“Then power up the drive,” he ordered. The dull throbbing echoing through the ship started to grow louder. “Helm, take us out of here.”
“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Marie Howells said. She worked her console for a long moment, her purple fingers dancing over the keys. “Sublight drive engaged; moving out.”
“Ready the stardrive,” Elton ordered. “Prepare to take us into FTL as soon as we have cleared the outer defence zone.”
“Aye, Captain,” Marie said.
Elton smiled at her back. He hadn't missed the excitement in her voice. The entire crew was looking forward to leaving Sol. They’d have some real stories to tell when they finally made it home.
“The convoy is falling into position,” Biscoe said. “They’re ready to enter FTL.”
“Good,” Elton said.
He took one last look at the main display, his eyes moving over the solar system. Earth itself might be a backwater, the civil war draining the planet’s resources faster than they could be replenished, but the remainder of the system was studded with icons. Hundreds of settlements on Luna, Mars, and Venus; thousands of settled asteroids, each one a canton; hundreds of thousands of spacecraft and starships moving from world to world or heading out into deep space. Humanity had come a very long way in a very short space of time.
No wonder the Galactics are so scared of us, he thought.
It was a strange thought. The Galactics were not stupid. As far as anyone could tell, most races shared the same basic level of intelligence. And yet, they’d managed to hamper themselves. No, more accurately, the Tokomak had hampered themselves ... and everyone else, to boot. Some races had been held back by force, others had never been taught just how their technology worked ... it was magic, as far as they were concerned. But humanity had not only unlocked the secrets of alien technology, humanity had figured out ways to improve it too. Who knew what the next thousand years would look like?
“Captain,” Marie said. “We are ready to enter FTL.”
Elton smiled. “Engage.”
He braced himself, instinctively, as the stardrive came online. But there was nothing, beyond a vague sense of discontent that faded with astonishing speed. He’d been on ships where entering FTL had been a profoundly discomforting experience, but the latest drive modifications had solved that problem. He couldn't help wondering if it was truly a good idea. Humanity needed to remember that the universe outside the starship’s hull was cold and harsh. Odyssey, for all her comfort, was not a civilian ship.
“All systems check out, captain,” Marie said. “We are on a direct course for Varner.”
“The freighters have followed us into FTL,” Biscoe added. “They’re holding course.”
“Keep an eye on them,” Elton ordered. “I want to know if any of them show signs of drive trouble.”
“Aye, Captain,” Biscoe said.
***
Rebecca had made a point of carefully not following Odyssey’s departure through the vessel’s sensors, let alone making her way to an observation blister to watch the stars blink out of existence as the starship entered FTL. She wasn't one of the rare handful of people who had to be sedated for FTL travel, but she didn't like being aware - all too aware - that there was nothing outside the giant starship. It was easier to pretend that she was still on an asteroid than try to convince herself that there was nothing unnatural about being in FTL.
And yet, she was surprised when the standard alert popped up in front of her eyes, informing her Odyssey was now in FTL. She hadn't felt much, if anything. Was the ship really travelling away from Sol at an unimaginable speed? She queried the local processor, just to be sure. It confirmed that Odyssey was indeed in FTL.
“Impressive,” she muttered.
“Yes, Madam Ambassador,” Mickey Tyler said. Her aide grinned at her. “Odyssey has the latest drive modifications designed to modulate the gravity flux, ensuring a smooth transit in and out of FTL. I read the file and it was very interesting ...”
“All right, all right,” Rebecca said, tiredly. “Please, spare me the details.”
She kept her expression under tight control as her aide looked back at his file, torn between amusement and annoyance. Tyler was good at his job, but he was also an unashamed starship enthusiast, someone capable of rattling off facts, figures and pieces of thoroughly useless information at a moment’s notice. She had no idea why he hadn't applied to join the navy, although she imagined that his constant questioning of everything would eventually grate on naval crewmen. She'd had to speak to him quite soundly after he’d begged a visit to the bridge, two days ago. Captain Yasser had not been pleased.
“I wonder why they haven't put the baffles on civilian liners,” Rose Smith said. Her other aide was a little older than Mickey, with a rather more cynical view of the universe. “The ship I took from Mars to Tychy groaned every time it dropped in and out of FTL.”
“It’s a new technology,” Tyler said. “I don’t think it’s available for civilian use yet.”
Rebecca cleared her throat. “And seeing that the pair of you are on duty,” she added dryly, “have you found anything useful in the files?”
Rose flushed, casting a dark look at Tyler. “I’ve been going through the diplomatic protocols,” she said, carefully. “I’m not sure which ones apply in this situation.”
“I see,” Rebecca said. She wasn't surprised. She’d expected that to be a problem the moment she read the mission briefing. Thankfully, they had nine months to work out the details before reaching Harmony. “And which ones do you think apply here?”
“I’m not sure,” Rose admitted. “On one hand, we are not going as supplicants - as a lower-class race. We shouldn't have to bow and scrape in front of them. But on the other hand, they’re not used to dealing with independent races.”
“They invited us,” Tyler pointed out. “I don’t think they’d expect us to kowtow.”
Rebecca wasn't so sure. Like so much else, the principles of galactic diplomacy had been laid down by the Tokomak. There was no pretence of equality, merely the submission of the weaker party and the gracious acceptance of the stronger party. The Harmonies, if the files could be trusted, were used to bowing the knee to the Tokomak and accepting tribute from everyone else. There were few other races on their level and almost all of them were hundreds of light years away.
And they might be seen as weak, if we didn't bend the knee to them, she mused. But, at the same time, we cannot allow ourselves to be seen as weak either.
She glanced at Rose. “Is there any precedent for meetings between equals?”
“Yes, but we’d have to convince them that we were equals first,” Rose said.
“We bested the Tokomak,” Tyler pointed out. “Surely that counts for something.”
Rebecca sighed, keeping her thoughts to herself. Diplomatic analysts and intelligence officers had studied the text of the original message over and over again, but they hadn't been able to determine if human representatives had been invited to attend a meeting or pre-emptively summoned, as if they were subjects of a vassal power. She’d read dozens of reports, yet none of them had been truly convincing. It was possible the Harmonies themselves didn't know. They might be trying to tread a fine line between humanity and their former masters.
She allowed herself a moment of annoyance. It was possible, one of the more careful analysts had pointed out, that the Harmonies were aiming for plausible deniability. The Tokomak - theoretically - would not be concerned if the Harmonies spoke to humans like masters to slaves. Indeed, they might be delighted if the Harmonies treated humans in a manner calculated to cause offense. The message might have been written very carefully indeed, trying to be diplomatic to human eyes and unpleasantly demanding to outside observers. Or it could be a translation glitch. The language had been so flowery that it was quite likely some of the meaning had been lost.
Which is what happens, she thought, if a message is repeatedly translated time and time again.
“Com
pared to the size of their navy,” Rose countered, “we didn't even take out a percentage point of a percentage point of their true strength. They might not even have noticed.”
“They would have done,” Tyler insisted. “I ...”
Rebecca rubbed her forehead. “Leave the debate for the moment,” she said. She had a nasty feeling that the first week at Harmony was going to be spent ironing out the diplomatic groundwork for the talks. Unless, of course, the Harmonies were actually determined to get to the meat of the matter at speed. That would make them unique, amongst the older races. “I want you to put together a plan to meet them as equals.”
She held up a hand before either of them could object. “It is important that we represent ourselves as a peer power,” she added. “And we cannot be seen to bend the knee.”
They said nothing, but she knew what they were thinking. Trying to strike a balance between respecting the other power’s feelings and conceding far too much was never easy. At what point did respect become submission? It was easy to say that the human race should present itself as an equal, but the Harmonies might try to argue that humans weren't equal. And they would have a point.
But they did contact us, she reminded herself. They decided we were worth trying to talk to.
Her intercom bleeped. She tapped it. “Yes?”
“Madam Ambassador, this is the captain,” Captain Yasser said. He sounded calm and composed, as always. “We have entered FTL and are on a direct course to Varner.”
“Understood,” Rebecca said.
She thought quickly. There was a fairly major human embassy, as well as a naval base, at Varner, if she recalled correctly. She’d have to make sure that they received copies of her game plan, such as it was. And see what, if anything, could be gleaned from the local datafiles. The Varner might know something about the Harmonies they hadn't bothered to share with the human race.
“My senior officers and I are also going to be meeting for dinner this evening,” the captain added, after a moment. “Would you and some of your staff care to join us?”
Rebecca had to smile. “It would be an excellent chance for us to practice our diplomacy,” she said. Neither Rose nor Tyler would enjoy it - diplomatic dinners weren't meant to be enjoyable - but it would be an excellent learning experience. “I look forward to it.”
“Very good,” the captain said. “See you there.”
“I thought diplomatic dinners were outdated, these days,” Rose said. She was young enough not to remember the days when the Solar Union had established embassies on Earth. “Does anything get decided at the dinner table?”
Rebecca shrugged. “It helps to build up personal relationships,” she said, sardonically. “And while such relationships can be quite dangerous in places, this isn't one of them.”
She smiled at their doubtful looks. Ambassadors had been known to lose track of their actual roles, after forging personal relationships with their opposite numbers. Most people liked doing favours for friends, allowing hostile powers to slowly turn the friendship into something exploitive. It was something she’d been cautioned to watch for as she’d worked her way up the ranks. But it wasn't something she expected from a starship’s crew. Indeed, a close working relationship between her staff and the captain’s officers could only be beneficial.
And besides, it isn't as though we’ll be sitting down to eat dinner with the Galactics, she thought, as she reached for the next set of files. The Tokomak had banned diplomatic dinners. For once, she saw their point. One race’s idea of good food was another race’s idea of deadly poison. That would probably start a war all on its own.
Chapter Four
There is a fine line between providing support and being overbearing, a balancing act that - let us be honest - most of us tend to fall off very quickly. Indeed, I am old enough to remember the days when ‘I’m from the government - I’m here to help’ was one of the most terrifying things one could hear. It isn’t our job to fix the galaxy’s problems, any more than it is our job to fix the problems on Earth.
-Solar Datanet, Political Forum (Grand Alliance Thoughts).
Boredom, in all honesty, was the one thing Elton had never expected when he’d first received his orders. He’d served in the military long enough to know that boredom was something to be cherished. And yet, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, boredom started wearing down his mind. There was nothing to do while the ship was in FTL, save for endless drills, simulations and reading files. The droll awareness that he should be glad to be bored didn't help.
He haunted the decks, checking and rechecking every system until he knew the ship like the back of his hand. He ran emergency drill after emergency drill, putting the crew through their paces until he reached a point of diminishing returns. And he read his way through everything ONI had been able to scrape up about the Kingdom of Harmonious Order, even though some of it was contradictory. Even eating regular dinners with the ambassador didn't help. By the time the small convoy dropped out of FTL near a dull red star to update their navigational readings, he was starting to turn a blind eye to crewmen overusing the entertainment suites. He was running out of things to keep them occupied.
And we haven’t even reached Hudson Base, he thought, morbidly. They must be going stir crazy, so far from Earth.
“Captain,” Marie said, breaking into his thoughts. “The navigational database is updating now. I believe the original files were somewhat lacking.”
“That’s odd,” Elton said, walking over to her console. “How so?”
“The gravitational fluctuations in this sector don’t match the files,” Marie said. “I’m starting to think we got an out of date copy.”
“It might date all the way back to the Hordesmen,” Biscoe suggested. “We haven’t done any proper surveys this far from Earth.”
“You’d think the locals would,” Elton said. The Solar Navy had surveyed the Sol Sector thoroughly, tracking each and every last gravitational flux in the region. “I assume this doesn't pose any threat to us?”
“I don’t believe so, Captain,” Marie said. “Our navigational readings are just ever so slightly skewed. We would probably find ourselves a little off-course if we didn't update the database.”
She frowned. “I do wonder why the Hudson Fleet never sent back an update.”
Elton shared a look with Biscoe. “They would have, wouldn't they?”
“Yes, sir,” Biscoe said. “But they might not have bothered to drop out of FTL here.”
Elton nodded. Odyssey could, in theory, remain in FTL until she reached the next set of gravity points. She’d already passed through a dozen to reach her current location. But the freighters were another story. Their drives needed to be checked and rechecked, while their crews needed a chance to take some R&R on Odyssey. It was possible that the Hudson Fleet hadn't bothered to drop out long enough to update their files. He made a mental note to check, once the convoy reached Hudson, then turned to Marie.
“Keep updating the files,” he ordered. “And ...”
An alarm sounded. “Captain,” Callaway snapped. “I’m picking up three starships on attack vector!”
“Red alert,” Elton snapped. He spun around and strode back to the command chair. Three red icons were already clearly visible, bearing down on his ship. “Can you get an ID?”
“Nothing solid,” Callaway reported. “I think one of them is a heavy cruiser, but the other two can’t be anything larger than light cruisers ... they’re using some complicated ECM to scatter our sensor probes.”
“Send a challenge,” Elton ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Jonathan Williams said. The communications officer hurried to work. “No response.”
Elton winced. By galactic law, any challenge - particularly in neutral space - had to be answered immediately. The only people who wouldn't answer a challenge were people who had bad intentions, either rebels or pirates. It was possible, he supposed, that a legitimate gover
nment might want to harass human shipping, but they’d have to be out of their minds to try. The Solar Union and its allies were firmly committed to free trade.
But then, we are over a thousand light years from Earth, he thought, sourly. These guys might not even have heard of us.
“Target One is heading directly towards us,” Callaway reported. “Targets Two and Three are angling towards the freighters.”
“Sweep all three of them with tactical sensors,” Elton ordered. It was the clearest warning he could give, the interstellar equivalent of a warning shot. “Helm, bring us around.”
He thought rapidly, assessing the tactical situation. The heavy cruiser was probably outdated, but there was no way to be sure. The Tokomak hadn't designed their ships to make it easy for the crews to modify their systems, yet a decent engineering team could probably upgrade the drives, sensors and weapons without too many problems. And while Odyssey outmassed her opponent, it was quite possible their weapons might be evenly matched. The standard heavy cruiser hull could be crammed with firepower ...
The Long Road Home (A Learning Experience Book 4) Page 4