Wing Commander #07 False Color William Forstchen (top 10 books to read .txt) 📖

we had at least a modicum of morality on our side, and this was putting us on the very same level as him.

"But before I'd finished the review and made a final decision I had a visit from an old friend of mine that changed everything." Tolwyn fell silent, still pacing restlessly.

"Sir?"

"David Whittaker." Tolwyn paused again, as if the name alone conveyed everything he wanted to say. Finally he continued. "Dave Whittaker was a classmate of mine in the Academy more years ago than I care to remember. We were shipmates on our cadet cruise aboard the old Albemarle. The captain sent us down in a shuttle with a survey team . . . you know the drill, give the middies some responsibility on some jerkwater little planet where nothing can go wrong. Well, this time something did go wrong. My helm console exploded—they never did figure out why—during the landing approach. The shuttle crashed. I woke up blind and pinned in the wreckage, without my helmet and with sulfur dioxide fumes leaking in from the planetary atmosphere. Dave didn't have a helmet either, it had been crushed under a piece of the computer when we hit. But he stayed with me, got me out and helped me get to an emergency pressure bubble, breathing that god-awful stuff. I never would have made it if it hadn't been for him. We both pulled six months in the hospital, and Dave got a commendation and the Distinguished Service Award. We kept in touch, off and on, but I kind of lost track of him over the last few years, until he came to see me one night at my house off-base.

"It could have been old home week, but he didn't waste any time making small talk. Instead he launched right into it. He wanted to sound me out on behalf of some friends of his, military officers with long and distinguished service records who were sick and tired of the way the Confederation civil government was making a hash out of the war effort. He named a couple of names . . . important officers, men like DuVall and Murasald. And they were just recent recruits, not part of the main organization. It took a few minutes for me to get it through my thick skull that Dave was talking about a military coup, about throwing over all of our service oaths and rising against the Confederation government!"

"What did you say to him, Admiral?" Bondarevsky asked.

"Well, what I should have done was say I'd sign on and find out more, but I didn't. I told him exactly what I thought of the idea of the military shaking loose of civilian control. I don't care how screwed up things are in a democracy, there's never an excuse for the military to run free of government control. Never! So Dave left, handing me a story about it was all just a vague idea and he was sorry he'd even broached it. But I knew he'd been serious. I guess my reputation for playing things my own way persuaded them that I'd be sympathetic."

"You could have been in a lot of danger," Bondarevsky said. "A halfway decent conspiracy would have had you killed if they thought you were a danger to them."

"I know. I think Dave was the only thing that held them back . . . that and the fact that I didn't do anything that could worry them."

"You mean . . . you didn't alert ConFleet Security?"

Tolwyn stopped his pacing and stood looking down at Bondarevsky. "I did not," he said flatly. "And for a good reason. One of the things Dave let slip when we were talking was the fact that Security is lousy with their people. They have a whole secret wing of the security forces, an agency I later found out is designated Y-12 on the TO&E. But they have agents scattered all through the structure. So who could I report things to? Anyone I contacted could have been part of it, even my best friends and oldest contacts. If Dave Whittaker was one of them . . ."

"You had Presidential access," Bondarevsky pointed out.

"And you know it takes time and several layers of bureaucracy to get a meeting, even to place a holocall—not that I'd've trusted something like that to a holo-call, no matter how secure the line was supposed to be. The way I figured it, if I had made a move to see anybody I could be reasonably sure wasn't part of the plot I'd have been dead before I knew what hit me. So I pretended I believed Dave's disclaimers and did the only thing I could think of doing."

"What was that?"

"I threw everything I had into getting Behemoth operational, Jason. Everything. I pushed every man in my command past the breaking point, myself included, trying to get that goddamned weapon built and tested as fast as possible."

Understanding dawned. "To get the war over as quickly as you could," Bondarevsky said slowly.

"Exactly," Tolwyn said. "I figured the only way to head off a coup was to remove the only excuse the conspirators had. End the war by whatever means possible, and the civilian government wouldn't have be in a position to screw things up so much any longer. So I figured Behemoth was our best possible chance. If I'd've known about Paladin's Temblor Bomb project I would have thrown all my department's resources into backing him. But his operation was strictly black, top secret all the way.

"So you pushed Behemoth as the best way to finish the fighting before the conspirators struck. I can see why you were under so much pressure . . ."

"Can you, Jason? Can you really?" Tolwyn's voice was suddenly ragged with emotion. "I don't know if anyone can understand what I was going through. Try to put yourself in my place. I was being forced to put my faith in a weapon I didn't really believe in, and the stakes