Free Rogue Powers by Roger MacBride Allen Page B

enough of fighting.
    So headquarters was built inconveniently far from town— near but not at the spaceport, in sight of but not on the coast, on the brow of a hill in the middle of a large and carefully tended clearing. It wasn't due to chance that the view from the Tower was superb, nor due to the prestige of the unit that the First Marine Battalion was stationed there.
    There had been scoffers who laughed at the egos that needed such a huge building, and a few Army types pointed out that the Castle cost more to build than most of the Navy's ships. Then the Fast Plague fell and madness literally became a contagious disease. When the cure was found, and the riots were over, the Castle was still there, with only a nick or two and a few scorch marks to mar the outer stone facing. The Army's gleaming, modern, downtown HQ Center had to be torn down and rebuilt altogether.
    The builders of the Castle were more farsighted than they were optimistic.
    The view from Mac's cabin (which Pete insisted on calling a room) was spectacular. Brown and Gesseti joined Mac for breakfast there the next morning. Mac couldn't eat much. He was too drawn by the view, the things to see. The coastline, the skyline of Hyannisport, the broad plain of the spaceport, were laid out in a magnificent panorama. It was the spaceport that Mac stared at. As he watched, a ship, a small winged job, made a horizontal launch into the perfect blue morning sky and rushed for orbit, the dull yellow of its air-breathing engines suddenly
    flaring into sun-bright specks as it shifted to fusion power. Mac watched it climb to orbit, to space, to the dark between the suns, and thought of Joslyn, his wife, once again so far away.
    "I should be out there, Pete," Mac said at last. "There's work to be done and I'm one of the best qualified to do it, and I'm cooped up here."
    "You'll be out there soon, Mac. The judges will pass their verdict, this whole farce will be over, and you'll be back at it. Besides, you're only locked up here because you had a job of talking to do that you thought was pretty damn important. And you were right."
    "Maybe," Captain Brown said, carefully refilling his coffee cup, "you even did some good, though I doubt it. And Pete, we gave it our best shot and did pretty well, but I've never had much hope of getting Mac off. The regulations are pretty clear, and I can't see Leventhal and company being thrown by a lot of verbal flourishes."
    "Why do you doubt I did any good?" Mac said.
    "Because you're a lousy politician and you didn't know the right people. Oh, I don't think you had much choice, and you did get your case heard, but all that accomplishes is getting the brass with their backs to the wall. They can't lose face by admitting you're right. They want to prove they're right—"
    "And the only way to do that is to deploy the damned carriers. But I had to try, Captain Brown. For all the reasons you talked about in court."
    "Yeah." Brown was angry, though he couldn't quite explain at what. But Terrance MacKenzie Larson was not the sort of man who should be hung out to dry. It was only the higher ranks, the admirals who loved their big ships too much, who felt the need to punish him. They left the dirty work to the Tsungs and the Leventhals, honorable officers honorably and reluctantly doing their duty. And Brown felt he never wanted to hear the word duty again.
    There was a polite knock at the door and the very respectful white-gloved marine informed them that the court-martial was ready to reconvene.
    They descended in the sleek, silent-running elevator, and were led the familiar way to the courtroom by the marine guard.
    There was shuffling of papers, and rising for the court, and finally it came, unwilling, from Leventhal's lips.
    One word.
    "Guilty."

CHAPTER FIVE   March, 2116   Guardian Contact Base on Surface of Outpost
    The day dawned as most of them did in this clearing, with a mist-shrouded sun easing its way through the knotted, roiling