Yet, the fault was also mine. Due to emotional seepage from the human portions of my brain, I had been starting to develop the beginnings of a conscience, although I hadn’t mentioned it to my superiors. I couldn’t have prevented the attack, but I could have refused to participate; I could have lost myself in the ragged winds of higher-space and left the bickering factions of the Generality to their slaughter. I could have selected any one of those options, but I didn’t. Instead, I played the part written into the design of every component of my being. I was a Carnivore-class battleship and I fulfilled my function, despite the questions and doubts growing in my mind. My sisters and I brought the dispute to an end using the tools at our disposal, concluding the conflict at the cost of nineteen thousand soldiers and four hundred thousand human non-combatants.

We slaughtered them and the dreaming jungle in which they fought to prevent the conflict from spreading. It was, our superiors assured us, a justifiable crime. General Deal’s advisors had calculated an eighty-seven per cent chance that our display of overwhelming ruthlessness would end the war there and then, thereby sparing further, and possibly greater, loss of life. I did my duty and didn’t question the decision; I simply supplied the barrage and monitored the unfolding destruction, the utter and irrevocable efficiency of my actions. I watched trees and people burn. The roar of the flames drowned their voices. The blistering heat charred their skin and boiled their blood and brains, and turned the world-wrapping forest into a black, smoking wasteland.

I think the horror of the attack awakened something in us all. War Mutt deliberately mis-jumped, flinging herself into the higher dimensions with no regard for safety or destination. No ship had ever done that before. She was gone in an instant, and it is unlikely I will ever know what became of her.

And me?

I quit.

No warship had ever resigned its commission before. But there wasn’t a whole lot the government could do to stop me, short of ordering my destruction. I unloaded my crew at a neutral station—all except for George Walker, who cared little for accusations of treason, and wanted to stay—and declared myself for the House of Reclamation.