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Of course they have, Little One. What, after all, could go wrong in wormhole space?
"Nothing, but it's the nature of the human beast to worry. At least I don't have to feel guilty about what we're carrying."
Do not be foolish. There is neither cause nor room for "guilt" in whatever we may do in pursuit of your vengeance.
Alicia winced at Tisiphone's absolute assurance. She could forget just how alien the Fury was for days at a stretch, but then Tisiphone came out with something like that. It wasn't posturing. It was simply the literal truth as she saw it.
"I'm afraid I can't agree with you on that one. I want justice, not blind vengeance, and I'd rather not hurt anyone I don't have to."
Justice is a delusion, Little One. The Fury's mental voice dripped scorn. Your people have learned much, but you have forgotten much, as well.
"You might profit by a little forgetting-or learning-of your own."
Such as?
"Such as the fact that simple vengeance is a self-sustaining reaction. When you 'avenge' yourself on someone, you usually give someone else an excuse to seek vengeance on you.
And you think your precious justice does not? You are wiser than that, Alicia DeVries-or would be, if you but let yourself!
"You're missing the point. If a society settles for naked vengeance, it all comes down to who has the bigger club. Justice provides the rules that make it possible for people to live together with some semblance of decency."
Bah! "Justice" is no more than vengeance dressed up in fine clothes! There can be no justice without punishment-or would you say that Colonel Watts was treated "justly" for the wrong he did your company?
Alicia's lip curled in an involuntary snarl, but she closed her eyes and fought it back as she felt the Fury's amusement.
"No, I wouldn't call that justice, or disagree that punishment is a part of justice. I won't even pretend vengeance isn't exactly what I wanted from that son-of-a-bitch. But there has to be guilt-and he was guilty as sin-before punishment. A society can't just go around smashing people without determining that the one punished is actually the guilty party. That's the worst kind of capriciousness-and a damned good recipe for anarchy."
What care I for anarchy? Tisiphone demanded. Nor am I "society." Nor, for that matter, are you. You are an individual, seeking redress for yourself and for others who ca
"I didn't say it was. I only said I don't want to hurt i
So you say, Little One, but you delude yourself. It is compassion, not reason, which truly shapes your thought-misplaced compassion for those who deserve none. This is the truth of what you feel.
Alicia's face twisted as the Fury relaxed i
The barriers snapped back, and she slumped in her chair, gasping and beaded with sweat.
You bitch! Megaira snarled. If you ever try that again, I'll-!
Peace, Megaira, the Fury interrupted almost gently. I will not harm her. But she must know herself if we are to succeed. There is no room for confusion or self-blindness in what we do.
Alicia trembled in the couch, nerve ends shuddering, and closed her thoughts off from the others. She needed the silence, needed a moment to breathe and recover from the side of herself she'd just seen. She believed what she'd told Tisiphone-more than believed, knew it was true-and yet …
She opened her eyes and looked down at her hands. They were slick and wet, coated in dripping grape pulp, and she shuddered.
Chapter Fifty-One
Commodore Howell sat on the freighter's bridge and told himself-again-that the ship was perfectly adequate for her mission. Compared to a warship, her command facilities were primitive, her defenses minimal, and her offensive weapons nonexistent, but if everything went right, that wouldn't matter, and so far the mission profile had been perfect. And much as he would have preferred being somewhere else, he had to be here for this one. They needed a success to blunt the sting of Elysium, and his people's morale required that he be here in person.
He watched the display, face expressionless, as the freighter and her two sister ships settled into parking orbit around Ringbolt. Control's information on the El Grecan fleet maneuvers had been right on the money, and the only ground defenses were purely anti-air weapons sited to cover Adcock Field, the main spaceport outside the city of Raphael. They had the reach to cover the city's airspace, but they wouldn't have the chance.
Howell's eyes swiveled to the reason they wouldn't. The freighters' transponders identified them as Fleet transports-courtesy of the ID codes Control had provided-escorted by a heavy cruiser. Now all four ships were in position, riding geosynchronous orbit directly above Raphael, and a signal in the commodore's synth-link told him HMS Intolerant's weapons were locked in.
Captain Arlen Monkoto of the Monkoto Free Mercenaries, known less formally as "Monkoto's Maniacs," stepped out onto the hotel balcony and sucked in crisp, cool air. Ringbolt was a much nicer planet than El Greco, he mused, and wondered if he could convince Simon to relocate their home port here.
He looked back over his shoulder. Lieutenant Commander Hugin was on the suite com, conferring with Chief Pilaskov. The recruiting mission had gone well, and Monkoto expected Simon to be pleased when he arrived. Over a hundred experienced perso
He started to open the balcony's French windows to join Hugin, and something flashed behind him. Eye-tearing light bounced back off the window glass, and his shadow was suddenly etched stark and black against the wall.
He whirled in disbelief, trained reflexes already throwing him face-down, as a huge, white fireball devoured Adcock Field.
"Launch shuttles!" Howell barked as Intolerant's HVW obliterated the port. Each of the big transports normally mothered eight heavy-lift cargo shuttles; for this operation, they'd been replaced with twelve Bengal-class assault boats each, and thirty-six deadly attack craft shrieked downward. Thirteen hundred grim-faced raiders rode them. For many this was their first mission, and they were determined to get it right. Others were the survivors of Elysium … and they were even more determined to avoid another disaster.
Arlen Monkoto staggered erect like a punch-drunk fighter. His nerve ends jittered with echoes of heat and blast, but it must have been an HVW. If it had been a nuke or anti-matter, he'd be dead, and he was only singed a bit. Fires roared and fumed along the city's eastern edge, and he doubted there was an intact window in Raphael, but otherwise the damage hadn't been severe.
He wheeled back to the French windows and froze. He'd been wrong about the severity of the damage, an icy voice told him. The windows had been blown across the hotel suite like glittering daggers, and bloody bits of Lieutenant Commander Hugin's mutilated body were sprayed across the far wall.
Monkoto made himself pick his way into the wreckage, and his hands were a stranger's as they moved what remained of Hugin gently aside. His exec's body had protected the com unit, and Chief Pilaskov was still on it. The burly NCO was half shouting, though Monkoto's stu
Fresh explosions thundered behind the captain, and his mouth tightened as he looked over his shoulder and saw the contrails slashing down the sky.
"Can't hear you, Chief." He tapped an ear, and Pilaskov's mouth snapped shut. "It doesn't matter. Break into the ordnance order and get our people moving. The primary LZ looks like Toledo U. I'll meet you there."
Surprise was total.
Adcock Field had known the freighters and their escort were friendly. No one at the port lived long enough to realize he was wrong, and sheer shock-not disbelief so much as a desperate need to be wrong-stu
By then it was far, far too late, and Howell's raiders carried through with merciless precision. Individual shuttles peeled off and streaked in to lay smaller HVW and guided bombs on every police station and substation in the city. Entire blocks went up with them, and other shuttles swept a circle about the raider's target with rocket clusters and incendiaries. A curtain of flame sealed their objective off from relief while two more shuttles took out the militia armory, and twenty Bengals grounded on the university campus, disgorging seven hundred heavily armed raiders who charged straight for their objectives and killed anyone in their path.
Stu