"That's the proximate cause," Szilard said. "The Colonial Union forgot that in attacking the fleet we weren't only striking at the Conclave but at every member of the Conclave. The ships in the fleet were often the flagships for their races. We didn't just destroy a fleet, we destroyed racial symbols. We kicked every single member race of the Conclave hard and square in the balls, Perry. They're not going to forgive that. But beyond that we're trying to use the destruction of the Conclave fleet as a rallying point for other unaffiliated races. We're trying to get them to become our allies. And the Conclave members have decided that the best way to keep those races unaffiliated is to make an example out of the Colonial Union. All of it."

"You don't sound surprised," I said.

"I'm not," Szilard said. "When destroying the Conclave fleet was first considered, I had the Special Forces intelligence corps model out the consequences of that act. This was always the mosr likely result."

"Why didn't they listen?" I asked.

"Because the CDF models told the Colonial Union what it wanted to hear," Szilard said. "And because at the end of the day the Colonial Union is going to place more weight on the intelligence generated by real humans than the intelligence created by the Frankenstein monsters it creates to do its dirty work."

"Like destroy the Conclave fleet," I said, recalling Lieutenant Stross.

"Yes," Szilard said.

"If you believed this was going to be the result, you should have refused to do it," I said. "You shouldn't have let your soldiers destroy the fleet."

Szilard shook his head. "It's not that simple. If I were to have refused, I would have been replaced as the commander of Special Forces. Special Forces are no less ambitious and venal than any other sort of human being, Perry. I can think of three generals under me who would have been happy to take my job for the simple cost of following foolish orders."

"But you followed foolish orders," I said.

"I did," Szilard said. "But I did so under my own terms. Part of which was helping to install you and Sagan as colony leaders at Roanoke."

"You installed me," I said. This was news to me.

"Well, actually, I installed Sagan," Szilard said. "You were merely part of the package deal. It was acceptable because you seemed unlikely to fuck things up."

"Nice to be valued," I said.

"You did make it easier to suggest Sagan," Szilard said. "I knew you had a history with General Rybicki. In all, you came in handy. But in point of fact neither you nor Sagan was the key to the equation. It was your daughter, Administrator Perry, who really matters here. Your daughter was the reason I chose the two of you to lead Roanoke."

I tried to puzzle this one out. "Because of the Obin?" I asked.

"Because of the Obin," Szilard agreed. "Because of the fact the Obin consider her something only a little short of a living god, thanks to their devotion to her true father, and the debatably beneficial boon of consciousness that he gave them."

"I'm afraid that I don't understand how the Obin matter here," I said, although that was a lie. I knew precisely, but I wanted to hear it from Szilard.

He obliged. "Because Roanoke is doomed without them," he said. "Roanoke has served its primary purpose of being a trap for the Conclave fleet. Now the entire Colonial Union is under attack and the CU will have to decide how best to portion out its defensive resources."

"We're already aware Roanoke doesn't rate much of a defense," I said. "I and my staff have had our face rubbed in that fact today."

"Oh, no," Szilard said. "It's worse than that."

"How can it be worse?" I asked.

"This way: Roanoke is more valuable to the Colonial Union dead than alive," Szilard said. "You have to understand, Perry. The Colonial Union is about to fight for its life against most of the races we know of. Its nice little system of farming decrepit Earthlmgs for soldiers isn't going to get the job done anymore. It's going to need to raise troops fiom the worlds of the Colonial Union, and fast. This is where Roanoke comes in. Alive, Roanoke is just another colony. Dead, it's a symbol for the ten worlds who gave it colonists, and to all the rest of the worlds in the Colonial Union. When Roanoke dies, the citizens of the Colonial Union are going to demand that they be allowed to fight. And the Colonial Union will let them."

"You know this for sure," I said. "This has been discussed."

"Of course it hasn't," Szilard said. "It never will be. But it's what will happen. The Colonial Union knows that Roanoke is a symbol for the Conclave races as well, the site of their first defeat. It's inevitable that defeat will be revenged. The Colonial Union also knows that by not defending Roanoke, that revenge will happen sooner than later. And sooner will work better for what the Colonial Union needs."

"I don't understand," I said. "You're saying that in order to fight the Conclave, the Colonial Union needs its citizens to become soldiers. And to motivate them into volunteering, Roanoke needs to be destroyed. But you're telling me that the reason you chose Jane and I to lead Roanoke was because the Obin revere my daughter and would not allow the colony to be destroyed."

"It's not quite that simple," Szilard said. "The Obin would not allow your daughter to die, that much is true. They may or may not defend your colony. But the Obin offered you another advantage: knowledge."

"You've lost me again," I said.

"Stop playing the fool, Perry," Szilard said. "It's insulting. I know you know more about General Gau and the Conclave than you let on in that sham of an inquiry today. I know it because it was the Special Forces who prepared the dossier on General Gau and the Conclave for you, the one that rather sloppily left a tremendous amount of metadata in its files for you to find. I also know that your daughter's Obin bodyguards knew rather more about the Conclave than we could tell you in our dossier. That's how you knew you could trust General Gau at his word. And that's why you tried to convince him not to call his fleet. You knew it would be destroyed and you knew he would be compromised."

"You couldn't have known I'd look for that metadata," I said. "You were risking a lot on my curiosity."

"Not really," Szilard said. "Remember, you were largely incidental to the selection process. I left that information for Sagan to find. She was an intelligence officer for years. She would have looked for metadata in the files as a matter of course. The fact you found the information first is trivial. It would have been found. It does me no good to leave things to chance."

"But none of that information does me any good now," I said. "None of this changes the fact that Roanoke is in the crosshairs, and there's not a thing I can do about it. You were at the inquiry. I'll be lucky if they let me tell Jane what prison I'll be rotting in."

Szilard waved this off. "The inquiry determined that you acted responsibly and within your duties," he said. "You're free to return to Roanoke as soon as you and I are done here."

"I take it back," I said. "You weren't at the same inquiry I was at."

"It is true that both Butcher and Berkeley are entirely convinced you're absolutely incompetent," Szilard said. "Both of them initially voted to move you to the Colonial Affairs Court, where you would have been convicted and sentenced in about five minutes. However, I managed to convince them to switch their vote."

"How did you do that?" I asked.

"Let's just say that it never pays to have things you don't want other people to know," Szilard said.

"You're blackmailing them," I said.

"I made them aware that every action has a consequence," Szilard said. "And in the fullness of their consideration they preferred the consequences of allowing you to return to Roanoke as opposed to the consequences of keeping you here. Ultimately it was all the same to them. They think you're going to die if you go back to Roanoke."