“Let me rephrase,” Rybicki said. “I’ve been as honest with you as I’ve been allowed to be.”
“You lied to me and Jane and an entire colony’s worth of people,” I said. “You’ve shunted us to the ass end of the universe and threatened us with annihilation from a group none of us even knew existed. You took colonists trained on modern equipment and forced them to colonize with ancient machines they barely knew how to use. If some of our colonists hadn’t happened to have been Mennonites, the only thing you would have found here would have been bones. And because you didn’t survey this planet well enough to know it has its own goddamned intelligent species, seven of my colonists have died in the last three days. So with all due respect, General, you can kiss my ass. Jane’s not here because if she was, you’d probably already be dead. I’m not feeling any more charitable to you myself.”
“Fair enough,” Rybicki said, grimly.
“Now,” I said. “Answers.”
“Since you mentioned annihilation, you know about the Conclave,” Rybicki said. “How much do you know?”
“I know what information you sent us,” I said, neglecting to mention I knew anything else.
“Then you know that it is actively seeking out new colonies and getting rid of them,” Rybicki said. “As you might expect, this is not going over well with the races who have had their colonies expunged. The Colonial Union has taken the lead in resisting the Conclave, and this colony has played a major role in that.”
“How?” I said.
“By staying hidden,” Rybicki said. “Christ, Perry, you’ve been here for almost a year. The Conclave has been going nuts looking for you. And every day it hasn’t found you, the less terrifying it looks. The more it looks like what it is: the universe’s biggest pyramid scheme. It’s a system where a few strong races are leveraging the gullibility of a bunch of weaker races to snap up every habitable planet in sight. We’ve been using this colony as a lever to pry off some of those sucker races. We’re destabilizing the Conclave before it can reach critical mass and crush us and everyone else with it.”
“And this required deceiving everyone, including the crew of the Magellan,” I said.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Rybicki said. “Look. The number of people who knew about this had to be kept to an absolute bare minimum. The Secretary of Colonization. Me. General Szilard of the Special Forces and a few of his handpicked soldiers. I supervised the load out and engineered some of the colonial selection. It’s not an accident you have Mennonites here, Perry. And it’s not an accident you had enough ancient machinery to get you through. It’s regrettable that we couldn’t tell you, and I’m sorry that we couldn’t see another way to do this. But I’m not going to apologize for it, because it worked.”
“And how is this playing back home?” I said. “How do the home planets of our people feel about you playing with the lives of their friends and families?”
“They don’t know,” Rybicki said. “The existence of the Conclave is a state secret, Perry. We haven’t told the individual colonies about it. It’s not something they need to worry about yet.”
“You don’t think a federation of a few hundred other races in this part of space is something most people might want to know about,” I said.
“I’m sure they’d want to know about it,” Rybicki said. “And between you and me, if I had my way, they probably would know about it already. But it’s not up to me, or you or any of us.”
“So everyone still thinks we’re lost,” I said.
“They do,” Rybicki said. “The second lost colony of Roanoke. You’re famous.”
“But you’ve just given the game away,” I said. “You’re here. When you go back, people are going to know we’re here. And my people know about the Conclave.”
“How do they know?” Rybicki asked.
“Because we told them,” I said, disbelieving. “Are you serious? You expect me to tell people they can’t use any technology more advanced than a mechanical combine and not give them a reason? I would have been the first death on the planet. So they know. And because they know, everyone they know back in the Colonial Union will know, too. Unless you plan to keep us stranded. In which case those same people who are jumping for joy outside that window will string you up by your thumbs.”
“No, you’re not being put back in the hole,” Rybicki said. “On the other hand, you’re not quite out of the hole yet, either. We’re here to do two things. The first is to pick up the crew of the Magellan.”
“For which they will no doubt be eternally grateful, although I expect Captain Zane wants his ship back,” I said.
“The second thing is to let you know that all the equipment you haven’t been using, you can now,” Rybicki said. “Say good-bye to the second millennium. Welcome to modern times. You can’t send messages back to the Colonial Union yet, though. There are still a few details to develop.”