"I wish you'd told me before, colonel. I could have had you in charge of this whole mess from the start."
"I am also instructed to shoot you."
"In that case I'm grateful that I never tried anything. The people are getting a bit restless about this." And so am I. What's the fleet doing?
"Rebels are always popular. A focus of resentments. We can cope."
Pock was very tired. Things were obviously out of his control now. "I'm going to bed," he said.
"Fine," said the colonel, and as soon as the governor was gone he drafted a reply to the rebels.
Sixth Exchange
From: Authority
To: Traitors and Terrorists
We are not afraid to die for the glorious empire. When we are dead, you shall be dealt with. For making the threat alone, you will be executed in the most ignominious manner possible. Carry out the threat, and we assure you that every telepath in the empire will pay the price.
What, do they think the other telepaths have any kind of link with us?
They assume it, Worthing told the new captain of the fleet. And why not? They're afraid of people who can talk to each other so that no one else can hear. Don't you remember? It's not polite to whisper.
We don't have any fuel left.
I suggest we surrender.
We will burn Harper Moon.
I will burn you first, Worthing said.
Rage. The rage of eighteen other captains. We are together, they shouted in their minds. We are together against the enemy, not against each other. We must stick together.
Then a pause.
More reasoned thoughts. More careful thoughts.
The last message. It was obviously written by someone else. Probably the military. It looks as though there has been either a policy or a personnel change.
So the hell what? Whatever we do, we're dead.
So let's surrender and at least they'll make martyrs of us, Homer. suggested.
Laughter. What is this? We didn't sign on to be Jesus. We could have let them make us martyrs long ago.
And Homer Worthing knew they were right. Martyrdom did nothing, really. Who would they be dying for? Who would rally to their cause? They were already as strong as any rebellion would ever be. When they died, all the lights would go out, and the empire would be free to use telepaths as tools, then cast them away at will, with impunity.
And underlying all the mental conversation was the ever more powerful undertone of fear. Fear of death. Fear of failing. Fear that, in the end, they were helpless after all.
The imperial fleet tried another sortie. This time there was no resistance. The rebels were entirely out of fuel. The imperials immediately attacked. At the end of the battle, even hampered as they were, the rebels had lost only seven ships to the nine lost by the imperial fleet. But the imperial fleet could afford losses. And now there were only twelve telepaths left, and they were lost. On the next battle, or the next, they would die.
Seventh Exchange
From: SWIP-e33
To: Governor Pock
If you have any humanity in you at all, governor, let us refuel and leave. All we want to do is leave settled space. We threaten no one. We harm no one. And in exchange for this we're being murdered in your skies for lack of the one thing you can spare without any loss-- a few million liters of your ocean. You are destroying us by your unwillingness to let us land. You are murdering us.
From: Authority
To: The traitors
You are out of fuel. You will be destroyed in a matter of days. We regard it as a point of particular pride that we, a minor planetary system, will have been chiefly responsible for the empire's glorious victory. Your begging is undignified. Surrender, and you may yet be spared.
The second battle ended, and now only Homer Worthing and two other telepaths were alive.
The panic and rage were getting control now. In any battlefield the death of a soldier's comrades is agonizing, terrifying. The wounded scream, and the music of their dying is madness to all who hear. But fingers can be put in ears, minds can be closed, eyes can focus on the enemy ahead and the battle can go on.
But what if the screams are silent? What if all the fear is played in every soldier's mind, and then the pain, and then the terror of staring into blackness and seeing all too well what waits there?
There is no hiding from the madness then.
Homer Worthing sat before the clean, shining console that commanded the stars and told a great ship how to hurtle through space. But now the ship was helpless, alive but unable to move. And because he had come to think of the ship as an extension of himself, Homer felt that arms and legs had been amputated, that his eyes had been cut out. He tried to close his mind to his own terror and the terror of his friends. His own he could control; his friends were less cooperative.
They've killed us, he kept thinking. They've killed us, and they sit safely on their planets gloating. They have murdered us and we have the power to destroy them, but we've withheld that power and for our mercy we are dying and we will get no thanks for it at all, no honor, no gratitude. In their inhumanity they take advantage of our humanity and because weare decent and cannot murder innocent people in cold blood we can be murdered in our innoceacce.
For a moment he wanted to press the three simple buttons that would release the mammoth fusion devices that would turn the three planets of Harper system into little suns. It would take five minutes, eight, and eleven for the three missiles to get within striking range of the three targets. Then, long before they were in any danger from planet-launched weapons, they would detonate, and the planets would be ended.
But he made the mistake of picturing the ending in his mind. He thought of the woman baking bread for her husband coming home from the field, and how the bread would indeed bake, but would never be tasted. He thought of children in a schoolroom wrestling with a problem that, perhaps, one of them would suddenly understand, and that one would leap to his feet, would say, "I've got it," and in that moment the understanding would be gone, and the grasping of the idea would have meant nothing.
They knew he could not do it.
He heard one of the others reach his own decision, saw the fusion devices launched. But he fired his own projectiles, which could do what planet-based weapons could not. He stopped the fusion devices in their flight, deflected them, cast them into the sun where their action would cause, perhaps, a solar flare and little more.
His friend wept in rage and frustration and then the next attack came, and there was no meeting it, and Homer's friends were both snuffed out almost instantly, and Homer knew a terrible moment as he saw the projectiles homing in on his own craft, projectiles he could not dodge. It would take four minutes for the first to arrive.
During the first minute he thought frantically of his wife, who would be wakened from her somec and informed. He could hear her cry out with grief, and in his mind he reached out and held her and comforted her hut he knew, in fact, that there would be no comfort for her then.
During the second minute he listened to the minds of the nearest imperial captains. Their thoughts were simple. Victory. Reward. Fame. I made it. That over and over again: I made it. I did it. I did it. Let it be my missile that strikes first. And Homer longed to shout (but they would never hear) are you heroes? What kind of heroes are you who can't kill unless someone ties down the prey and disarms it and stretches out its neck for the knife?