The Insurrection

Horror froze his subordinates into shocked, speechless immobility as the target codes appeared on their monitors, and he heard Han's reply and waited in a private hell for the words he kne, must come.

"Fire Control!" Hodah's voice pounded in his brain.

"Yes, sir?" He was astounded he could sound so calm.

"Lock on all weapons. Prepare to fire at my cammand." "Aye, aye, sir. Locking on now." His fingers pressed the commit keys, and red lights glowed as weapon bays opened. Massive beam projectors snouted out and missiles slid into theirthe launchers, backup rounds dropping silently into the loading trays.

The ranked missiles riding the external racks woke to malevolent life, and sweat burned his eyes. He was sealed in a cage of ice and fire, for he was both a Fringer and a Federation officer. What was his duty? It mattered, and his uncer- tainty was agony as his hands hovered above the firing keys.

"Captain Li, this is your last chance!" Hodah snapped.

"Go , Simon!" Li Han's His harsh at last, almost as ff she were deliberately goading her old friend. "Fire and be damned!" "Very well, Captain." Hodah's voice was as cold as space. "You leave me no choice.

Fire Control, you have your orders. Open fire-- now.t" Windrider's hands trembled on the deadly snakes of his firing keys and he blinked his eyes, fighting to focus. Longbow and the superdreadnoughts were virtually shield-to-shield, floating in his targeting screens at suicidal range, the battle-erniser small and alone, frail despite her weight of armor and weapons. Visions and sounds filled his mind. Memories of his homeworld. The final parade at the Academy. Men and women he knew in the ships on his control screen. Men and women waiting to die when he touched those keys. All of them flashed through his mind, and his hands were paralyzed.

"Damn it, Windrider! Open fire!" Hodah roared, his own grief flogging his fury. "Do your duty, man!" The word "duty" flared in Windrider's mind like a bomb, and he jerked spastically.

"Aye, aye, sir," he said very softly, and his eyes flicked over the targeting codes, a professional double-checking his work even in his anguish. Then his fingers tensed, and Enwright's weapons spoke.

The world of the eom cha

Shields flared and died. Plating split, ruptured, disintegrated, vaporized. Atmosphere fumed from a gutted hull, and Jason Windrider clung to his sanity with bleeding fingernails while tears streamed down his cheeks and TFNS Nanda Devi died under his THE OF CAIN Naomi Hezikiah felt out of place in Pommern's command chair, for a heavy cruiser was not normally a lieutenant commander's billet, and even the thin Bible in the breast of her ,c suit was scant comfort as she contemplated what was about to happen.

She punched up communications, and a painfully young ensign answered her. Yet another sign of the times; it should have been at least a full lieutenant.

"Anything from the flagship, Harvey?" "No, sir." The young black man shook his head in mild surprise. "Standing orders are to maintain com silence, sir," he reminded respectfully.

"I know." Naomi probed the ensign's face for any uncertainty and started to say more, but she'd set her hand to the plow, as Elder Habermaa would say. To everything there was a season... even to this, she supposed drear-fly. So she made herself smile, instead. "Carry on, Ensign." "Aye, aye, sir," the corn officer said, and the screen blanked.

Naomi leaned back and closed her eyes. All she wanted was to be back on cold, bleak New Covenant. But she couldn't be there and after what had already happened @u.. after what was about to happen..

. not even New Covenant would want her back.

She remembered Abraham and prayed silently for God to send another ram before the blade fell. But he wouldn't.

Her mind went back over the past, terrible two weeks

that had started so wonderfully. She and Earnest had had the medic's official report; they'd actually been discussing ways to finagle their assignments so she could take her maternity leave at home on New Covenant when the scrambled transmission came over the relay net. An entire Battle Fleet task force--comn just a battlegroup, a task force--taken by its own perso

.. and why. He should have known what would happen--and it had happened within hours. Desperate men and women had met, and the Fringers among his crews had risen against him.

But not all of them. No, not all of them. The meetings had been too clandestine, too hurried.

Everything had been improvised by isolated groups, trusting no one outside their own little band. Not until the first mutineer drew his weapon could anyone know who stood where outside whatever tiny group they'd discussed disx with, and the loyalists had fought back furiously. The carnage had been more savage than she would have believed possible; there were laser scars on the bulkheads around her, and the victorious mutineers had barely half the perso

And when the fighting ended, Naomi found Earnest sprawled over his fire control panel, laser in hand, and two dead mutineers before him.

She had barely been able to read the funeral service through her tears. Had he known they were on different sides? Would he have fought beside her if he'd known? Or would his stubborn sense of duty, the courage she loved so much, still have ranged them against one another?

She didn't know. She couldn't know, for Earnest had died, and she had inherited command of a heavy, cruiser @u.. and even Elder Haberman would never be able to convince her that God could forgive her.

Not that the Elder would have the chance, she thought mordantly,, glancing at the nay tank. She would have the opportunity to plead her case before the Lord herself all too soon, for the pulsing pattern of the nay beacons was clear in the tank, and her astrogator turrved to her.

"Thirty seconds to warp, Captain," he said quietly. "Very well," Naomi nodded curtly@u "Carry. on." "Aye, aye, sir." And so it was official. Toshiba wasn't going to relent@u "We have no choice," Captain Victor Toshiba had told his "captains." "We're too deep in I

"We'ret walking dead, ladies and gentlemen.

Face it. Accept it and use it, because we're just as dead whether we spend our lives profitably or not. There is one, and only one, thing we can do for the Fringe now." His finger had stabbed the erazv quilt of warp lines in his nay tank. "Galloway's World. hat's what we ean give the Fringe @u.

. by taking it away from the Federation!" Naomi had stared at him in horror, yet she was his senior "captain." "But, sir," she'd said softly, "we don't begin to have the strength to seize Gallowav's World. Surelv vou're not suggesting... hiswas " " His "That's precisely what I am suggesting," Toshiba had said coldly. "We can gut the shipyards if we get in unchallenged. It's gone too far to stop now. It's war, Commander, war between the Fringe and the I