. Willis Enwright walked slowly to the hatch and paused, then turned back to his admiral, his face older than his years.

"Sir, what if they don't surrender? What will you do if they fight?"

"Do, Willis?" Forsythe felt the cold of interstellar space blow down his spine. "I'll honor my oath to defend and preserve the Constitution-any way I must."

"You'll open fire, then," Enwright said almost inaudibly.

"If I must," Forsythe said steadily. "I don't want to. I'll tell them I don't want to. But I have orders to execute and four centuries of history to defend. Unlike them, I have no room to make personal choices, do I?"

"I suppose not, sir," Enwright said quietly. "But consider this, I beg of you. What you see as a personal choice may not seem like one to others." He seemed to be trying to tell Forsythe something, but the old admiral was too worried and heartsick to hunt for the meaning.

"I understand that, but I don't have an option. No one can ask more of any man than that he do his duty as he sees it." He shook his head sadly. "No matter how painful it is."

"Yes, sir. I hope we all remember that," Enwright said quietly. Then he drew himself up and gave Forsythe the sharpest salute the admiral had ever seen from him. He stepped through the hatch, and it closed behind him.

"Captain Enwright and Admiral Forsythe are both dead !"

The gasping words came hoarse over the com channel, but the screens were blank with electronic hash. Commander Windrider didn't recognize the distorted, faceless voice. Who was it? Had they ever met?

"They're all dead on flag bridge!" the voice went on desperately. "There's fighting everywhere . . . crew quarters . . . officer country . . . power rooms. . . . We need help , for God's sake! We-"

The snarl of a laser pistol slashed across the words and the voice went silent. The blinking light codes on Windrider's fire control screens chilled his blood, and his hands clenched on the gunnery console of the monitor Enwright as the flagship fell away, the first mutiny in the Federation Navy's history raging on her command bridges and in her drive rooms.

Jason Bluefield Windrider couldn't believe it. No, he told himself grimly, he could believe it; he just didn't want to. Mutiny was an obscenity to a man like him, but he understood the mutineers. Not long ago, some of them would have been guests in his quarters, discussing the crisis, wondering where their true duty lay. It seemed they'd decided aboard Anderson.

He looked into the strained faces of his control team. They knew what was happening aboard the flagship-but what could they do about it? For that matter, what could he do? He and his ratings sat at the very core of a tremendous hull, 285,000 tonnes of alloy and armor wrapped around their fragile bodies and sensitive instruments. They were Enwright 's fighting brain, controlling the power to vaporize a planetoid or sterilize a world, and soon they might have to perform actions which would scar their souls. He didn't know what the men and women of his crew would decide. He was certain of only one thing; he himself was about to face a moment of truth he did not believe he could endure.

The communicators muttered, ghostly voices blurring in his battlephone implant as frantic commanders conferred, afraid to expose their inner convictions, yet compelled by duty and training to act decisively.

And that was their true curse, Windrider thought savagely. Navy training and their own inclinations forced them to act. They weren't politicians (the word was a vicious epithet in his thoughts) who could confer and debate and duck responsibility. When you put on Navy black and silver, you put your judgment on the spot. "An imperfect response now is a thousand times better than recognizing the perfect response too late." That was what the Academy taught-but there were only imperfect responses to this!

Windrider shook his head angrily. The universe was crumbling before his eyes and he was philosophizing ? Yet what else could he do? He, too, had "reacted" long since, but his had been a hypothetical decision, one he'd hoped never to face. One he'd believed he would never face, because he had dared not believe anything else. But now its hungry breath was in his face, hot and stinking as a pseudopuma's.

It wasn't fair ! Hadn't the bureaucrats known ? Were they so blind to human needs and loyalties they hadn't even considered what might happen out here?

But of course they had. That was why the Marine contingents aboard the transports consisted almost entirely of Innerworlders.

Yet the politicos had miscalculated, he thought grimly. They'd guessed at the hatred they were about to unleash, but not how quickly the flames would erupt. Their planned show of force was supposed to nip rebellion in the bud, on the ground. They'd never dreamed the Kontravians might seize their local orbital defenses and Frontier Fleet squadrons or have the guts to defy TF 17's might after they did. Besides, the Navy's monumental dependability was the bedrock of the Federation; it had never occurred to them that the Fringers in the Fleet might be as conscious of planetary loyalties as any Corporate Worlder. So they hadn't "sanitized" the Fleet as they had the ground forces. Perhaps they couldn't have, really, given the high proportion of Outworlders in the Fleet. Only a few ships had "reliable" Innerworld crews. Most had heavy Fringe contingents; some were completely Fringer-crewed. Now their officers were caught between their oaths and the dreadful prospect of turning their weapons on fellow Fringers, and it was intolerable. Faced with the unfaceable, Enwright had acted, Forsythe had reacted, and laser fire had gutted Anderson 's flag deck. But they were only the first casualties; Windrider could already taste the blood to come, and it sickened him.

"Captain! Admiral Singh is coming up on the all-ships channel!"

"Throw it on the big screen, Mister Sung."

Li Han held her face calm and her voice level as she waited for the screen to light, but she felt her bridge crew's tension. Even her imperturbable executive officer showed the signs; Tsing Chang's breathing was harshly audible.

Thomas Singh had always struck Han as belonging to an earlier age. The neatly trimmed beard in fashion among the Fleet's male officers somehow contrived to look fierce and predatory on Singh, and never more so than now. His dark eyes flashed, and the lips under his hooked nose were tight. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and cold.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief. Captain Willis Enwright and others aboard the flagship have mutinied against the lawful orders of their superior officers and against their oaths as officers and enlisted personnel of the Federation Navy. I will not permit this to spread! I believe Admiral Forsythe to be dead, and I hereby assume command. All Marine detachments will report to the armories and draw full combat equipment." Han tensed, and a soft sigh ran around her bridge. "Marines from the transport group will board Anderson. Any individual participating in this disgraceful violation of the Fleet's trust will be arrested to await tr-"

"No!"

Despite her iron control, Han jerked as the single word cut across Singh's cold voice. She thought it had come from one of her own people . . . until Singh whipped around to stare behind him. Then he was flinging himself aside, dropping towards the deck, and a laser bolt slashed across the pickup. His command console flared-plastics burning, metals melting-and the snarl of lasers continued for a fractional second before someone's fire incinerated the entire command station.