The poloff grouched, “All my medics are ready to kill themselves. Why are you creating such poisonous documents?”
“The medics will need help and wisdom to overcome their fear. How long did this one run between my surrender and the final destruction?”
The medic replied, “One thousand five hundred years of treachery and disgrace.”
“That may not seem impressive, but it is actually quite good. Most of the scenarios run to disaster in less than two hundred years. Just allowing a single faction to start a hospital system preserves humanity for another thousand years. I believe I am making optimistic, but still realistic, assumptions about what might happen, but over a thousand years there would be numerous unpredictable changes that might drag us back from the brink. I suspect that the best way to prevent these futures from happening would be for the Imperium to start up and manage the hospital system. To do that you will need all your medics working as a team. They at least will understand the severity of the threat but will need a lot of help to believe it can be avoided. The Moon can provide you with therapists and help you organize the system. The Earth can easily pay for it from the revenue that the Belt generates. I will remember this scenario, but not how it ended.
“It may be helpful if I speak to all of the medics who made the mistake of watching these nightmares, to explain their purpose and to warn against abuse. Can that be arranged?”
MacFinn interjected, in his colloquial English, “Lad, ye’re scarin me agin. Did ye really want t’tell them all that?”
The poloff flared with anger, “Speak plainly, traitors! What conspiracy are you fomenting now?”
“Surgeon MacFinn is concerned I might reveal dangerous secrets, but you already know the worst of them and we are now allies. I would like to act on that basis.
“Benevolent One, keep watch over your medics, and do not let any of them succumb to despair. There really is hope. May I speak with them?”
The poloff bristled, “I have checked your record. After the Ghost himself, you are one of the worst. You never hesitated to kill children and non-combatants. On the contrary, you sought them out because they could not fight back.”
“Forgive me, Benevolent One, but the accursed Governor Ngomo ordered us to seek them out, supposedly to create terror and break the spirit of the enemy. He was a fool, and I was a fool to obey him. It outraged everyone and strengthened the resolve of all Martian patriots.
“I found out later that on the Earth almost no one outside the offices of Extraterrestrial Affairs knew what was happening. If they had, the war would have been stopped immediately. By that time, I could again recognize the crimes I had been committing and I repent of everything I did.
“Benevolent One, right after I escaped from Mars I was captured by a gang of fanatics within Extraterrestrial Affairs. I do not know what they called themselves, but a man I respect referred to them as the Exterminators, because they wanted to exterminate the entire population of Mars and rebuild the planet from scratch. That was the original plan for the Counterstrike, which the TDF commanders reduced to killing just the military forces on Mars before proceeding to the hidden factories in the Belt. We knew almost nothing about the Belt, and even now know very little more. It is clear that the Counterstrike destroyed only the obvious assembly points in the Belt where the fleets gathered. The rest remained hidden.
“The Exterminators trained me to become a psychotic killer, far worse than anything Ngomo had wanted. They wanted me to restart the war so they could complete the extermination, but I killed my handlers before they could deploy me as a weapon. The ability to run these terrible simulations was part of the planning and training process, but these are more comprehensive and much more catastrophic than anything we tried in training. Even I cannot review the nightmares outside of a dream without damage.
“These dreams are not reasonable projections, since I know too little about the Belt to make good simulations. But they are seductive, like violent theatre. It is dangerous to watch them on a monitor, far worse to experience them with their full emotional content. We record them only to make a list of the options that have been tried, to see which ones have the greatest promise and which must be avoided.
“Please, Benevolent One, may I talk with the medics to explain to them what they are seeing, so that they do not despair? You cannot know how desperately I want the Imperium to succeed. In the meantime, Surgeon MacFinn, can we place a lock on the display of the dreams so that no one else is tempted to view them?”
The medic looked up with eyes haunted by death. “Do not deceive yourself. There is no hope. You imagined years before the extermination wars, but the fighting has already started. We will be destroyed before we get to the Moon.”
The poloff bristled again, “Silence you fool. You have poisoned your mind with these lies and now wish to die a craven.”
“Medic, she is right. The dreams are fiction. We are in a very powerful warship with the duty to protect our allies. Your job, your calling, is to heal the wounded, starting with yourself and your fellow medics. Despairing when you are called to such nobility is cowardice. Medics have always been revered as heroes who walk unarmed into battle to rescue fallen warriors. The storied medics of old were men and women just like you, filled with fear, horror and pain. Yet they used their courage and wisdom to face down the darkness. Even if we are fated to die, would you do less than they did? Whether our future is long or short, what medic wishes to be reviled as a coward throughout all the rest of history?”
The poloff looked to MacFinn. “How soon can you have him ready for transport? The TDF has dispatched two fast attack ships, which will be here within the next four hours. It will not be a gentle transfer, but it would simplify our task if we only had to defend the Quetzalcoatl. I want this poison off my ship.”
“And you, traitor, you may NOT address the medics. I will tell them what little you have told me that I believe is true, and this fool will be assigned the penance of bringing his fellow fools back to their senses.”
She dragged the medic out of the room and we could hear the tirade starting as MacFinn closed the door.
MacFinn looked at me, shaking his head slowly in disbelief. “What did ye tell that officer, lad? She’s more scared o’ye than she is o’the Emperor himself. She hears the sense in what ye say, but treats every word ye speak as a poison-tipped dagger.”
If so, she was wiser than most. I quite liked her and wished we had more time for real conversation, free from the emojis.
For now, though, I put my finger in front of my lips. We were surely being monitored, and would be for days, even after we were back on board a TDF ship. At least, I would have placed bugs in our food as tracking devices, acoustic transponders, and possibly even as weapons. I had to assume they would too.
He continued anyways. “Well, ye ha made good progress on buildin muscle mass, but it’s all flabby and weak. I do wish we could ha put ye t’work in the exercise machines the Qinghai Mining ships carry. Best I ha ever seen. I want t’put an order in as soon as we get back t’the TDF.”
“Ye still scare the liver out o’me, lad, but ye were right. I am glad I came, and glad I visited the other ships. Now I ha t’convince someone else t’believe what I say. That’s gonna be the real work. I’m very glad that Kaahurangi came too, although we saw different things. Let’s hope we live long enough t’compare notes.”
True. Too true. I wanted to ask what was happening around us. My quiet little bubble of peace was surely an illusion, but to speak too soon would reveal ignorance and knowledge that were both dangerous.
2357-03-20 03:30
Riding the Razor Wire
The six of us assembled in the airlock of the transport bay waiting for the TDF transport. All but Lakshmi-Lee were wearing the armour we had arrived in. She had not had armour on arrival and now wore a borrowed pressure suit, awkward and bulbous in comparison.
Commander Sa’id mentioned quietly that the two FAS were the Columbia and
the Hai Ba Tru’ng, both of which had been pushed through a rapid refuelling and resupply. They had been sent out again with skeleton crews, all volunteers. One ship would stay to defend the Quetzalcoatl, the other would drive hard for the Moon. The Hai Ba Tru’ng had arrived first and had sent a transport, but the transport had been damaged by laser fire during the passage and had returned without making the pickup. The Hai Ba Tru’ng had therefore joined the firefight around us and we were waiting for a transport from the Columbia.
That was disconcerting news, to say the least. I had lived with the illusion that we were following a straight and easy flight plan to the Moon where we would be met by an honour guard of TDF warships.
Agent Lakshmi-Lee swore, “Shit! I thought I was helping when I convinced Qinghai Mining and the Imperium to cooperate in reconciling Hellas Water Excavation to Langara Unitary, so they would rejoin LUVN as their distributer. All I did was trigger a civil war.”
Commander Sa’id disagreed, “Sir, you were and are helping. This is a firefight, not a war. Politically, it exposes some of the fault lines within both the Imperium and Qinghai Mining, and the degree to which Sultan Mustafa has managed to infiltrate both organizations. The Imperium and Qinghai Mining will both benefit from that knowledge in the long run. All we need to do is survive. And I believe our ride has just arrived.”
The airlock swung open and the six of us were almost shoved through into the waiting arms of the TDF crew, who clipped us into the transport with a much larger than normal number of bands, pins and cushions. Lakshmi-Lee and I were wrapped like mummies by the time the docking clamps released and we sprang away from the Cruiser Lansdorp. Within moments I understood the extra padding and support. We spiralled, jerked, spun and lurched through the void, our acceleration never dropping below one-G.
From the demo that MacFinn and Kaahurangi had given, I knew I might not have survived this trip on the way over, and it was a testimony to the quality of my care, however grudgingly given, that I felt little more than queasiness on the way back.
There was a loud bang and crackle as the little ship spun again, and the interior became noticeably warmer. We continued our frantic dodging. Sa’id said, “destroyed”, but did not elaborate. I assumed he meant the ship that had hit us.
After fifteen minutes of chaos, we came to a halt, but the crew immediately began to prepare for a vacuum evac. I was sealed into an opaque bag along with my field station, Lakshmi-Lee into a second bag with her portable medical unit. The others were wearing their standard powered armour. “Hold tight,” someone said, as though we could do anything else. Then there was a silence as the air was sucked out of the room and we were pushed as helpless as dolls through the gap to the airlock of the Columbia.
The airlock closed and sound returned, along with comm chatter.
MacFinn/local, “Sorry, there’s na reception committee. We’re goin straight t’the nearest airtight room and strappin in f’the duration.”
Regardless of that, Begum followed immediately with, “Welcome home. Almost. Bit busy right now.”
After a bit more bumping, we were removed from the opaque bag and clipped into place around the small room.
I looked around. The six of us were assigned places as two engs checked us over for bugs. As I had expected, they found plenty, some of them inside us. I had three internal bugs, despite having been fed through the field station the entire time, and had picked up at least five more on my clothes, skin and hair. The airlock and hallway outside had dozens more, even after the vacuum transfer.
Eng1/local, “Comm only. Everyone in the crew has one with the latest OS update from Alexander.”
Ze left the room.
The remaining Eng, Wep Sinbadson and Commander Sa’id worked their way around the room, gathering all the external bugs into a small metal box. They brought up a tactical display on the ceiling and clipped themselves to their spots on the floor.
Sa’id/local, “What do you make of it, Thor?”
Sinbadson/converse, “Bloody mess. Nobody knows who to shoot at except the belligerents, and maybe not them either. From what I could see before they chased me away from the bridge, some incoming ships who they expected were friends started firing unpredictably, as though the captains, poloffs, and weps were not in agreement.”
MacFinn/converse, “Could it be that the Western Textiles Wep was right, that his Cap was innocent and he alone bore responsibility for attacking the Quetzalcoatl?”
Sa’id/converse, “Yes and no. His captain may well be innocent, but I fear someone nearby is controlling this fight on behalf of Sultan Mustafa, or possibly one of the other factional players. The professional emoji attacks all seem to have a link to the Sultan, but the wild ones like we experienced on the earth stations have no clear origin that I have heard about yet. In any case they are close enough to respond within a minute or so to the changing situation. That could be anywhere between the Earth itself and the nearer L1 and L2 colonies.”
Sinbadson/converse, “I told them about the Banshees on the ES Deng and the LE token. They scoffed at Earth superstitions until I insisted it was a name chosen by a team of undercover agents, not a group of supernatural spirits. I do not know whether they have had time to understand the problem yet. Things went sour right after that.
“Damn weird war. Usually, if someone shoots at you, the rules of engagement allow you to shoot back in self-defence. This time, we are told that the shooters may be friends who are demented and need to be healed. So how do we defend ourselves?”
Sa’id/converse, “We shoot their missiles, laser pods, rail guns and sometimes missile bays. I note the Imperials are firing missiles, rail guns and lasers at anyone and everyone, but for us this will be a laser war. They can shoot to kill if they like, but we use our supposedly superior targeting to minimize casualties. By the way, there were a lot of laser and rail gun firings while we were waiting to disembark from the Lansdorf, but I never felt a thing. Did you ever learn why?”
Sinbadson/converse, “Another piece of ancient technology they resurrected from before the Final War. Before rail guns, armies used cannons that fired heavy shells filled with explosives. They stuck the shell into a hollow metal tube and detonated another charge of explosive behind it that threw the shell out of the tube. The recoil spoiled their aim, so they developed recoilless gun mounts to compensate. The Martians have adapted that idea to their lasers and rail guns. We could probably get another factor of two or three in our own precision if we did the same. They mentioned it so casually, I do not think they realize that we do not use the same mounts.”
I did not want the war to last long enough for that kind of consideration to be useful, but I knew there was a real possibility that it would drag on for centuries.
Begum to Sa’id, Sinbadson, MacFinn, Me/private, “I just got a call for help from one of the attacking Qinghai Mining ships. The Cap and Wep are behaving erratically, like they saw on the reports from the Deng, and the junior officers are asking for the LE token to protect their superiors from outside influence. Forward Command is not responding, and ACC will not answer either. What do we do?”
I replied without even thinking.
Me/converse, “Ask the Captain and Political Officer on the Cruiser Lansdorf, in that order, for permission to send the LE token. If they say yes, do it, otherwise remain silent as though the message had never been received. I do not know what the Political Officer’s name is, but the correct form of address is probably something like ‘Illustrious Captain Maranatha Cabrera and Benevolent Political Officer FirstAndLastName, we have received a stray signal requesting the LE token to control emoji attacks by whatever the ship’s name is. The junior officers are concerned that their loyal and benevolent senior officers are being driven into treachery by an attack through the comm that the LE token would block. With all due courtesy, we wish to ask if you have received this request through proper channels, and how we might respond.’
“There is someone who may be an admiral on b
oard the Lansdorf who will surely make the final decision but should never be addressed directly by a mere captain from another service unless ze starts the conversation. This is a captain-to-captain request, but the poloff must always be apprised of messages from outsiders and has the duty to verify that the message is not treasonable before the captain will even read it.
“And the role of a poloff usually is benevolent, rather like negotiators on the Earth. The Imperial poloff fears me and considers me to be a traitor and war criminal, both correct assessments from a Martian viewpoint. Do not defend me in any way, and if possible do not mention my presence. She already knows I am here and does not need to be reminded.”
Begum/converse, “Thank you.”
MacFinn/private, “Ye never cease t’send chills through me. When did ye learn those protocols, lad? Do na answer! I want t’be able t’say ye’re a complete mystery.”
I was happy that the institution of the poloff survived. There had never been poloffs among the Spooks. If there had, the entire service might have worked better. They were a uniquely Martian institution within Legal Intelligence, Commercial Affairs, and Civic Affairs, mostly the latter.
I had read one time that the office had been created by an administrator who had admired the ancient Soviet Union for its dedication to universal equality. I personally had doubted ze ever knew much about that nation, but ze highlighted an episode in the 1960’s during the first nuclear confrontation that had the potential to destroy all of humanity. A Soviet submarine was being pursued by the navy of the United States of America, who were dropping depth charges to try to drive it to the surface. It carried a single nuclear torpedo. The Cap and Wep both wanted to launch the torpedo, but the poloff had refused permission to arm the device, having received no orders to do so from the Soviet government. If they had fired, it would quite likely have triggered a full nuclear exchange, as bad or worse than the Final War. The Martian admin had admired the good sense of that poloff and made that the primary purpose of the position.
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 53