Even before they sat he’d become suddenly conscious of his own appearance, his manners, his limited and little used social skills. She wasn’t someone to boss around, and he had begun to think that if she had been, he might not be up to the task.
They ordered and while they ate he received a comm from Elian, who wanted to know where he was. He looked at the screen and decided not to answer – the young man was like a ferret when it came to secrets.
Over drinks – wine for her, beer for Kana, they talked about the Bugs – Seventh Fleet’s name for the enemy - and what the military was capable of doing in response, what the Federal government might or might not do, and about their chances for survival.
Mona said, “Our ships are ancient and our officer corps are usually political appointees. I don’t know. What about the Hawk?”
He smiled, “My two officers are less than a year out of flight school, and severely wet behind the ears, but both graduated near the top of their schools and the combination is deadly. They killed their first bug fighter at what Elian told me was visual distance, got their second with a volley of that crappy ER-12 missile and killed a third while in a dogfight with three bugs. They are both very, very smart and they found the first bug force based mainly on an educated guess; they penetrated it and moved around inside the formation, studying emissions, looking for patterns and acquiring a huge amount of data about a totally unknown enemy. Virtually everything we know about Bugs came from the Hawk, and those two are the ones who reinvented it and flew it. In my opinion, they represent the only weapon this Navy has that can take the fight to the enemy, and they believe that if they allow that enemy to take the fight to us, we’re extinct.”
She asked, “Extinct?” He nodded, “The way they approach combat is different from humans. We fight until one side or the other is the clear winner, at which time the losing side surrenders; the bugs don’t stop until the enemy is vapor. They build ships that are in most areas inferior to ours, but their mother ships are able to take a nuclear missile and survive. I’d love to know how they did that, but I can already guess the why.”
She asked, “What do you think they want, why are they here, and can we survive?” He nodded, “We know – based on the fact that these huge mother ships and their escorts are virtually one hundred percent military based, that they have traveled interstellar distances at something around half the speed of light, that they are now beginning to come together after an unknown but very long time, with the possible intent to colonize a system. We think – not know – that they were chased out of their own system, and their unprovoked attacks seem to suggest that they are still being chased, although we have no evidence to back that up. As to our own survival, our present Navy is incapable of a stand-up fight, so we have to think outside of the box, and we have to survive long enough to build a Navy that can fight. We have one huge advantage, our ability to jump. They don’t know about that, or at least we don’t think they do, and that gives us some time. Lubya is the closest system, and we estimate that within a few years they’ll be able to pick up the system’s transmissions. That assumes of course that they can – we have little idea how they communicate.”
She blinked, “You seem to be at the right place at the right time. What about these two JG’s, are they going to be able to stay together?” Kana smiled, “Oh, I think so.”
She nodded, “You’ve…” She blinked and pursed her lips, “Perhaps we can continue this line or reasoning some other time?” Virtually every square meter of the base was monitored. He grinned – she had just told him something important; she was going to see him again. Oh, and she was very smart.
They had some free time and decided to catch a shuttle down to New Novosibirsk, the capital.
As they sat in the passenger compartment, now talking surprisingly like a couple rather than two separate people, Lt. JG Robert Padilla entered and stopped short when he saw the two.
Kana grinned at the young officer, almost blushing in the process and said, “Sir, allow me to present Senior Chief Cadiz. Senior Chief, may I present to you Lieutenant Padilla. I have been attempting to keep the lieutenant here out of trouble, and I have to say, it’s a big job.”
Kana found that he was grinning from ear to ear, partly in embarrassment, mostly in pride. Lt. Padilla shook her hand and smiled at her, “Senior Chief, it is a pleasure to meet you. Unfortunately, he is quite correct, but the fact that I am standing here is proof that he has been, to date, quite successful in his efforts.”
She grinned at the handsome young man and said, “From what he has told me, sir, you are clearly capable of taking care of yourself, as well as the rest of your command, with the possible exception of REMF’s.”
It was his turn to blush and he asked, “Chief, how is it that you two became acquainted? Did it have something to do with the lottery, or, I don’t know, a judge?”
Kana answered, “Sir, I met the senior chief just a few hours ago, after we arrived in Lubya. She knew my wife - they served together - but the chief and I never served on the same ship, and we were never in port at the same time.”
The lieutenant stared at Chief Kana in surprise, clearly unaware of any of this. Kana said, “Sir, to answer the question you are about to ask, I was married years ago, for a brief time. My wife lost her life at the battle of York.”
Of late, the young man had witnessed a great deal of death and violence, but he was still surprised into silence by this news.
He asked about her duty assignment and Mona told him, “Sir, I have just arrived at Lubya. I’m stationed on the battle cruiser Redoubtable, which has just come out of the yards.”
The young man clearly wanted to ask more questions, but seemed to understand that Kana was enjoying some much needed personal time, and after voicing his pleasure at meeting her he went off to another seat, leaving Kana alone with Mona.
On the way down she asked about the evening, and he smiled, “As it happens, I’ve reserved several tables: Robert and his new bride, and Lt. Turner and ETech4 Carolyn, the enlisted who has been part of our crew, and who just happens to be smitten with Elian, who despite a certain reputation, has been utterly stupid. There will be some additional people as well, perhaps fourteen? Not certain.”
Mona cocked her head, “So, what’s the occasion?” He shrugged, “We survived.” She nodded, “I understand that motive – it’s hard enough on ancient ships, but when you add an enemy trying to kill you, just making home port, or for that matter, any port, is a true blessing. What can you tell me about your two officers?”
He smiled, “Lt. Padilla has a true genius at operating a ship. He always knows where the enemy is in relation to him, never panics or suffers from indecision. To date all his decisions have proven to be the right ones. He’s brilliant. Lt. Turner graduated at the top of his class and chose Padilla, who was the number two stick during flight school, and perhaps the number last officer anywhere near a book. They helped each other through flight school and they killed a far superior enemy fighter while being engaged by three of them. As I told you earlier, they are the ones who found the Hawk, the ones who originated the idea for transforming it into the one single craft our Navy has that is capable of attacking the enemy. ETech4 Carolyn is the one who discovered the emissions that we had for ages ignored, the ones the enemy used to find and kill us.”
Mona smiled, “You like them don’t you.” He nodded, “Absolutely, when everyone else was screaming to jump out and save their skins, those three were concentrating on learning how to kill bugs. Frankly, I don’t see anyone else as having come up with anything.” She asked, “So, what about the future?”
He grinned, “We stay together, and we get us some more Hawks to play with. Right now, they’re refurbishing all the ones stored here on Lubya, and we know there are others spread out over multiple systems. I understand that Jupiter Base has issued general orders recalling all of them. There exists the probability that our four will get sent to Jupiter as well, unless Admiral Lee i
s an idiot, and I don’t think the man is.”
She asked, clearly hearing something in his words, “How do you know you’ll stay together?” He grinned again, “Best you don’t ask.”
She nodded, “You might keep me in mind.” She smiled while he considered the various possible meanings. He snorted, “In the dictionary, instead of a verbal definition for ‘confident’ they’ve got a pic of you.” Mona frowned, “You have a dictionary?”
Chapter 43
Admiral Shin Ho Lee, Haifa, Earth
The huge room slowly filled up, taking far longer than anything the military would have organized, but since these men and women were civilians, Shin Ho was not surprised. He wasn’t happy, civilians tended to drive him to a near frenzy, but since he worked for them, he was forced to remain quietly seated while the delegates bounced around from group to group, trading smiles and probably the odd knife, hopefully verbal.
The federal government had called an emergency meeting of the presidents, premiers, one queen and appointed governors of the inhabited star systems. That it took place at all was somewhat unusual since it involved a relatively large amount of negotiation and huge amounts of niggling details, plus of course, the travel.
Something similar occurred every four years when planetary delegations gathered to elect the federal legislature. The party system was alive and well, but rather than two or so organizations that periodically traded places, there existed a fascinating array of what Shin Ho thought of as non-parties, or perhaps, anti-parties, groups of people who were allied around or against a particular theme, policy, or, he didn’t know, recipe.
Earth’s economy dwarfed even the most powerful systems, including Nasser and Elyse, but there were now somewhere between nine and twelve that were thriving with GDP’s shooting up as they exported more than they imported. The exact number constantly changed, based on who wanted what from whom.
Since the end of the civil war the numbers of freighters and bulk carriers had steadily grown, and now numbered in the thousands. The size of the newer ships dwarfed earlier craft and were far more efficient, driving down the cost of shipping while helping borderline systems to grow and develop at a faster pace.
It was obvious to everyone that the last twenty years or so of relative peace had fostered this near-explosion of trade and growth, and that it was to everyone’s benefit to ensure that it continued.
One inevitable result of peace had been a series of ever-smaller budgets for the Federal Navy, which had, in those same twenty years, crashed and burned, in some cases, literally.
It would appear that the arrival of the “bugs” had changed everyone’s priorities.
It took over thirty minutes for the delegations to finally settle into their assigned seating. The several dozen sergeants-at-arms left the large chamber and the current head of government now stood on the dais, waiting for silence and perhaps a bit of attention.
She was a Premier, and led a very loose coalition of twelve parties, providing her just enough votes to assume and retain power.
The federal government was based on the British Parliamentary system, save that elections were scheduled every four years, come rain or shine, an old joke. The regular election cycle was a result of the difficulty of travel.
Her coalition had ruled for twelve years. During those years it had ruthlessly cut Navy budgets and failed to pay attention as rot and corruption spread up through the ranks and down through the ships and equipment that physically ensured cohesion and unity.
Her party, the Preservation Coalition, had also paid the same lack of attention to the various regulatory agencies that watched over the frequently fragile ecologies that humankind had transplanted to all those systems. It was a widely held joke that the coalition should have called itself the Profit for Corporation Coalition.
Overall, net wealth had continued to rise, and large national and interstellar corporations thrived, but after those twelve years, it was now evident that those policies had also damaged a huge variety of human endeavors that depended on federal expenditures rather than corporate profits. Those included education, research and development, exploration, and the tax system that created the various forms of subsidies that in turn allowed the newest recipient planetary systems to receive more in federal taxes than they paid.
Shin Ho sat off to the side. At some point in this extraordinary meeting, he was going to be called on to provide these men and women with a detailed report on the threat mankind faced. He would have to tell them that they were in all likelihood screwed, blued and tattooed, an old expression he’d learned from the captain of his first ship.
Premier Ma, a native of Han, a former Chinese colony that had one of the larger populations, was a brilliant politician. Shin Ho considered that to be a bad thing, but it had allowed this woman, a fifth generation colonist of a relatively poor world to manipulate both people and facts to her advantage, and to her position on that dais.
She finally began speaking, “I have verified that we have representatives present from all systems save Aditi, whose delegation is right now shuttling down. They are in communication with us and I therefore call this extraordinary session to order.”
She waited while all the delegations signaled their agreement.
She began, “Humankind has for nearly a generation enjoyed unparalleled peace and prosperity. During this period, our collective economy has grown at a rate of nine percent per annum, and today there remain just a handful of systems that require significant assistance. It is estimated that within as little as nineteen years, all thirty-nine systems will achieve basic self-sufficiency.”
Everyone understood that the information was framed in Earth years, the standard format for pretty much everything.
She waited out some mild and more or less required applause, “Trade and commerce between systems has greatly increased during this period, the horrendous shipping costs have dropped forty-seven percent over this same time frame, and we are now seeing increasing movement of people between systems, some heading to new jobs, many moving outward from Earth, still the primary source of new colonists. However, increasing numbers of colonists are moving from one system to another as jobs and opportunities develop.” More polite applause.
Shin Ho had heard her repeat this same mantra, more than once, thought it was a nearly total load of crap, but a small majority of these delegates chose to believe it. In fact, he thought they were voting with their wallets, but that didn’t change the facts that their policies had come home to roost.
He squirmed into a more comfortable position, waiting for the first shoe to drop. In his opinion she tended to gild the lily, rather a lot, but today, instead of a lily, she had a cactus, and she had to be very careful how she got around to introducing the subject at hand – the potential imminent demise of humanity.
She resumed, “As you know, a crisis has arisen, one totally unexpected, and I’m now going to turn the dais over to Admiral of the Fleet Shin Ho Lee.”
He was almost surprised at her failure to take fifteen minutes to yell, ‘fire!’. On the other hand, she’d neatly avoided having to give them the bad news, instead allowing him to do it. She didn’t like him, knew full well that he didn’t like her, and while she had to allow him to speak, that didn’t mean she was going to do anything that remotely smacked of taking responsibility.
In deathly silence she assumed a chair behind the dais. It was above and behind his left shoulder. Being a relatively tiny woman, she’d had it raised.
Shin Ho walked the five meters to the dais and turned to face the very large gathering, over one thousand men and women.
He brought up his notes, appearing on a screen in front of him, and slowly turned his head to look at each delegation. He took his time, wanting to ensure that everyone was paying attention.
Admiral Lee was a head banger. He liked the direct approach to problem solving, and was brilliant at giving the other man a very bad headache. What was less well appreciated was that he was
at least as brilliant at reading humans, their faces and posture, their words, tone of voice, clothing. He studied people, knew the way they thought, and he knew, without a doubt, that today his task wasn’t merely to repeat a list of statistics, of fighters, weapons, possible intentions, probable abilities. Today, he had to tell these people that they were in desperate straits. But worse, he had to convince them that they were going to hang separately unless they gave him the ability to wage collective war. He already had most of the authority he required, and as soon as this cluster of hopefully terrified humans approved the State of Extreme Emergency, he’d have the rest. Beyond those broad police powers, he required what was effectively unlimited funds, something he thought they were going to really, really hate, especially this current governing coalition, which had managed to starve the federal system into a state of relative weakness, allowing the huge corporations to flourish.
Finally, what he required was the ability to use as he saw fit the extremely limited naval forces that he did have. He was reasonably certain that short of the appearance of God right there in front of them, they were going to give him lip service and then take what few ships he had and uselessly gather them in one system, said system to be determined after a knife fight in the cloak room.
Hawk Flight (Flight of the Hawk Book 3) Page 24