01 Insurrection by David Weber

Author:David Weber [Weber, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780671720247
Google: frZVPgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0671720244
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1998-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Drumbeat

“Courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior.”

General Karl von Clausewitz,

On War

Zephrain, as humans rendered the name bestowed by its Orion discoverers, was a distant binary system. Component B, an orange K8 star, swung ponderously around its yellow G5 companion in an orbit of over fifty percent eccentricity, coming as close as three light-hours at periastron. Both stars had small families of planets, and extensive asteroidal rubble marked the hypothetical orbits of stillborn gas giants which would have formed but for the gravitational havoc wrought by each star on the other’s planetary system.

Zephrain A-II was Earthlike – a small, dense world with abundant liquid water and free oxygen. Named Xanadu by a humorously inclined Terran Survey officer, A-II was home to a thriving human population, but Zephrain RDS was on Gehenna, Planet A-III – a lifeless, nearly airless ball of sand not much better than Old Terra’s neighbor Mars – precisely because the station must inevitably be the primary target in the system. Since Howard Anderson’s day, the TFN had believed that “combat should be kept out in space where it belongs,” or, if not in space, at least on worthless planets no one would miss when the planetbusters arrived.

And that, thought Vice Admiral Ian Trevayne, was a very fine policy against aliens who would lose no sleep over the incidental genocide of whole human colonies. But in a war between humans, there were arguments for placing targets like Zephrain RDS next to a city or two. Or would that have given the Terran Republic pause, after all? Certainly the murderous bastards had already shown their willingness to inflict noncombatant casualties, he thought bitterly.

The Terran Republic! Trevayne recalled a cynical query concerning Old Terra’s Holy Roman Empire: in what respect was it holy, Roman, or an empire? He almost voiced the thought to the older man beside him, but he knew he would have gotten a look of incomprehension and polite disinterest. Vice Admiral Sergei Ortega was no history buff.

At any rate, there were more urgent matters at hand. Like persuading Ortega to stay aboard this ship.

* * *

They stood on the flag bridge of the monitor Zoroff, Trevayne’s flagship. Accompanying her in orbit around Xanadu were the other ships of the battlegroup he’d brought through the chaos of insurrection to Zephrain. He still couldn’t contemplate the journey without a feeling of awe that he had actually gotten away with it.

Battlegroup Thirty-Two had been stunned when news of the first mutinies arrived from the Innerworlds, but Trevayne had foreseen the storm and taken precautions. His personnel, even the Fringers, knew and trusted him, and his captains had been loyal to a man (or woman, as the case might be). The few outbreaks had been quelled with a minimum of bloodshed.

Only then had there been time to come to terms with the other news the light cruiser Blackfoot had brought. News of the bloody raid on Galloway’s World, BG 32’s home port, which had gutted the Federation’s largest

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