Authors: William H. Keith
Several hundred leggers were also gathered in that building, foot soldiers of the Rebel Network. One platoon had been fitted out with complete combat armor, but the rest were still wearing partial armor, or none at all. The rebellion had grown tremendously since Katya had arrived on Eridu, but it still was having trouble providing arms and equipment for all of its members.
The miracle was that what they did have had been successfully hidden from the Imperials and their Hegemony watchdogs. These four warstriders, for instance, had been shipped to warehouse 1103 in crates labeled
MACHINE PARTS
and stored there for the past week, awaiting this moment. It would not have been possible without the active, the enthusiastic, support of much of the city’s population, including especially those like Simone Dagousset who were willing to tweak the government’s computer network.
“You take the pods.” she told Georg Lipinski, in the LaG-42’s number two slot. “But if it comes to a fight, watch what you’re shooting at. It’s crowded out there.”
“Iceworld,” Lipinski said, his mental voice steady. “Easy feed.” The kid had grown a lot in these past few weeks and taken on the stature of a combat veteran.
The sliding doors to warehouse 1103 were wide open now, and white light splashed into the dusty building interior from the city center outside. Beyond, a throng of civilians stood in a dense-packed mass, waiting in eerie silence. Katya could see some of their banners and slogans.
ERIDU IS FREE!
one crudely spray-painted placard read. She sincerely hoped that the wish could be made fact, though the odds were still against it. Against
them.
Katya’s Ghostrider emerged into daylight filtered through the broad transplas expanse of the largest Babel dome, leading the way into the town’s central square where the people had gathered in a vast, shoulder-to-shoulder mass. They made way for the line of warstriders, but they’d been resisting for some time the loudhailer demands of militia and Hegemony troops to break up, to go home.
A line of Hegemony warstriders was arrayed opposite the mob, blocking the way toward the Towerdown dome and the base of the sky-el itself. Behind them, the holographic image of Governor Prem, five stories tall, implored the populace to disperse. Katya enhanced her view and read the unit emblems and designations on the silent row of Ghostriders, Scoutstriders, and one massive, three-slotter Warlord. Chiron Centurians. Good troops… and not yet infected by the heady, antiauthoritarian air that had been filling the Eriduan domes for the past several weeks.
“People of Eridu,” the enormously enlarged image of Prem was saying. “I promise you, your complaints, your dissatisfaction, your petitions have been heard! Return to your habs immediately. Otherwise, the government authority will have no alternative but to employ gas.”
As the rebel warstriders entered the square, however, the Hegemony machines stirred and shifted nervously, as though wondering which side the newcomers might be on. Katya feared for the people between the two lines of giants. If a fight broke out…
Katya sought the Hegemony combat channels, her AI shifting through thousands of frequencies in a fraction of a second. There! She heard them talking—AI-coded, of course. “Join us,” she said, speaking in the clear. There was a sudden, shocked silence. “Hegemony warstriders, join us! Or step aside and allow us to pass to Towerdown!”
“Who is this?” A man’s voice, harsh with frustration.
“This is Captain Katya Alessandro of the Confederation,” she said. She hoped she didn’t sound as pompous as she felt. “Hegemony and Empire no longer govern here. Eridu is free. Allow us to enter the Towerdown dome.”
She could see the entrance to Towerdown behind the warstriders and a line of Heglegger infantry. That dome had been heavily guarded throughout the past week, and if this rebellion was to have any chance at all, Sinclair’s forces had to seize it. Besides the space elevator’s base and power circuits, it housed the government-controlled transmitters and AI that connected much of Eridu with synchorbit. While government centers at Winchester and elsewhere possessed direct lasercom links with Babylon, the Hegemony’s control of the planet’s entertainment, news, and communications originated
there,
in Towerdown.
The biggest of the opposing striders, an old RS-64C Warlord, pivoted on its upper torso, the massive, blunt forearms housing megavolt particle cannons coming to bear on Katya’s Ghostrider with unmistakable menace.
“Give it up, sweetheart,” the voice replied, “before we squash you and your mincie friends here like bugs.”
“Like you did at Tanis?” she shot back. “Another massacre? Start shooting and none of you will leave this plaza alive.
Let us pass!”
The Warlord took a threatening step forward. The crowd, uncertain, wavered somewhere between panic and fury. Katya could imagine the sheer helplessness they would feel, faced by armored giants against which they were powerless. Some of them were shouting now, isolated cries, calling for the rebel striders to go ahead and attack.
She hesitated. Any overt force could trigger a firefight, and hundreds would die. She checked her internal time sense again. Sinclair had promised—
Yes! The vast image of Prem flickered, broke into dancing fragments, solidified once, then blanked out. In its place was a new figure, serene and cold and remote.
General Travis Sinclair, wearing an austere brown uniform with only a single star glinting at his throat to show his rank. The transmission, Katya knew, was being beamed into Eridu’s communication system by hackers who’d managed to infiltrate the government’s ViRcom network days before. She prayed they would be able to keep the tap open;
everything
depended on Sinclair’s getting his message out now. The crowd, trembling at the brink of an all-out riot, grew still. Even the Heglegger troops around the perimeter turned to watch the screen.
“People of Eridu,” Sinclair began, a simple and straight-forward preamble. “As most of you know by now, the Eriduan Congress of Delegates has asked us to prepare a document advancing the New Constitutionalist position. We have done so. Congress has not yet voted to accept its provisions, but it occurs to us that, in a declaration of such import, in
events
of such import, a direct appeal to the people for ratification might best serve our cause. This is, after all,
your
world, and not Earth’s. And, if you will it, it is your declaration.
“Therefore…
“We, the free peoples of a diverse and infinitely variable species, in order that our beliefs and the nature of our steadfast determination be set before the judgment of an informed and rational Humankind, do now publish this Declaration of Reason, establishing it as a covenant among those seeking relief from the burden imposed by Hegemony tyranny.
“A just and unemotional deference to the principles of reason demands that we explain our position clearly and without equivocation. Why should the rule of law given precedent by centuries of peace be called now into question? In explanation, then, we make these assertions:
“We hold that the vast distances sundering world from world and system from system serve to insulate the worlds of Mankind’s diaspora from one another and from Earth, and that government cannot adequately bridge so vast a gap of time, space, and culture;
“We hold that the differences between mutually alien, albeit human cultures render impossible a thorough understanding of the needs, necessities, aspirations, goals, and dreams of those disparate worlds by any central governing body;
“We hold that the seizure of the wealth and property of our citizens on pain of imprisonment or suit is indistinguishable from armed robbery, that the forced servitude of our people on foreign worlds is indistinguishable from slavery, that the continued assimilation of diverse cultures into societal patterns determined by those claiming to represent popular opinion is indistinguishable from genocide;
“Further, we hold that human culture, economy, and aspirations are too varied to administer, regulate, or restrict by any means, but should be free, allowing each to thrive or fail on its own merits;
“That human rights derive neither from God nor from human government or institutions nor from precedent, but from a people’s willingness to secure and maintain those rights for themselves;
“That every individual bears the responsibility for his own actions, and that personal liberty conveys no right to deprive others of life, liberty, or property; neither can what is regarded as morally wrong for the individual be considered morally right for government;
“That the only just role for government in human affairs is as defense against force or fraud;
“That when government no longer represents its people, that when government representatives advance their own interests at the expense of the people, that when legal attempts by the people to represent themselves and their interests and to redress the wrongs of the government prove ineffectual, that when government manifestly threatens the principles of individual liberty, then the people have not the right but the responsibility for reforming or, at need, changing that government.…”
There was more, a lot more, all of it following the same general thread, that people didn’t have to let some amorphous and all-wise government think for them, but had the right… no, the
duty
to think for themselves. Katya wasn’t entirely sure she believed all that was said. If there were no taxes—that line about seizure of wealth and property had caught her ear—how could the government keep open the trade routes between the worlds? If individual freedoms took precedence over public welfare, what was to stop someone from screaming “Fire!” in a crowded room? Or operating a groundcar or skimmer while a current trickled through the pleasure center of his brain?
Well, perhaps that line about individual responsibility covered that… but she still had the feeling that this Declaration of Reason was being just a bit glib on that point.
Nevertheless, she had a large, unyielding lump in her throat as she listened to the rest of the address, and she noticed that the crowd thronging the square was as silent and as still as if they’d been somehow suspended in time.
“We declare, therefore, that the Worlds of Man are and should be mutually sovereign, mutually independent of central authority, mutually free to pursue what they perceive as their own best interests, so long as those interests do not abridge the freedoms of their neighbors.
“And we further declare that the government of the United Terran Hegemony, having forfeited its right to govern through careless disregard of the needs and petitions of its citizens, can no longer be the legitimate and representative government for those worlds and peoples signatory to this contract, but that the said relationship between governed and governors is henceforth dissolved.
“It is the firm desire of the signatories of this declaration to live in peace with all men and all worlds, but we hereby pledge our devotion to the principles of individual liberty outlined in this document with a firm determination to uphold these principles in the face of coercion, intimidation, imprisonment, and death.
“To this we pledge our lives, our honor, and our trust as members of a common humanity.”
What, Katya wondered, would the Xenophobes make of that? Nothing much, she decided, since concepts like “individual” and “personal” were wholly alien to them. She remembered again the Xenophobe’s touch, and shuddered.
But the human members of the audience accepted the declaration with profound emotion. For long seconds after Sinclair’s image had stopped speaking, there was silence… and then the square erupted in a thunderous ovation, in screams and cheers and roared approval. Scanning the crowd, Katya saw people on their knees in prayer, people in tears, people with their arms upraised and their eyes closed in a kind of ecstasy born of mass acclamation.
But others were in motion, surging
toward
the line of Centurian warstriders.
For one fragile moment, Katya thought that perhaps the Centurians were not going to fire, that the advancing crowd had caught them off-guard or that they could not bring themselves to fire on civilians. Then the Warlord’s twin particle cannons thundered, twin bolts of blue-white light lashing the charging mob. Screams rose above the mob thunder, and Katya felt the icy touch of horror.
“Aim for their weapons!” she ordered. “Watch for the civilians!”
“Targeting!” Hagan yelled. His Scoutstrider’s laser fired an instant later, striking the Warlord’s left arm close to the shoulder joint.
Katya fired an instant later, wondering how many unarmed civilians would die in the ricochets of explosive rounds and the sweep of laser beams that would surely follow.
One of the Centurian Scoutstriders was trembling, then rocking back and forth as the crowd surged about its legs, pushing first one way, then the other. Its torso lashed about, its laser firing, scoring bloody, smoking paths through the sea of humanity before it, but then the mob hit it from the left like ocean breakers crashing against the shore, and the twenty-ton, three-and-a-half-meter-tall warstrider toppled over with flailing arms and a grinding crash.
Katya could hear the screams of the wounded over the roar of the crowd, but louder and louder came a thundering chant, a thousand voices or more picking up the theme and magnifying it: ‘
Ta
nis!
Ta
nis!
Ta
nis!” She caught a glimpse of the Scoutstrider’s operator as he was hauled from his slot, but only a glimpse. He vanished beneath the crowd an instant later.
With infinite care she moved forward, fearful of treading on the densely packed, screaming, banner-waving mass of humanity before her. Both of the Warlord’s particle cannons were smoking now, disabled by near-point-blank bursts of laser fire from the rebel striders. The other striders seemed hesitant to open fire, but a thick fog hung in the air… gas of some kind.
God, we’ve got to win this quick,
she thought.
Some Hegemony troops opened fire on the crowd and died. Some turned over their weapons without a fight and most lived. Some actually joined the crowd’s roaring charge.