He brings down both fists against the podium, slamming the wood so hard, the nearest reporters jump with shock. “I have already sent a message to our embassy on Vishnu. I’ve ordered embassy officials and students loyal to the POPPA party to identify Granger agents working on Vishnu and Mali. Once we have rooted out the identity of these off-world murderers, we will crack open the network they have created in our midst and destroy it without hesitation, pity, or remorse. They have shown none to us. We will burn their bodies to ashes and sow their land with salt. And I swear to God and all the devils of hell, I will no longer feed enemy soldiers and dissidents whose sole aim is the destruction of this government.
“Under my authority as president and commander in chief of Jefferson’s armed forces, I hereby order P-Squadron commanders to eliminate all enemies of the state currently held in custody. We will not waste our precious food resources on hardened butchers who want the rest of us dead. By God, we will not even waste ammunition on them. The people’s hard-earned taxes must pay for ammunition to launch an aggressive assault into rebel territory. I therefore direct commandants of prisons and work camps to find alternative means of dispatching the enemy soldiers and traitors already in custody. Use whatever means necessary to comply with this directive. Food resources currently earmarked for feeding traitors must be reallocated to support a new division of federal troops, which is being assembled as we speak, under the command of General Milo Akbarr, Commandant of Internal Security Forces.”
I surmise from this statement that General Akbarr is preparing an assault on suspected Granger strongholds in the Damisi Mountain range. I believe this assault to be misguided, since I do not believe that blame for today’s blast can be laid on the Granger rebellion. There are several good reasons for this conclusion.
It does not fit with Commodore Oroton’s modus operandi, which has demonstrated again and again his dedication to taking out only those individuals proven by their own actions to be corrupt and dangerous to Granger survival. Oroton has taken great care, in fact, to spare the lives of innocents in close proximity. I cannot believe that a commander as shrewd as Commodore Oroton would have authorized an attack of this magnitude, understanding as he does that any such attack would bring down the wrath of the entire POPPA party machine. He is no fool. I refuse to believe that such a commander would deliberately provoke the retribution that is, at this moment, falling on the heads of disarmed and vulnerable Grangers.
No. Commodore Oroton did not engineer, orchestrate, or approve today’s bombing. There are too many people already in custody — and far too many more who shortly will be in custody — to risk those prisoners’ lives in a guaranteed bloodbath. By my calculation, which is doubtless lower than the actual number, there are three quarters of a million people in custody at work camps, holding facilities, and local jails. These people have no defense. Commodore Oroton knows this.
Therefore, the wildcat broadcast taking credit for the attack can, I believe, be taken at face value. There is a separate, urban-based movement, with a far more ruthless approach than Oroton’s. I do not believe that Grangers can be implicated, let alone blamed, for today’s bombing. That does not appear to matter to Vittori Santorini, who apparently has no intention of discovering who was ultimately responsible for today’s blast. The legacy of Vice President Nassiona’s death will make a search unnecessary, since he has vowed to arrest anyone disagreeing with him, whether a person is a Granger or an urban dissident.
I predict overtures from the Rat Guard Militia to Oroton’s Granger guerillas, to create an alliance that will, if allowed to blossom, prove fatal to POPPA and its leaders. Unless, of course, I am restored to some semblance of battlefield readiness in time to stop the inevitable slaughter.
While I wait, that slaughter begins.
II
“Absolutely not!”
Kafari glared up at Dinny Ghamal, whose violent objection to her plan burned like hellfire in his eyes. She measured him with one long, ice-cold stare. “Mister, I don’t recall anyone electing you commander of this rebellion.”
Dinny’s skin was dark enough, anger didn’t show up as the bright flush that stained lighter complexions crimson, but there was no mistaking the anger that turned jaw muscles to iron and flared his nostrils. He bit down on the worst of the retort she could see balanced on the tip of his tongue, bit down and held it. When he could control the words trying to explode into the hot sunlight, he spoke with rigid formality. “Sir, we can’t afford the risk. If we mount a rescue operation — any rescue — it’ll have to be in the next few minutes or there won’t be anything to rescue but corpses—”
“Which is exactly why we’re going in!” Kafari snarled.
“Hear me out!”
Kafari was on the ragged edge of shouting at him for insubordination when she saw the anger in his eyes shift, almost imperceptibly, into something else. Something dreadful. Stark fear. For her. She clacked her teeth together and breathed hard for several seconds. “All right, soldier,” she finally growled, “make it fast. People are already dying out there.”
“I know,” he groaned. The memory of his mother’s death drew a veil of shadows across his eyes. “Believe me, I know. But if we hit those camps now, in the middle of the afternoon, we’ll have to move openly, in daylight. If the satellites don’t pick us up, you can bet your next paycheck some P-Squadder manning a radar array will. Even if we do nothing but fire high-angle mortars or launch ballistic missiles from hiding, they’ll track the flight path back to the point of launch. If we run for it — which we’ll have to do, once the shooting starts — they’ll pinpoint these camps within minutes. And I wouldn’t give a snowball’s chance for the lives of any Granger caught within a hundred kilometer radius of our base camps. If we try to stop the massacres, we’ll risk losing the entire rebellion.”
It was soundly reasoned. Kafari couldn’t fault him on that. She’d already considered every single argument he’d made. If this had been any other soldier — even Anish Balin — she would’ve simply overruled his objections and ordered him to comply or else. But this wasn’t any other soldier. It was Dinny Ghamal. She tried to find the right words to explain, because she needed Dinny’s support, not just grudging obedience to orders.
“Simon once told me there comes a point in every battlefield commander’s career,” she said softly, “where the price for choosing safety — personal safety or the safety of one’s command, one’s troops — comes with too high a price tag. I started this war because I watched the brutal massacre of helpless people. Now there’s another massacre underway, only it’s far worse, this time. They’re not running over a few hundred protestors, they’re systematically executing seven-hundred fifty thousand helpless civilians. This is what we’re fighting the rebellion for, the whole reason we’re out here. If we fail these people, if we don’t even lift a finger to help them, we might as well just shoot ourselves and spare POPPA the trouble of doing it for us.”
Dinny winced.
Kafari said, as gently as possible, “It isn’t as suicidal as it looks, at first glance. Sonny’s out of commission—”