The Unincorporated Future Read Free Page B

could do about it. As a humanitarian gesture, he said he would allow the Alliance three days to evacuate its citizens. They could take any nonmilitary items they wanted and were free to go anywhere they wished. If they wished to, they could return to UHF territory with a safe passage and settlement guarantee signed by Trang himself that would be honored by the government. All people, he continued, acting as government and military officials of the Alliance would have the choice of surrendering to UHF forces or could choose to stay and chance the fortunes of war. Trang gave his personal oath that other than an inspection for war-making materials, any military or government personnel who fled Ceres would be not be harmed. He finished by asking those acting as the government of the Alliance to forgo any more honorific and therefore senseless deaths. Both sides having heinously attacked civilians, such actions must be curtailed, he implored. He then finished by saying the individuals acting as the government of the Alliance had one hour to accept these terms or the bombardment would begin again and could not take into account civilian versus military targets. He finished by pleading for the people of Ceres to accept these terms and end the madness that had made the horrors of Jupiter and the Beanstalk possible.
    When it was over, the vid simply repeated, but now there was a timer counting down. It was, Sandra had to admit, a very effective technique. She cleared her throat and chose the direction she wanted the conversation to go.
    “How do we tell Trang to stuff his generous offer? Personally, I kind of liked Anjou’s three-fingers kiss off to Gupta.”
    There was a smattering of nervous laughter from around the table but Mosh wasn’t biting.
    “Would it be so wrong,” he asked, “to accept, if only to save the children and the wounded amongst us?”
    “To accept that offer is to accept the end of the war,” said Sandra. “Why do you think Trang made it?”
    Mosh’s face contorted into disbelief. “How does evacuating Ceres end the war?”
    Now Kirk pounced. “Because if we stop the fighting for three days, it will be almost impossible to get it to start again. Forget the fact you’ll be separating families—you’ll also be admitting that we can’t save our own capital. We won’t say it out loud, but it’s what everyone will be thinking. That combined with the loss of Jupiter will get people wondering why they’re dying for a cause that the very people they elected no longer believe in.”
    “A soldier expert in many fields, I see,” said Padamir with some admiration. “Look how Trang splits us even now. And if we’re arguing here in the Cabinet, you can bet wives are up there arguing with husbands, mothers with children, et cetera, et cetera.”
    “We’re not going to give him the satisfaction,” said Sandra. “I don’t care if he’s using words as weapons, he’ll fail because we’re fighting for some thing and he’s fighting for some one. We lost Justin but gained resolve. Lost the Belt but took our goddamn rocks with us! Hell, we’re in one of them now. We lost Jupiter and the hundreds of millions murdered but gained a new appreciation of the depth our enemy will go to in their effort to enslave us. J. D. didn’t give up, and now the bastard who committed those murders is destroyed by the very planet he hoped to subjugate. Omad Hassan, at the cost of his life, struck at the heart of the incorporated system and felled the Beanstalk, and Suchitra, outgunned and deep in enemy territory, attacked the UHF at its most sensitive industrial spot and is on her way to Saturn even as we speak. Well, now it’s our turn. And I say it’s about fucking time.”
    “To do what?” asked Mosh. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t exactly have the upper hand here.”
    “But we do, Mosh. We’ve had it all along. You see, what Trang wants us to destroy for him is the absolute knowledge that what