The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Spartans! They have killed the King! The Helots have killed the King!”

“Thank God!” Lieutenant Beeson said.

“Beeson?” Ciotti said.

“It wasn’t us, it was the Helots,” Beeson said. “Colonel Farley’s right, sir, we’re on the wrong side.”

“Farley, I will overlook—”

“No, sir, no you won’t, because I won’t back off,” Farley said. “Colonel, I can’t take this. I’m relieving you of command. Bannister, general orders, all units. Cease operations against the Spartans, and assist the Spartans against those barbarians.”

Bannister stood frozen.

“Do it and I’ll have you in a cell with this mutineer,” Ciotti said. “Sergeant Major.”

“Sir?”

“Please conduct Colonel Farley to the Provost Marshal for confinement. Bannister, order the renewed assault on Fort Plataia.”

Bannister didn’t move.

Neither did Sergeant Major Kramer.

“Spartans! They have killed the King!”

Ciotti looked around wildly. His pistol was hung neatly with his uniform tunic in the cloak room. “Sergeant Major—”

Kramer shook himself, as if to wake up. “No, sir.”

“Sergeant, you’ve been with me twenty years!”

“I’m with you now, Colonel. I’ll always be with you. But—we’re on the wrong side, Colonel, it’s the wrong fucking side, and you know it, sir, you have to know it.”

Farley nodded slowly. “Sergeant Major, I think Colonel Ciotti has had a mild stroke. He needs rest. Please take him to his quarters and look after him. Major Bannister, please send that order.”

Bannister nodded slowly. He raised the microphone. “All units,” he said. “Attention to orders.”

When Colonel Karantov and his Fleet Marine guards arrived ten minutes later, he found the 77th in full cooperation with the Spartan forces. The battle of Sparta City was over.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A well-hidden secret of the principate had been revealed: it was possible, it seemed, for an emperor to be chosen outside Rome.

—Tacitus, HISTORIES, 1,4:

* * *

Surveying this watershed year of 1941, from which mankind has descended into its present predicament, the historian cannot but be astounded by the decisive role of individual will. Hitler and Stalin played chess with humanity. In all essentials, it was Stalin’s personal insecurity, his obsessive fear of Germany, that led him to sign the fatal pact, and it was his greed and illusion—no one else’s—which kept it operative, a screen of false security behind which Hitler prepared his murderous spring. It was Hitler, no one else, who determined on a war of annihilation against Russia, canceled then postponed it, and reinstated it as the centerpiece of his strategy, as, how, and when he chose. Neither man represented irresistible or even potent historical forces. Neither at any stage conducted any process of consultation with their peoples, or even spoke for self-appointed collegiate bodies. Both were solitary and unadvised in the manner in which they took these fateful steps, being guided by personal prejudices of the crudest kind and by their own arbitrary visions. Their lieutenants obeyed blindly or in apathetic terror and the vast nations over which they ruled seem to have had no choice but to stumble in their wake toward mutual destruction. We have here the very opposite of historical determinism—the apotheosis of the single autocrat. Thus it is, when the moral restraints of religion and tradition, hierarchy and precedent, are removed, the power to suspend or unleash catastrophic events does not devolve on the impersonal benevolence of the masses but falls into the hands of men who are isolated by the very totality of their evil natures.

—Paul Johnson, Modern Times:

The World from the Twenties to

the Nineties (rev. ed. 1991)

* * *

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

—Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson,

Terminiello v. Chicago 337 US 1, 37(1949)

* * *

As with any complex event, many factors were important in the transformation of Sparta from a nation founded by university professors seeking to establish the good society to the nucleus of what is formally called the Spartan Hegemony and which in all but name is the first interstellar empire; but analysts are universally agreed that much of the change can be traced to the will and intent of one man, Lysander I, Collins King of Sparta. It remains for us to examine how Lysander, originally very much in agreement with the Spartan Founders that the best policy for Sparta would be an armed neutrality on the Swiss model, came to embrace the necessity of empire.

We must also understand that although Lysander did accept the necessity of an empire uniting a number of planets, he did not come to it willingly. Indeed, it was thrust upon him in a surprising manner . . .

—From the preface to From Utopia to Imperium:

A History of Sparta from Alexander I

to the Accession of Lysander,

by Caldwell C. Whitlock Ph.D.

(University of Sparta Press, 2220)

* * *

The war room was nearly deserted. Harv sat motionless at one end, and Lysander was in the center, his head bowed over the displays, although it was doubtful that they gave him much information. Two orderlies and a communications technician were still on duty. The lights flickered off, then back on, as Peter entered.

“Sire.”

Lysander stared at him.

“Victory, your Majesty. The CoDominium forces have changed sides, and the Helots are defeated. More than defeated. Annihilated for the most part.”

“Thank you.” Lysander tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. He cursed. “Another hour—If the battle’s over I should go to Mother.”

“She’s under sedation at St. Thomas’s, sire,” Peter said. “And while the battle is over, there are a great many things to be done. Beginning with evacuation of the Palace. I’ve come to escort you.”

“You really believe in that atom bomb?” Lysander demanded.

“I don’t disbelieve in it,” Peter said. “I’m also ordering Fort Plataia evacuated. Just in case.”

“Good idea. A bomb here would get Government Square. St. Thomas’s—”

“Yes, sire, I’m working on that, too. We don’t have much transportation, though, and it’s not going to be easy. The Queen Mother and Graffin Melissa will be out of there in five minutes. A couple of hours to get everyone.”

“I suppose it’s best. All right, General, where shall we go?”

“With your permission, Sire, I won’t tell you until we’re on the way. We’ve checked this room many times, but still—”

Lysander shuddered. “Won’t we ever be free of those vermin? General, you have no idea how weary I am of living this way, scared of the very walls—anyway, let’s go. I trust you’ll have good communications and status displays where you’re taking me.”

Owensford led him out through the Palace. The corridors were mostly deserted. Peter tried to steer Lysander toward the back gates, but that wasn’t possible. Lysander broke free and went to the front gates. “Where?” he demanded.

Peter Owensford sighed and led him to the place where King Alexander had died. A blanket still lay on the marble steps. “It was there, sire. The Helots were going to raise their flag, but the King brought out his guards and prevented that.”

Lysander knelt and lifted the blanket to reveal the blood-stained marble. He stared across the public square, to the flagstaff where the Crowned Mountain proudly flew. “Get lights on that flag,” he said. “I want it to stay there until we can put up a statue. All right, General, let’s go.”

* * *

The command caravan was parked ten kilometers from the Palace. Most of both the Legion and Spartan military staff officers were there. Admiral Forrest waited impatiently as Lysander limped in, leaning heavily on a cane, and was seated with the assistance of two orderlies.

“Highness—uh, excuse me. Sire. General Owensford,” he began eagerly.

“I gather Ciotti is talking,” Owensford said.

“Oh, yeah. It was this way. Ciotti got the order to arrest the Legion and pronounce an interdict on Sparta. It looked legitimate enough, even though it was signed by Nguyen in Townsend’s name. What made it suspicious was the other messages he got.

“First, there was a long report on the breakup of the CoDominum. The Grand Senate is dissolved, but there’s not enough stability on Earth to have another election, and a lot of places aren’t even stable enough to appoint new Senators.”

“Jesus,” Owensford said.

“There’s more. The Senate dissolved, but apparently a small group of Senators got together again in the Senate Chamber, and declared the adjournment invalid on some technical grounds. That meant this Rump was in theory a legitimate Senate, or at least could call itself that. It proceeded to pass a number of resolutions, one of them the order to imprison all mercenaries on Sparta, another deposing Grand Admiral Lermontov and ordering his arrest.

“Then there was another message, apparently from Bronson himself as the new Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee. It promises Ciotti promotion to Lieutenant General in command of this system, provided that he gains control here.”