Starfishers Volume 3: Stars 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,