The Last Colony (Old Man's War, #3)

by John Scalzi

On the other hand any public servant is likely to tell you that just a few annoying people in their community will take up the vast majority of their time.

Humans—the few who know the story, anyway—naturally regard Boutin as a traitor, a man whose plan to topple the Colonial Union would have caused the slaughter of billions of humans. The Obin equally and naturally regard him as one of their great racial heroes, a Prometheus figure who gave them not fire but awareness. If you ever needed an argument that heroism is relative, there it is.

Roanoke was a symbol, too, for some of the more dissatisfied members of the Conclave, who saw the burden of its grand designs fall on them without the immediate benefits they had hoped to gain. If the humans could defy the Conclave and get away with it, what value was there in being in the Conclave at all? Every day Roanoke stayed hidden was a day these lesser Conclave members would stew in their own dissatisfaction with the organization they’d surrendered their sovereignty to.

“And then it will go to war with most of the races in this part of space,” Szilard said. “And it will lose. And in losing, humanity will be wiped out. All of it, from Roanoke all the way up. Even Earth will die, Perry. It will be wiped out and the billions there will have no idea why they’re dying. Nothing will be saved. Humanity is on the brink of genocide. And it’s a genocide we will have inflicted on ourselves. Unless you can stop it. Unless you can save Roanoke.”