A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “We could share what we’ve learned with the Coalition,” Ross said. “Invite them to join us in open war.”

  “Most races would probably balk without evidence the Tokomak could be beaten,” Bute pointed out. “The Tokomak do have a lot of ships and they know where to find the Coalition homeworlds.”

  “They know where to find us too,” Marie countered. “They’ve known about us for centuries, Councillor; they just haven’t cared. Or do we have hidden colonies the rest of us aren’t meant to know about?”

  “You’re not meant to know about them,” Kevin said, although it was an open secret. Quite a few asteroids had crammed a miniature tech base into their habitats, then used fusion drives to punch their way out of the solar system. It was quite tempting to think that, if the Tokomak won, one day one of those asteroids would rebuild human civilisation and come back for revenge. “However, all of those colonies are merely lights tossed into the darkness.”

  “Which leaves us with the problem of needing a victory, both to convince them to leave us alone and to get the Coalition to support us,” Ross said. “Or are there ways we could approach the Varnar?”

  “We can certainly try,” Kevin said. “There have to be quite a few Varnar who know they’re being used, but don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t think there's anything particularly subtle in the proxy war. And the Varnar have definitely learned a few lessons from four hundred years of fighting.”

  “How true,” Mongo agreed. “They wouldn't have let their guard down if they were patrolling a seemingly unoccupied system.”

  “The Varnar have strong ties to the galactic economy,” Bute said. “They would have strong reasons to support the Tokomak in any case.”

  The President held up a hand. “Based on what we now know,” he said, “do you have a plan?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Mongo said.

  He activated the holographic display. A handful of stars appeared, blinking red.

  “The Tokomak plan is to secure these stars and turn them into naval bases, then strike directly for Earth,” he said. “It looks as if someone with more theoretical knowledge than experience came up with the plan, because the simplest way to achieve their objectives would be to charge straight towards Earth as soon as their battleships assemble at Varnar. To a layman, the plan blocks the Coalition from either helping us or continuing their war with the Varnar; to a spacer, the naval bases can simply be ignored. I suspect, however, that the Tokomak CO will be unable to change the plan, even if she realises how flawed it actually is.

  “My intention is to raid those bases as soon as the advance elements arrive,” he continued. “Their obsession with logistics puts America in the shade; they’re sending hundreds of freighters as part of their fleet train, with millions of tons of supplies. Capturing or destroying those supplies will put a real crimp in their operations. Worse, they will have to retake those stars as quickly as possible or they’ll look weak in the eyes of the galaxy.”

  “Or launch a thunderbolt towards Earth,” Bute commented, sourly.

  “It’s one of our contingency plans,” Mongo assured him. “We will meet their fleet in interstellar space and destroy it. They won’t know what has hit them until it is far too late.”

  Ross frowned. “Are you sure this is workable?”

  “I think we have no alternative,” Mongo said. “They will either secure their naval bases and then advance, or – as the Councillor suggested – throw caution to the winds and advance anyway. The latter would definitely be the better option for them.”

  “I will be setting up a new intelligence base on Varnar and bringing in some of the resident assets,” Kevin added. “We’ll know when their main fleet arrives and is ready for deployment.”

  And see if we can rope Mr. Ando into helping us, he thought. He clearly isn't backing the Tokomak.

  “Very well,” Ross said. “How long would it take us to prepare?”

  “Call up the reserves, prep the fleet, recall the merchant skippers ... around three to four months,” Mongo said. “The downside is that we would take an economic hit.”

  Kevin groaned, inwardly. The Solar Union had produced a class of small light freighters that could, with a little work, be converted into small warships. There were literally thousands of them plying the spaceways now, bringing human trade goods to the Galactics and obtaining samples of alien technology in return. But Mongo was right; if the crews and their ships were called home, as part of the Naval Reserve, the human race would suffer an economic downturn. Israel had suffered the same problem until the Middle East had collapsed into an orgy of bloodletting and mutual slaughter.

  “We could take it,” Marie said. “Most of our economy is not dependent on trade with the Galactics.”

  “True, but there would be headaches,” Mongo said. “Thankfully, we’re not dependent on the Galactics for anything other than intelligence.”

  “All of which leads us to a very different question,” Ross said. “We have bent the rules almost to breaking point in keeping this a secret from the general population. Can we do that any longer?”

  Mongo took a breath. “The moment we start debating the question of war,” he said, “we run the risk of alerting the Galactics. There are no shortage of traders in the Sol System who will happily sell information to outsiders, particularly as we will no longer be trading with them. I would honestly prefer to keep it a secret as long as we could.”

  “But the news will leak,” Marie countered, tartly. “The Naval Reserves being called up cannot be concealed, nor can the sudden shortage of freighters. A blogger or two will put it together soon enough, Admiral, and we cannot silence them all.”

  She was right, Kevin knew. The CIA had been able to wield some influence over the Mainstream Media on Earth – although sometimes the media had published anyway, often costing lives or valuable intelligence sources – but the Solar Union had no such power. Outside of libel or slander, there were no restrictions on press freedom in the Solar Union; hell, he was mildly surprised someone hadn't put it together already. Or maybe they had and they were just keeping their mouths shut. It wouldn't have happened on Earth, of course, but the Solar Union produced a more responsible species of journalist.

  Because they can be sued if they lie or misrepresent the truth, he thought. And because reporters can genuinely be held to account.

  But they couldn't be here, he knew, because they would be reporting the truth. And the Solar Union was designed to avoid government secrecy, after all.

  “So we put the issue before Congress,” the President said. “And call for a general vote.”

  Bute coughed. “There will be quite a few willing to speak against war,” he said. “Do you really want to take the risk they’d vote no?”

  “There’s no choice,” the President said, sharply. “Launching an attack on a single cruiser is pushing my powers to the limit. Going on the offensive when the enemy isn't in the Solar System is well beyond them. Captains and crews will balk, Senator, and that will prove disastrous.”

  He took a breath. “Unless anyone has any strong objections,” he said, “I will call for a joint meeting of Congress and the Senate two days from now.”

  “Make it three days,” Marie advised. “You’ll get the kids out of schooling for a day.”

  “Kids can't vote,” Bute pointed out, sharply.

  The President scowled at them both, then turned his attention to Mongo. “Admiral, I want a précis of the situation,” he said. “We won’t discuss the plan openly – everyone will understand that, I think – but we do need to convince them that the situation is dire enough to start a war.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Mongo said.

  Kevin understood the President’s doubts. Even for the Solar Union’s population, used to starships and asteroid settlements and the bounty of alien technology, it was hard to comprehend the sheer crushing power of the Tokomak, of a race that could soak up thousands of losses and just keep coming. Were the
y even imaginative enough to be scared? There was no way to know.

  But their plan does show a certain level of imagination, he thought. Crude and flawed, but imaginative.

  He shook his head. The Solar Union maintained a faith in its politicians that had long since faded from Earth, if only because no politician lasted long enough to go bad. Or so they hoped ... would that faith survive, Kevin asked himself, the coming war? America had never really recovered after Nixon, or Carter, or Clinton. Bush and Obama had been either antichrists or messiahs, depending on who was asked. And the Presidents that had followed Obama had been dependent on a tottering political structure unable to adapt to the post-Contact world.

  And Steve would have hated to watch the decline and fall of America, he thought. Perhaps it’s for the best he chose to leave. He might have been able to convince the Solar Union to intervene ...

  Mongo poked him, non-too-gently. “Do you think we can put assets on Varnar to help make their lives miserable?”

  “Probably, but not that miserable,” Kevin said, hastily using his implants to replay the last few words of the conversation. Bute had been suggesting inserting SpecOps teams onto Varnar to cause trouble. “Their security isn't anything like as bad as it seems. I happen to know their military bases and government installations are very secure. We’d be doing nothing more than random terrorism.”

  “Then it remains out of the question,” President Ross said, firmly. “See if you can find ways to cause trouble, Kevin, but I don’t want a repeat of 9/11, let alone Oakland or San Diego.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Kevin said.

  “Assuming everything goes according to plan, we will open a War Cabinet to assume overall direction of the war,” the President added. “This council will be wound down, the files sealed for the next one hundred years. And then, no doubt, we will be very embarrassed when the truth comes out.”

  Kevin smirked. One hundred years, on Earth, was long enough for everyone to be safely dead, but he was already pushing one hundred and the others weren't that far behind. The files would need to be secure for much longer ... and would have been, if there weren't laws intended to prevent excessive government secrecy. Even one hundred years was pushing the envelope.

  Steve would never have approved, he thought. But then, Steve didn't know how to compromise either. He saw compromise as a dirty word.

  “By then, we will all be out of politics,” Bute said. Politicians had somewhere between five to ten years in politics at the most. “We will be yesterday’s news.”

  “And thank god for that,” Marie snapped. “Do you know they ran a feature on what kind of bloody shoes I wear every day? Apparently, the economy rises and falls on what I happen to pick to wear on my feet!”

  “It depends,” Bute said. “How many pairs of shoes do you buy?”

  “I could outfit everyone in my Canton with shoes,” Marie said, “and I doubt it would cause more than a blip in the economy.”

  The President sighed. “I expect you all to take a role in presenting the case for war,” he continued. “Unless you feel otherwise, in which case now would be a good time to say so.”

  “I don’t like the idea of fighting an enemy so much stronger than ourselves,” Bute said, “but I don’t see that we have a choice. The Tokomak are unlikely to accept anything other than complete and unconditional surrender.”

  “If that,” Kevin said.

  He scowled in bitter memory. The Galactics had laws against genocide ... but a handful of species had gone missing, over the centuries. Kevin had a private suspicion that the long-gone races had been seen as threats or potential challengers ... and, as such, had been destroyed long before they could become dangerous. If the Galactics realised just how far humanity had advanced, after capturing a single ancient starship and her crew, they would probably start launching planet-busters at Earth.

  Shame we can't get more of their records, he thought, but most of the Tokomak archives are sealed, closed to anyone who isn't one of them. It might answer a few of our questions.

  The Tokomak Empire was ancient, by human standards; it had maintained itself and its culture for over four thousand years. No human polity had ever managed to keep itself in stasis for so long. But four thousand years – or forty thousand – was nothing compared to the life of the universe. It was generally estimated that the universe was over thirteen billion years old. There could have been thousands of empires on the same scale – or greater – in the period between the birth of the universe and the Tokomak.

  They could have been the lucky ones who figured out the gravity drive, he thought. It wasn't unknown for races to trap themselves in a technological cul-de-sac, only to get an unpleasant surprise when they encountered their more advanced neighbours. But over such a long space of time, is that even possible?

  He set the thought aside as the President dismissed the council, warning them all to be present at the joint assembly. Kevin groaned at the thought – his role wasn't a complete secret, but he preferred to stay out of the spotlight – then concentrated on planning ways to approach Mr. Ando. Or, perhaps, his assistant. Sally didn't have a security file, which suggested she was nothing more than what she seemed, a young human girl who had accepted a chance to live and work hundreds of light years from home.

  But where, he asked himself, would her loyalties lie?

  “This could be it,” Mongo said. “Our very existence hanging by a thread.”

  Kevin sighed, inwardly. Steve and Mongo were very similar, even though neither of them would have admitted it. They would have been happier fighting beside Bowie and Travis at the Battle of the Alamo than negotiating a peace both sides could live with. There was, after all, something more dramatic about a desperate last stand than a peaceful talk at the negotiation table. Kevin had always been the odd one out, in many ways. Queen Elizabeth’s observation that wars were chancy things had always resonated with him.

  But sometimes the war had to be fought, because there was no hope of a reasonable compromise.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And let us pray we win, because defeat will be terrible.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A student was arrested yesterday in Manchester, United Kingdom, for poisoning over four hundred of his schoolmates. According to his testimonial, published online, he was bullied from the day he set foot in the school until the day he dumped poison in the free school dinners. Seventy students have reportedly died, while the rest remain in critical condition. Speaking in Parliament, MPs condemned the easy availability of poison and vowed new legislation to ban its purchase by anyone without a licence.

  -Solar News Network, Year 53

  “Do you think we’re allowed to talk about the ... incident ... now?”

  “I don’t think so,” Yolanda said. “Didn't you get the same lecture?”

  Martin nodded. Captain Lockland had lined up his Marines and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they weren't to breathe a word of their successful operation, on pain of being charged with High Treason and shot. He rather doubted the officer was joking, given just what they’d done. The Galactics could not be allowed to find out what had happened to their starship.

  “So we keep our mouths shut,” he said. “And vote, it would seem.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. Back in the ghetto, there was no such thing as public participation, unless it was in carefully-staged riots designed to pressure the politicians into sending more loot to the rulers. The community organisers delivered votes, on demand, to their friends in Washington; the fact that hardly anyone had bothered to vote was neither here nor there. But the Solar Union expected – it demanded – that it citizens play a part in governing themselves. Martin was still having problems trying to wrap his head around the concept.

  The message had arrived two hours ago, informing them that a joint session of Congress and the Senate would be held, followed by a vote. There had been no declared subject, but after what they’d done, Martin was fairly sure it had s
omething to do with the Tokomak. The government wouldn't have kidnapped an entire ship, along with its surviving crew, unless they had a long-term idea in mind. Unlike Earth, the Solar Union’s politicians couldn't stand for re-election time and time again. They had some interest in doing the right thing.

  “But we should hear the debates first,” Yolanda said. “And then make up our minds.”

  Martin rolled his eyes. They were sharing a suite in the most expensive hotel on Gunn Asteroid – which wasn't saying very much – but their minds were elsewhere, drinking in the endless flow of information from the datanet. Martin found it more than a little scary, if he were forced to tell the truth; it was hard, sometimes, to know where he ended and the datanet began. He’d been told there were people who uploaded themselves into computer cores, becoming Homo Electronic. It sickened him – it seemed nothing less than a form of suicide – and yet he could see the attraction. What would he do to have a VR chamber of his own where his merest whim became reality?