THE ONLY “POSITIVE” THING Lynn Ferraro could say about the destruction of the cities of Globar and Schall was that their burning made aesthetically-pleasing smears of light against the night sky of Epsilon Indi IV.
“The stiffness of your back tells me you don’t approve, Friend Ferraro.” She didn’t turn at his words, but she could feel her vertebrae cracking as she tensed. She kept her face turned to the screens, watching the twin cities shrink as the flames consumed them, a wild colossus whose pillared legs rose to meet a hundred meters above the debacle.
“A lot of good my disapproval does, Commander.”
He made a sighing sound at her response. “Well, you have the satisfaction of knowing your report will more than likely terminate my career.”
She turned on him, her facial muscles tight as sun-dried leather. “And a hell of a lot of good that does the people down there!”
She was an Amicus Hostis , a Friend of the Enemy, placed on board the Terran dreadnought Descartes , Solar Force registry number SFD/199–660, in this the forty-first year of the Earth-Kyba War, to prevent atrocities, to attempt any kind of rapprochement with the Kyben, should a situation present itself in which the Kyben would do other than kill or be killed. And when it had become clear that this lunatic, this butcher, this Commander Julian Drabix was determined to take the planet — at any cost — no matter how horrifyingly high — scorched earth if nothing short of that monstrousness would suffice — when it had become clear her command powers would be ignored by him, she had filed a light-wave report with Terran Central. But it would take time for the report to reach Central, time for it to be studied, time for a report-judgment and time for instructions to be light-fired back to the Descartes. And Drabix had not waited. Contravening the authority of the Amicus , he had unleashed the full firepower of the dreadnought.
Globar and Schall burned like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But unlike those God-condemned hellholes of an ancient religion, no one knew if the residents of Globar and Schall were good, or evil, or merely frightened natives of a world caught in the middle of an interstellar war that seemed destined never to end.
“All I know,” Drabix had said, by way of justification, “is that planet’s atmospheric conditions are perfect for the formation of the crystalline form of the power-mineral we need. If we don’t get it, Kyba will. It’s too rare, and it’s too important to vacillate. I’m sorry about this, but it has to be done.” So he had done it.
She had argued that they didn’t even know for certain if the mineral was there , in the enormous quantities Drabix believed were present. It was true the conditions were right for its formation, and on similar worlds where the conditions were approximated they had found the precious crystals in small amounts … but how could even such a near-certainty justify destruction so total, so inhuman?
Drabix had chosen not to argue. He had made his choice, knowing it would end his career in the Service; but he was a patriot; and allegiance overrode all other considerations.
Ferraro despised him. It was the only word that fit. She despised everything about him, but this blind servitude to cause was the most loathsome aspect of his character.
And even that was futile, as Globar and Schall burned.
Who would speak the elegy for the thousands, perhaps millions, who now burned among the stones of the twin cities?
When the conflagration died down and the rubble cooled, the Descartes sent down its reconnaissance ships; and after a time, Commander Drabix and Friend Ferraro went to the surface. To murmur among the ashes.
Command post had been set up on the island the natives called Stand of Light because of the manner in which the sunlight from Epsilon Indi was reflected back from the sleek boles of the gigantic trees that formed a central cluster forest in the middle of the twenty-five-kilometer spot of land. Drabix had ordered his recon teams to scour the planet and bring in a wide sample of prisoners. Now they stood in ragged ranks up and down the beach as far as Lynn Ferraro could see; perhaps thirty thousand men and women and children. Some were burned horribly.
She rode on the airlift platform with Drabix as he skimmed smoothly past them, just above their heads.
“I can’t believe this,” Drabix said.
What he found difficult to accept was the diversity of races represented in the population sample the recon ships had brought in. There were Bleshites and Mosynichii in worn leathers from the worlds of 61 Cygni, there were Camogasques in prayer togas from Epsilon Eridani, there were Kopektans and Livides from Altair II and X; Millmen from Tau Ceti, Oldonians from Lalande 21185, Runaways from Rigel; stalk-thin female warriors of the Seull Clan from Delta Cephei III, beaked Raskkans from the hollow asteroids of the Whip belt, squidlike Silvinoids from Grover; Petokii and Vulpeculans and Rohrs and Mawawanians and creatures even Drabix’s familiarity with the Ephemeris could not identity.
Yet nowhere in the thousands of trembling and cursing prisoners — watching the airlift platform as it passed them — nowhere in that horde, could be seen even one single golden-skinned, tentacle-fingered Kyben. It was this, perhaps, that Drabix found the more impossible to accept. But it was so. Of the expeditionary force sent from far Kyba to hold this crossroads planet, not one survivor remained. They had all, to the last defender, suicided.
When the knowledge could no longer be denied, Lynn turned on Drabix and denounced him with words of his own choosing, words he had frequently used to vindicate his actions during the two years she had ridden as supercargo on the Descartes. “ ‘War is not merely a political act but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means,’ as Karl von Clausewitz has so perfectly said.”
He snarled at her. “Shut your face, Amicus ! I’m not in a mood for your stupidities!”
“And slaughter is not merely an act of war, is that right, Commander? Is it also a political instrument? Why not take me to see the stacked corpses? Perhaps I can fulfill my mission … perhaps I’ll learn to communicate with the dead! You deranged fool! You should be commanding an abattoir, not a ship of the line!”
He doubled his right fist and punched her full in the face, within sight of the endless swarm of helpless prisoners and his own crew. She fell backward, off the airlift, tumbling down into the throng. Their bodies broke her fall, and within seconds members of Drabix’s crew had rescued her; but he did not see it; the airlift had skimmed away and was quickly lost in the flash of golden brilliance reflecting off the holy shining trees of Stand of Light.
The adjutant found her sitting on a greenglass boulder jutting up from the edge of the beach. Waves came in lazily and foamed around the huge shape. There was hardly any sound. The forest was almost silent; if there were birds or insects, they had been stilled, as though waiting.
“Friend Ferraro?” he said, stepping into the water to gain her attention. He had called her twice, and she had seemed too sunk in thought to notice. Now she looked down at him and seemed to refocus with difficulty.