"The two of you together wouldn't stand a chance against my task group," Navarre said flatly.
"You might be surprised by how much of a chance we'd stand," Roszak replied. "And while you might very probably win in the end, the cost would be… considerable. I rather doubt that your admiralty would be very happy about that."
"And speakin' purely as a backward and benighted neobarb," Oversteegen observed with deadly affability, "I really suspect, Commodore, that your government would be most unhappy with the officer who managed, in one afternoon, t' get them into a shootin' war with both the Solarian League and the Star Kingdom of Manticore."
Navarre deflated visibly. It was rather like watching the air flow out of a punctured balloon, Oversteegen thought. The commodore was clearly picturing what a squadron or two of modern Manticoran ships-of-the-wall could do to the entire Mesan Navy. Especially if the Solarian League wasn't simply giving them free passage to reach Mesa but actually acting as a cobelligerent.
Rozsak saw the same thoughts flow across Navarre's face and smiled once more, ever so slightly.
"I think, Commodore," he suggested gently, "that it might be best, all things considered, if you left the sovereign star system of Torch.
"Now."
Chapter 47
Berry found it difficult not to wince, watching the Mesan personnel filing past her into the building which served Congo-no, Torch, now-as the assembly area for its shuttle grounds. The faces of the children, of which there were more than she'd expected, were especially hard to watch. Their expressions were a combination of exhaustion, terror, shock-in some cases, what looked like borderline psychosis.
Those people were the survivors of the savage slave rebellion which had erupted on Congo as soon as word began to spread that the space station had been seized by…
Whoever. It didn't matter, really, as long as they were anti-Mesan. Congo had been a prison planet, in essence. Once all of the really powerful military forces at the disposal of Mesa, including the kinetic missiles with which the planet could be bombarded in case of extreme necessity, had been taken out of the equation, the Mesan personnel on the planet had been, for all practical purposes, in the same position as British clerks had been when the Sepoy Mutiny swept over them. Dead meat, if they didn't get to an enclave quick enough. The light weaponry in the hands of the overseers, by itself, was simply not enough to cow slaves filled with the fury of generations of oppression and exploitation.
Not even close. Those overseers who did try to stand their ground had been overwhelmed-and their weapons turned to the use of killing other overseers. Not just "overseers," either. Anyone-even a child-associated with "Mesa" or especially "Manpower" had been under sentence of death, everywhere on the planet's surface. A sentence which had been imposed immediately, mercilessly, and in some cases accompanied by the most horrible atrocities.
There had been some exceptions, here and there. Mesans whose duties had not involved discipline over the slaves, especially those who had established a reputation for being at least decent, had been spared in a number of cases. There was even one instance where an entire settlement of Mesan scientists and pharmaceutical technicians and their families had been protected by an improvised slave defense guard against slaves coming in from the outside.
But, for the most part, any Mesan who hadn't gotten himself quickly enough to one of the enclaves where armed Mesans had been able to fort up and hold off the slaves until the surrender was negotiated had simply been slaughtered. The entire surface of the planet had been engulfed, for two days, in a wave of pure murder.
And it hadn't taken long for the word to spread, either-nor the further word that the space station was now in the hands of the Audubon Ballroom, which had simply poured fuel on an already spreading conflagration. Death to Mesa. Death to Manpower. Now.
Once again, Berry realized, the economic reality of slavery based on a high level of technical advancement had manifested itself. There were simply too many ways for literate slaves, in a modern technical society, to gain access to information once the opportunity arose. Which it had, in most cases, when dumbfounded slaves suddenly saw Mesan overseers and staff personnel piling into vehicles and abandoning the area-their faces making their own panic obvious. The slaves, after an initial hesitation, had simply walked into the communications centers and discovered the information on the computer screens-computers which many of them knew perfectly well how to operate.
Death. Death. Death. All of them! Now!
In some cases, the departing Mesans had had the foresight to destroy the equipment. But, more often than not, in their panicky haste to simply flee for a refuge, they had neglected to do so. And, once the com centers had started falling into the hands of the slaves, the slaves had rapidly begun establishing their own communication network across the planet. This was a rebellion which had all the pitiless rage of Nat Turner's-but whose slaves were very far from illiterate field hands. They had organized themselves just about as quickly and readily as the slaves on Felicia had done, after Templeton's seizure of the ship. And, like the slaves on Felicia, there had been enough undercover agents of the Ballroom to serve as an organizing and directing catalyst.
Berry drew a long and shaky breath. It was over now, at least-and, at least, she could remind herself that she had been the central figure in ending the slaughter. Before the second of Congo's twenty-seven-hour days had passed, she'd been able to establish contact with all the remaining Mesan enclaves, as well as the major slave organizing centers, and negotiate a surrender. Her terms had been simple: In exchange for their lives and whatever personal possessions they could carry, provided they surrendered immediately and made no attempt at sabotage, any Mesan who wanted to leave the planet would be allowed to do so with no further harm. Under Solarian Navy escort, and into the safekeeping of the Solarian Navy. She'd even offered to place the Felicia at the disposal of the Solarian Navy, to provide the needed transport.
That last decision had been one she'd made with some reluctance. As with everyone involved during those long weeks, Felicia had come to occupy a special place in her heart. She'd even been the one to give the ship her new name: Hope, she'd called her, repeating the name until she simply drove under all the competing names. Of which Vengeance had been the most popular.
She'd had to drive over even sharper opposition to get everyone's agreement to her proposal to use Hope as the transport for the departing Mesan personnel. Web Du Havel had sided with her immediately, but Jeremy had dug in his heels.
Let the swine make the trip in cubbyholes aboard Solarian warships.
The children, too?
Those are not children. Those are young vipers.
No. NO. There isn't enough room for all of them. Leave any behind…