Manna

by Lee Correy

  “I think he got a missile up his main engine,” Omer observed quietly.

  And we were about to run another gauntlet with an unidentified armed space fighter on our tail!

  There was no Mayday call on any frequency but the Black Tiger may have had its own emergency frequency. L-4 was too far away, so we never saw whether or not the Soviets sent out a rescue mission.

  “Watch the unidentified, Omer. I’ve got to dive through our hole here.” I spent the next few minutes trimming trajectory so our projected flight path went through an opening in the skein. If I nailed the center of our window dead-nuts, we’d be well outside any previously announced engagement zone.

  We’d computed correctly, guessed right, and used the proper amount of Kentucky windage.

  We sailed through unharmed.

  I must have breathed a sigh of relief because Omer reminded me, “Sandy, is not all copasetic. Unidentified target came through same window two hundred kilometers behind us. Closing rate eighty meters per second. Intercept course.”

  Friend or foe? I didn’t know. He’d gotten a Soviet space fighter off our track, but we hadn’t seen how he did it. Now he was on our track.

  Friend or foe? I had to know. And I wanted the rest of the world to know, too.

  I wasn’t going to sit there and be blown out of space quietly. I used the international ship-to-ship unicom frequency that everybody in space monitors. It’s also monitored at every STC Center. I’d be heard by a lot of people, and that’s what I wanted.

  “This is the commercial packet Tomahok of Commonwealth registry out of Vamori Free Space Port for Ell-Five. Our beacon code one-two-seven-three. Hailing the unidentified space vehicle on an intercept two hundred kilometers behind us. Please identify yourself,sir.”

  A strange voice replied, “Tomahok, switch to frequency Echo Hotel?”

  Several frequencies had been assigned for use by ships registered under the Commonwealth flag, and these in turn had been assigned code names by ComSpat and ComServe.

  Whoever was in that space vehicle knew the Commonwealth frequency codes.

  “This is Tomahok on Echo Hotel,” I broadcast on the Commonwealth channel.

  “Tomohok, this is People’s Space Navy cosmolorcha Heavenly Lightning. We are instructed upon request for contact and identification from you to transmit to you the kindest wishes of Wen-ling Chung for a peaceful and successful journey.”

  Of course! The People’s Republic of China was not a signatory to the International Astronautic Conventions, the Singapore Treaties. They’d consistently boycotted international space treaty meetings, claiming the Soviet Union and its Socialist Hegemony were hostile. The Chinese had always been both wary and desirous of external relations, and they hadn’t been helped by coming off on the short end of the Sino-Soviet Incident.

  “That’s why they do not show beacon I. D.!” Omer exclaimed.

  “Heavenly Lightning, this is Tomahok,” I replied slowly and carefully in Basic Aerospace English. “Thank you, sir. Please return the regards of Sandy Baldwin and Omer Astrabadi to Wen-ling Chung. What are your intentions, sir?”

  “This is a training flight to trans-lunar space with landing at Dianaport. Request permission to pass within five kilometers of you.”

  “Training flight? Hah!” Omer exclaimed. “Chung has given us an escort!”

  “Yes, but why?” I wanted to know. “What’s going on dirtside that we should know about?”

  Omer shrugged. “Let Chinese escort us. It will discourage more hassle.”

  If the Chinese cosmolorcha wanted to escort us, there was nothing we could do about it.

  It was armed. Cis-lunar space is no place to get whanged; it’s a long time to anywhere.

  “Permission granted, Heavenly Lightning,” I replied. “Be advised you are within our zone of damage if we should have a catastrophic failure.” The last was bluff, but nobody wanted to be near a space vehicle if it catoed, regardless whether it was due to an internal or external cause. I didn’t think they’d shoot, but I wanted to give them every discouragement because anybody who takes on a Soviet Black Tiger is a very tigerish tiger indeed.

  “Heavenly Lightning, do you have any information about the Soviet space vehicle that passed near you?” I added carefully, hoping to garner some data.

  “Tomohok, the Soviet ship had an accident. We were not permitted to assist.”

  Period. That was all. We never got any more information.

  The Heavenly Lightning crept up on us, decreased its closure rate, and was in visual range for almost 20 hours. We had a chance to look her over and get her visual, radar, andelectromagnetic signatures on tape.

  There wasn’t much difference between the Heavenly Lightning and the old Beikel class. A hybrid like her namesake, the sailing lorcha, she’d been up-rated with more modern propulsion and other systems. She was a black-and-white dart in the sunlight, looking like the paper airplanes we used to make as kids. She was right out of the history tapes. She might have been considered obsolete in high-tech; she was an operable space vehicle and had managed to whang a far superior Soviet Black Tiger.

  And she was on our side at the moment.

  Sometimes old technology isn’t obsolete. The seas of Earth are being plied even now by Chinese ships of a type known as the junk, a design so successful that it hasn’t changed for centuries.

  Because of the sensitive approach and engagement zones of L-5, I called long before it was necessary to do so. L-5 Center probably had the same data all the other centers had obtained on our squirrelly flight track through the maze, plus that of the Heavenly Lightning.

  But I wasn’t taking chances. We of the Commonwealth were apparently the current pariahs, and I didn’t know if that image had spread to L-5. No sense being stupid and getting burned after more than seventy hours of sneaky tricks and fantastic luck. No sense in pushing that luck, either.

  L-5 Approach gave us a straightforward, no-nonsense clearance, but added, “Tomahok, we’re painting you as two targets..Is that another ship with you?”

  “Affirmative. She’s the Chinese Heavenly Lightning on a training flight to cis-lunar space with landing at Dianaport. Are you experiencing difficulty communicating with her?”

  “That’s affirmative. Be advised we may issue an amended clearance into an inspection holding sector if she doesn’t separate from you shortly.”

  As if on cue, the Heavenly Lightning executed a delta-vee burn into a new trajectory our computer showed as passing well clear of the L-5 sensitivity zone.

  I called ComSpat and informed Jen of our arrival clearance.

  “Roger, Tomahok. Ali says to tell you everything is copasetic in spite of his sister. He claims he can handle her, but, if so, he’s the only one! And we’re monitoring and taping all Approach Control data as well as our own independent sensors jay-eye-cee. Your anatomy is covered.”

  There was one more wrinkle. “Tomahok, this is Approach. United States Aerospace Force requests permission for a close approach to verify your configuration and markings.”

  “Let them,” Omer advised. “They must cover their anatomy, too. They know ComSpat is taping. And I know ail Aerospace Force cutter pilots. They good drinking buddies!”

  We watched a cutter swing out of a parking sector and set up an intercept. But we hardly had time to get a visual because it passed at a high rate, scanning as it did so, a procedure intended for minimum exposure to hostile action.

  We passed inspection.

  We were home at Lagrange. Ali was waiting for us in the portlock with Jeri and Tsaya. He looked relieved. “You had us worried.”

  It was like coming back from a hot hypersonic ground attack run where I’d let it hang very far out. It was my nature to play Bruce Couth under those circumstances. “Worried? Why? We’re pretty damned hot stuff, you know.”

  Jeri sighed. “Space pilots! Most modest people in the universe!”

  Omer was obviously feeling the same way. He grinned and brushed his
mustache with his hand. “Hah! You just want some clean new underwear, Jeri! Whole cargo hold full of it. We use none of it ourselves. Help yourself!”

  I added fuel to the fire. “Must be pretty grim out here to ship a load of undies by packet. Or did they put you on short water rations so you couldn’t use the laundry?”

  “No, they started using too much starch in our shorts,” Jeri put in.

  “Seriously,” Ali put in, “you had us in a sweat. To put it bluntly, Vaivan was very upset when she discovered you’d left, Sandy.”

  “I presume you mollified her? After all, there isn’t much she can do about it.”

  “She’s catching hell from the Defense Commissioner as well as from Wahak,” Ali said.

  “I didn’t accomplish much, but The General had a few well-chosen words with people dirtside.”

  “How’s The General?” Both Omer and I asked the question in unison.

  “Excellent,” Tsaya reported. “He can go back any time.”

  “Great!” I observed. “But not right away. We’ve been jammed in that can for three days. I want a shine, shower, shave, and shampoo, among other things.”

  “In good time,” Tsaya told me, taking me by the arm. “You left Vershatets without being released. Wahak and Vaivan want a full med check on you. Let’s go to the infirmary.”

  I didn’t resist although I was tired, dirty, and hungry.

  In ComSpat’s infirmary, Tsaya checked me over. “You’re healing very well,” she observed, inspecting my scars. “Don’t over-stress those leg muscles.”

  “There’s no stress on them in weightlessness,” I pointed out.

  “True. But you’re not back to normal yet. Your blood pressure and heart rate are elevated.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “You’ve been through a stressful experience.”

  “That’s not the reason, Tsaya. You know why.”

  “I won’t speculate. A diagnosis should always be based on hard data.” She was still acting very professional, but she took my chin in one hand and checked my eyes with the other. “Just as I suspected. A hopeless case. Hyperexcitability caused by hypoaffection, a chronic malady affecting people who go down to the sea and up to the stars. Fortunately, itcan be treated. Good thing, too, because it also affects those who wait, moapa.” She spoke that word softly but with intense feeling. Cradling my face in her hands, she kissed me.

  Tsaya went at something wholeheartedly once she’d decided to. Being both a medical doctor and a witch doctor, she knew precisely what to do and how to do it. I’d been shot at and hit, then chased all over the sky. Nothing makes a man more ready, willing, and able than being exposed to danger.

  More than that, I wanted the love of this woman and to love her.

  I wanted to tell her that, but I couldn’t. Kissing Tsaya fully occupied me.

  “You said I shouldn’t overstress my legs,” I reminded her when we came up for air. “How about the rest of me?”

  “You won’t stress your legs; you won’t need to use them. Sandy, moapa, next time please don’t get hurt. Somebody cares about you, you know. Somebody cares a great deal,” she said softly.

  “How could I know? You’re wearing an iklawa,” I reminded her.

  Her iklawa clanged as it hit the bulkhead. “My love for you is now defenseless.”

  She really wasn’t defenseless.

  Be careful when making love to medical-witch doctors.

  But enjoy it.

  I did.

  Chapter 15

  Of Love and War and Guiding Lights

  “What you did,” General Vamori remarked, “was courageous.”

  “No, it just seemed the right thing to do at the time. On the other hand, what Omer did took a lot of bravery,” I told him. We’d gotten some rest and were in The General’s compartment for a social get together.

  General Vamori had completely recovered from his burns. Tsaya had also done some reconstructive surgery he’d put off for years, so she said he was even better than before. He acted that way, too. “You confuse courage and bravery, Sandy,” he observed.

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Bravery is a defiant act against great odds; kittens are brave. But the word courage comes from the Latin word for ‘heart’ and describes a conscious act based upon the moral judgement that it’s ‘right.’ You and Omer exhibited courage in both Kulala and the Tomahok.”

  Omer sipped supaku from the plastic bag and shook his head. “La!” he replied forcefully in Kazakh rather than in Russian. “Getting to Kulala and back was the only way to help Sandy. Coming out in the Tomahok, it was a big challenge to get from Vamori-Free to Ell-Five without STC. We’re proud we can do it without help!” In the relaxed surroundings of The General’s quarters, Omer’s speech was less abbreviated.

  “And with two military space ships following us,” I added.

  “How did you know who they were and what they might do?” The General asked.

  “Our combined knowledge of both the American Aerospace Force and the Soviet Kosmonautika made us a team,” I explained. “I knew what the Aerospace Force was up to. Omer knew the technology and tactics of the Kosmonautika.”

  “But you didn’t know about the Chinese ship.”

  “The Chinese are inscrutible on purpose,” Omer remarked, setting his empty supaku bag down on the adhesive table top. “They have a different kind of language and think differently than Russians or westerners. This serves their foreign policy well; nobody knows what they are doing. One does not approach the unknown without caution.”

  “You told me you were just an old Frontavaia Aviatsiya tacair driver who was never taught history,” I said.

  Omer shrugged. “I can see. I can read. I can hear and listen. And I can make up my own mind, too.”

  “We’re not even sure what the Heavenly Lightning did to the Black Tiger,” I told The General. “Omer thinks the Chinese put a missile up the Soviet’s boattail. Whatever happened made the Soviet pilot change his mind about whatever he was going to do.”

  The General sighed. “It made the situation worse.”

  More than four days had passed since we’d left Vershatets. I hadn’t paid any attention to the telenews. I’d been kept happily busy by Tsaya.

  I hadn’t considered all the twisty little international legal implications of the Tomahok Incident, as it was being called by the world press at the time. It involved a possible attack on a military vessel by the military vessel of another nation in which a third commercial vessel played no part whatsoever, although its name was hung on the incident. It took place in “non-national space.” None of the ships had operational safety clearances from Space Traffic Control and were operating under the “detect-and-avoid” freedom of space rules.

  The Tomahok being a civil vessel registered under the Commonwealth flag wasn’t open to attack by the Soviet ship because no provocation had been given. And there was no way to know whether or not the Heavenly Lightning had responded to a provocation from the Black Tiger or if the Soviet pilot simply got the hell out of there. Nobody knew anything. Therefore, the news media had a field day analyzing, editorializing, and playing “let’s suppose.” None of this reflected any familiarity with the law of armed conflict.

  The law of armed conflict holds regardless of whether or not an actual state of declared “war” exists.

  As a youngster, I’d had the typical layman’s view: “All’s fair in love and war,” the 19thCentury German Kriegsraison doctrine which asserted that military necessity justified anything; the world clearly rejected that during the Nuremberg Trials. At the Academy, it astounded me to discover there was a law of armed conflict. It isn’t “law” as we ordinarily think of it. There’s no central enforcement authority. The law of armed conflict is part of international law where nations are the subjects, not individual persons as in domestic law.

  It’s called the law of armed conflict because there hadn’t been a formal declaration of war since 11 D
ecember 1941. When the UN Charter was adopted in 1946, nations formally revoked their sovereign right to use war to achieve political aims.

  But this didn’t stop armed conflict. Nations continued to justify it as an exercise of their right of self-defense against aggression. The various brushfire wars and the Sino-Soviet Incident are examples. Nor did it stop terrorism or guerrilla warfare because it doesn’t apply to “internal conflicts.” But the law of armed conflict works because it actually diminishes the effects of confrontations. The Tomahok Incident didn’t start a war because of the law of armed conflict and other aspects of international law relating to such activities.

  The Soviet foreign minister presented a diplomatic note to the PRC Ambassador claiming an unprovoked hostile act by the Heavenly Lightning and demanding compensation for damage to a Soviet vessel engaged in deep space activities. He didn’t say what those activities were.

  The Chinese foreign minister replied that the Heavenly Lightning had been on a training mission and expressed regret that there had been an accident involving the Soviet ship. He didn’t say what the accident was. The Chinese government paid a small token indemnity without admitting that Heavenly Lightning had struck.

  “The real reason behind the Soviet action and the Chinese reply is the powersat situation,” Vaivan reported during a telecon. “When you cancelled clearance, the Black Tiger was assigned to stalk you in hopes of learning about some of the military facilities. The Chinese ship had standing orders to cover any Commonwealth ship being stalked by the Soviets. The Soviet reaction to the incident tells me the Soviets are showing military restraint because they hope to conclude their powersat deal. The Chinese are saving face through inscrutability and protecting their options.”

  “Those two nations have had a love-hate relationship for well over a century,” I observed. “The Soviets consider themselves oriental while the Chinese think of them as occidental. They’re sparring with one another as usual.”