This morning, however, the armed men arrayed on the firing line were not going to be shooting at targets. They were going to be shooting at their fellow men. Men with mothers and fathers and wives and children. Men who, like them, were citizens of the Terran Union but who, for reasons that the men holding the M-88 Pulse Rifles could not fathom, had decided to betray the Human Race to an inhuman enemy bent on the annihilation of Mankind. And, for that, they would die. Today. Minutes from now. The five condemned men stood in a line against the armored back wall of the range—the one that was built to stop bullets. They looked mostly dead already. Pale, drawn, unshaven, bleary from lack of sleep, eyes vacant. Two appeared to be in a near stupor, perhaps from the injections they had received from the doctor because they were shaking so hard they could not stand or walk. These were not military men, hardened to danger and long accustomed to the idea that death might claim them on any given day. They were freighter rats, and not particularly successful ones at that, whose consciences were barely flexible enough to allow them to sell cargo to the enemy in exchange for enough wealth to settle down on some nice planet with a house, a little bit of land, and a nest egg. But this was more than they bargained for.
