"What about them?" Viveros asked.

"Well, I've done a little research into these people," Bender said. "They've got a remarkable culture, you know. Their highest art form is a form of mass chant that's like a Gregorian round—they'll get an entire city full of Whaidians and start chanting. It's said you can hear the chant for dozens of klicks, and the chants can go on for hours."

"So?"

"So, this is a culture we should be celebrating and exploring, not bottling up on its planet simply because they're in our way. Have the Colonials even attempted to reach a peace with these people? I see no record of an attempt. I think we should make an attempt. Maybe an attempt could be made by us."

Viveros snorted. "Negotiating a treaty is a little beyond our orders, Bender."

"In my first term as senator, I went to Northern Ireland as part of a trade junket and ended up extracting a peace treaty from the Catholics and the Protestants. I didn't have the authority to make an agreement, and it caused a huge controversy back in the States. But when an opportunity for peace arises, we must take it," Bender said.

"I remember that," I said. "That was right before the bloodiest marching season in two centuries. Not a very successful peace agreement."

"That wasn't the fault of the agreement," Bender said, somewhat defensively. "Some drugged-out Catholic kid threw a grenade into an Orangemen's march, and it was all over after that."

"Damn real live people, getting in the way of your peaceful ideals," I said.

"Look, I already said diplomacy wasn't easy," Bender said. "But I think that ultimately we have more to gain by trying to work with these people than we have by trying to wipe them out. It's an option that should at least be on the table."

"Thanks for the seminar, Bender," Viveros said. "Now if you'll yield the floor, I have two points to make here. The first is that until you fight, what you know or what you think you know out here means shit to me and to everyone else. This isn't Northern Ireland, it's not Washington, DC, and it's not planet Earth. When you joined up, you joined up as a soldier, and you better remember that. Second, no matter what you think, Private, your responsibility right now isn't to the universe or to humanity at large—it's to me, your squadmates, your platoon and to the CDF. When you're given an order, you'll follow it. If you go beyond the scope of your orders, you're going to have to answer to me. Do you get me?"

Bender regarded Viveros somewhat coolly. "Much evil has been done under the guise of 'just following orders,'" he said. "I hope we never have to find ourselves using the same excuse."

Viveros narrowed her eyes. "I'm done eating," she said, and got up, taking her tray with her.

Bender arched his eyebrows as she left. "I didn't mean to offend her," he said to me.

I regarded Bender carefully. "Do you recognize the name 'Viveros' at all, Bender?" I asked.

He frowned a bit. "It's not familiar," he said.

"Think way back," I said. "We would have been about five or six or so."

A light went on in his head. "There was a Peruvian president named Viveros. He was assassinated, I think."

"Pedro Viveros, that's right," I said. "And not just him—his wife, his brother, his brother's wife and most of their families were murdered in the military coup. Only one of Pedro's daughters survived. Her nanny stuffed her down a laundry chute while the soldiers went through the presidential palace, looking for family members. The nanny was raped before they slit her throat, incidentally."

Bender turned a greenish shade of gray. "She can't be the daughter," he said.

"She is," I said. "And you know what, when the coup was put down and the soldiers who killed her family were put on trial, their excuse was that they were just following orders. So regardless of whether your point there was well made or not, you made it to just about the last person in the universe to whom you ought to lecture on the banality of evil. She knows all about it. It slaughtered her family while she lay in a basement laundry cart, bleeding and trying not to cry."

"God, I'm sorry, of course," Bender said. "I wouldn't have said anything. But I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't, Bender," I said. "And that was Viveros' point. Out here, you don't know. You don't know anything."

"Listen up," Viveros said on the way down to the surface. "Our job is strictly to smash and dash. We're landing near the center of their government operations—blast buildings and structures but avoid shooting live targets unless CDF soldiers are targeted first. We've already kicked these people in the balls, now we're just pissing on them while they're down. Be fast, do damage and get back. Are we clear?"

The operation had been a cakewalk up to that point; the Whaidians had been utterly unprepared for the sudden and instantaneous arrival of two dozen CDF battleships in their home space. The CDF had opened up a diversionary offensive in the Earnhardt system several days before to lure Whaidian ships there to support the battle, so there was almost nobody to defend the home fort, and those that were, were blasted out of the sky in short, surprised order.

Our destroyers also made quick work of the Whaidians' major spaceport, shattering the kilometers-long structure at critical junctures, which allowed the port's own centripetal forces to tear it apart (no need to waste more ammo than necessary). No skip pods were detected as launched to alert Whaidian forces in the Earnhardt system to our attack, so they wouldn't know they were duped until it was too late. If any of the Whaidian forces survived the battle there, they would return home to find nowhere to dock or repair. Our forces would be long gone when they arrived.

With the local space cleared of threats, the CDF leisurely targeted industrial centers, military bases, mines, refineries, desalination plants, dams, solar arrays, harbors, space launch facilities, major highways and any other target that would require the Whaidians to rebuild it before rebuilding their interstellar capabilities. After six hours of solid, unremitting pummeling, the Whaidians had been effectively pushed back to the days of internal combustion engines, and would be likely to stay there for a while.

The CDF avoided a wide-scale random bombing of major cities, since wanton civilian death was not the goal. CDF intelligence suspected major casualties downstream of the destroyed dams, but that really couldn't be helped. There would have been no way for the Whaidians to stop the CDF from cratering the major cities, but the thinking was the Whaidians would have enough problems with the disease, famine and the political and social unrest that inevitably comes as a result of having your industrial and technological base yanked out from under you. Therefore, actively going after the civilian population was seen as inhumane and (equally as important to the CDF brass) an inefficient use of resources. Aside from the capital city, which was targeted strictly as an exercise in psychological warfare, no ground attacks were even considered.

Not that the Whaidians in the capital seemed to appreciate that. Projectiles and beams were bouncing off our troop transports even as we landed. It sounded like hail and frying eggs on the hull.

"Two by two," Viveros said, pairing up the squad. "No one goes off on their own. Refer to your maps and don't get trapped. Perry, you got Bender watch. Try to keep him from signing any peace treaties, if you please. And as an added bonus, you two are first out the door. Get high and deal with snipers."

"Bender." I motioned him over. "Set your Empee for rockets and follow me. Camo on. BrainPal chatter only." The transport ramp went down and Bender and I sprinted out the door. Directly in front of me at forty meters was an abstract sculpture of some description; I nailed it as Bender and I ran. Never much liked abstract art.