“If President Marrot makes a decision to move based upon your prognostications, our asses are covered. He can’t come back and blame us if something goes wrong,” said Admiral Bradley.
“He can only crucify me,” observed Bat.
“Well, if worse comes to worst, at least the retirement for a vice admiral is far better than that of a commander, eh, Bat?” smirked Bradley.
* * * *
The Alliance Planet Nork
Late November 3862
J.P Aneke, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Consortium of Industrial Management and CEO of Starquest Aerospace, hobbled into his office at Starquest Aerospace Headquarters in Nork City, still limping from injuries he sustained when a Confederate ship-killer missile malfunctioned and collapsed his own hotel down on his head back in early June.
Malfunctioned, my ass! Those bastards weren’t after Marrot… they were intentionally trying to kill ME! They killed Aline McCauley.
Aneke wasn’t buying that lame “mis-marked drums” crap that had been blamed for the explosion of McCauley’s spaceplane, as it approached Waston Interstellar Spaceport last July.
They came after me and Aline both.
Aneke had to admit events had certainly taken an unexpectedly nasty turn — several unexpectedly nasty turns in fact. The cyber-attack at Nork was the most disturbing of all.
If the Confederates have been able to read our mail all this time, it’s no damned wonder they’ve kicked the shit out of us at every turn.
The Consortium’s bank accounts were empty. The computer records, on all of the politicians and government officials they’d bought and paid for, were gone, and with them, their control of the government.
That fucking Marrot actually had the balls to throw me out of his office — ME, who put him there in the first place! Ungrateful bastard.
It felt odd to be back in his office at Starquest. He’d normally ran everything from his office at Consortium Headquarters, but that building, too, had been leveled during Stillman’s raid on Nork, back in May. A lot of things felt odd right now… disjointed. Aneke couldn’t believe how quickly everything had gone so completely to shit.
I should have just let the damned Southerners go, but who could have dreamed that anything like this mess could have possibly happened?
He’d gone from Master of the Universe to having his fortune, influence and body completely broken, in just two years. He was down to living off the gold he’d hoarded away in his vault in the basement of his mansion — his “emergency money,” never believing that he’d ever actually need it. Perhaps he should encourage Marrot to take the rebels up on their offer to restore all of the missing money and just let them go. Perhaps he could salvage something out of this mess anyway.
Would Marrot even listen to anything I have to say any more?
* * * *
The Planet Ginia, City of Rikmon
Late November, 3862
Confederate President Lincoln Collier was fit to be tied. “Admiral Kalis, are you telling me the Confederate Intelligence Agency is responsible for destroying the economies of the entire human race?”
‘No, Mr. President,” replied a remarkably calm Fleet Admiral Roger Kalis. “The Confederate Intelligence Agency had nothing at all to do with it. I am the one who authorized Confederate Fleet Intelligence to conduct the cyber-attack, targeted solely on Consortium and Alliance Federal Government accounts.”
“What about wiping the Alliance Stock Market records? Did you authorize that too?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I did,” replied Kalis. “The enemy’s industrial capacity had to be crippled if we are to have any hope against their incredible ability to replace casualties. Crippling their ability to pay for those replacements was exceedingly less costly for us, than destroying the hundreds of actual manufacturing centers themselves. We now have the Alliance by the short-hairs, and we finally have the leverage to force them to come to the peace table.”
“Admiral Kalis,” responded the Confederate president frostily. “Do you have any idea of the incredible amount of pressure that the international community has put me under, since that cyber-attack? Some have even threatened to declare war on us, for God’s sake!”
“No one else will be declaring war on the Confederacy, Mr. President. Of that, I can assure you.”
“And just what is it that makes you so damned sure that none of them will declare war on us over this, Admiral?”
“Because none of them want us doing to their economies, what we just did to the Alliance,” replied Kalis. “Imagine what would have happened if we had done, to all of the other Alliance planets, what we did to Nork. Imagine what would have happened if we’d wiped the records of every personal bank account, as well as every corporate account and every corporate computer record in the entire Alliance. The entire Alliance economy would have totally collapsed, with no one having any money. Millions of people would be starving within days.”
President Collier stared at Kalis in shock, unbelieving what he’d just heard come out of the admiral’s mouth.
“We could have done it, almost as easily as what we did at Nork,” Kalis continued. “Even if no one can prove it, you can be damned sure that they all suspect it, and they are all appropriately terrified at the prospect of being on the receiving end of such a monstrous financial apocalypse.”
“My God, Admiral,” said the thunderstruck Confederate president. “Have we become such monsters that we could even contemplate such a thing?”
“No, Mr. President, we’re not,” said Admiral Kalis. “Our sole objective is to achieve our independence and join the family of nations as a good neighbor. That fact is, we now possess a virtual ultimate cyber-weapon, capable of destroying virtually all computer data of any kind, anywhere. While that may give us the power to destroy most of humanity, we still retain the wisdom to NOT use it. That’s exactly why we did not do everything that is within our power to do to our enemy — why we pulled our punch to the extent we did. You see what we did as excessive, but it was merely the lightest touch of what we now have the power to unleash.
“All we want is peace, Mr. President, but not peace at any price. Not the peace of surrender. We can use this crisis to force the Alliance to the bargaining table. Talking is highly preferable to fighting, but the Alliance has never been willing to discuss anything with us before now. It was always surrender or fight — that’s the only options they’ve ever given us. But now they have no choice but to talk to us.”
“Yes, but negotiations with a gun to their heads aren’t negotiations at all.”
“Exactly, Mr. President,” responded Kalis. “This isn’t going to be negotiation between equals. The Yankees started this war, and they lost. We won. These talks can either be negotiations for a treaty of peace that guarantees full recognition of independence and sovereignty of the Confederacy, or they can become a demand for unconditional surrender of the Alliance, under the threat of even greater cyber-attacks in the future, whichever the Yankees prefer.”
“What has become of our honor, then, Admiral? How will the other nations of humanity react to such an ultimatum? If we are seen as willing to employ such a horrific weapon against what they see as our own people, how are they to believe that we won’t use it against them, as well?”
“Mr. President, we are at war. These other nations that you’re so concerned about have sat on the sidelines and watched us fight for our very survival, as though we were some sort of entertainment for them. Yes, some have rooted for us, and some have made a lot of money selling us weapons, but only Sextus has stood solidly behind us from the very beginning.
“But, what do I tell them?”
“Admit it. Let them know we have the capability. The Yankees certainly won’t lay down the fight unless they are totally convinced they’ll get more, and worse if they don’t. Wyatt Cargill, the president of Sextus, knows us and understands we would never use this weapon against him. If the others are frightened by it, good! If all o
f our other potential enemies are too frightened by what we can and might be able to do to them, to even consider attacking us in the future, then so much the better.
“Only time... time during which we do not employ our weapon against them will allay the fears of our neighbors. The fact that we possess such a weapon and purposely do not utilize it to subjugate our neighbors will be honor enough, don’t you think? I would think that there would be great honor in that.”
“I’m not sure that openly admitting we possess such a destructive weapon would be in our best foreign policy interests, Admiral. Perhaps the Unionists can be forced to the bargaining table by the mere implication that we were behind the cyber-attack.”
“That is entirely your decision, Mr. President. Please just remember that we will be negotiating from a position of strength. The concept of ‘total, unlimited war’ may be something new and shocking to many, but it existed on Old Earth thousands of years ago. It is a tribute to her children that it has taken ‘total, unlimited war’ as long as it has, to follow them to the stars.”
* * * *
The Planetoid of Discol, City of Waston
November, 3862
Admirals Campbell, Bradley and Melendez sat in the Oval Office. After introducing President Marrot to Vice Admiral Masterson, they then briefed the president on Bat’s unique sixth-sense and the amazing accuracy of his prognostications toward Confederate intentions.
“Yes,” said President Marrot. “I can understand why you’d be hesitant to actually make military decisions, based solely on one man’s psychic abilities, no matter how accurate he’s been in the past. Still, it would be nice to have some idea of what to expect, whether we can actually act on the information, or not.”
“That’s why we felt compelled to bring him to your attention, Mr. President,” replied Admiral Campbell.
“So, Admiral Masterson, what do you expect the Confederates to do to us next?” asked Marrot.
“I expect their politicians will rein in Kalis, Stillman and Thorn for a while, figuring that after that nasty cyber-attack, maybe we’ll finally be willing to talk peace.”
“Those were my thoughts, as well,” said Marrot. “Lord knows we need time to get our economy rebalanced enough to get our military manufacturing back online, to rebuild our Fleet.”
* * * *
Chapter-11
I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. -- Mark Twain
December, 3862
Considering all of the communications delays, it took a while for peace negotiations to finally be arranged. While a formal “cease-fire” had not yet been officially negotiated, the financial chaos from the Confederate cyber-attack had crippled the Federal war effort to the point where the Confederacy’s output of weaponry actually exceeded that of the Union, so both sides were content to pause and lick their wounds for a bit. The common folk of both nations greeted the impending holidays with more hope than any they had had in eight years — since before the passage of the Consortium-backed Alliance First Act of 3854.
Peace delegations made up of the Secretary of State and other diplomats, including their military attachés from both sides, finally met in the French capital of Pari. British officials, still miffed at the treatment they’d received from the Alliance government during their peace initiative almost a year earlier, refused to attend. The Brits, out of consideration for the Confederacy, had, however contacted the French, who immediately agreed to host and moderate the talks.
Representatives from virtually every human government attended as observers, and were allowed to express their opinions and concerns through the French via written statements — basically defending their own national interests or castigating one side or the other for an obstructionist stance. Diplomacy being what it is, no one really expected any concrete results for some time.
* * * *
For J.P. Aneke, it began by losing his balance, and then by a tingling and a slight numbness in his fingers and hands. His ear, nose and throat specialist could find no inner-ear infection, as he’d expected, so he suggested that Aneke see a neurologist. After the MRI’s came back negative, the neurologist insisted that Aneke go into the hospital for extensive tests — most of which turned out totally unnecessary. The first blood test came back showing mercury levels over 80 times lethal toxicity.
Three days later, J.P. Aneke slipped into a coma, from which he never awoke. One of his very last thoughts, as reality drifted away from him was, That German bastard has killed me — that Baron whatshisfuck. Why? What the hell did I ever do to him?
* * * *
The Alliance railed against the Confederate cyber-attack as “a crime against humanity,” while the Confederates continued their denials of responsibility, noting poignantly that even if they had those capabilities, a surgical strike aimed at cutting their enemy’s ability to wage war was not beyond the bounds of accepted warfare... yada, yada, yada.
After a while, virtually everyone quit listening to the rambling dissertations, each blaming the other side for the war. Eventually, the French moderators finally managed to steer the two antagonists toward the one thing that everyone desired, and a formal “cease-fire” agreement was reached just prior to the New Year recess.
* * * *
January - March, 3863
Throughout human space all mankind enjoyed relative peace, except in Pari, where diplomats continued dancing in the thigh-deep mud called international politics. The Confederates took an increasingly belligerent stance, and displayed hard evidence of massive corruption within the Alliance federal government to the gathered international community. Without actually naming names, the documents appeared valid, and highly damning... showing widespread corruption throughout the Alliance federal government. The Alliance representatives naturally denied everything, claiming the documents were fabricated as an excuse to secede and stormed out of the meeting, appalled at having their dirty laundry aired in public.
In mid-February, the Alliance Stock Market finally reopened after all of the restored data had been verified as accurate from trader records, and an all-new computer system, based on the one used throughout the federal government, with stringent new security software, was installed. This finally calmed the nerves of investors and dampened the waves the shutdown had caused in the other international markets, allowing them to recover somewhat. The Alliance continued their stall tactics, until it became painfully obvious, to even the most jaded of international diplomats, that the Alliance was much more interested in playing for time, than in seriously negotiating away what they still considered to be one-third of their territory.
Near the end of March, the Friends of the Confederacy terrorist group was finally heard from again, as they issued their own ultimatum: either the Alliance get serious about negotiating a treaty of peace that recognized the sovereignty of the Confederacy as an independent member of the family of nations and agree to pay $2.4 trillion in war reparations for their unprovoked attacks on the Confederacy, or face further cyber-attacks. After all, the message stated, the Alliance had negotiated a cease-fire with the Confederacy, not with the Friends. While the Confederacy might feel constrained by international diplomatic methodology to allow the Alliance to continue the farce that they had turned the “peace talks” into, the Friends had far less patience for bureaucratic bullshit.
* * * *
Having been fully warned of Bat Masterson’s unfortunate propensity for telling superiors the unadulterated truth, in sometimes less than subordinate ways, without regard for political niceties or consideration for how such might affect his career, President Marrot nonetheless named the young vice admiral as his military attaché.
“What do you make of this latest threat from the terrorists calling themselves the Friends of the Confederacy, Admiral?” asked President Marrot.
“Whether they are actively affiliated with the Confederate military, or merely coordinated with Kalis’ strike at Nork is irrelevant, Mr. Presid
ent. What matters is, they put the Alliance Stock Market records back verbatim, right after announcing that they would. To do that, they had to have full copies of everything that was taken, which, by implication, proves they were the ones who took the data in the first place. Has the ABI had any success in backtracking the intruders that I am not aware of, Mr. President?”
“None, the best computer geeks in the country have been chasing their tails for months. They haven’t got a clue.”
“Not surprising, especially if what I suspect is true, really is.”
“You really think that mad scientist succeeded in creating a truly artificial life form?”
“Nothing else makes sense, Mr. President. As you said, ‘the best computer geeks in the country have been chasing their tails for months… they haven’t got a clue.’ That alone stands as the best possible evidence that we’re dealing with something completely outside human experience.”
“Assuming that you’re right, then why did this thing take sides in this insurrection?”
“Mr. President, have you actually looked at all of the documents that the Confederates presented at the ‘peace talks’ in Pari?”
“You mean that pile of counterfeited garbage they’re trying to pawn off as evidence?”
Vice Admiral Bat Masterson gazed intently into the eyes of the President of the United Stellar Alliance. The president returned that gaze for a full 20 seconds, before finally having to look away from those intense blue eyes.
“I thought so,” sighed Masterson. “Mr. President, I’m afraid that I must tender my resignation as your military attaché. If I must also resign my commission in the Fleet as well, so be it.” Masterson started to rise, but was held back by the president’s outreached hand.
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