Free Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber Page A

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    â€œLanghorne and Bédard have turned out to be not just fanatics, but megalomaniacs. I’ve left a complete file for you, with all the details. I don’t have the heart to recite them all for you now. But the short version is that it turns out Langhorne and his inner clique never trusted me quite as completely as I thought they had. They deployed a complete orbital kinetic strike system without ever telling me, as their senior military officer, a thing about it. I never knew it was there, couldn’t take any steps to neutralize it. And when Shan-wei and her supporters resisted their efforts to turn themselves into gods, they used it. They killed her, Nimue—her and all of the people trying to openly maintain any memory of our true history.”
    A PICA had no heart, not in any physical sense, but the heart Nimue Alban no longer possessed twisted in anguish, and he cleared his throat, then shook his head hard.
    â€œTo be honest, I thought about waking you up, having this conversation with you in person, but I was afraid to. I’ve lived a long time now, Nimue, but you’re still young. I didn’t want to tell you about Shan-wei. For a lot of reasons, really, including the fact that I know how much you loved her and I was…too cowardly to face your pain. But also because I know you . You wouldn’t have been willing to ‘go back to sleep’ until you’d personally done something about her murder, and I can’t afford to lose you. Not now. Not for a lot of reasons. Besides, you’d probably try to argue with me about my own plans. And when you come right down to it, no time will pass for you between now and when you actually see this message, will it?”
    His bittersweet smile was crooked, but when he spoke again, his voice was brisker, almost normal-sounding.
    â€œWe did our best to give you at least some of the tools you’ll need if you decide—if you decide, as the person you are now , not the Nimue Alban who originally volunteered for this—to continue with this mission. We didn’t really think we’d be able to do that, since we hadn’t known Langhorne would decide to keep Hasdrubal with the main fleet instead of personally overseeing Safehold’s terraforming. We were delighted that he did, at the time, because it gave us a lot more freedom. Of course”—he smiled bitterly—“we didn’t realize then why he was staying there. Even without him looking over our shoulder, though, we couldn’t begin to give you everything I would have liked to. There were still limits to what we dared to ‘disappear’ from the equipment lists, but Shan-wei and I showed a little creativity during the terraforming operations. So you’ll have some computer support, the most complete records we could provide, and at least some hardware.
    â€œI’ve set the timer to activate this…depot, I suppose, seven hundred and fifty standard years after I complete this recording. I arrived at that particular timing because our best projections indicate that if the Gbaba didn’t decide Kau-zhi’s fleet was all of Operation Ark’s units, and if their scout ships continued to sweep outward, it ought to take them a maximum of about five hundred years to pass within easy detection range of radio emissions or neutrinos from this system. So I’ve allowed a fifty percent cushion to carry you through the threat zone of immediate detection. That’s how long you will have been ‘asleep.’”
    He shook his head again.
    â€œI can’t begin to imagine what it’s going to be like for you, Nimue. I wish there’d been some way, any way, I could have avoided dropping this burden on you. I couldn’t find one. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
    He sat silent once more for several seconds, his holographic eyes gazing at something no one else had ever been able to see, then blinked back into