NOTICE OF SANCTUARY TO: ALL PERSONNEL FROM: AUSLAND COMMITTEE SUBJECT: FREEDOM
1. ANY OFFICER OR MAN WHO WISHES TO RESIGN FROM THE SERVICES OF THE IMPERIAL FORCES OF THE SECESSION MAY DO SO OF THIS DATE.
2. THE PROCEDURE FOR RESIGNATION INVOLVES NO FORMAL STATEMENT. A MAN MAY TERMINATE HIS PERIOD OF SERVICE BY DEPARTING FROM THE OCCUPIED ZONE.
3. ANY OFFICER OR MAN WHO ATTEMPTS TO INTERFERE WITH THE RESIGNATION OF ANOTHER SHALL BE TRIED IN ABSENTIA BY THIS COMMITTEE, AND IF FOUND GUILTY, SHALL INCUR THE DEATH PENALTY.
"An outrageous and preposterous bit of deviltry!" ven Klaeden had hissed. "Get them. Make an example of them."
In reversal of previous policy, a police party was sent to search for the self-styled ausland committee, with orders to capture or kill on sight. The police party hunted down and killed six deserters, dragged eleven more back to the occupied zone, under the very eyes of the native population. But the immunizing serum was not recovered.
A few days later, three staff officers and a dozen officers in Justice Section awoke with yelps in the night to pluck stinging needles from their skins and scream for the guard to pursue the silent shadows that had invaded their quarters.
Five men were captured. Three of them were natives. Interrogation failed to disclose the location of the immunizing serum.
Muttering natives began to desert the project. The five culprits were brought before the baron.
"Execute them in public, with full dress military ceremony. Then close the border of the occupied zone. No native may leave, if he has signed a work contract."
On the day of the execution, the natives attempted to leave en masse. The police activity along the border approached the proportions of a massacre.
"We were nearly finished," raged the baron, pacing like an angry predator in the glade. "Another two weeks, and the first ore would come out of the crushers. They can't stop us now. They can't quit."
Three elders of the Geoark sat like frozen statues on a mossy boulder, tight-lipped, not understanding the colonel's tongue, disdaining to speak in the intermediate language.
"Explain it to them, Meikl. Make it clear."
Pale, trembling with suppressed disapproval, the analyst bowed curtly and turned to the girl. "Tell them," he said in the Intermedia, "that death will come to any native who deserts, and that ten auslanders will die for every man murdered by the renegade committee. Tell them that the Geoark is...." He paused. There was no word for "hostage."