XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Dix grinned.

  ‘So I should hope,’ he said. ‘And that’s exactly what I told them, too, plus that if such orders ever land on my desk that my resignation will be fired back with immediate effect. That plan never did have presidential or majority Senate support, though – just typical army, thinking they can solve any problem by shouting at people. Plan D is, indeed, our fallback, if all else fails, tell the spacers what’s going on and ask for their understanding. But that is only if Plan E doesn’t work. And Plan E, Alex, is for you to make first contact with Gide and ask them to reset their alarm systems so that our shipping doesn’t trigger it.’

  Alex stared at him, utterly nonplussed.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘They want you to attempt first contact,’ Dix repeated, with an amused look at Alex’s flabbergasted expression. ‘It’s not as insane as it sounds,’ he assured him. ‘It is, in fact, a strategy that has been used before, historically. It’s called a pawn sacrifice approach, though I should be clear in this that we are not actually talking about sacrificing you or your ship. It’s a diplomatic term, meaning only that when a situation is very sensitive, you send in a junior member of staff in an apparently unofficial capacity. If they pull it off, whatever the negotiation is, then all well and good. If it goes bad, though, the primaries still have what they call relationship rescue. They can deny any knowledge of what the junior representative was doing, apologise profusely for any offence caused, and hopefully retain a working relationship.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alex considered that, but felt even more bewildered. ‘But ... me?’

  ‘Several possibilities were considered, obviously,’ Dix told him. ‘There is, you see, a very high probability that the Gideans will reject any approach made to them. They certainly aren’t at all keen to establish a relationship – far from it, they won’t even allow the Solarans to tell us anything about them. The chances are extremely high that you’ll spend weeks attempting to make contact with them and get no response at all. But on the faint chance that you might get to talk to someone, you have to appreciate what a delicate situation it is, that we are evidently annoying them and have to tell them that we don’t see any quick solution to that. Even if we tell spacers the situation and ask for their help, it will be years before that gets around to everyone, and not everyone will comply with it, of course, because there are always the odd cussed ones who won’t play ball. There is another possibility, finding another route to Tolmer’s Drift that we could offer spacers as an alternative. But not everyone would comply with that, either, so the only realistic solution we can see, honestly, is for them to adjust things their side so that the alarm isn’t set off by our shipping.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they have done that already, sir, if it was that simple?’ Alex asked, bewildered.

  ‘You’d think so, but apparently not,’ Dix said. ‘Karlos Gerard explained it to me as being like neighbouring houses with a fence between. One of the households is terrified of the other and has installed a security system that turns on a bright light when someone goes close to the fence. Finding that it goes off quite often does not make them inclined to reset it so that their neighbours can climb the fence without it being triggered. If anything it makes them inclined to make the sensors even more sensitive. The only thing that would make them reset it, really, would be an assurance from their neighbours, a convincing assurance, that they are no kind of threat.’

  ‘So – we’re working on the assumption that the Gideans are terrified of us?’ Alex asked.

  ‘That seems to be a fairly safe assumption, given that the species out there have contained us in our own space with a system that turns our ships around,’ Dix pointed out. ‘Debate may go on for some time about why they’ve done that, whether there was a war or a natural plague, but the staggering scale of that barrier speaks in itself to the fear with which either we or the diseases we carry are seen by those outside it. We don’t know how close Gide is to the other side of the Firewall, but it is evidently close enough that our shipping even brushing as near to it as Abigale Alley causes them concern.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alex, again, and then, as he thought this through, ‘And the Solarans won’t act as intermediaries in this?’

  ‘No,’ Dix confirmed. ‘It’s difficult to be sure – you know what Solarans are like, you ask them a question and about half an hour later they start talking about chair legs – but the diplomats feel that there’s some kind of issue between Solarus Perth and Gide, too. They talk about Gide being out of balance, a chair with only two legs. It may even be the case that the Gideans passed their message to the Solarans themselves via a third party. Something one of the ambassadors said seemed to indicate that, but they won’t be any more forthcoming than that. A request for them to convey our apologies to the Gideans and attempt to set up a dialogue was, however, clearly refused, end of discussion.’

  ‘Ah,’ Alex said, recognising that that really would be that, as far as the Solarans were concerned. Once they’d said that something was closed to further discussion, they would physically withdraw from any meeting in which anyone tried to raise that issue again. ‘But still, surely, if you want to reassure the Gideans that we are no threat to them, a properly trained ambassador on a diplomatic ship would be a much better option than sending a frigate.’ He looked at the patient expression on Dix’s face, and realised. ‘Oh, of course. They’ve already tried that.’

  ‘Have tried it, are trying it,’ Dix confirmed. ‘There is a diplomatic ship on assignment there. They’ve laid more than four hundred satellites along the Firewall, transmitting greetings, explanations and a request for a meeting, but they’ve had no response at all. The diplomats feel that it is time to attempt a rather more robust approach. Hence the request for a Fleet ship to go in on a pawn sacrifice manoeuvre. Yours was not the only ship considered, obviously, the Eagle was top of that shortlist for quite some time. Your operations at Sixships, however, moved you up into the number one position.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alex said, and as the significance of that sank in, ‘oh!’

  ‘Exactly,’ Dix agreed. ‘That was, in itself, a pawn sacrifice manoeuvre. The diplomats are just delighted by how well you carried out your role, there, leaving them clean and clear. They were also impressed by the obviously strong relationship you’d already forged with Mr North, and keen to see how you’d cope with the responsibility of hosting a first contact ambassador. As it turns out, you’ve exceeded everyone’s expectations in that, and not just you, either, but your officers and crew. Karlos Gerard is adamant, now – they want the Heron, for this. The president has high confidence in you, too. So that has been confirmed, already decided. Your XD-317 orders will do no more than tell you to ‘seek a solution’. Which means, in effect, that you are expected to attempt to make first contact by bumping the Firewall, but to do so as if on your own initiative. The diplomats want relationship rescue, the politicians want deniability, it all adds up to you having to make the field decisions and take the responsibility for whatever might happen.’

  ‘Well, I’m ...’ Alex started, but realised there were just no words, gesturing helplessly.

  ‘You’ve only got yourself to blame,’ Dix told him. ‘If you will go about being so brilliant, solving problems that politicians and diplomats consider irresolvable, you are in no position to complain when they see you as the go-to guy for even more difficult situations.’

  Alex laughed, as he was obviously intended to, but it was a rather breathless kind of laugh, and he shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t done anything that would merit them seeing me that way,’ he protested, and that was no false modesty, but genuinely what he believed.

  ‘Alex,’ Dix said, with a speaking look at him.

  ‘Honestly, sir,’ Alex insisted. ‘I’m just an ordinary officer coping with extraordinary circumstances, making the best of it and doing whatever tasks I’m assigned to the best of my ability. The idea that the president and Diplomatic Corps might think I’m in any way qua
lified to undertake first contact is just ... well, terrifying, to be honest.’

  Dix laughed, a guffaw of deep amusement.

  ‘You’re doing all right with Shionolethe,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s different,’ Alex answered, his manner earnest. ‘Shion asked to come to us. It’s a huge honour, obviously, and I’m very conscious of the responsibility, too, both for her welfare and in fostering that relationship, but that relationship had already been established before she came to us. What you’re talking about here is real, actual first contact with a people, a species, we know nothing at all about.’

  ‘And you’re telling me that the possibility of that doesn’t thrill you to the core?’ Dix asked, with a teasing look. ‘Come off it, Alex. You’re a spacer! Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to do this.’

  Alex stared at him. ‘Of course I want to do it!’ he answered, as if that was so obvious it did not even need saying. ‘My God, what spacer wouldn’t? I won’t even attempt to deny that my heart is thumping double time even at the thought, and all other things being equal I would claw through duralloy for such an opportunity. But this is huge, sir, this is enormous, and it is terrifying to think that the government may be choosing me to do this, over far more experienced and qualified people, in some misapprehension that I’m, I don’t know, some kind of superman.’

  ‘Oh, I believe that the Senate has a pretty good understanding of your abilities, Alex,’ said Dix. ‘And more to the point, when I was asked for my opinion on the matter I told them that I don’t believe they could make a better choice.’ He grinned.

  ‘I do have to admit to being extremely envious,’ he told him. ‘It’s what we all hope for, of course, first contact missions, and I will freely admit that I made a spirited effort to convince them that I’d be a good choice for it myself. Obviously that wouldn’t play, though, with the imperative being for relationship rescue or deniability, whichever term you prefer. A frigate or destroyer skipper is considered to be at the right level for pawn-sacrifice diplomacy; senior enough to be acting on their own initiative but junior enough for their actions to be disclaimed if things go wrong. And you haven’t, I notice, asked me what happens if things do go wrong.’

  ‘Oh, I took that as understood, sir,’ Alex answered. ‘Obviously, taking full responsibility means just that, so if things go bad, the best I can hope for is to be allowed to resign my commission.’ As he saw assent on Dix’s face, Alex went on, ‘And absolutely right, too – if I take this on and mess it up, I’d deserve everything they could throw at me.’

  Dix smiled. He could think of any number of officers, far senior to Alex, who’d be asking for all manner of safeguards for themselves before agreeing to such a mission. Alex, though, had a tremendously strong sense of personal responsibility, as if the words the buck stops here had been encoded in his DNA. That could make him an infuriating subordinate when that sense of responsibility drove him to take some ethical stance against authority, but it also gave him the strength to make and stand by his own decisions.

  ‘Well, I won’t let them blame you unless I think myself that you messed up somehow,’ Dix told him. ‘But I don’t see that, really. Frankly, I doubt that you will get any kind of response to any kind of attempt to make contact, since it seems pretty clear to me that they just don’t want to talk to us. I believe that you’ll have to fall back on Plan D, and in that, even if you can only manage to reduce the number of ships traversing Abigale, at least we’re showing willing in attempting to resolve the problem. You will, I know, do everything humanly possible. But that isn’t what I need to ask you about, right now.

  ‘The question I’ve been asked to advise the president about is, obviously, about Shionolethe. Perhaps it should be clarified that she has absolutely no involvement with the Gide situation – as far as I’m aware she doesn’t know anything about it. That message was brought by a different set of ambassadors, at Chartsey, seven weeks before Shionolethe arrived at Amali, and there’s no reason to believe those events are in any way connected. But you were already being considered for the Novamas mission at the point where Shionolethe asked if she could travel with you, and I will not deny that that was a factor taken into consideration when that was being decided.’

  Alex gave him a startled look as a thought occurred.

  ‘Can I ask – does Davie North know about the situation at Novamas?’ he asked. ‘And did he know that we were being considered for that when he suggested us to Shion?’

  ‘Officially, no, to both,’ said Dix. ‘But off the record, probably, yes. I’m guessing, there. It’s virtually impossible to know for sure what the Families actually know about anything, but generally considered advisable to assume that they know absolutely everything that’s going on, however highly classified it might be. They’ve always had an active role in exodiplomacy, too, and by ‘always’ I mean of course throughout the League’s history. Mr North is not the first of them to be bioengineered, either. That’s something they do when they consider it to be necessary, engineering a representative to facilitate exodiplomacy. They had someone engineered with gills, I believe, during our first-phase contact with Quarus.’

  Alex nodded. Groundsiders might have freaked out at the discovery that there was a highly reclusive group of super-rich families who owned significant chunks of the League’s major industries. It was the stuff of conspiracy theory, that, and the additional information that the Founding Families occasionally engineered offspring to represent them in exodiplomacy would have been considered extreme even in meetings of the First Contact society.

  Alex, however, knew that it was even weirder than that. The super-reclusive Founding Families were not secretly controlling the government, as conspiracy theorists would immediately assume, but were quietly, determinedly upholding the League Constitution. In areas where that brought them into conflict with government, like the issue of sovereignty over ISiS, they would fight with every lawful, constitutional means available to them. In other areas, such as supporting exodiplomacy, facilitating colonies and funding exploration and starship development, they were an invaluable resource.

  ‘You could,’ Dix suggested, ‘ask Mr North yourself what was in his mind when he suggested travelling with you to Shionolethe, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of any real answer. If he does know about the situation at Novamas then he will certainly respect confidentiality on that and not discuss it even with you.’

  Alex nodded understanding. Davie had told Shion the day before that he would be leaving for Flancer once the Heron departed Karadon. Whether he would turn up again later, and if so, where, was something he couldn’t even tell Shion. He didn’t, he said, make plans that far ahead.

  ‘Anyway, the decision to deploy you was made, entirely legitimately, by the relevant authorities, with no kind of interference from Mr North or any other members of the Founding Families,’ Dix said, ‘just in case that needs to be said.’

  Alex gave him an apologetic look, as even wondering how much influence Davie North had had in this did, obviously, call the integrity of that decision into question.

  ‘Sorry, sir – just trying to get a full picture,’ he explained.

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Dix grinned briefly, having found Davie North quite incomprehensible, himself. ‘But the question is about Shionolethe. She hasn’t shown any particular interest in whatever mission you may be undertaking at Novamas, I gather?’

  ‘No, sir – just accepted it when I said we didn’t know ourselves, that we’d be given our orders when we get there,’ Alex confirmed. ‘And I’ve noticed that she seems very focussed, always, on what we’re doing at the time, doesn’t seem to speculate much about future operations.’

  ‘That’s cultural,’ Dix observed. ‘Karlos Gerard says that he thinks they’re so deeply rooted in the past and in experiencing the present, they just don’t think much about the future. And it may be, too, that living in a static society discourages thinking and planning for the future, too
. More importantly, here, she is of course adamant against accepting any kind of advisory role in human affairs.’

  ‘Emphatically so, yes,’ Alex agreed.

  ‘Which makes it, obviously, very sensitive to raise the issues with Gide, with her,’ Dix pointed out. ‘The last thing we want to do is damage that relationship with Pirrell in attempting to solve the problem with Gide. At the same time, though, there she is, aboard your ship, with a declared intention of serving as a member of your crew. What we were hoping, obviously, was that she’d accept an invitation to Canelon, giving us time to build that relationship at a higher diplomatic level to the point where we felt we could discuss such delicate issues. Now that isn’t going to happen, the president has to decide whether to talk to her about the Gide situation and ask if there is any advice or help she could offer, and if so, whether to do that now or if it would be better to wait till we meet at Penrys. He’s looking to me to advise him on that and me, Alex, I am looking to you. So what do you think? What’s your gut feeling on that?’

  Alex gave him a surprised look.

  ‘Oh, I’d ask her,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘Straight out, no beating about the bush. She can always say if she doesn’t want to talk about it, after all, and she values that, you see, very highly, frank and open communication. She doesn’t really like the diplomatic approach. She’s never said so, but my gut feeling is that she finds it tedious and perhaps even manipulative.’

  ‘And do you think she’d be willing to help?’

  ‘Well, I can’t speak for her, obviously, but my feeling is that if she was asked to undertake any official diplomatic role, like representing us in first contact, she’d say no, both on principle and because she’d feel such responsibilities to be beyond her. You really have to get past the notion of her being some wise and powerful super-being, sir, to see her as a student, very much like a cadet, and have reasonable expectations of her.’ Alex said. ‘If she was asked to tell us anything she might know about Gide that might be helpful, or perhaps to act in some assisting capacity, say, as an interpreter, I believe she would do what she could for us, in that, in any role appropriate for a junior officer.’