“That’s right. I can’t see how it could be otherwise. But we need to remember that none of the people in question are idiots: your commanders are damn smart and our commanders are damn smart, as well. You put smart commanders in a battle zone and give them a problem—they’re going to find a way to solve it. You don’t get to be a commodore or an admiral unless you have a truly outstanding ability to solve complex problems. It’s what these guys do.”
Max could see that the minister was still wavering. He must have some very, very serious concerns about his people’s forces going into battle under Union commanders. The Kingdom had gone its own way for a long time. Max didn’t know diplomacy, but he did know people, and he was pretty sure he knew what the minister’s sticking point was.
“Minister, I know what you’re worried about. I think we both know our military history and the many examples in history of joint operations where a commander of a joint force has used an ally’s forces unfairly. You know—he gives the glory missions to his own guys and the grunt work to the others; the low-risk objectives to his own and lets the others take the heavy casualties. I could give you a laundry list of examples, but I think you know them just as well as I do.
“In the end, it all comes down to trust. No agreement that we sign, no assurance that we give you, can take the place of your trust in the good sense and the good will of our commanders, just as we are going to have to trust the good sense and the good will of yours.”
Suddenly, Max remembered something his Mother Goose on the San Jacinto had told him: “Giving your trust is like handing over your baby: you can’t hand a baby to a position or an office. You have to put that baby in the living hands of an actual person.”
“Minister, if I’m any judge of men, you’ve been following the conduct of the war very closely.” Wortham-Biggs nodded his agreement. “Then you know the reputation and the combat records of the admirals we’ve got in the major operational commands: Litvinoff overall, Hornmeyer and Middleton commanding the two major theaters, with Lo, Diem, and Barber running the Attack and Maneuver Groups. Truthfully, sir, can you see any of these men turning into a Sir Ian Hamilton? It’s almost absurd when I think about it.
“Minister, I know two of these men personally. If Admiral Charles L. Middleton isn’t the most honorable man in Known Space, he’s the runner-up and the guy ahead of him should be emperor of us all. The other one, old Hit ’em Hard Hornmeyer, may kick you in the ass, and he may curse you to your face, but he’s sure as hell not going to stab you in the back. If these guys wind up commanding some of your forces—and remember, there will be times when your admirals will command our forces—you can be certain that they’ll make decisions based on military considerations only.
“This is not the same Navy that fought at the Great Rift. Our admirals aren’t politically ambitious, power-seeking, effete headquarters drones and empty heads in pretty uniforms who move icons around in the tactical projector.”
“I understand that, Captain. I have no doubt that these are honorable men. I have come to know the ambassador here as an honorable man, and your actions prove you also to be a man of honor. But we would be forming a relationship not just with Admirals Litvinoff and Middleton and Hornmeyer, and with Captain Robichaux and Dr. Sahin, but with dozens of admirals and commodores and thousands of other officers. Trust in this situation does not come easily.”
“Sir, this is the Navy I’ve been a part of since I was eight years old and that I love as much as my life. It’s the most effective large military force in the history of the human race. Our admirals are seasoned warriors; our officers, tough and competent professionals; our Navy, an instrument of death. We’ve been fighting for our lives for thirty years. We, or the Krag, have weeded out everyone—at least everyone at the senior levels—who isn’t brave, capable, and aggressive, not to mention honorable and worthy of trust as well. I would trust any one of them with my life. In fact, that’s exactly what I do. Every day.”
“Minister,” Sahin added, “you know what is at stake. If the Union falls, the Kingdom will not be far behind; then the Romanovans, then the Ghiftee, and everyone else. No one will be left behind to pray to Allah, to tend the graves of your ancestors, to carry the flame of learning and achievement and building and exploration handed down to us over the thousands of years from those who have come before. To fail to make common cause against the Krag now is to take the torch that bears that flame and to cast it into the dust. All of mankind’s struggles through the ages will have been for nothing.”
He paused, drew in his breath, and played what he hoped would be the trump card. “Visualize the holy places on all the worlds defiled, then leveled and covered with the dust of the ages, without so much as a single human eye to shed a single human tear for their passing. Imagine all the cities and homes of man, empty and silent for all time. Think of the Orion-Cygnus arm of the galaxy not as the cradle of man, but as his graveyard.”
The man whom Sahin had come to know as Mr. Wortham-Biggs stirred his coffee again, stared at the liquid for a moment, and set his spoon down in the saucer. He touched the handle of the cup but did not pick it up. Again the internal battle: he wanted coffee but resisted subjecting his sophisticated palate to an inferior beverage. With a subtle shake of the head, he decided that the coffee was best left in the cup, eventually to find its way into a drain somewhere.
He withdrew his hand from the cup as he met Max’s eyes and then those of the doctor. Clearly, he had made a decision. And not one about coffee. “The King has authorized me to speak for him in these matters. But he also gave me clear instructions. I fear that I have deviated from them slightly by insisting so strongly in securing these guarantees for the Kingdom. The need to strike the best bargain possible is deeply rooted in my nature, and, of more importance, I felt a duty to my people. In a just cause, the blood of our sons may be spent, but must not be squandered. The fathers and mothers and wives and children of the men who serve are worthy of the best assurances in that regard that I could provide.”
He stood, his eyes grave. His head turned sharply toward the window that looked into the courtyard containing the broken airplane, the shattered trellis, the broken statues, the crushed roses, and the obliterated ferns. Machine gun fire could be heard in the distance—the king’s troops finally arriving to deal with the emir’s forces. “We are a warrior people: our culture celebrates and ennobles the warrior virtues of courage, honor, loyalty, and sacrifice. We do not, however, celebrate or glorify the taking of life, the spilling of blood, or the death of our own men. We know that if we enter the war now, many of our brave sons will die, and that they will start dying very soon. Next week. Tomorrow. A few hours from now. How soon will it be when the first names of the dead are made known, the first notices to the families, the first lists on the newswebs with their pages bordered in black?”
A burst of automatic weapons fire echoed down the streets. The minister gestured vaguely in the direction of the sound. “In a manner of speaking, our first casualties are bleeding and dying right now.” He sighed heavily.
“The price of doing nothing is too great to contemplate. If there are to be future generations of our people, we must act. Our grandchildren are so precious to us that we must buy their lives with the blood of our sons.”
He assumed a formal stance. “Ambassador, Captain, the Unified Kingdom of Rashid, Allied Emirates, and Protected Islamic Worlds will enter the war on the side of the Union as an Associated Power with appropriate Union guarantees of the continued independence of the Kingdom. The Equilateral protocols will serve as a framework for the integration of forces, further arrangements to be made by commanders in the field or further negotiations between the representatives of our governments. Are we in agreement, Mr. Ambassador?”
The doctor stood and bowed formally. “We are in agreement, Minister. May our swords shine together.”
“And may their edges be a scourge to our en
emies,” the minister completed the benediction. He touched the comm panel. “Authorization Altair-Mirfak-Deneb.”
Less than two seconds later a voice came over the panel’s transducer. “Yes?”
“It is done.”
The comm clearly picked up a heavy sigh, but it was a sigh of resignation and resolve rather than of sadness. “Good. We will do what we must.
“Ambassador, Captain, this is Khalil.” Not “the king,” not “King Khalil.” Just “Khalil.” “All of Rashid, every man, every ship, every drop of blood, every gram of treasure, is now committed to this cause. Humanity will stand together. We will fight beside our Union brothers and let nothing stand between us. Admiral Taniq and a small staff will leave within the hour for the Halsey to serve as liaison between your command structure in this theater and ours. Taniq is a fleet admiral, and the fourth most senior officer in our Navy. He has my complete trust and will be empowered to make binding agreements as to the use and deployment of all our forces without recourse to any higher authority.
“Further, at my suggestion, five years ago we elevated the status of the ‘military attaché’ to our embassy on Earth from a commander’s posting to a rear admiral’s billet and greatly enlarged his staff. Obviously, this team’s true purpose was to be ready to step in as the Kingdom’s representative and his staff in any joint command arrangements that we might make were we to enter the war. Orders activating those personnel in that capacity will go out momentarily, as will our notice to your president. Captain, is there any other military step that you suggest we consider taking immediately?”
Max gulped. He wasn’t used to being asked for advice by anyone higher than a captain by rank, and here he was being asked for advice on the force disposition of one of Known Space’s great powers. By a king. What do you even call a king? The last king to actively rule his forebears was George II of Great Britain, and that didn’t end so well—he threw them out of Canada, and they wound up in the territory known as Louisiana. He threw a panicked look at the doctor, who perceptively mouthed “Your Majesty.”
Deep breath. Tactical officer. Captain just asked for a recommendation. Done that before. “Yes, Your Majesty, this is Max Robichaux. If the emir is in league with the Krag, and if he knew that you were planning to enter the war on our side, then I think we may safely assume that the Krag know that too.
“Now, I’m just a destroyer captain, sir. I operate on the tactical, not the strategic, level, but if I’m the Krag Horde Master for this theater of operations, I’ve got to be thinking about making a preemptive attack the minute I suspect that the Kingdom is going to enter the war. Strike now to eliminate the Kingdom’s forces before they can be made ready for combat and get integrated into the larger force structure of the Union.
“I don’t know the readiness state and disposition of your forces, but if I were you, I would get as much of my fleet as possible—and preferably all of it—fueled, loaded for bear, and deployed. And I would not waste any time doing it either. I’d want my forces in an operational deployment no more than two hours from now. That’s the earliest an attack force of fast destroyers could get here if the Krag launched it immediately upon finding out from the emir that you were going to join forces with us.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. “One moment.” Whereas at the beginning of the conversation, the king’s voice sounded determined and confident, there was now a definite note of concern. Max could hear the click followed by deadness that meant the audio pickup on the other end of the comm had been muted. About a minute and a half passed. Another click.
“I have given the orders to dispatch Admiral Taniq and activate our liaison on Earth, and to notify Admiral Hornmeyer and the Union president of what has taken place today. Now, Captain, to your suggestion: we gave the activation order hours ago. My brother will fill you in on our forces’ status. Once you understand the complete situation, if you have any further advice, please convey it to him. Be assured that he has my ear at all times and that, in light of your most interesting combat record, any insights you may have will be welcome. Good day to you both, Captain, Ambassador. My brother, we will speak soon. Khalil out.”
Max could not help but notice that he closed the comm link more in the manner of a warship captain than a civilian political leader. A warship captain with a problem.
Max wanted to get to the bottom of this. Quickly. “Minister, I may not know squat about kings, but I’ve been taking orders from warship captains since I was eight years old, and I know when one of them is worried. That was one worried warship captain. Why?”
The minister retook his seat. He glanced down at his watch, still on the table. The machine gun and assault rifle fire outside were rising to a crescendo, punctuated by the occasional burst of a grenade or mortar round. He turned back to Max and took a deep breath in the manner of a man charged with the delivery of unpleasant news.
“Unlike the Texians and many of the other Independent Powers, our Navy does not have institutional roots in your Navy. Accordingly, our ships are not an extension or branch of the same design lineage as yours. There is no ‘family resemblance’ between the vessels of the two navies as there is between those of the Union and so many other human powers. We have always gone our own way. That is why our ships look so different from yours and possess radically different strengths and weaknesses. What many people do not understand is that the difference is, as we say, ‘more than skin deep.’ Indeed, it goes to the very core.
“Your fusion reactors are of the Svavarsdottir, or ‘S-Dot,’ design in which plasma containment is achieved purely by means of two spherical and concentric reciprocally polarized graviton fields. S-Dot reactors can achieve a cold start in less than five minutes, but at the expense of a comparatively low power-to-weight ratio and less than optimal fuel efficiency.”
Oh, shit.
The minister continued. “It is little known outside of the Kingdom’s naval circles that our warships are not powered by S-Dot reactors.” Double shit.
“Don’t tell me you are still using tokomaks,” Max said anxiously.
“Nothing even remotely so primitive. In fact, our reactors are of an extremely advanced design. As you are probably aware, almost 90 percent of the energy expended in an S-Dot reactor to achieve complete containment is directed to bottling up the most energetic 10 percent of the plasma. We employ a hybrid design in which the plasma is 90 percent graviton contained, and the remaining 10 percent is contained by a more energy-efficient technology—conventional Bussard-Polywell polyhedral electromagnetic coils.
“This design approach is, as far as we know, used only by us and by the Romanovans, with whom we jointly developed it. It has advantages of a more than 20 percent increase in efficiency and accompanying savings in fuel consumption, as well as an almost 30 percent improvement in power-to-weight ratio. The reactors are also smaller per unit of power and have less demanding cooling requirements, resulting in additional savings in power, size, and weight.”
“But you have to granny-start them, don’t you?” said Max.
“Granny-start?” It seemed that there was no bit of spacer slang of which the doctor was not ignorant.
As usual, Max filled in the gaps in his knowledge. “Slang for ‘incremental volumetric ignition.’ The way you typically start an S-Dot reactor is you flood the containment vessel with gaseous deuterium up to its rated pressure, then kick in the graviton generators and rapidly compress the gas almost to the point at which it would begin fusing, then kill the field, and in the milliseconds before the compressed gas has enough time to expand much, you squirt in another volume of gas; compress that amount to a slightly larger volume again, almost to the point at which it would begin fusing; and so on, until the whole vessel is full of deuterium just on the cusp of fusing; then you kick in the field for good, and use it to compress the gas that last little bit necessary to initiate the fusion reaction.
“
Once you power up the field. it takes only a few minutes to start the reactor, but you have to run the graviton field at very high levels to be able to snap it on and off and on again like that and stabilize rapidly enough to keep compression-heated deuterium confined.
“But in an S-Dot reactor, if your graviton generators are damaged and can’t be run at peak output, you do a granny-start. You start the reaction gradually. The first step is the same as a normal start—you fill the vessel to the highest safe pressure and then compress that gas almost to the fusion threshold, but once you get there, things go a lot more slowly. Then you slowly add more gas while gradually increasing the volume of the containment field. The gas has to be kept right on the edge of fusing, without starting the reaction, because it’s only at the edges of the containment vessel, close to the emitters, that the field is strong enough to contain fusion plasma. When you finally have the vessel full of deuterium just at the fusion cusp, then you compress it across the fusion threshold and initiate the reaction.
“It takes anywhere from four hours to something like eighteen hours, depending on how much power the generators will take and how big the reaction chamber is. So, Minister, what’s the start-up time on your reactor design?”
“Twenty-three hours on most of our ships. They got orders to start their reactors seven hours and…”—he glanced at the watch still on the table—“nineteen minutes ago, when we first had indications that the emir was going to cause trouble. We also have three older destroyers and two frigates that use more conventional reactor designs. They have already powered up and put to space.”
“Twenty. Three. Hours.” Max slowly came to his feet and paced deliberately to the window, a deadly coldness coalescing in his chest. His percom gave a brief, quiet buzzing sound, the sound it made when its beep had been muted. Max looked at the alphanumeric display, flipped the device open to its main display, and entered a few commands on the soft screen. The doctor surmised that he had programmed some sort of time alarm into the system.
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 11