Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  The clock struck six o'clock in the morning. The compdisplay flashed solid green. He reached for the tabletop, lifted his ceremonial hammer, and struck the ceremonial gong at his left hand. Once. Around the room, conversation interrupted. Twice. The room was quiet. Thrice. As the saying went, you could hear a pin drop, if some antiquarian had produced a pin.

  "Give ears! Give ears!" Meyer chanted. The Modern English rendering of Norman French always grated. "This emergency meeting of the States of Lincoln Joint State Senates Committee on War is hereby called to order. My board shows all Senators are physically or virtually present, datalinks to at least three newsnets are up and streaming, the general public has entered the Hall, and therefore under the Suppression of Secrecy Act we are lawfully in Order." The public? He could still remember the occasion, fifteen years ago, an emergency meeting on Victory Over Europe Day, on which they had had to lure a drunk from the street so that the Committee could say that the public was indeed present and listening. He had not guessed that Fuller carried a hip flask, but it had saved the day. That bulge usually implied a large hand weapon.

  "This meeting is called to hear the report of Grand Commodore Pyotr Eustasovitch Kalinin, Senior Flag of the States of Lincoln Planetary Self-Defense Fleet, to this Committee and to the Commander in Chief, on the appearance of non-American warpships at the Clarksburg gate and perhaps elsewhere in this system. Chair requests that regular orders be waived. Objections? Hearing none, so ordered." Meyer noted to himself that he had just collapsed ten minutes of ceremony and formal declarations into as many seconds of his speaking a mile a minute. He glanced at the Minority Leaders. Helene and Elspeth appeared taken aback by his fast start. Senator Fuller was actually smiling approvingly, an almost unheard-of event. "If Committee members later ask that we return to some critical item from regular orders, that will be in order. Objections? So ordered. Committee now hears from the Honorable Grand Commodore."

  Meyer leaned back in his chair, its servile readjusting its contour to support his back and neck. 'Not too comfortable', he typed. The servile complied. It was still 6 in the morning. Staffers dimmed the lights and brought up Kalinin's holoprojector on the rear wall screen. "As this illustrious Committee will undoubtedly recall," Kalinin began, "a picket force is maintained at each of the seven Alpha Centauri warp gates. Late last evening, local time, there appeared at the Clarksburg gate a squadron of FEU conventional and novel warpships. These vessels..." Meyer pondered, letting the text of Kalinin's report scroll by his console. What was here meant by 'novel'? The dodecahedra were certainly not a known FEU ship configuration. Indeed, annotations led to reports of years past rejecting the utility of such an uneconomical ship design. What objective did the naval architect have in mind? Meyer made himself return to the testimony. There would be time enough later to consider why the FEU had done what it had done. Now the major question was what response was required to the FEU acts. If the Self-Defense Forces did nothing, the next FEU appearance might involve a far larger group of warpships. There was a need to respond, to cover threatened positions.

  "...in summary, the deployed forces executed the planned defensive operations within the calculated time windows," Kalinin concluded. Well within, Meyer noted, but the windows really were extremely generous. "I must respectfully report, however, that the EU force withdrew in apparent good order. At an indefinite future date there is a substantial likelihood of a return engagement. I have transmitted the preplanned mobilization directives to the Fleet Yards, and request instruction as to the mobilization plan I am to activate." Meyer hoped his frown had not been noticeable. He was not faulting Kalinin. He had overlooked the obvious: Kalinin might legitimately direct that question to the Committee rather than the Commander in Chief, and the Committee was not precisely united on this issue.

  "Mr. Chairman!" came at least five distinct voices. Meyer raised one hand.

  "The Chair asks that the Grand Commodore first clarify his request: Is there a reason not to execute one of the standard five plans, all of which as I recall are practically the same during the first half-day?" Meyer hoped none of his colleagues would be too put out that he had used his Chairman's prerogative as First Speaker. Kalinin would now talk, at least for a few minutes, giving some of his dear colleagues a chance to let their brains catch up with their mouths. That was perhaps unfair. Fuller and Braithewaite-Duclos and their supporters had been waiting for decades for this event. Their remarks were preordained. Senator Hector Sher-Jin Molitor was the prominent AWA activist on the Committee. As an American Wargaming Association Fellow, he might well want to discuss further the actual combat. Elspeth Thorne and Social Justice Party Senator Donna Caravelle cradled their chins in their hands, looked at each other, but said nothing. What were those two up to? Social Justice, this session, had lacked the numbers to organize as a Minority Party, but their members still stalked the Capitol's Halls and Lobbies.

  "If the Committee allows?" Kalinin paused slightly. "The immediate decisions refer to the Umber, Sunflower, and Teal Plans. The Gray and White Plans really don't diverge from these in less than a year, though certain issues relating to topics with which the military does not concern itself are referenced in their timelines at earlier dates." Meyer nodded. Kalinin had just come as close as he could go to reminding the Senators that if they wanted to go to full mobilization they would soon need to authorize a Tax Referendum. "There have been no substantial changes in these plans since my briefing of last November. The ship rotation plan has continued to pull vessels out of ordinary, upgrade and maintain their systems, and set them on cruises, so that, for example, references in the November briefing to the Armored Cruiser Khartoum are now references to the Armored Cruiser Isandhlwana. That's just a change in name. There are still three Ancestral-Victory-Class armored cruisers covering the Clarksburg gate, just as there would have been three months from now after The Sixteen finished refitting and trials and went on station. As the Committee requested, the Committee was presented with three alternative mobilization plans using current personnel, the plans differing in the emphasis on crewing available ships, on bringing ships more rapidly from storage, and on immediately strengthening the gate garrison."

  "It is the Chair's recollection that this decision was discussed at length and brought to a vote within the past five years," Meyer reminded. "Are there persons who wish to discuss the objective criteria and their applicability, or are we ready to discuss which contingency has become applicable?" This was a resource allocation issue, not a deployment issue; the Commander in Chief was yet bound to the decisions of the Senate. He would try to steer the Committee toward Plan Teal, which gave the most extensive mobilization a bit further out and cost less in the short term, but he was dealing with willful clever adults, not small children who could be herded like geese with a little corn. The Committee was quiet. Reconsidering criteria when they were about to be used suggested irresolution or shortsightedness, traits that many voters were happy to punish at the polls.

  "Mr. Chairman?" Senator Caravelle was at her most sweetly unctuous.

  "Chair recognizes the Senator for up to -- unanimous consent for six minutes per, absent a recognized need for extended debate?" Meyer awaited the inevitable.

  "Mr. Chairman, it may well be that diplomacy can resolve these issues, as they have others in the past. Diplomacy is certain the preferable option under most circumstances." She paused and folded her hands. "However--a factor not in the objective criteria list -- the Pontefract tube to Mercury is down for standard triennial maintenance, so we will be unable to receive support from the Federal Senate in real time for the next 15 to 18 days. Nor will we be able to invoke Shell Game. While I shall certainly hope that we need not ask the full Senate to impinge on the inadequate pittance we allot to the less fortunate, there does appear to be some need for haste without waste in readying adequate defensive forces. Also, the novel ship types deployed by the Europeans once again show how our forces lag behind theirs, a lag that might be overcome by State
s investment in scientific and engineering research..." Meyer gritted his teeth. Not only had she inserted her usual plug for indigent welfare at a half percent of the States' budgets, but here came her science welfare lines.

  "Point of Order! Point of Order! Orders of the Day!" Meyer was not sure who had spoken first, but Fuller was the loudest--and usually had the best grasp of procedural issues.

  "The Chair notes that we are considering mobilization, not the decennial budgetary process, and asks that the speaker remain germane or clarify how her doubtless wise observation is germane," Meyer said blandly.

  "...as could be accomplished via activation of Tab 412 of Mobilization Plan Ultraviolet," Caravelle finished. Meyer took a moment to remember: Ultraviolet was the committee minority report, and included everything that the Committee had not seen fit to include in the sane Plans. The desk comp brought Tab 412 up. This was the Social-Justice-Restorationist-Democratic-Republican 'revive government-funded-research' European national socialist claptrap, and he still owed Elspeth Thorne's people a substantial favor for giving him the votes to beat it.

  "Personal Privilege?" Fuller spoke. Meyer nodded. "I apologize to the Senator for interrupting with my call for Orders. I had forgotten the Ultraviolet Plan and this very wise proposal embedded in it." The two Senators nodded at each other. Now Meyer knew who had certainly not been comparing notes with whom.

  "Mr. Chairman?" Braithewaite-Duclos rolled her head to the side to regard him. Light trapped in the semiprecious stones woven into her hair. As affectations went, the wiring was expensive, inconvenient, and remarkably effective on the hearts of male watchers. Meyer's other half had proposed it for herself, for their hundredth anniversary, in gold and rubies, hand unwinding being the late-evening entertainment. After the event, they had happily agreed that some erotic experiments were less successful than others.

  Meyer nodded. Braithewaite-Duclos continued. "I believe that the Pontefract Tube closure, while not a listed criterion, is adequately captured by criterion 7, Special Exacerbating Circumstances,” she said. “It's in practice not much different than local crises temporarily making the American Solar Navy unavailable for redeployment here. Based on the size of the FEU force, and the reasonable expectation that, if there were a military rather than a diplomatic outcome, that the FEU would return in economical but overwhelming numbers at an early time, it would appear that the desired mobilization should give the most rapid short-term outcome." She paused. "Also, it would be possible and in my opinion wise for this Committee to activate Plan Ultraviolet, Tab 412, with a decennial time scale and review for effectiveness before that time."

  Meyer stared at his deskcomp display. He had three requests to discuss the choice of Plan, another four to discuss Tab 412. "Chair finds that Plan selection is more urgent than Tab 412, and that activation or nonactivation of Tab 412 does not enter into our short-term decision. Major objections? We therefore proceed to Plan Selection. Discussion in order of Seniority, except ... Senator and Fellow Molitor?" Molitor had invoked his prerogative as an AWA Fellow. To Meyer's knowledge, half the committee were Fellows, but Molitor flaunted his earned title.

  "Mr. Chairman," Molitor began, "there is here a great need for haste. From what the FEU has told us over the years of the hyperspace grid, it is on one hand almost certainly true that the intermediate steps in their warp paths from here to Earth reach out millions of light years. To return to Earth the FEU forces will probably need several weeks. However, the Europeans believe that our travels to and from Sol are limited to rapidity drive, to speeds four or eight times that of light. They conclude that they have half year or so during which they can safely launch an expedition, return here, capture Lincoln, and still have their entire fleet ready at Sol to face the American Solar Navy, when it finally learns that we are under attack. If the FEU were to return to attack us here, they would therefore try to do so at the earliest practicable date, with the largest available force. This is a Special Exacerbating Circumstance, so sound strategy I believe dictates rejection of Plan Umber."

  "Other remarks on Umber? Support for Umber?" Meyer looked at his fellow Senators. He had expected Umber to be pruned early in the decision tree, and it had just been pruned. The FEU, so far as was known, remained ignorant of Pontefract Tube travel, which gave Lincoln an instantaneous direct transport link to Mercury, at least when the tube was up and running. At least messages could still pass, if they were not too long. "Has the choice narrowed to Plans Sunflower and Teal? Does anyone wish to speak for a Third Alternative? Speakers for Teal or Sunflower?" His tablecomp flashed four hashmarks. "We alternate Plans in ... in alphabetical order. Speaker for Sunflower? Senator Fuller?" Fuller was always fast off the mark to ask the floor. Good. He could indulge in the histrionics his constituents so admired. Sunflower supporters could do damage control afterwards.

  "Mr. Chairman, I hope I do not indulge in false modesty when I stand in the same, first place as all my fellow Senators, leading from the forefront in calling for the defense of our states against European aggression. It is through rational central planning, led by perspicacious men such as yourself, that we might wisely advance to a strong military, adequately financially supported and ready to defend against any foreign threat." Meyer did not need a dictionary to recognize the code words, all too audible to Fuller's constituents and all too deniable elsewhere. Fuller’s constituents were the small minority of Americans who viewed ‘strong leader’ as a positive feature rather than an epithet. "In the immediate term, there is a need to mobilize our fleet as rapidly as possible, recognizing that additional expenses now will undoubtedly be made up later by the patriotic generosity of Lincoln's voters." Twenty years ago, Senator Thorne would have thrown a fit at a proposal for a Tax Referendum. Now she just smiled tightly at the phrase patriotic generosity. "While the EU might take months to respond, they might appear on our doorstep in as little as a few weeks, perhaps even before the Pontefract tube is again operational. The next few weeks are the critical window, and we need maximal immediate mobilization to meet this hazard. Plan Sunflower meets our needs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman."

  Yet more lights flashed on his screen. "Absent objection we shall remain with original speaking order," Meyer intoned. He was very careful not to railroad his committee. They returned the courtesy by not objecting when he asked for unanimous consent. Fortunately, he had stuck with the War Committee, rather than shifting to Rules or to Philosophy and Metaphysics, never expecting until the end that he would rise so high. Other committees were more fractious. "Senator Martinez, for Plan Teal."

  "Mr. Chairman, it is our profound duty to our constituents to husband our resources, spending wisely the money they have willingly and voluntarily given us." Meyer smiled. Martinez was from what would once have been called the small-business conservative wing of the Movimiento. Every so often, he would lapse into social issues that put most of the remainder of the Committee up the wall, but he'd flashed Meyer his speaking points, and they would stay entirely germane. "True, there is a small possibility that the Europeans will return in the next two weeks or two months, the period when the difference between Teal and Sunflower is large. However, in this period the forces that are brought to full readiness are not very substantial, and as a pure tactical matter--to which I of course defer to the Commander in Chief--if there were a serious attack in this period we would in any event almost certainly need to withdraw our forces behind the orbital or planetary ether screens, using them as adjuncts to the Coast Defense Artillery. I need not stress under this condition that the substantial part of the dead-docked reserve fleet now near Harding might well be lost. Our war planning, of course, has always assumed a period of escalating tension between our Republic and the rest of the world, a period in which we might safely mobilize. Given the difference in outcomes in the six month to three year periods--when our fleet would be partly or fully mobilized up until major construction would just be coming on line, I urge the Teal Plan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman."

 
"Senator Braithewaite-Duclos, for Plan Sunflower." Interesting, Meyer thought in mild surprise. Several people had withdrawn in order to let her speak early, the compdisplay servile automatically tracking requests to speak and enforcing the Senate's complex but highly precise rules on speaking order. "The Chair notes that the Committee Desk Servile has made several complex interventions in the speaking order, which to my eye are pushing the limit of rules testing, and asks unanimous consent that I accept its outcomes," Fuller raised an eyebrow, "unless it becomes apparent that something has gone awry." Fuller nodded in agreement.

  "Mr. Chairman," Braithewaite-Duclos began, "in three weeks our Pontefract tube to Mercury will again be operational. When that occurs, we will again have access to the resources of Earth, and at greater remove to linked resources of the three dozen star systems and more than five dozen planets of our glorious Republic. Until that moment returns, until the remainder of our Republic rallies to our side, we must rely on our own resources. I must most strongly urge that we focus our minds on the plan that will protect in our period of greatest need, even though it is true that there are some long term costs. That plan is Plan Sunflower. The hardworking men and women of our States have entrusted us with their resources so that we can spend them when it becomes necessary. Mr. Chairman, that time is now. We should advance with Plan Sunflower." There was a mutter of agreement from her part of the chamber. She was, after all, the Primary Minority leader. He nonetheless struck the gong for order. On a less urgent day, her statements might have been debated. There were three dozen stars in the Republic, but many were type K and M reds, stars producing too little UV for plants to flourish or planets to gain oxidizing atmospheres. There were twice as many pleasant planets--Xi Bootes had seven, more or less--but many were still sand and water and mud, barely starting to receive Terran plant and animal life. Someday their homesteaders would be rich, but for the moment their hosts of servots and serviles focused on narrow, repetitive, agronomic tasks.