We do, however, believe that you are dangerously and blasphemously deluded. You do not worship the Creator-God. You do not recognize the overlordship of the superior beings whom he has created and chosen to rule over you. You refuse to recognize that it is His plan that you submit to our authority. You continue to believe that your life form and ours originated on your world, that our world was populated with life forms evolved on your world, and that we are not the Creator-God’s chosen creations, but merely an animal evolved from an ancestor of the lowly pests that infest your homes and granaries.
Therefore, rather than exterminate you, we have concluded that the Creator-God wishes us first to humble you, then to rule over you as just and wise overlords, and finally to convert you from your various unholy, idolatrous forms of worship to the eternal glorification of the Creator-God who spawned the Universe and all life in it.
You may be of the belief that you, rather than we, are the recipients of divine favor, based on certain recent events that, admittedly, would appear to show that events have turned in your favor. The advantages you believe they confer upon you are illusory. We know of your recent purchase from the Sarthan and what that will mean in terms of your vessel design. Although the Sarthan will not give us the benefit of a similar sale, irrespective of cost, the simple knowledge of what you now have will enable us to eliminate much of the strategic benefit you expect to gain from this technology. When your larger ships appear, we will be ready for them and will have countermeasures adapted to destroy them. We have new and more capable weapons that have not yet been used in combat against you. These weapons will be particularly effective against your new vessels.
Further, we retain our previous advantages of greater population, greater rate of population growth, more worlds, more natural resources, and greater industrial capacity. Recent events, in fact, have made these advantages even more formidable. Unknown to you, our civilization has been at war with another race known as the Thark since the second year of our war against you. This war has consistently consumed nearly a third of our personnel and the output of our military-industrial complex. We have just conquered the Thark, which will allow us to turn all of the resources we have been devoting to fighting them to the war against you and, in the fullness of time, will also allow us to turn against you all of the resources and production capacity formerly controlled by the Thark.
If the war continues, our victory is inevitable. You will be defeated. If we defeat you, we will exterminate you.
In light of the foregoing, we offer to accept the Union’s surrender on the following terms:
1. Complete disarmament of all humans subject to Union jurisdiction. All Union naval vessels, all bases and installations, and any other military assets will be surrendered to us. We will transport vessel crews and other combat capable personnel to detention centers for reeducation and, provided that they are found not to be a threat to our rule, later transport to their homeworlds. Military personnel who cannot or will not be reeducated will be humanely detained for life. No human will retain any firearm or other weapon capable of military use for any reason. Civil law enforcement will be provided by armed Krag military and unarmed Human police. Human police and paramilitary units may be provided with arms at some time in the distant future when your descendants are contented subjects under our just rule.
2. Complete dismantling of all apparatus of government in the Union at higher than the city and county levels. Government and administration will be provided by wise and just Krag overlords appointed by the Hegemony. Their rule will be absolute.
3. The purely Human concept of “Civil Rights” will have no place in the new order. Humans’ place in the Universe is as a subject people. Subjects have no rights other than those conferred by their superiors. Our rule will be just and humane, but only because we choose to rule in that manner, not because of any inherent or innate entitlement on the part of Humans to be ruled by their superiors in any particular manner.
4. The practice of all false religions will cease. All clergy will be detained and reeducated. All other Humans will be instructed in the worship of the Creator-God. Those who refuse will be executed. Their deaths will be brought about humanely, but without delay. There is no place in Creation for children of the Creator-God who are blasphemers.
We understand that these terms seem harsh. This is because the Creator-God has decreed that you be humbled and reformed. Doing so requires that our rule at first be with an iron hand. Once your race has been humbled, and once your people are reformed and have grown to adopt the true faith, you will find that we can be benign and gentle rulers who will allow you to retain much of your culture and autonomy. Later generations will fail to understand why there was such enmity between our peoples and will regard us as wise overlords. Your descendants will be happy subjects of the Krag Hegemony. And more importantly, you will have descendants. Your race will continue. Your billions of progeny will live on, most enjoying long, healthy, productive, and happy lives—working, having families, and living in a manner unchanged in most particulars from how you live now.
If you do not accept these terms, we must conclude that you will not accept humbling and reformation. In that event, your blasphemy and offenses cannot go unpunished. We will continue the war against you until your race is forever removed from creation. Because this is an outcome that we would deeply regret, we earnestly and sincerely pray that you accept our overlordship and religious instruction so that your people need not be destroyed.
Communicate your acceptance or rejection of these terms by sending the same ship to the same rendezvous point at 12:00Z Hours, 2 May 2315. If the designated ship is not present, we will conclude that you wish the war to continue. Not one of you will survive. Each of your worlds will be sterilized down to the last bacterium. So, the question we pose to the Union is this: Will you save your race, preserving the lives of yourselves, your children, and the generations to come by tendering your surrender and accepting the overlordship of the Krag?
Even in the heat of battle, in the face of the enemy with the odds against him, Max had never as an adult been truly, abjectly afraid.
He was afraid now.
* * *
CHAPTER 16
* * *
11:50Z Hours, 2 May 2315
Max had experienced tension in a CIC before: on capital ships before major fleet actions where the admirals were rolling the dice with three or four carrier battle groups and the stakes were an entire sector or sometimes even two. Once, he had been present when Admiral Middleton had quietly put his whole Theater Task Force on the table to be victorious or to be obliterated. None of those compared to this.
Cumberland was at the rendezvous point. Ten minutes early. The Union’s answer to the Krag surrender demand had been decided by the Senate in a closed session that lasted for nineteen straight hours. It was known that the president attended the entire debate and made use of his rarely exercised privilege to speak personally on the issue.
It was also known that the vote of the Senate had been unanimous and that the text of the message communicating the decision to the Krag had been drafted by the First Senator (what the Senate called its Chair), Alexander Conway, a short, balding, fastidious man known more for his mastery of the legislative technicalities than for any particular wisdom or strength of character. Lee and Conway were advised by Union Foreign Minister Judith Bernard, a retired admiral who had fought in the early days of the Krag war, before the killing of billions of females by the Krag biological weapon known as the Gynophage caused the Admiralty to remove women from all front-line service.
Bernard, known as the “Smiling Executioner” for her habit of wearing a small, tight smile on her face while cutting the enemy into small slices and bite-sized chunks, had enough toughness to make up for any deficiencies in the two men, with a generous quantity left over for the rest of the Senate. Unfortunately, she was not in charge. In an unprecedented move to g
uard the security of the Senate, that body had held this crucial session in the Pete Conrad Convention Center on the Earth’s Moon.
What was not known was how the vote had turned out. That was the most closely held secret in the history of the Union. Only President Lee, the Senate, and Minister Bernard knew the outcome, and they were all secluded on Luna Base under Marine guard, with all the long-distance comms on the whole Moon shut down so that no one could leak the result. It was feared that disclosure of the outcome, before it became a fait accompli by transmission to the Krag, might spawn demonstrations, riots, even secession of worlds from the Union, detracting from the unanimity of the response and rendering it ineffective. This step, standing alone, made Max lose almost all hope.
The response to the Krag had been encrypted with a time-lock code that would not allow it to be read until the appointed moment, the time-lock encrypted data encrypted again in ICEPACK, the Union’s highest level encrypt, and placed on a data chip to be carried to the rendezvous in the Cumberland and transmitted.
That chip was now plugged into the captain’s console, which had been programmed to read the chip and transmit the message when Max pressed the recently repaired and now famous “SUMMON STEWARD—COFFEE” button. Max was on the verge of being physically ill. The mood in CIC was not only tense but grim. Most of the men had picked up on the skipper’s pessimism and now believed that the Senate had voted to preserve the existence of the human race by sending it into eternal slavery under the lash of the Krag.
The result of the vote would be released to humankind at large by means of a presidential address beginning at the instant the answer was scheduled to be transmitted. On board the Cumberland, every console throughout the ship had been configured to display the answer when it was sent, so no man need wait in suspense a second longer than necessary. Two hundred and fifteen men would know the fate of the human race in a single, shared moment. Until then, it was agony.
At 11:55, the Vaaach vessel seemed simply to wink into existence, exactly ten kilometers away, just as it had the last time. After the usual steps, the forest commander’s face appeared on the displays. His demeanor seemed subdued. The normally gut-shaking roars were quiet and deliberate. Then, the translation: “Peer Swamp Fox, I greet you.”
“And I greet you, Forest Commander Chrrrlgrf.”
“This is an important day in the history of your race. Although I am here only to bring Human and Krag together to exchange their messages in safety, I wish you to know that I do not welcome the thought of your troop of absurd, chattering primates going into the long silence of oblivion, nor do I welcome the thought of them being chained and marched into the cages of slavery.”
He stood, placed his long arms (which reached well past his knees—a sign of his arboreal heritage) at his side, claws fully extended, and bowed his head for just under five seconds. Salute? Prayer? Mourning? There was no intel brief on this gesture. Then, he leveled his unnerving yellow-green eyes at the camera. It felt to Max as though the Vaaach were meeting his own eyes. There was genuine emotion in the alien gaze. Max could not read it, but it was certainly present and it was undoubtedly powerful. “The Vaaach wish you well.”
“I thank you for your good wishes, Forest Commander. I do not know what the answer of my people will be. We will all learn it together.”
“I await this revelation with interest. Today, we will learn the true nature of your species: hunters or prey.”
The Krag vessel appeared at 11:59 and slid into its appointed place. At the stroke of 12:00 Chin announced, “Sir, the Krag send ‘Ready to copy transmission.’ ” His voice was like death.
High noon. The hands of the old-style twelve-hour watch clock mounted on the bulkhead pointed straight up because, at that moment, more than a thousand light years away on Earth, the sun was at its highest point in the sky as viewed from the meridian of Greenwich, England. Over the thousands of years of human history, how many confrontations, how many meetings, how many ultimatums, how many pivotal events had been scheduled for just this hour and minute? Could any of them—could all of them put together—be any more important than what was about to happen at high noon, today, 2 May 2315?
No. Probably not.
Max steeled himself to push the button that would cause his console to lock in the decrypt, interrogate the chip, extract the response, and transmit it to the Krag. He laid his finger on top of the button without pressing it. It was bad enough that he was the one who had to send the message he was certain would begin humankind’s subjugation to the Krag. He could not make himself watch it happen. The almost unbearable emotion of the moment making Max literally unable to breathe, he closed his eyes and forced his finger to exert the necessary pressure. The button engaged the contact that closed the circuit, making a click that, although almost inaudible, echoed in Max’s mind like a rifle shot.
There. It was done.
Max felt a coldness run through his veins, as though he were receiving an intravenous drip of liquid helium. He knew the people around him were reading the response. Eyes still closed, he listened for changes in their breathing, speech, anything that would give away the answer without his having to look at the fateful words on his display. Nothing. The CIC crew was always a stoic lot.
A warship is essentially a hermetically sealed metal tube containing equipment, air, consumables, and human beings. The hull, the airtight bulkheads, and the decks that transect that hull are made of metal so thick and so sturdy that sounds made by the unamplified voices of the humans within or by the direct actions of their limbs in one compartment of the ship are usually inaudible in any other. But if enough noise is made of the right kind, the ship can be turned into an enormous reverberation chamber that amplifies and multiplies sounds rather than dampening them. Max had never encountered that phenomenon.
Until that moment.
At first, he could barely hear it, an almost subliminal suggestion of a sound, like the thunder of a distant storm. Undifferentiated in the beginning, it resolved into a series of BOOMs that got louder and louder and more and more powerful until the ship and the very air within it seemed to shake with each one. Only one thing could make that sound, Max thought: every member of the crew stomping his feet and banging on the bulkheads in unison. Also, faintly, he heard voices echoing through the bulkheads and vibrating the decks both above and below him. The men were shouting something in rhythm with one another. One word. Two syllables. He could not make them out.
Max’s heart was beating so hard that he could feel each individual contraction not just as a motion inside his chest but as a throb of pressure inside his head—pressure so great he felt as though his head might explode. He opened his eyes, assembling the courage and the patience to wade through a lengthy Senatorial reply, the verbosity and obscurity of which would prevent him from knowing until the very end of the document the answer to the Krag’s deadly question. The Krag had asked: Will you save your race, preserving the lives of yourselves, your children, and the generations to come by tendering your surrender and accepting the overlordship of the Krag?
The answer of the Union and of the human race to the Krag’s question, shown on hundreds of displays around the ship, was a single word: the same word that the men were shouting over and over in time with the cannon-like booms that shook the ship, the same word that—for good or ill—would shape the destiny of the human race for all time:
NEVER.
The Union would fight on. Mankind would live free.
Or die.
The story of Captain Max Robichaux, Doctor Ibrahim Sahin, and the USS Cumberland continues in the concluding volume of the “Man of War” Trilogy, Brothers in Valor, scheduled for publication in April 2014. The author plans more adventures for these characters; readers can look for the “Flames of War” trilogy (tentative title) beginning in late 2014.
* * *
GLOSSARY AND GUIDE TO ABBREVIATIONS
* * *
Alfvén wave A low-frequency travelling oscillation of ions in a magnetic field, resulting when ions are injected or inserted into the field, with the ion mass density providing the inertia and the magnetic field line tension providing the restoring force. Alfvén waves travel along the lines of force of the magnetic field.
Allah askina (Turkish) For God’s sake. An expression of shock and dismay.
Alphacen Alpha Centauri, as viewed from Earth the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus (the Centaur) a trinary star system and the star system nearest to the Sol System. Primary star: Alpha Centauri A, a type G2V main sequence star.
Article 15, Paragraph 5, Naval Regulations The provision of Naval regulations giving the commander of a rated warship the authority to disobey a direct order from a superior when an unforeseen event triggers the operation of a superior and countermanding standing or other preexisting order. In such an event, the officer disobeying the order is required to provide, as soon as practicable, a full and complete explanation and justification of his actions, in writing, to the superior officer whose order was disobeyed. The disobeying officer invokes this regulation at his peril, as there is no “good faith exception” to excuse his disobedience if his interpretation of the orders in question turns out to be in error.
AU Astronomical Unit. A unit of length or distance, defined as the mean distance between Earth and the sun, most commonly used in measuring distances on an interplanetary rather than an interstellar scale because it yields manageable numbers for such distances. For example, Mercury is about 0.35 AU from the sun, whereas Neptune is about 30 AU from the sun. One AU is equal to 149,597,870.7 kilometers, or 92,955,807.3 miles.
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 44