The admiral turned back to the front of the room, listened for a few moments to the general whispering, nodded, and again pulled down on her jacket. That apparently was something she just did. Whether it was a nervous tick, Sandy would leave to Jacques and his team.
“With a third threat axis to cover, and a chance that she may end up having to defend the jumps into the system where we live, I think every officer here would agree that she has acted wisely. We would also like to point out that she is defending us with vastly insufficient forces. I’ve made it my life’s work to advance the cause of Columm Almar. I have fought many of the officers in this room. I strongly believe that any waste of life and resources to any other endeavor than defending our planet from this enemy is a waste. So say we all,” she said, turning back to the others.
Suzie’s effort to translate the roar of agreement from the third row failed. It was left to Mimzy to say, “They all strongly agree,” and leave it at that.
With a respectful nod from both officers to the President, then to the Prime Minister, the two returned to their places in the third row. There, they were greeted by pats on the back and quiet nods. The cats in the room stayed quiet, allowing the officers a chance to express their approval to each other.
As the officers sat, the President and Prime Minister stood. They were soon joined by four other leaders. All six of the largest delegations, those that had taken up the smaller first row, now had their leaders standing shoulder to shoulder.
Clearly, they wanted to present a united front to Sandy. The grand admiral could only hope that they were united and were ready to head off in the one direction that she could agree with.
“Grand Admiral Santiago,” the President said, “We thank you and your brave space sailors for putting yourselves in harms’ way for our sake. We wish with all our hearts that we could send ships, crewed to a great extent by our own people, to fight for our very existence as you are now doing. Possibly matters would be better now if some of us had been more forthcoming,” she said, turning to eye those around her.
“However, that mistake belongs to all of us. Now, we must not make that mistake again. Not if we survive the next few weeks based on your bravery and charity.”
She paused to take a deep breath and let it out before beginning again. “As you may have noticed, our negotiations took longer than we expected. I suspect your duties kept you busy. Busy enough that our delay hardly bothered you.”
Sandy raised an eyebrow, then realized that such slight facial comments might go unnoticed. “You are correct. I was very occupied. I trusted you put the extra time to good use.”
“That we have,” the President said, turning to nod at those around her. “Your people were kind enough to allow your fabrication managers to meet with our industrial leaders. We came to understand that their plan was to land the magical metal on our moon. There, they would establish mining operations to extract raw materials while also building the initial fabricators to convert those materials into more fabricators. The expectation was that during the first two or three years, all production would be devoted to building a larger industrial base. Do I have that correct?”
Sandy turned to Penny. The captain answered with a simple, “Yes.”
“We knew that you were responding to a threat,” the President said. “We could not fail to understand your request for more of our atomics, nor miss one of your fleets sailing off as soon as they were delivered. We were aware before your briefing that a second part of your armada was preparing for a hasty sortie. We cannot often understand the fine points of your body language, as, we suspect, you are still working on ours. However, the worried haste of your officers and sailors screamed concern. Now we fully understand why. We wish that we could stand with you in the battles to come, but we have no spaceships.”
Again, the President paused to take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She did it twice before she went on. “However, we are very much aware that we must look to you like questionable partners. Kris Longknife told us that our lack of a central government was a bar to our entering your United Societies. No one had to tell us that you feared sharing all your advanced technology with cats that squabbled too much and had their fingers on the nuclear trigger.”
Sandy opened her mouth to say something. She wasn’t sure what it would be, but the President waved her to silence.
“As I said, no one told us this. It didn’t take a genius to look honestly at ourselves and conclude that we would not let ourselves loose among the stars. We are a combative race with, what do you call it,” she turned to Jacques. “Angry management issues?”
Jacques shook his head, “I would not have put it that way.”
No, Sandy thought. He’d say, “anger management issues.”
The President went on, possibly with something like a smile on her face. “Still, so long as we cannot solve our problems without resorting to violence and we have our fingers on the nuclear button, I would not let us loose without a leash.”
Sandy expected muttering at that, but the room remained so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
“Keeping all of those concerns in mind, I would like to make you an offer that does, indeed, grant us access to much of your technology. I am prepared to commit to us using this technology totally for our mutual defense for the next five years. For the next five years, we would allow ten percent of that production to seep into our economy and society. Like you, we have fears, too. I’m told that you also refer to the buggy whip business vanishing with the advent of the automobile.”
The room did share a soft chuckle at that.
“What we are offering to you is a minimum of seventy-five percent of our industry presently devoted to weapons production. We will immediately begin converting it to the production of your magic metal and weapons systems such as lasers. We will also build transport to your design to both take these up to your station and to construct mining survey vessels to search for minerals scattered in our asteroid belt. We expect that we might be able to begin exploiting those resources in four or five years. Maybe less. During that time, we will devote as least as many resources to the construction of fabricating mills on our planet and the production of what you need to build ships.”
Now the President turned to do an eyeball check with those around her. She was greeted with nods, so she turned back to Sandy.
“Would you like time to consider this offer? We have provided the outline of it to your staff people. They can brief you more in-depth. Should we remove ourselves?”
Sandy did feel kind of swamped. This was not what she’d come here expecting. She gave Penny, Jacques and Amanda the stink eye, but they maintained placid innocence.
“Have you eaten recently?” Sandy asked.
“We have survived for the last two days on cocoa and cold meats,” the President admitted.
“Penny, could you lay out a banquet on my flagship?”
“Do you require that your meat be seared or served raw?” Penny asked.
“Just so long as it is not served cold from the refrigerator and long dead, we will be happy,” the President said.
“I’ve got Mimzy working on it with the mess president, ma’am,” Penny said. “Jeanette,” talking to a lieutenant commander seated behind them, “please lead our guests back to the banquet hall this all started in.”
“Yes, Captain. If you will come this way,” and the cats filed out of the room quietly.
While they did, Sandy reviewed what she’d heard. At least intellectually, the cats understood that the humans weren’t sure they wanted to share space with them. Still, the situation called for, and they proposed, that the humans give them access to their advanced tech so they could build warships to better defend themselves.
Of course, warships were both defensive and offensive weapon systems. The key question was how to avoid the cats appearing in human space and dropping illegal atomics on human or Iteeche planets.
With the door closing behind th
e last cat, Sandy turned to Penny and the rest of her advisors. “Okay folks. We’re being asked to let this genie out of the bottle. There’s a good argument to be made that we do it. There’s no doubt in my mind that we need them actively and heavily involved in their own defense. So, how do we do this without them returning the favor we give them by turning human planets into atomic waste lands?”
Penny cleared her throat, made sure no one else was eager to jump into this frying pan, and said, “We’ve been looking at this for much of the last two days. We think we have an idea. You might want to run it by a red team. To get to human space, you need a star map and a Mark XII fire control system. You also need to know how to use jumps to cover the galaxy in seven league boots.”
Penny paused. Sandy gave her a nod.
“We’re using the standard jumps to defend here. A Mark X fire control would work fine in a fight five or ten systems out. Second, we give them a map of this immediate area, showing the jumps and advise them not to approach a jump at more than 50,000 kilometers per hour, or they may end up off the charts and lost.”
“And if we need them to use a long jump?” Sandy asked.
“We lead them through it. Until we have to do it, we don’t tell them about them.”
“They already know that we’re doing something,” Sandy said. “If Alwa isn’t within their defense perimeter, they’ll know something is up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jacques said. “But these pussies like foxy leaders. If they know you’re holding back an ace or two, they’ll respect you. I don’t think they’ll feel disrespected. Hell, they might even feel respected. They know we’re kind of afraid of them. I think they like that.”
“Do they understand that they aren’t higher on the food chain than us?” Sandy asked.
“I think the cats we have been talking to for the past few days are scared stiff. They know all that stands between their planet being ‘nuked from orbit,’ I think that is their phrase, is us. They very much don’t want to face this situation again.”
“So, have you given some thought to how we work this?” Sandy asked.
“For the first five years,” Penny said, “they don’t expect to be skippers, XO’s, Guns, Engineering and other division officers. They know they’ll have to work their way up from boot ensign and deck ape to field grade officers and chiefs. I think we’ll be getting the best cats they have in their military. They know they need to be young and flexible. The old generals and admirals aren’t real happy, but the ones present understand that we knock these ships around hard.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“From five to ten years, they’d like to see some of their people advanced into division head slots. Maybe XO. Maybe CO. Our choice. Promotions will be governed by a performance system that we’ll agree on with them. We can wash out anyone for the first four years of their career. After that, the cats want a board to review our decision. Two cats, two humans, and a bird. A human is the chairman of the board. They’re willing to keep that in place for fifteen years.”
“Okay, I’ll think about that. Amanda, how is this economic transfer going to work? Can they actually make Smart Metal and weapons-level lasers?”
The economist turned to glance at several of the fab managers behind her. “We think so. It will take some re-tooling. They’re used to producing specialized steel and aluminum products. If we land twenty thousand tons of Smart Metal on their planet, we can quickly set up a Smart Metal foundry. Once it’s up and running, they can produce their own metal to bring more foundries on line as well as start shipping metal up to Kiel Station to be spun into battlecruisers.”
Amanda eyed the one Navy officer sitting against the wall. “We gave the cats laser tech for minor things like computers. I knew they were already working on how they could knock out more powerful lasers, say for cutting cloth to make clothes. We knew they wanted to push it for all they were worth. It will take an effort on our part, but they should be able to produce fighting lasers in the next six months. Maybe less. We’re thinking of starting with frigates, maybe with 18-inch guns. Something we could use for scouts, or maybe redesign things when they can do 20- or 22-inch lasers.”
“Like we did,” Sandy said.
“Yes, ma’am,” came from all three of the people at Sandy’s table.
“What kind of a mess does this do to their economy and society?” Sandy asked.
“Well, it won’t be good,” the husband and wife team of anthropologist and economist said together. They shared a laugh, then he waved her into the breach.
Amanda took a deep breath. “We’ve been looking at this hard, both us and the cats. They are not unaware of how much our highly advanced tech can upset things. They’ve been having trouble living with just the radical changes computers have brought to them. Computers and low-powered lasers. They came to us begging for thermonuclear power plants. They needed to build some new coal burning power plants, and they didn’t want to invest in obsolete technology. Drago let them have three big power plants and taught them how to build a better power grid with computer controls. They went hog wild, but it caused major disruption in their coal country.”
“No surprise there,” Sandy drawled.
“However, they need carbon to convert to Smart Metal. They already have orders in for coal deliveries, not to burn but to convert.”
“So, this huge defense effort could help them over the imminent speed bumps?”
“Yes, ma’am. They also have committed to keeping this new tech from impacting their economy for the first five years of the work. Everything they produce goes into warships, fabs on the ground or on the moon, and setting up a mining effort to their asteroid belt. Nothing goes into the civilian economy. None goes into the ground-based military. This isn’t part of the program, but I think the last tank, plane, and ship have already been commissioned. What’s in production now will be shoved aside to make room for high tech work.”
“Displacement?”
“Several of the countries do have safety nets for the unemployed. Those that don’t have them are being heavily leaned on to provide the same services. No one wants someone to keep producing planes after they quit. You do mean to come to anyone’s aid that is attacked, right?”
Sandy winced. “Assuming I’ve got any ships in their sky, yes.”
“Yeah. Well, if all the other countries are ready to respond to any rogue, we’ll likely be part of the charge.”
“Understood,” Sandy said. “We need some good diplomats to help handle the inter-governmental affairs.”
“I’d order up a couple of dozen with the next ship heading back home,” Penny said.
About that time someone’s stomach growled, and then another. “When was the last time you ate a decent dinner?” Sandy asked.
It turned out, just like the cats, they’d been surviving on coffee and sandwiches since the banquet.
“Let’s head for the Victory. Penny, if the cats don’t mind us sitting in on their dinner, we can do that. Otherwise, you are all welcome to my flag wardroom.”
The cats liked the idea of having the humans in the same room with them. They were letting down their hair. Several of them were engaged in some kind of sing-along that really should be classified as torture, but worked for them. There were short forays into negotiations, but nothing too deep.
When the dinner was done, Penny had Mimzy print up a stack of proofed briefs they had worked out. The cats read it over, agreed that it was the framework they had worked out, and it was what they would take down to their respective governments to look at and refine.
Sandy told the admiral commanding Kiel Yard and the senior managers who had come out with the Smart MetalTM to the cat system to take a deep dive into this planning document. She also ordered her Fleet Security Officer to take two paranoid pills and go over it as if that document alone would keep the cats from atomic bombing her grandmother.
It was agreed to meet again in two days and go over all the proposed changes an
d additions to the Status of Forces Agreement as well as the Technological Transfer Agreement.
Then Sandy went back to chewing her nails and waiting for the aliens to make their next move.
Admiral Bethea jumped out of the system, headed for her own battle.
Sandy had a lot to worry about.
Suddenly, there was no more time left to worry.
21
Admiral Miyoshi sat in his high gee station, studying the latest communication from Admiral Santiago. It held no surprises.
The aliens were sending a fast-moving wing at one of the other jump points into the cat’s system. He and Sandy had expected that. The question was, could a fast wing carry enough weight to bust through a jump point defended by a fleet?
Of course, he was trying to ambush a force the same size, half of which were battleships. There was still no way to tell how much rock armor they’d added to their hide.
The final paragraph was the core of the message. IF POSSIBLE, DISPOSE OF THE INTRUDER AND RETURN TO KIEL STATION SOONEST.
He eyed the star map projected on the forward screen of his flag plot. His aliens were maintaining a combined arms fleet structure. The cruisers and frigates were ahead of the battleships, but the big over-gunned and armored ships were not that far behind. If Miyoshi held to 3.0 gees, maybe a bit more, he could easily be ready to meet them this side of the jump into system three. By doing that, he’d have to spend more time in transit, both out and back, but he’d hold contact with the aliens for the entire time they were crossing system four.
“It is better to know where your enemy is than to run around the battlefield trying to be everywhere at once,” he told himself.
He held his course and acceleration. He hoped Sandy would not need him too quickly. He doubted that this was an accident on the alien’s part. They wanted his ships here, not at Sandy’s side.
Damn, but he hated it when the enemy got smart. He hoped it would not get to be a regular habit.
22
Kris Longknife's Successor Page 14