Free Stark's Crusade by John G. Hemry Page B

that last question, Reminds me of something. Some guys who stood and died. Who? Where? A face came to mind. Rash Paratnam? He's still alive, thank God. But he told me once about some guys. What was the name? Something like Sports. Spartans. Yeah. Some battle where they stood and fought to the last. Why the hell'd they do that, anyway?
    The answer might not matter at all, but at least finding it would be a diversion from bad dreams and other questions whose answers couldn't be looked up. Rousing himself, Stark activated the display, searching for the battle his friend had once described. This must be it. Thermopylae. He read the description, grew intrigued enough to call up the background, then the longer-term results. An hour passed.
    Stark had been given the Colony manager's private number, and he used it now. After several rings, Campbell answered, gazing bleary-eyed and disheveled into the screen. "Sergeant Stark? Is there an emergency?"
    "No. Not an emergency. There's something I wanted to talk to you about."
    Campbell squinted toward the corner of his own screen where the time would be displayed. "Sergeant, you're not much for following normal sleep patterns, are you?"
    "Uh, I guess not, sir. Too many nights on duty, I guess. Listen, you ever hear of some guys named Spartans?"
    "Spartans? Of course. Ancient Greece, correct?"
    "That's right. Well, they fought a battle once at some place I can't pronounce. Thermo something. There were only a hundred of them, sent to stop an invading army."
    Campbell shook his head as if trying to shake his thoughts into order. "That would have been the Persians, if I recall right."
    "Yeah. Anyway, these Spartans held for a while. Those were their orders. Hold the position. But the Persians had a huge army. So eventually they surrounded the Spartans and killed them all." Stark moved his finger as if pointing to text no longer displayed. "They could've run, but they didn't. They'd been ordered to hold. They stayed and died."
    "It was certainly a noble sacrifice, Sergeant Stark, but what—?"
    Stark looked upward, seeking the right words. "But it was more than that. All the different Greeks fought a lot with each other. Cities, I guess. So even though this big Persian army was coming, the Greeks weren't cooperating well. But those hundred Spartans changed that. They didn't just buy a little time. What they did was give all the Greeks a symbol. See, they didn't die for themselves. They knew even if the Persians got beat that they'd still be dead. And they could've hung back in their part of Greece and just tried to protect their own territory. But they died protecting everybody. They became a symbol. Something for all the Greeks to rally around."
    Campbell nodded, clearly puzzled. "Yes, that would have been important. But why is this old battle important now?"
    "Because it tells us something, Mr. Campbell." Stark leaned toward the screen to emphasize his next words. "Something about making good things happen. I'm going to ask you a favor, sir."
    "What's that?"
    "This vote on declaring independence. I want you to postpone it."
    "What?" Campbell shook his head again, as if testing his hearing this time. "Postpone the referendum on independence? Why?"
    Stark hesitated, once again searching for the words he needed. "Because we can leave the U.S. and get away with it for at least a while. I mean, the Colony is pretty well off, now that it's not being sucked dry by the corporations back home and by the extra taxes you civs had to pay because you weren't allowed to elect your own representatives to help protect you from that kind of nonsense. Hell, you're rich in resources and specialized manufacturing plants, right? And my troops can protect this Colony for a while. Maybe forever. But we'd be cutting and running, wouldn't we? Taking what we could get and leaving all the ordinary civs back home stuck with the same corrupt politicians and corrupted system."
    "You're saying we should stick with a