by David Tatum
Preble smiled slightly. “It’s a long story. It has to do with a handshake deal I made with General Austin of the Army, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.”
“But why would the Army—” McCaffrey began.
“Mike, drop it,” Pratchet intervened. “Suffice to say, it had no impact on our decision, as it eliminated no-one from consideration.”
“Then why was Captain Green made the CO of the Academy?” Honeycutt asked.
Pratchet grimaced. “Green was not selected by us, but by the civilian authorities. The Senate Defense Committee wanted him for the job.”
Silence met that pronouncement. “Forgive me for my ignorance,” Preble finally said. “But I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Why is the senate able to affect the minutiae of such things as who gets what command in a simple war game? That oversteps anything that has happened to me in my tenure as the Marine Corps commandant.”
The Wargame veterans looked at one another knowingly. “I suppose I should explain,” Pratchet began softly. “Most war games are small affairs, involving only a few ships in a very isolated part of space. The Wargame is a little different – it is the largest military exercise we run outside of an actual war. Hell, it’s larger than some wars. We need a significant amount of support from the civilian government, just to obtain the physical resources needed to try it. We don’t just need the permission of a local government, but the support of the entire Congress and the President in order to use three star systems and a large percentage of the Fleet. We’re fortunate that Captain Green’s appointment is the only thing the Senate insisted upon, as it stands.”
Preble grimaced. “Fortunately, Commandant of the Marine Corps is a less prominent position to politicians eyes – while my job has involved a lot of political schmoozing, I haven’t had to deal with that kind of interference. At least not yet – I’m less than a year into my term.”
Pratchet grinned ruefully. “You’ve been lucky. But enough about that. We still need to discuss how we’ll come up with the necessary ships for the ‘Fleet’ side of the Wargame. Our Navy currently maintains eighty commissioned battleships, forty of which are in Home Fleet. Twelve of the eighty are deployed on various foreign assignments, and simply aren’t available. That leaves us with a pool of twenty-eight battleships to draw from. Now, the Academy will have twenty admittedly old battleships, which will be re-commissioned for the exercise, so I would like to give the Fleet side at least fifteen of its own.” He sighed. “Vice Admiral Breslau’s Division would be able to supply more than half of those needs, but our Ambassador in 16 Cygni thinks we need his ships cruising near her post for political reasons. We’re going to have to strip planetary defenses to the bone, it looks like. We’ve been directed to avoid removing ships from dispatch or convoy duties.”
McCaffrey sighed. “I always hate this part of the Wargame. It makes our border planets so vulnerable.”
“They’re always vulnerable,” Admiral Mumford complained. “As things stand, we can only cover home fleet and a handful of our major systems with the ships we have, and some of those systems are barely covered at all. Border worlds are generally forced to use Orbital Guard ships for protection. We need more ships.”
“That is precisely why we haven’t retired the Cleopatra class battleships yet,” Pratchet sighed. “And won’t, even after the next fifteen in the Argus class are complete. In fact, I’m tempted to leave the twenty Sirius-class battleships we’re restoring in service after the Wargame, and maybe some of the other re-commissioned ships, too. We’re finally getting the financial backing to start upgrading our support fleet the way we need to, but if we ever go to war we’ll need more ships. We can only fully defend three worlds outside of Earth, and barely maintain a token presence in a dozen other systems. If we end up at war any time in the next twenty years or so, under projected construction rates, we’ll lose almost thirty systems without even being able to fire a shot.” Pratchet shook his head. “Let’s hope we can convince the money counters to buy in the Academy’s refit ships. The only reason the vulture states like the 16 Cygni Confederation haven’t attacked us is that we’ve developed a somewhat unwarranted reputation for never losing a war. Sure, on paper we’ve got the largest military of anyone, but we’re spread too thin.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried,” General Preble said. “We might be stretched a little, but the only nation which has shown us any hostility in the past thirty years is 16 Cygni itself, and while they may be tempted to raid us we could easily annihilate their entire nation in response. Who else would risk starting a war against us?”
The Navy personnel present all had grim looks at that, but no-one said anything.
“Well,” Pratchet said, changing the topic. “We need to get back down to the business of selecting the ships for this assignment. Admiral Honeycutt, your recommendations?”
——————————
Cygni Confederation, 16 Cygni, Earth Alliance Embassy
“Rear Admiral Fulton is here to see you, Ambassador,” the intercom echoed through Noriko Goldsmith’s office. Goldsmith was the Ambassador for the Earth Alliance to its strongest historical enemy, the Cygni Confederation. It was a thankless job, and a difficult one, but the very existence of an embassy on Cygni was something of a feat.
Around the star 16 Cygni orbited one of the more bizarre inhabited planets in the known universe. It was the capital of a major interstellar power literally founded on piracy some four hundred years before. Eight pirates, looking to retire, used their plunder to purchase four whole planetary systems and established a ‘constitution’ based on their articles of piracy. The government had slowly evolved from its pirate origins into a more legitimate institution, but it was still known for launching quite a few wars over some rather creative ‘grievances.’ Most of those wars were very short, ending as soon as they’d been able to raid and plunder a planet or three. Their longest war had been against the Earth Alliance, with Cygni supported by the Federal Republic of Iota Draconis and a small cluster of independent systems. In the end, Iota Draconis turned against Cygni when they learned that their allies had misled them about the Earth Alliance’s culpability in the action that started the war. Despite Iota Draconis changing sides, Cygni had somehow escaped the war with more planets than it had started with, having annexed many of the independent planets which had been its “allies” in the war.
That had been over thirty years ago, and Cygni no longer had any special hatred for the Alliance, but that had never stopped them from starting a war last time. That was what made Goldsmith’s job so difficult – she had to keep Cygni from finding some justification to start a war. She knew just how vulnerable the Earth Alliance really was, and was very concerned that information would leak out to Cygni.
In truth, the Alliance had never recovered from the last war. It still had a plethora of battleships, but not enough for a new conflict with Cygni. Thanks largely to Cygni’s massive strikes against Alliance shipping (and hence, the warships that had been assigned to escort major convoys), most of the Navy’s smaller ships had been destroyed or crippled in the last war. The peace treaty which ended it put a serious limit on how much new construction each naval base was permitted, but thankfully that only applied to bases built at the time the war had ended. It took decades to establish the support necessary for a new shipyard of sufficient size, but recently a massive Navy Yard was completed at Epsilon Eridani. It was beginning to look as if they might finally be able to build up enough force to defend their borders within the next few years, but every Ambassador the Alliance had was given a special briefing on just how important it was to avoid conflict at this time, in particular.
Goldsmith shook her head. There wasn’t time to worry about that now. She had to find out what brought one of her Navy’s Admirals out for an unscheduled meeting. “Send him in,” she said.
A middle-aged Navy man wearing a rather battered-looking white dress uniform stepped into the room, holding a ha
nd comp and a stylus. “Hello, Ambassador Goldsmith,” he said.
“Admiral,” she nodded, acknowledging him with the minimum of formality. “Please, have a seat. Are your ships being recalled or something?”
Hawkeye Fulton, one of the more experienced Rear Admirals thanks to his years on the Cygni Patrol, grinned at her. “Hardly. No, someone upstairs is actually listening to you, for once. It’s a bit of an open secret in the Navy that we’re amassing a fleet for the Wargame. Instead of doing what we’ve often done in the past and pulling ships from the two undersized squadrons patrolling our most dangerous border – this one – they’re stripping some planetary systems down to the bare bones to provide the necessary forces.” He cleared his throat. “However, your ship is being recalled.”
“Eh?” Goldsmith blinked. “You’re taking the Terrapin from me? Why?”
“Vice-Admiral Breslau’s orders. Since you’ve requested a ‘show of force,’ he thought the Ambassador’s Yacht should be something a bit more powerful than a thirty year old corvette. He’s replacing her with one of our Valkyrie class heavy cruisers.” He paused, then smiled sourly. “At least that’s the official reason. Her hyperspace drive was acting up a little, so he’s making the switch. He figures she should stay here until they figure out what’s causing the problems with her engines. The transfer is as permanent as it gets, though.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” the Ambassador said. “But that doesn’t really explain why you are here. I’d have expected the captain of the incoming heavy cruiser to report to me himself.”
“Normally he would,” Hawkeye replied. “But I was down here anyway, so I figured I could deliver the news, myself.” He set his hand comp in front of her. “Here. Latest reports from Military Intelligence.”
As she read through the report, Noriko paled. “Are these numbers correct?”
“As near as I can tell,” he replied. “Within the next two months, the Cygni Confederation fleet will have another twenty battleships commissioned. With sixty-three warships of that size at their disposal, they’ll be a match for us again.”
“Which means that within the next two months, they’ll be ready for another war,” Noriko sighed. “Great. Looks like I’ll be even busier than usual for a while. Well, at least you’re able to keep your squadron nearby. With your ships in the neighborhood, we can at least try to bluff that we’re still a match.”
“Maybe,” Hawkeye replied doubtfully. “But I’m guessing not. Their intelligence on us is probably as good as ours, if not better. They have to know we’re in deep shit when it comes to our tactical position. Sorry, Noriko, but my squadron being here is next to useless. Be on your guard while we’re gone – if they’re going to start a war, it’ll be now.” He paused. “And we won’t be ready for them.”
CHAPTER V
Alcyone Star System, Pleiades Alpha, Hexagon Park
“You were aware that scientists in this directorate are supposed to submit findings to my office for review before sending them out for publication, weren’t you, Dr. Foley?” Director Karlsson demanded. Flanking the Director stood a WISPR agent in full black armorwrap, complete with hood and mask. Foley wasn’t sure of the reason for his presence, but wasn’t about to ask.
He swallowed nervously. Director Karlsson was a very important man, and a very powerful one. He was also one of the strictest authoritarians ever assigned to his position. He could ruin the career of any scientist if he desired. In Foley’s case, he could do even more: Foley had signed a confidentiality agreement when he accepted funding from the Directorate. Violating that agreement was punishable with severe fines or even imprisonment.
Foley coughed. “I was, Director Karlsson.”
“And yet you went ahead and published this report to the interstellar nets without even sending it through the peer review process. It took a replay of your findings in a foreign news report for us to discover that you had done it. That caused the Earth Alliance to ask if they could send an expedition to join the dig next month.” Karlsson chided. “If you had submitted your paper for review, you would have learned that we had some concerns about announcing this before we had investigated it ourselves.”
“I thought it was for the best,” Foley protested. “We need some of the best experts from other star systems in order to properly investigate the finding. We don’t have the right linguists to help decipher their language, for example. Several of our top scientists have left Pleiades over the last few years for a variety of reasons. I viewed this as a necessity – there are no peers to properly review my findings in Pleiades any more.” Suddenly remembering who he was talking to, he paused and collected himself before continuing. “At the very least, we needed to get the services of Dr. Kimiko Beccera. Although she is not a linguist, she’s the best when it comes to investigating alien artifacts. We would have had to tell her at least some of what we found to get her interested. She would have brought in some of her associates in the Earth Alliance anyway, despite her Pleiades citizenship.”
“No outside participation was authorized,” the WISPR officer growled. He had an unusually gravelly voice, as if with age, but instead of making him sound elderly it conveyed a great sense of power. That tone startled Dr. Foley, causing him to flinch back.
Director Karlsson raised a hand, turning to the security man in annoyance. “Skorrjh, please. What’s done is done.”
Skorrjh? Foley pondered nervously. What sort of name is that?
Karlsson turned his attention back to the archeologist, lips twisted into a false smile that looked more menacing than reassuring. “Dr. Foley... Whit. It’s too late to recall your reports. I understand that. Now, we have to do some damage control, so I’ve got a job for you. If you do it, then you can continue on with your assignment and we won’t levy any fines or additional charges against you.”
“What is it?” Foley asked, anything but reassured.
“It’s simple. I want you to hide the fossilized Neanderthal-like skeleton and claim it was destroyed accidentally. We don’t want anyone else to study it,” Karlsson explained.
“The skeleton?” Foley said, startled. “Why the skeleton? I thought... well, out of all the things I discovered I thought that would have the least security implications. That’s one of the reasons I focused on it in my report and gave only a brief mention of the writing and other things we found later. A simple fossilized skeleton is never going to give anyone a technological advantage or anything like that.”
Skorrjh slammed a palm down on Karlsson’s desk, bouncing a small collection of trinkets and gizmos. “You ask too many questions, Dr. Foley,” he growled evenly. “Consider this. How many of your foreign colleagues would have dropped their own work to travel here without your publishing that skeleton report? The linguists would have been interested in the writing, certainly, but they could have studied that from the pictures without leaving home. There are various political reasons why we would prefer to minimize foreign visitors at the moment, and there are too many Earth Alliance ‘researchers’ poking around here already. You’ve made that situation worse. Do you understand?”
Foley frowned. “But this is a tremendous scientific discovery. We don’t have the proper people here in Pleiades to investigate a find like this! We need all of the help we can get, just to confirm how close it really is to a Neanderthal skeleton. One of the people we invited, Dr. Frank Orwell, is the closest thing in modern times to an expert on Neanderthals. We need his expertise if we want to know what we’re looking at!”
“Whit,” Karlsson sighed. “I appreciate that you were trying to do what you thought was the right thing. But this is not optional. And it’s not like I’m asking you to cover up much... as you pointed out, it’s just a simple, fossilized skeleton.”
“But—”
“And, Dr. Foley,” he continued, reverting to a more formal tone of voice. “If you feel uncomfortable lying, we could make sure the skeleton really is destroyed. Unfortunately, if we have to do that, we might a
ccidentally catch some of the other items you particularly prize in the process.”
Foley’s jaw dropped. Why would Karlsson and this ‘Skorrjh’ fellow take such drastic measures just to hide a skeleton? The only reason Foley could think of to go to such extremes would be if he already knew about the fossils before he’d found them. But what could a fossilized skeleton hide? He had to know, but worried about what these people might do to him for investigating. Or what they might do to him if he refused. Recollection of another archaeologist from a dig similar to his, later found dead after an ‘accidental’ moment of explosive decompression, came to mind.
For the moment, Foley had to do everything these men wanted. Even co-operating wouldn’t save him for long, he suspected, but it might buy him some time. Nodding briskly, he answered, “Very well, sir. If you want to hide that skeleton, we’ll hide it.” Deciding to make himself even more useful, he continued, “I even know of a convincing explanation for why it was accidentally destroyed, should anyone come by asking about it.”
Karlsson nodded. “Good. See to it that you keep the story straight in your head, though. It wouldn’t do for someone to get the ‘wrong’ idea.”
Foley nodded hastily. “Yes, of course, Director.”
“Now, get out of my office,” Karlsson snapped, losing all pretence of collegiality.
“Yes, sir,” Foley replied, making a hasty retreat. Foley would do everything in his power to determine what was going on, but he would have to do it quietly. And, in the meantime, he would make sure he followed the Director’s orders. It wouldn’t do to make the man suspicious.
Skorrjh addressed the Director once he was sure Foley had departed.
“I don’t like it,” he growled. The officer removed his mask, sweeping back his sandy blond hair, revealing an inhumanly heavy brow ridge.
“Neither do I,” Karlsson replied. “But I don’t think we’ve got a choice. The damage has already been done – we have to contain it as much as possible. If he does as instructed and tells the other scientists that the skeleton was destroyed, we might be okay.”