Wing Commander #07 False Color by William Forstchen (best books to read in life .txt) 📕

weren't just victory or defeat any more. If we didn't stop the Kilrathi cold, one of two things would have happened. Either the Cats would have hit us so hard that we'd be joining the dinosaurs, or the conspiracy would strike and militarize the Confederation in the name of saving mankind. Either way, everything I believed in would have been gone. And on top of it all was the fact that it was Dave Whittaker who'd brought it to me. Damn it all, he saved my life when we were middies together, Jason, and yet he turned out to be part of this group that would actually consider an armed coup against our own government! I think that hurt me worse than when I lost my family."

Bondarevsky found himself picturing how he might react if someone close to him, Sparks or Kevin Tolwyn for instance, had approached him with such a concept. "Yeah . . . that must've been . . ." He trailed off. There weren't words for such a betrayal.

When Tolwyn spoke again, his voice had dropped until it was barely more than a whisper. "The real hell of it wasn't even Dave's involvement," he said. "God forgive me, Jason, but there was a part of me that was tempted to go along with Dave. The civilian government really was making a hash out of the war effort. In the right hands, a military government could have stabilized things long enough to deal with the Cats. It wouldn't need to be a tyranny, if the right people were involved. And Dave Whittaker should have been one of the right people."

"Then what stopped you from joining?"

Tolwyn's answer was oblique. "Back in the days of the Roman Republic, before the Caesars, the word `dictator' didn't have any unfortunate connotations," he said. "A dictator was just a leader appointed for the duration of an emergency with broad military and civil powers. Did you ever read Livy, Jason? Cincinnatus was a simple country squire, but when Rome was in danger he left the plow to become the dictator until the crisis was over. Then he laid down the rods of office and went back to his simple rustic life. George Washington was the same kind of man, in the early days of the American republic." Tolwyn sighed. "But there aren't many men like Washington or Cincinnatus, Jason. Rome had Caesar and Pompey; America had Harold Jarvis back in the early twenty-first century. I was tempted to play Cincinnatus and defend the Confederation, but I'm damned if I'm going to help some ambitious bastard play Caesar!"

"I see your point, sir."

"Well, anyway, you know what happened. By the time we got Behemoth operational I was so tied up in knots over everything that I tried to carry off the whole operation on sheer brute determination. Most of my people were on the thin edge of a nervous breakdown, and I wasn't far behind them. Otherwise we would have tightened security, and that damned Cat Hobbes would never have been able to get the details of the Behemoth to Thrakhath. Hell, there were officers aboard my flagship who were conducting a search for a spy long before I ever knew anything about it. Maybe if I'd been more conscious of anything beyond the need to get the job done I might have been able to help them find him before he screwed us all. But . . I didn't. Thrakhath jumped the fleet and knocked out Behemoth, and that was all she wrote. Fortunately Paladin was there to pick up the pieces, and Chris Blair flew the mission that ended the war before the conspirators had a chance to move. I ended up with a messy court-martial and a career in ruins even after they acquitted me. But it was what happened after the court-martial that made me realize that I'd underestimated the bastards in the conspiracy after all."

"After the court-martial?"

"Just after. When I got home from the court appearance that last day, I found a message on my comm terminal. No video, just a voice using a distorter so it couldn't be recognized. All he said was 'We could just as easily have crushed you. Remember that we look after our friends . . as long as they are friends.' "

"You think the officers on the court were in on the conspiracy?" Bondarevsky asked.

"I'm certain of it," Tolwyn responded. "Just as certain as I am that it was that same bunch who had Dave Whittaker killed four months ago."

"But why?"

"I did some digging, as quietly as I could, and found out that some of the conspirators were in it for a lot more than just the idea of saving us from the Cats. They call themselves the Belisarius Group. Some of the ringleaders have enjoyed the increased power they've acquired as a result of the war. Even under civilian authority, the military's been riding high lots of ways. They must have figured they would lose out on their perks once the peace was signed. I suspect the civil government might not have been as stupid as everyone thought, too. The indecent haste with which they started scaling back the armed forces tells me they were worried about a coup even after the war . . . and it turns out they had good reason to worry."

"But without the War there's no excuse . ."

"Exactly." Tolwyn sat down again, leaning forward and talking now with an intensity that reminded Bondarevsky of the admiral's customary aura before a major engagement. "The conspiracy has penetrated beyond the military now, Jason. They've got people on the Peace Commission, in the Foreign Office, plenty of key places. And they are deliberately engineering a revival of the Kilrathi War so that there will be a sufficient threat out there to justify them seizing power and holding on to it."

"That's . . that's a pretty powerful accusation, sir."

"It's true. I've been collecting information ever since the court-martial, trying to gather enough