Ascending - James Alan Gardner [72]
Dr. Havel muttered under his breath, “If the League lets you.”
Festina nodded. “True. The biggest danger isn’t fighting a scruffy bunch of outlaws; it’s afterward, when you find out whether the League accepts your actions. The bad guys damned near always have innocent hostages aboard their ships, so the navy can’t just leap into an indiscriminate fire-fight. You try to negotiate, which seldom works, then you try blockading, then maybe a sneak attack to grab the enemy with your ship’s tractors…and nine times out of ten it still comes down to a shoot-out where you blast the bastards to bat-shit.
“Afterward, you ask yourself scary questions: did we really do our best to save sentient lives, or is the League going to hand us a death sentence when we reach deep space? Even worse, did we really clean up a nest of homicidal maniacs, or were those so-called terrorists actually high-minded dissenters against some corrupt local regime…and the fat-assed generalissimos fed our navy a pack of lies so we’d wipe out their squeaky clean opposition.” Festina shrugged. “You can never be sure. The only way to learn if you did the right thing is to head home; if the League doesn’t kill you, you’re a bona fide hero.”
“But even if the League doesn’t kill you,” Dr. Havel said, “they may kill the person next to you.” He dropped his gaze. “Admiral Ramos hasn’t mentioned what usually happens after our navy blows some ship from the sky. Even if you think you’ve pulled off a textbook operation, the League still executes a few people in your crew. Maybe those folks liked the killing too much—or maybe they didn’t do their best to encourage a peaceful surrender. Maybe the League are secretly sadists and they kill a couple crew members at random to keep everyone else nervous. You never know: God forbid the League should explain its actions. All you can say for sure is that the nice woman who always ate lunch with you, and the funny guy from engineering who had a new joke every day…they both got executed by the League and you’re still alive.”
His voice carried such bitterness, we all stared at him. The doctor did not say more. It occurred to me that a man who laughs at the least opportunity may not be half so jolly as he seems.
Avoidance
“Well,” said Festina in a quiet voice, “we won’t give anyone the chance to shoot us. Royal Hemlock will stay far away from Technocracy star systems; even if the council orders the rest of the fleet to vaporize us on sight, we’ll never come within target range.”
“Then how shall we defeat the villains?” I asked.
“We’ll go public,” Festina said. “Loud, brash, and the sooner the better. Before I came down here, I asked Captain Kapoor to contact news agencies on the closest planet to us: a Cashling world named Jalmut. We’ll record our testimony here on Hemlock, transmit everything to the Cashlings, and let them blare it across the galaxy.” She smiled grimly. “I like the idea of putting out the news through nonhumans; it’s less likely the fleet will be able to get to them.”
“Get to them?” Havel gulped. “What do you mean?”
“Bribe them, intimidate them, tie them up in red tape. Every human news agency has a few people who’ve been secretly bought by the navy.” She glanced over at Uclod, still huddled against Lajoolie. “That must be how the Admiralty learned what Grandma Yulai was planning: she approached