Capitol

BURNING

With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

--Judges 15:16

There were exactly twenty ships, and they were exactly alike-vast cylinders, kilometers long and kilometers wide, with slender needles sticking out of one end. The huge cylinders were propulsion; the entire payload was in the needle. It was ridiculously uneconomical; energy costs were phenomenal; the ship's pilots spent most of their lives asleep, allowed by the drug somec to dreamlessly pass the thrice-lightspeed journeys between stars because otherwise they would grow old and die somewhere around the first tenth of the average trip. But the ships took them between the stars, and so they went.

From the outside, of course, all starships looked the same-- there had been no improvement on the fundamental design in centuries. But these ships were different.

First Exchange

From: Starfleet SWIP-e33

To: System-- Harper. Authority: Planets Harper, Harper Moon, Stoddard

Request permission to take on supplies. Captain, Homer Worthing.

From: System-- Harper. Authority: Planets Harper, Harper Moon, Stoddard

Permission denied. How the hell stupid do you think we are? Governor, Dallan Pock.

"The bastards," said Captain Worthing.

"Agreed," spattered back the radio. With typical precision the twenty ships of the fleet had already gone into orbit around the three planets of the Harper system.

"Looks like radio has finally caught up with us."

"Or one of Mother's little messenger ships."

"If it's here, I don't see it, and you don't hide a starship."

"Maybe it went away again. We have burned several dozen of Mother's best ships. Can we turn this off?"

"Sure," Worthing said, and the radio fell silent. Instead, Worthing leaned back on his chair and began the other kind of contact with all nineteen of the ship's captains in his fleet.

We're in a precarious position, they told him.

Agreed, he answered.

We're nearly out of supplies. We've been playing this game for two hundred years. These ships were meant to put into port.

Then we must certainly get our supplies here, Worthing replied.

They're resisting. That must mean they're expecting an imperial fleet soon.

This much is obvious.

Well, then, Captain Worthing, what the bloody hell are we going to do?

We, my dear friends, are going to scare their little heads off.

And if they don't scare?

Then we're in trouble, yes?

Second Exchange

From: SWIP-e33

To: Our unwise planetside friends

We are a fully equipped fleet. We do not ask, we demand supplies within 24 hours, with unencumbered right to land, or we will be forced to use our armaments against you. There isn't a weapon you have that can harm us. We can defeat any imperial fleet, in case you're expecting rescue. You know who we are. You know what we can do. Our patience is not infinite.

From: Authority

To: The rebels

We don't want any trouble. We know that you can't land anything if we don't want it to land, and we know you don't have any armaments that work against planets. It's a stalemate. So why don't you just go away?

"They aren't going," said the colonel to Governor Pock.

"I wish they would," sighed Pock, genuinely distressed.

"Maybe they aren't going because they don't have enough supplies to go on to anyplace else."

"I'm quite sure that's precisely why they're staying, Colonel. But that doesn't change our situation one bit. Do you know what Mother has done to the other governors who've cooperated in any way-- in any way-- with the rebels?"

"It's practically a humanitarian decision. They need supplies. They need water for the engines. We have eighteen oceans, among the three planets. Why not let them down?"

"Do you know what they've done to the chief military officer wherever the rebels have received cooperation?"

The colonel shook his head.

"Governors just lose their jobs and their somec. Soldiers get shot, Colonel."

"They aren't really doing that, are they?"

"On six planets. I'm just very grateful that radio has finally got ahead of them. At least we're warned. And the message said that the imperial fleet would be getting here momentarily."

"Which could mean anytime this year."

"What else do you propose? The only weapon the rebels have that could hurt us is the fusion bomb, and that would burn over the entire planet-- all the planets. They'd never use that. No one has ever systematically killed all the civilians. So we're safe. We'll just sit here and let the fleet come and take care of them and we'll never have to get involved at all."

And, very pleased with himself, Governor Pock closed his eyes to rest. The colonel left.

In the observatories, radioscopes began noting the arrival of a large group of starships. The fleet was already here.

Third Exchange:

From: INFL-c89

To: Rebel fleet SWIP-e33

Surrender. You are outnumbered, out of supplies, unable to maneuver, and we can outwait you. Why prolong matters? Captain, Fit Treece.

From: Homer

To: Fit

You know us, Fit. Hell, I saved your life a few times. You know what the bastards tried to do to us. We've proved by now that we have no intention of joining the enemy-- or of surrendering to Mother. So why not just let us go off on our own and forget this stupid war?

From: INFL-c89

To: Rebel fleet SWIP-e33

Her Imperial Majesty cannot brook rebellion. But if you surrender, by jettisoning crews in landers, and blowing up the ships behind you, you will receive a fair and lenient trial, and perhaps the death penalty can be avoided. Certainly we can refrain from confiscating property. And we can wait forever. We are fully supplied.

They've got us in a box, Worthing thought to the others.

We've got to do something. You know the bastards'll kill us if they catch us. We're the only rebellion in history that's lasted more than a day. We've lasted two centuries. They've got to make an example of us.

But there's nothing we can do, Worthing answered.

We can threaten to burn the damn planets.

But we'd never do it. Why make threats we'll never carry out? Besides, they know as well as we do that if we burn the planets, we can't get water from them, and then what have we accomplished?

Then let's threaten to burn one. The others'll go along.

Worthing refused, adamantly, shouting, if it were possible. Never. No. That is an atrocity and I won't brook it. If we do that, we don't deserve to survive.

What about me? one captain asked. I'm going to be out of fuel in a couple of days. What about me?

I don't know, Worthing answered.

Maybe they don't mean it. Surely they wouldn't shoot us down.

Surely. Are you willing to risk your life to find out?

Long pause in the thought conversation. A turmoil of emotions. Then:

Yeah. I'm willing.

And so the huge fueling craft broke away from the payload section of the ship-- huge, in relation to the antlike man inside, who was the whole crew of the ship and the fueling craft. In relation to the starship itself, of course, the fueler was absurdly small.

The fueler descended gracefully into the atmosphere of Harper Moon, the smallest of the three planets. It was instantly detected by the radar watch of the system military authority. "Well, Governor Pock, will you give the order?"

"I don't want to do it, dammit! Why should a peaceful little system like ours have to kill a man?"

"Because the damned rebels will be out of the sky sometime soon anyway, and the imperial fleet will be here forever!"

"All right, then. Kill him." And Pock left the room, furious at having been compelled to make such a decision. He was trained to administer a vast network of bureaucracy. He was not trained to cope with an interstellar rebellion by Mother's most brilliant ship captains.

The radars locked in. The missiles were launched. They intercepted the relatively slower fueler long before it reached the ocean. It erupted in a ball of flame. No particles large enough to notice survived to reach the ocean.

He's dead, Homer pointed out unnecessarily to the others.

I didn't think they'd do it, the bastards, someone else commented.

I say tell 'em we'll burn 'em. If they plan to take part in the war, then let's bring it right to home.

We won't burn anybody.

But we can sure as hell say we'll burn 'em, can't we?

Fourth Exchange

From: SWIP-e33

To: The assassins on Harper system

You're not the only ones who can kill. We now have fusion devices ready to launch at Harper Moon. You have four hours to grant permission for fuelers to land or we will burn the planet.

From: Authority

To: The rebels

Look, we warned you. Please go away. Surrender or something. How can we put it any plainer? You can't get onto the planet. Burning the planets, even if you would really do it, would accomplish nothing-- how could you get any water then? And you'd be hunted to the ends of the universe. No one will ever forgive planet burners. Right now, you might very well be forgiven.

"That communique was pathetic," the colonel told the governor.

"What, I should have been formal?" Pock retorted. "Official language doesn't communicate. I just want this whole thing to go away."

"It won't," said the colonel.

"But you will," answered Pock. "Until you can put a weapon in my hand that allows me to stop them from burning any planet in the system, I have no intention of following your insane advice and writing insane patriotic messages. Why antagonize them?"

"The only thing that will stop them from getting I antagonized is giving them water, which we won't do," the colonel answered.

"Do you think I don't know that?"

The imperial fleet was now close enough to entirely encircle the system-- and the rebels. In previous attempts at encirclement, of course, the rebels, being telepaths-- that was the point of the war, wasn't it-- were able to anticipate every move and broke such circles like child's play. But now they were nearly out of fuel-- they had no maneuvering room; they could not get to another system; they had to either get water from Harper system or surrender.

And in the meantime, the imperial fleet began making feints and false attacks and swift diving runs. The rebels had to react, had to move their ships, for the telepaths could clearly see that the fleet commander would instantly follow up any momentary advantage. And when the rebels stopped responding, he would know that they were out of fuel and would attack. Without fuel to maneuver the ship, telepathy was no longer an advantage.

We're doomed, they told Homer Worthing.

We knew that was a possibility from the start. And if we'd stayed with them, we would have been doomed anyway-- after all, didn't the enemy kill all their telepaths? They didn't trust us, with good reason, and now we're stuck.

Brilliant, somebody said. We know we're stuck. But we don't have to be.

And Homer Worthing felt his authority slipping away from him. What do you mean, we don't have to be? he asked.

I mean that this planet system isn't neutral. Our lack of supplies is the empire's most potent weapon against us. That makes the planets hostile adversaries. Attacking them is legitimate. Theyare no longer civilians.

Just try explaining that to all the innocent people you'd be killing.

Then let them explain to us why they're so eager to kill us? If we had a weapon that would only kill generals, we'd use it. But we don't. But we do have a weapon that will definitely kill the generals-- and everybody else. So let's be ready to use that.

Not while I lead this fleet.

All those in favor?

For the moment, the majority voted to keep Worthing as fleet commander. But only a majority, and not an overwhelming one.

And as time passed and they maneuvered more and more, all but four ships ran out of fuel.

Fifth Exchange

From: SWIP-e33

To: The planetside enemy

By refusing to supply us and by attacking a ship attempting to refuel and destroying it, you have removed yourselves from civilian immunity. Perhaps it will convince you that we are serious if we tell you that Homer Worthing is no longer captain of the fleet. The new captain is determined to burn you within four hours unless we have a positive response.

"That means," the colonel gloated, "that they're nearly out of fuel! We've got them where we want them!"

"That means," Governor Pock said, "that they're cornered and desperate and may very well do anything, including burning us to a cinder."

"Nonsense. That wouldn't help them and they know it. They've lost-- they'll simply have to admit it and surrender."

"They've lost, and we made them lose," the governor said. "What animal doesn't take one last swipe at the hunter, even though he's already dying?"

"You've shot down too many skeeters, Governor," said the colonel.

"We'll be destroyed. I don't want to get these planets involved."

"A bit too late, isn't it? What do you want to do, send them water?"

"I've been considering it."

"Well, stop considering it, Pock. I have authority to remove you from office and impose military law the moment you attempt to in any way aid the rebels." The presence of the fleet had stiffened his spine.

"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?

During the third minute he looked around the cockpit of the ship and wondered what he was doing there, what in the world he was doing in a starship two centuries away from his home on Capitol and why hadn't he stayed there and kept his damned gift a secret and not joined the Service at all, where they could teach him to enhance his gift, teach him to be a pilot, teach him to win victories for the empire, and then, when suddenly it became an embarrassment to be breaking the Convention by using telepaths, cast him off, execute him as they had done the first dozen telepathic pilots who had home to port, declare him a traitor for having served them so well. In his mind he undid it and lived a complete life as the scientist he had thought he wanted to be back home, with several children and much honor and many friends but then he looked at the console and the computer told him he had a minute to go and the alarms rang loudly and his ears insisting that he DO SOMETHING NOW but there was nothing that he could do because he couldn't even turn the ship.

During the fourth minute, at the beginning of it, he cast his attention randomly toward Harper, the nearest of the three planets, randomly sorted a mind, randomly listened, randomly sought for what the common man on Harper was thinking of all this and hoping that in the man's mind there was some thought that would make the battle and the death stand for something, be worthwhile somehow.

The mind he found was that of an engineer who was leaning back in his chair wondering what in the world he could do about his mistress, who was also the boss's secretary, and who was now threatening to get revenge for his infidelity to her by telling the boss who it was who really designed the Hadgate bridge. Can I, wondered the engineer, soothe this over by getting her to bed again? She has no self-control in bed. And the engineer reached for a book.

Homer could not bear it. Bad enough to know that the military was gloating. Bad enough to hear the death agonies of his friends. But to know that an intelligent, responsible human being did not give a damn that not far above his head twenty good men had died for daring to want to resist the empire's attempt to murder them, that was unbearable. That was tho ultimate wound that they could cause Homer Worthing, and he screamed, "You're killing me, you bastard!" and his fingers launched the fusion devices. A moment later he changed his mind. A moment later his reason returned and he knew he could never commit such murder. But as his fingers reached for the controls that would abort the fusion devices, the first enemy projectile reached his ship, and he died in fire.

The three fusion devices went their way.

The imperial fleet was not prepared for this. It was so unthinkable, to use those weapons against a planet when their purpose was merely to destroy a ship without hitting it directly-- so unthinkable to commit such an atrocity, that they were utterly unprepared and even though they fired the intercepting projectiles, they were not quick enough. One of them intercepted the device heading for Harper Moon. But that was not enough.

Stoddard went first, the planet visibly rocking under the shock of having a tenth of its surface instantly converted into an inferno of corrupting atoms breaking down into their constituent parts. After a moment, the reaction spread throughout the planet's core, and it simultaneously exploded and collapsed in a reaction not particularly different from a star, though there was not enough matter to provide enough energy to sustain the reaction, and after only a few seconds of being a star the matter collapsed into a hot, glowing ball of fairly well-mixed elements.

The Stoddard reaction was over before the projectile reached Harper. The performance was repeated, with the addition of a tongue of fire reaching out to lick all the way around Harper Moon. Harper Moon did not explode. But every living thing on its surface died, and the ocean leaped into the atmosphere and then collapsed again, washing away all soil, all hints that anything other than water and rock had ever existed on the surface of the world.

And then all was still.

The captain of tht imperial fleet looked at the starfinder's graphic portrayal of what the ship's instruments had seen. In dozens of other ships, other captains were doing the same: they knew the horror felt by those who, millennia before, had walked into death camps and seen stacks of corpses and soldiers casually murdering civilians and piles of gold teeth and false teeth and a lampshade made of human skin. Only in this case eight billion people had died.

And they were ready to carry the word back to the empire: that the telepaths, the Swipes, had committed an atrocity beside which all other cruelties of humanity in the past became negligible.

The empire would rock with the news, and mobs would hunt down known telepaths and tear them apart in vengeance for the vast crime their kind had committed. Almost a hundred thousand telepaths would die.

But for a brief moment, sitting in front of his starfinder, Captain Fil Treece of the imperial fleet could not figure out why anybody's life should have been any more valuable than Homer Worthing's, and why the murder of one person should be good policy, while the murder of eight billion should be an inhuman crime.

Instead, he remembered a practical joke he and Homer Worthing had played on a professor in pilot school. They had programmed the class battle computer to respond incorrectly to any program that would result in death or damage to any ship. For three hours the professor tried to force the computer to carry out battle instructions, but it would not. Finally the professor realized that the mistakes were not in his program, and he turned to Homer and Fil (since practical jokes usually originated in their little circle of friends) and said, "May every ship you pilot have a computer that acts like this."

At the time it had been a sobering thought-- almost a wish for their certain deaths.

But now, Fil thought, I wish to God it had come true.

He led his fleet from the dead star system and soon they were passing light as if it were standing still. On the way back toward Capitol, their ships woke them from their somec sleep-- an enemy colony ship was heading past them toward a distant star system. According to standing orders, the fleet dispersed: three ships blasted the colony ship out of the sky along with all three hundred or so sleeping passengers aboard the unarmed craft, while the rest of the fleet continued toward Capitol.

And back on Capitol they gave Fil and his fleet medals for having killed the rebels and citations for having destroyed the enemy colonists.

"But I never meant to kill anybody," Fil said to the official who had guided him through the ceremony.

"Shut up," the official responded quietly. "Everybody says that. But you bastards take the medals just the sqme."

"I hope a raise in salary goes along with it," Fil said. And it did, allowing him to purchase a permanent apartment on Capitol, much to his wife's pleasure. Shp decorated it in ancient Chinese style, and every time he was in port they drank tea together and made love afterward on a mat on the floor and Fil was as happy as a person can reasonably expect to be.

And the people of the empire, learning of the terrible crime of the SWIP-e33 fleet, murdered almost a hundred thousand known or suspected or (at least) accused telepaths. Almost everyone agreed it was just. After all, hadn't the telepaths committed an atrocity?