"Missiles?" Nimbus said. "You mean bombs? I thought the League of Peoples wouldn’t let ships carry lethal weapons."

Festina gave the cloud man a weary smile. "The League won’t let us carry weapons from one star system to another… but they certainly do let us kill dangerous non-sentients. Sometimes it’s nigh on mandatory. How do you think we handle pirates or terrorists? Plenty of nasty folk arm their ships and cause trouble for passers-by. If killers like that leave their home star system, the League takes care of them; but if the bad guys stay in one place, hiding in a handy asteroid belt and popping out from time to time to hijack local shipping, our navy has to declare a police action. A squadron goes in, sets up a secure base, then manufactures warheads from standard ship supplies. The warheads attach to normal probe missiles, and voila, you’re ready to shoot non-sentients. Once the enemy has been blown to smithereens, you dismantle your leftover warheads and go home with your pockets full of danger pay."

Dr. Havel muttered under his breath, "If the League lets you."

Festina nodded. "True. The biggest danger isn’t fighting a scruffy bunch of outlaws; it’s afterward, when you find out whether the League accepts your actions. The bad guys damned near always have innocent hostages aboard their ships, so the navy can’t just leap into an indiscriminate firefight. You try to negotiate, which seldom works, then you try blockading, then maybe a sneak attack to grab the enemy with your ship’s tractors… and nine times out of ten it still comes down to a shoot-out where you blast the bastards to bat-shit.

"Afterward, you ask yourself scary questions: did we really do our best to save sentient lives, or is the League going to hand us a death sentence when we reach deep space? Even worse, did we really clean up a nest of homicidal maniacs, or were those so-called terrorists actually high-minded dissenters against some corrupt local regime… and the fat-assed generalissimos fed our navy a pack of ties so we’d wipe out their squeaky clean opposition." Festina shrugged. "You can never be sure. The only way to learn if you did the right thing is to head home; if the League doesn’t kill you, you’re a bona fide hero."

"But even if the League doesn’t kill you," Dr. Havel said, "they may kill the person next to you." He dropped his gaze. "Admiral Ramos hasn’t mentioned what usually happens after our navy blows some ship from the sky. Even if you think you’ve pulled off a textbook operation, the League still executes a few people in your crew. Maybe those folks liked the killing too much — or maybe they didn’t do their best to encourage a peaceful surrender. Maybe the League are secretly sadists and they kill a couple crew members at random to keep everyone else nervous. You never know: God forbid the League should explain its actions. All you can say for sure is that the nice woman who always ate lunch with you, and the funny guy from engineering who had a new joke every day… they both got executed by the League and you’re still alive."

His voice carried such bitterness, we all stared at him. The doctor did not say more. It occurred to me that a man who laughs at the least opportunity may not be half so jolly as he seems.

Avoidance

"Well," said Festina in a quiet voice, "we won’t give anyone the chance to shoot us. Royal Hemlock will stay far away from Technocracy star systems; even if the council orders the rest of the fleet to vaporize us on sight, we’ll never come within target range."

"Then how shall we defeat the villains?" I asked.

"We’ll go public," Festina said. "Loud, brash, and the sooner the better. Before I came down here, I asked Captain Kapoor to contact news agencies on the closest planet to us: a Cashling world named Jalmut. We’ll record our testimony here on Hemlock, transmit everything to the Cashlings, and let them blare it across the galaxy." She smiled grimly. "I like the idea of putting out the news through nonhumans; it’s less likely the fleet will be able to get to them."

"Get to them?" Havel gulped. "What do you mean?"

"Bribe them, intimidate them, tie them up in red tape. Every human news agency has a few people who’ve been secretly bought by the navy." She glanced over at Uclod, still huddled against Lajoolie. "That must be how the Admiralty learned what Grandma Yulai was planning: she approached some reporter and the snitches got wind of it. But nonhuman media services are less subject to fleet interference; and once our statements hit general broadcast, the High Council won’t be able to keep things quiet. Even better, they won’t dare bump off the other Explorers who can testify about Melaquin — it’ll be too obvious.

"On top of that," she continued, "the whole council will likely get tossed in the clink as soon as we tell our tale, so they’ll find it hard to arrange assassinations. The government on New Earth will go berserk at what’s been happening behind their backs… especially the murder of Uclod’s grandmother. The top echelons of the Technocracy have never cared how the fleet handles its own people, but when admirals start killing civilians — even disreputable civilians like Yulai Unorr — every politician in human space will howl for blood."

"They might get it," Nimbus said. "Blood running in the streets. If the civilian government tries to crack down on the Admiralty, the admirals may crack back. Next thing you know, there’s a civil war."

Festina shook her head. "If our statements get out into public broadcast, the admirals’ own people will turn against them. That’s the problem with hiring opportunist scum to do your dirty work; they won’t stick by you when the wind turns. A few admirals may hole up in their mansions with squadrons of hired goons, but the police can deal with that. There’s absolutely no chance the navy itself will stick by the council once the truth gets out — honest folks in the fleet will be outraged, and dishonest ones will leap at the chance to eliminate the people above them."

"Then we must disseminate the truth immediately," I said. "Let us broadcast our messages right now."

Festina glanced at Uclod again. Lajoolie had dropped to her knees, the better to hug her little orange husband. They looked most ridiculous like that, the woman so big and the man so small; yet I thought how comforting it must be to have someone who did not mind looking ridiculous when you needed to be held.

"Uclod is a key witness," Festina said softly. "We’ll give him a few more minutes. Anyway, we can’t do much till the captain makes arrangements with some news agency. Then," she continued, "we’ll put a whole lot of nails in the Admiralty’s coffin."

"I am excellent at using a hammer," I said.

14: WHEREIN I PREPARE FOR FAME

The Insides Of Aliens

As we waited for Uclod to recover his composure, I inquired about this race who would be handling our broadcast: the Cashlings of Jalmut. I confess I was not truly interested in them, but I did not wish to brood any more about Death so I needed something to occupy my mind.

The moment I asked, Dr. Havel rushed to locate a picture of the Cashling species. He did not succeed immediately… or rather, he did succeed, but the first images he found were anatomical diagrams wherein the skin was omitted, in order to reveal internal organs.

I can tell you a Cashling has many internal organs indeed. Cashlings are, in fact, distributed creatures, which means they have more than one of almost everything. They do not, for example, have a single heart: they have several small hearts spread throughout their bodies, and the number varies with age. Babies begin with five working hearts, but develop additional ones as life goes on; by the time they reach puberty, they have twenty hearts pumping day and night, which makes them most energetic and a trial to their parents. From this circulatory peak, the hearts begin to shut down again, an average of one ceasing to beat every seven and a half years. When the last heart stops, so does the Cashling.