by John Ringo
Dr. Velasquez leaned over and whispered in Dr. Werden’s ear.
“So you are saying that any relationship between you and us is impossible because we have not proven we can be trusted,” Dr. Werden said.
“You have, in fact, proven you cannot be,” Tyler said, nudging another file. “I would rather trust the French. And that is saying something.”
“Then why are you generally in support of the premise?” Dr. Palencia asked.
“Because,” Tyler said, grinning. “I am going to request that the Alliance give you an opportunity to prove yourselves. To regain trust.”
“Sir, this is a purely internal military matter,” Admiral Duvall said. “While I respect your prominent position—”
“Admiral,” Tyler said, holding up his hand. “I don’t have the way, yet, but I have an inkling. There’s something there. But I will only present that recommendation if I have a reasonable method of action. Does that temporarily satisfy your department’s position on this matter?”
“Not unless there is a reasonable method of action,” Admiral Duvall said.
“You are saying that your department is going to recommend... what exactly?” General Barcena asked.
“The recommendation is not final,” Admiral Duvall said. “But based upon a hot-wash analysis of the inspection conducted post MASSEX and the maintenance issues found thereof, it is the general opinion of my department that the entire group of personnel is liable for the failure. There are personnel issues involved as well which are under review. However, it is the general tenor, of all departments involved as well as initial findings of meetings among policy makers, that the One-Four-Three as currently formed does not meet the conditions of ‘of Alliance standards’ under the Alliance Treaty and that, therefore, supplying countries are in violation of the Alliance Treaty.”
“WHAT?” Dr. Barreiro said.
“I was going to wait until one of the later meetings to present that initial hot-wash,” Admiral Duvall said. “But I was specifically charged to present the initial findings given the nature of the persons here gathered. Bottom-line, Mr. Foreign Minister and Mr. Foreign Minister, your personal interference and the interference of your government in normal military affairs have rendered the sole personnel and material your countries have supplied to the Alliance as unfit for operation. Ergo, you are not meeting ‘Alliance Standards’ Ergo, absent rectification of these items your countries are not qualified for Alliance membership.”
“We have poured out the treasure of our nations...” Dr. Werden said, stunned.
“Doesn’t matter,” Tyler said. “It’s not even in the fine print. What you supply doesn’t matter. It has to be useable. Your units have to be able to fight. They can’t. They are not meeting standard.”
Tyler sighed and leaned forward.
“Gentlemen, you represent specific countries,” Tyler said. “The Alliance is charged with defending a good part of the world. In reality, the whole world and our solar system. In a very real war that has had enormous casualties.”
“What Mr. Vernon is saying,” Admiral Duvall said. “And what the Secretary of State will be saying again, in informal situations, is that this isn’t about diplomacy. This is about protecting the world. And if you do not meet the standards, you do not meet the standards. We have to be able to trust you to be there when we need you. And as Mr. Vernon pointed out, you’ve failed that trust. The Alliance is, yes, primarily based upon U.S. and Anglosphere countries. We like you in a general ‘they seem like nice people’ sort of way. But if you can’t have our back in a space battle, and your people have proven they don’t, then we’re not going to just let you slide.”
“We paid for those shuttles!” Dr. Barreiro said.
“And you’ll be paid back,” Admiral Duvall said. “Less negotiable expenses for the repairs that will be necessary due to lack of maintenance. Which are going to be hefty. We’ll try to sort out which are Apollo’s and probably fudge somewhere in the middle and the American taxpayer will eat it.”
“Fudge some in our direction, too,” Tyler said. “I’ll tell my people not to geek.”
“Thank you,” the admiral said. “But the shuttles will be turned over to another group. One which can maintain them and fight them. One we can trust.”
“And that, gentlemen, I would prefer to avoid,” Tyler said.
“It is pretty far down the road, Mr. Vernon,” Admiral Duvall said. “Quite frankly, if the secretary sees one more missive from the State Department about EM Parker he has threatened to drop a rock on Buenos Aires and blame the Rangora. That is a joke, I hope you understand, Dr. Barreiro.”
“One in very poor taste!” the foreign minister replied hotly.
“I don’t know how to fix this, but strangely enough I want to,” Tyler said.
“Why?” Dr. Palencia asked. “Your opinion of us, and our sons, is fairly evident.”
“Is it?” Tyler said. “One more time and with feeling. I FLEW UP HERE ON A SHUTTLE MAINTAINED BY YOUR SON!”
“On which your friend, Parker, was the division chief,” Dr. Barreiro said.
“Oh, hell, yeah,” Tyler replied, leaning back. “Seriously. I’m surprised you were willing to fly on them at all. I knew it was Parker’s division. One of a half dozen reasons that I asked for her. Because she wasn’t going to fly on shuttles she didn’t know were safe. Trust, again. I trusted her because she’d earned it. She’d proven herself again and again. Seriously. Think about it. You all know the true condition of the One-Four-Three and you all know why it exists. You say different because admitting fault in Latin cultures is tantamount to suicide. But you had to have some trepidation about getting into a shuttle that was maintained by the One-Four-Three.”
“They assumed that since they were transporting DPs, special care would be taken,” Admiral Duvall said. “I think that the ambassador waited until just before the shuttles landed to hint that that had not been the case. The secretary wanted to send some from Alpha Flight.”
“Point being?” Dr. Werden asked.
“I would have developed a sudden stomach flu,” Admiral Benito said. “And recommended that you do the same, Foreign Minister.”
“Effectively, it was,” Tyler said. “I wasn’t going to ride on one unless Parker said it was good.”
“Because she is your friend,” Barreiro pointed out.
“No,” Tyler said, sighing. “Try, again, to understand my culture. She is my friend because I admire her. I admire her because when she says something, you know it’s rock hard truth. And you had to have been there when she did her comet across the main bay. Video just doesn’t cut it.”
“You don’t remove someone from an alliance,” General Barcena said. “It’s simply... not done. Everyone needs allies.”
“We’re sort of down to bedrock,” Admiral Duvall said, sighing. “This isn’t about establishing and maintaining international relations. This is about survival of Terra. And, yes, survival of the United States and Canada and Britain and Germany and Japan and Australia who are the primary Alliance partners. The State Department has input on Alliance membership but the final call is the Department of Defense. We want everyone we can in this Alliance. But if you can’t cut the mustard, you don’t play.”
She looked over at Vernon and shrugged.
“Dr. Barreiro, Dr. Werden,” Tyler said. “Have you ever played football? What we Americans call soccer?”
“Much,” Dr. Werden said.
“As well,” Dr. Barreiro said.
“You are in a football game when the game is tied and you’re in the last minutes,” Tyler said. “The enemy has the ball on your end of the field. You can bring new players on the field. Do you bring on someone who can play really well or the kid who can’t figure out which end is the goal?”
“That was just insulting!” Dr. Barreiro said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Admiral Duvall replied. “We’re about done producing the first Constitution for the Thermopylae. The decision h
as already been made that it’s going to a Japanese crew, not the Argentinean that was notionally considered. Most of the flotilla will be Japanese. The One-Four-Three is scheduled to be demobilized, temporarily, refurbished by Apollo and then turned over to a Thai unit. Essentially the Thermopylae will be moving to an all Asian, not South American, battlestation.”
“And we will be told, ‘thank you very much for playing but you’re not good enough, goodbye,’” Dr. Barreiro said angrily.
“Yes,” Admiral Duvall said. “In prettier diplomatic language. Again, this is a decision of DOD, not State. And the only thing that DOD cares about is ‘can you defend the solar system?’ The proven answer is: No. The President is in concurrence.”
“Unless we can turn them around,” Tyler said.
“I—” Admiral Duvall said, then stopped. “Do you have a specific proposal?”
“Not at this time,” Tyler said. “But I hope to have one by the end of this series of conferences. Obviously, the agendas are now moot. But I would strongly suggest that we continue as we have been going. If I can come up with a recommendation which meets your approval and SecNav’s, we can pretend this meeting never happened.”
“What would you recommend for the rest of the week?” Dr. Werden asked. “We do have other duties.”
“The simple answer will sound insulting,” Tyler said.
“What is one more insult?” Dr. Barreiro asked.
“Then I would recommend that you gentlemen let myself and my people give you as much of a class on the necessities of survival in space as is possible in the next few days,” Tyler said. “This problem isn’t actually cultural. Or rather, the solution has to ignore culture. Space isn’t about culture except in the negative. Space is a binary solution set. You only have to breathe vacuum once to realize that at a very real emotional level.”
“I do not intend to let any of these ministers breathe vacuum,” General Barcena said.
“Not what I meant,” Tyler replied. “Wolf is a mass of space industry. You guys want to know what it takes to really survive in space, this is the place. And the gas mine is very freaking cool. Heck, I’d strongly recommend going over to the shuttles for not just a meet and greet, isn’t this neat, but to spend time with your sons and your subordinates’ sons seeing what they do. And asking them why they do it. Try to understand that if the U.S. military had the same cultural approach, we would be unable to do this. We’d have the whole squadron of boats deadlined.”
“We have had similar situations in the past,” Duvall said. “Ships that simply were not up to snuff. Maintenance is a major issue in water Navy as well.”
“What did you do?” Tyler asked.
“Canned everyone in a position to affect the overall running of the ship,” Duvall said. “Starting with the captain and working down. Complete retrain for the crew. Usually complete replacement of the senior NCOs and chain of command. Napoleon said it best with a little paraphrase: There are no bad ships; there are only bad officers and NCOs. Which, for political and cultural reasons, is very difficult to do in South American countries.”
“What gets me is, I know that Argentineans and Chileans can do this!” Tyler said, waving his hands in the air. “We buy some very high-end parts from you guys! Stuff that’s hard to make and has to be perfect! And it is! You make great stuff! You can’t make them if you don’t pay attention to detail! You can do this! Why can’t you do it in the One-Four-Three? These are your ‘best and brightest,’ right?”
“Finding such people is... extremely difficult,” Admiral Benito said.
“Do you think we send every starry-eyed kid who comes to a recruiting station into space, Admiral?” Duvall said, chuckling. “Failure rate in A school for space-based operations is right at sixty percent.”
“Ditto here,” Tyler said. “About the same fail rate at Apollo’s training center. And most of the people applying are Americans so it’s not racist.”
“Which is why we’d really prefer not to have to remove people from the Alliance,” Admiral Duvall said. “This isn’t World War Two with masses of conscripts to help. The U.S., Canada, Australia, cannot supply enough force. We need the bodies. And the money. But warm bodies won’t do it. We need, absolutely require for survival, people who can do the jobs. Sorry.”
“So you will send our sons home in disgrace,” Dr. Velasquez said quietly.
“Disgrace is cultural,” Admiral Duvall said, shrugging. “From one of my briefings on the subject, it would appear that an inability to perform ‘minor mechanical work’ is anything but a disgrace in your culture. Quite the opposite. That being said, everyone in Parker’s division we’d be willing to retain. Which just says that it’s actually Parker. But there’s no form for that. Your son has passed the review with flying colors, Underminister. And Underminister. Their boats are as close to perfect as you could wish. I understand from the same briefing that that is potentially a liability in their home culture. Which, from our POV, sort of says it all.”
* * * *
EIGHTEEN
“Parker, MOGs.”
“Yes, sir?” Dana said.
With the afternoon conference cancelled, Parker wasn’t going to have her little sheep wandering adrift. As soon as they got the word it was definitely cancelled, she rounded them up and had them in the boats faster than you could say Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services. She’d sent Palencia over to Boat One, under the supervision of the chief, while she worked on Twenty-Three and Velasquez took Twenty-Four.
“Afternoon reschedule now explained,” DiNote commed. “Were doing a dog and pony. Bring Twenty-Three into Bay One, Twenty-Four into Bay Two. The ministers and muckety-mucks are going to ‘observe maintenance operations.’”
“Oh, joy,” Dana said. “Twenty-Three to Bay One, aye. Twenty-Four to Bay Two, aye.”
“Palencia and Velasquez are to do the dog and pony,” DiNote said. “Which, by order, is to ‘perform initial portion of thirty-day standard checks and service.’ Benito and Mutant will stand by in the flight compartments to explain flight operations. You and Thermal will stand by in the cargo zone to explain maintenance issues and general operations. The ministers are anticipated to be present for up to two hours.”
“That’s a pretty long dog and pony, sir,” Dana said, frowning.
“Understood,” DiNote said. “We’ll just have to figure out something interesting.”
* * * *
“Parker,” Dr. Velasquez said, nodding at the engineer’s mate.
Parker had been standing at parade rest in the cargo bay of Twenty-Four for nearly an hour with no one, not even Mr. Vernon, really acknowledging her presence. On orders the teams had pulled out all the crash couches first, then started pulling panels to reveal the masses of circuitry and grav plates that made up the bulkheads and decks of the Myrmidons.
Mr. Vernon, of all people, had been pointing out most of the stuff and the conversations had been ... guarded. There was something more than a simple dog and pony going on. The South Americans, particularly, looked very unhappy. When there were questions beyond Mr. Vernon’s level of expertise, either Velasquez or Granadica had answered them. Velasquez, between questions, had been doing his checks. She had had to just stand there and hope he was really doing them. Not to mention worrying that with all the plates off, and untrained people wandering around, anything could have happened to the circuitry. They were going to have to run a full diagnostic after this. And as soon as they got back to the Therm they were running a thirty-sixty-ninety just to make sure.
“Sir,” Dana said, coming to attention and looking past the minister at the far bulkhead.
“You don’t have to ...” the minister said then sighed. “Very well. What is a gravitational vortex?”
“A gravitational vortex is a quantum interaction produced by the intersection of one or more pseudogravitational fields due to relational frame dragging leading to an anomalous gravitational condition in the vortex region, sir” Dana said. Straig
ht out of the manual.
“Engineer’s mate,” Velasquez said. “My doctorates are in international relations and anthropology. I also speak seven languages, including Glatun. None of those permit me to translate what you just said. Could you put it in terms I can understand?”
“When two or more pseudogravitational fields that are not properly tuned interact, you get gravity that is not what you wanted in that area, sir,” Dana said.
“Higher gravity?” Velasquez asked.
“Depends, sir,” Dana said. “I’m not a quantum gravitational expert, sir. But from experience, you can get anomalous conditions that mimic microgravity, low gravity, high gravity or some things we don’t have good names for. The worst I’ve ever seen was negative gravity.”
“Negative gravity?”
“Negative momentum?” Dana said. “Negative gravity would be things going up. As I said, we don’t even have names for it. It’s when things in the area tend to fly apart. Only place I’ve ever seen it was in Twenty-Two, sir, just after I joined.”