Read Online Out of the Dark by David Weber - Free Book Online Page B

result is lesssuccessful than we might wish, would we not risk exposing the Empire to retaliation from other members of the Hegemony?”
    “A valid point,” Thikair acknowledged. “First, however, as I say, the Council’s attitude towards the humans is somewhat more . . . ambivalent than usual. Second, even if the Barthoni and their weed-eater fellows were able to muster support for a vote of censure from the Council, the Emperor would be able to insist—truthfully—that the decision was mine, not his, and that he never authorized anything of the sort. I believe it’s most probable the Hegemony Judiciary would settle for penalizing me, as an individual, rather than recommending retaliation against the Empire generally. Of course it’s possible some of you, as my senior officers, might suffer as well. On the other hand, I believe the risk would be well worth taking and would ultimately redound to the honor of our clans.
    “There is, however, always another possibility. The Council won’t expect a Level Three or a Level Two civilization any more than we did. If it turns out after a local century or so that these humans aren’t working out, the simplest solution may well be to simply exterminate them and destroy enough of their cities and installations to conceal the level of technology they’d actually attained before our arrival. Given the Council’s evident attitude towards the original survey reports and—especially—Vice-Speaker Koomaatkia’s . . . encouragement, I suspect the Hegemony would be less brokenhearted over such an outcome than they might have been in another case, not that any of them would ever be honest enough to
say
so. In fact, it’s possible they might well choose not to look all that carefully at the evidence of the locals’ actual technological level lest unpleasant questions about their own attitudes and behaviors be raised. So while it would be dreadfully unfortunate, of course, if one of our carefully focused and limited bioweapons somehow mutated into something which swept the entire surface of the planet with a lethal plague, the Council might prove surprisingly . . . understanding in this instance. After all, as we all know”—he bared his canines fully—“accidents sometimes happen.”

. V .

    “I wonder if she’ll drown him?” Captain Pieter Stefanovich Ushakov mused aloud, watching his daughter glower at the older of her two younger brothers.
    “I doubt it,” his wife replied calmly.
    Vladislava Nikolaevna Ushakovna was a tall, trim woman, as blond as her husband, but with a markedly more placid disposition. Unlike Pieter, who’d been born in Ternopil
oblast
in western Ukraine and whose family had moved to Kiev only after his eleventh birthday, Vladislava was a native Kievan. She was the one who’d first introduced fourteen-year-old Pieter to the vast lake many years before, and he was glad she had. Not just because of the fond memories of moonlight, blankets, and murmured kisses, either, although they
definitely
played a part in explaining just how fond those memories were. At the moment, however, those long-ago days seemed rather remote as she did her best to dissuade their youngest—three-and-a-half-year-old Grigori—from ripping his favorite picture out of his favorite book. She, Pieter, and Grigori sat under a picnic shelter overlooking the huge Kyyivs’ke reservoir north of Kiev on the Dnipro River. The spring sunlight was warm, the day was young, and the dark blue waters of the lake were dotted with pleasure craft.
    They were also quite deep enough to dispose of an irritating younger brother, Pieter thought.
    “I don’t know,” he said with a slow smile. “If I were her,
I’d
probably drown him.”
    “I think that might be just a little extreme as a first response,” Vladislava said. “Now, if he keeps it
up
. . . .”
    The two of them looked at each other, and Pieter chuckled. At twelve, Daria had already shot up to a meter and a half in