The City of Dubuk swayed as she came away from the dock. The lead tug signaled with three quick chirps.
But did Dad know that? Jeffrey demanded.
your father does not have access to the database that informs your decisions—and those of raj, Center replied after a pause that could only be deliberate. nor does he have my capacity for analysis available to him. he viewed the chance of combat as not greater than one in ten, and the risk of all-out war resulting from such combat as in the same order of probability.
Jeffrey put his hand on the wooden railing. It had the sticky roughness of salt deposited since a deckhand had wiped it down this morning.
Dad thought the risk was better than living with the alternative.
At the time Jeffrey’s link through Center had showed him the scene on the bridge of the McCormick City, his own eyes had been watching Heinrich and two aides torturing a twelve-year-old boy to learn where his father, the town’s mayor, had concealed the arms from the police station.
The ship swayed again, this time from the torque of her central propeller as she started ahead dead slow.
I was so frightened . . . but I’d never have spoken to Dad again if he’d permitted a massacre like the ones I watched.
I had men like your father serving under me, Raj said. They could only guess at the things Center would have known, but they still managed to act the way I’d have done.
The City of Dubuk whistled again, long and raucously, as all three propellers began to churn water in the direction of home.
I’ve always thought those people were the greatest good fortune of my career, Raj added.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gerta Hosten spat in the dry dust of the village street.
“Leutnant, just what the fik do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“Setting the animals an example!” the young officer said.
“An example of what—how to show courage and resistance?” she asked.
The subject of their dispute hung head-down from a rope tied around his ankles and looped over a stout limb of the live oak that shaded the village well. He spat, too, in her direction, then returned to a cracked, tuneless rendition of “Imperial Glory,” the former Empire’s national anthem. Two hundred or so peasants and artisans stood and watched behind a screen of Protégé infantry; the town’s gentry, priests, and other potential troublemakers had already been swept up. The packed villagers smelled of sweat and hatred, their eyes furtive except for a few with the courage to glare. The sun beat down, hot even by Land standards on this late-summer day, but dry enough to make her throat feel gritty.
Gerta sighed, drew her Lauter automatic, jacked the slide, and fired one round into the hanging man’s head from less than a meter distance. The flat elastic crack echoed back from the whitewashed stone houses surrounding the village square and from the church that dominated it. The civilians jerked back with a rippling murmur; the Protégé troopers watched her with incurious ox-eyed calm. Blood and bone fragments and glistening bits of brain spattered across the feet of the Protégé who had been waiting with a barbed whip. He gaped in surprise, lifting one foot and then another in slow bewilderment.
“Hauptman—”
“Shut up.” Gerta ejected the magazine, returned it to the pouch on her belt beside the holster, and snapped a fresh one into the well of the pistol. “Come.”
She put her hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder and guided him aside a few steps, leaning toward him confidentially. Young as he was, she didn’t think he mistook the smile on her face for an expression of friendliness; on the other hand, she was a full captain and attached to General Staff Intelligence, so he’d probably listen at least a little.
“What exactly did you have planned?” she said.
“Why . . . ammunition was found in the animal’s dwelling. I was to execute him, shoot five others taken at random, and then burn the village.”
Gerta sighed again. “Leutnant, the logic of our communication with the animals is simple.” She clenched one hand and held it before his nose. “It goes like this: ‘Dog, here is my fist. Do what I want, or I will hit you with it.'”