Book 3 - Star's End by Glen Cook

tomorrow.”
    More silence.
    Then, “Yes, sir. I thought so, sir. I understand, sir.
Thank you, sir.” Beckhart broke the connection. “He
wants to take it up with the Chiefs of Staff.”
    “They’re going to back down now? After all the lives
we’ve spent?”
    “Commander Jones. Do you
realize
the enormity of
what I just dumped on him? Let me draw you a picture. I interrupted
him while von Staufenberg was briefing him on what we saw
centerward. Which was about what we expected to see, and as pretty
as a barge loaded with dead babies. Some psychopathic race is doing
its damnedest to kill off anything sentient it can find. Then I
horn in and ask for a confirm on Memo Four slash Six. Which is a
vow to exterminate the Sangaree whenever we find out where the hell
they’re hiding their homeworld. We’re supposed to be
the good guys, Jones. The things he’s looking at right now
kind of tend to put the damper on the fires of that good old-time
anti-Sangaree righteousness.”
    “I don’t see the problem, sir.”
    “Pragmatically it doesn’t exist. Having seen
what’s going on centerward, I’d say Four slash Six is a
strategic imperative. We’ve got to get those bloodsuckers off
our backs fast. They ate us alive during the wars with Ulant and
Toke. Any time there’s a dust-up between non-Confederation
worlds they come on like jackals. Raidships in
swarms . . . Not to mention the price we pay in
stardust addiction. Hell, half the fleet is tied up protecting
shipping. Four slash Six would free those ships. And if we burned
the Sangaree, the McGraws would close up shop. Those are the
arguments in favor. Akido. Take the Devil’s
advocate.”
    It was an old game. Namaguchi knew his commander well.
“Sir. How in God’s name can we go to the people of
Confederation—not to mention our allies—with the news
that we’ve destroyed a whole race? Just when we’re
about to pump them up with moral indignation so we can justify a
preemptive strike against a species we claim is guilty of the
identical sin? Let me understate, sir, and say that the positions
are inconsistent. Let me say, sir, that we’re on a quick
slide down into a moral cesspool. We would, quite simply, be the
biggest hypocrites this universe has ever seen.”
    “Shit,” Jones responded with no great force.
“There isn’t one in a thousand of them would ever see
the inconsistency. They’ll cheer about the Sangaree going
down, then go sign up for the war against these centerward creeps.
Akido, you’re giving Mr. Average Man too much credit. He
can’t even follow his credit balance, let alone weigh a moral
one.”
    “Charlie, that attitude is going to destroy Luna Command.
And when we go, Confederation goes. When Confederation goes, the
barbarians come in. In the words of the Roman Centurion Publius
Minutius, speaking of the legions, ‘We
are
the
Empire.’ ”
    “Just a minute,” Beckhart interjected. “Akido.
Come over here.” He pushed the comm across the desk.
“Punch up the library and get me an abstract on this
Minutius.”
    “Uh . . . ”
    “I thought so. Another one of your out-of-the-dark
authorities.”
    Namaguchi chuckled. It was a favorite trick. His boss was the
only man who caught him every time. “Actually, old Publius
probably said something more like, ‘Which way to the nearest
whorehouse, buddy?’ But I’ll stake my reputation on the
fact that some Roman soldier said it somewhere along the way. It
was true. The army
was
the Empire.”
    “You don’t have any reputation to stake,
Akido,” Jones quipped.
    “The army got a lot of help from the fact that everybody
in the provinces went along with a lot of tacit rules,
Akido,” Beckhart remarked. “We’re getting off the
subject. What about McClennon’s report?”
    “They’re still working on it. First abstracts should
be up any time now. The key thing we’ve gotten is that the
Starfishers did go after Stars’ End. So you guessed right on
that one,