Rhapsody For The Tempest (The Braintrust Book 3)

by Marc Stiegler

  A hatch opened, and Security Chief Baddeley stuck his head out. “You two need a lift?”

  Once they’d gotten Ping stretched out on a bunk inside the mini-submarine, she started asking questions. “Did the spaceship make it? Is everyone ok?”

  Hart assured them that, although the capsule had missed the helipad on the Taixue for which it had been aiming, it had hit the water in one piece just off the stern. The catamarans had unloaded everyone before the capsule started sinking.

  Ping went on to the next subject. Rather than passing out from loss of blood, she seemed to have become feverish. “What about the Chinese cruiser? Are they going to give us any trouble?

  Hart glanced at his instruments. “They seem to have lost interest in us after we dived. We’re at two hundred meters so we may have a thermocline hiding us. Or they have more important fish to fry.” His voice turned grim. “They seem to be heading straight for the archipelago.”

  Ping closed her eyes at last and Jam took over Hart’s interrogation, waving her hands in all directions. “Where did this come from? I didn’t know we had submarines.”

  Hart shook his head in bemusement. “Yeah, we didn’t until a few days ago. This just got here from the BrainTrust proper. I guess it was a pet project of Colin’s.” He paused. “I get the feeling Dash helped too. I’m told she designed the power supply.”

  With her eyes still closed, Ping smiled. “Of course.”

  Hart continued to speak to Ping. “They tell me there’s another sub on its way to the Prometheus fleet, so you’ll have one when you get back on station.”

  Ping’s smile widened as visions of submarine warfare danced in her head.

  Jam had one more question. “And finally, who was the lunatic who took on a squadron of Chinese fighter planes by himself?”

  Hart laughed out loud. “Now that is a funny story. Toni Shatzki was flying Dash out here in case anybody needed patching up after the rescue. Anyway, Toni ran into the Chinese shooting at you. She said she had no choice but to fight her way through.”

  Jam and Ping almost screamed in unison. Jam: “Toni went into that dogfight with Dash on board?” Ping: “Dash is here on the Fuxing?”

  Hart raised his hands defensively. “Whoa, folks! I don’t make the news, I just report it.” He looked at Ping, who had closed her eyes again. “All in all, I think it’s a good thing Toni brought Dash out, for more than one reason.”

  Jam looked down at her now-unconscious friend and had to concur. Then she realized they still had a problem… The Chinese cruiser was about to attack the very ships where Dash awaited them.

  12

  Invasion

  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

  —Sun Tzu

  Captain Han Chunlan, commander of the Chinese cruiser Renhai, accepted his orders with cautious excitement. He’d been shadowing this clutter of BrainTrust isle ships for months, forced to stand back and allow them to violate Chinese waters with not the slightest concern in their little BrainTrust heads. Certainly, he should have been allowed to fire a few warning shots when they first anchored here, making them scamper somewhere else for safety. Anywhere else.

  But the Politburo had been leery of starting a war with the BrainTrust, and Captain Chunlan could understand their reasoning. With their ships sitting at the very nexus of conflicting claims between China, the Philippines, and the rebels of Taiwan, a shooting war with the BrainTrust could easily explode into a regional war of epic proportions.

  But that didn’t scare him as much as it scared the Politburo. The Renhai might be one of the oldest ships in the Chinese fleet, but she was still a match all by herself for everything the Taiwanese and Philippinos could muster. Though China categorized her as a destroyer, with a hundred and twenty-two vertical missile silos, she carried as much lethality as any Western cruiser and was classified as a cruiser by NATO. The Renhai could pump enough death and destruction into the air in ten minutes to destroy every other surface combatant in the area.

  As long as nobody invited the Americans and the Japanese into the fray.

  Well, the unauthorized flight of a Kestrel into Chinese territory and out again had gotten everyone properly riled. He still wasn’t authorized to shoot any missiles or even fire any warning shots with his 130mm gun, but his new instructions were perhaps better. He was to board the ships of the archipelago to find the kidnapped village.

  Han shook his head in bemusement. A kidnapped village? Taken in broad daylight by a rocket ship? What kind of science-fiction fantasy was this, anyway? If he had not seen the space capsule descending with his own eyes, being shot at by fighter planes from China’s Air Force, he would not have believed it.

  He still didn’t quite believe it, and he was uncomfortable with the idea that his nation had seen fit to shoot at a capsule loaded with hundreds of kidnapped Chinese citizens. Something did not ring true here.

  What did ring chillingly true was the way the BrainTrust had smacked down half a dozen Chinese fighter planes. His people were still studying the radar, infrared, and visuals from the battle, trying to ascertain exactly what had happened. The BrainTrust isle ships were supposed to be virtually defenseless, so something was very wrong here indeed. Perhaps the Politburo had shown wisdom beyond their normal standards in holding off on an assault all this time.

  One thing was certain. A little caution was in order for this upcoming boarding action. Maybe even a lot of caution.

  The lieutenant in charge of the boarding party stepped onto the Taixue’s boat dock with a confident swagger. He had forty marines with him, five times more troops than the entire Fuxing fleet could muster, according to his briefing. Any firefights would be short and sweet.

  Two BrainTrust peacekeepers, one a mere woman, stood on the dock to greet him, looking irritatingly unconcerned with his firepower.

  But least concerned of all was the lithe Chinese girl with long shiny hair who stood with them, imperiously looking down her nose at him. “Where is your captain?” she demanded.

  The officer stood very still, very erect. “The captain does not accompany boarding parties. I am in charge here.”

  The girl stepped into his personal space, challenging him. “You are confused. I am Liu Fan Hui, daughter of the Politburo. These are my ships, Lieutenant. I require an audience with your captain.”

  The lieutenant controlled himself, holding back a biting response. Fighting with Red Princelings was contraindicated for those seeking career advancement. In the end he commed the Renhai and told the captain that Liu Fan Hui, daughter of the Politburo, demanded to speak with him. In person. Here. Now.

  Once the captain had promised to comply, Fan relaxed. “You and your men are welcome to stay with me here on the dock till he arrives.”

  The lieutenant wisely chose to acknowledge this with a nod, since his verbal thank you might have sounded unrepentantly sarcastic.

  Yet another boat arrived carrying the captain. After brief introductions, Fan started in on him, treating him no better than the lieutenant. “I understand you’re here to search my ships for a kidnapped Chinese village. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?”

  Captain Chunlan knew exactly how ridiculous it sounded. “Orders are orders, ma’am. And I got good visuals of the space capsule that came down here a few hours ago. It seems at least possible that such a kidnapping could have occurred.”

  Fan rolled her eyes. “Well, as you say, you have your orders.” She turned and yelled, “Hey, Chen! You’re up!”

  Chen, the very incarnation of the pasty-faced geek who needed web-addiction rehabilitation, stumbled onto the deck. Fan introduced him. “This is Chen Ying, a son of the Politburo.”

  While Chunlan digested this, she pointed at the lieutenant and the two peacekeepers. “Take your men and divide them into three teams. Peacekeeper Sun will accompany one team, Security Chief Baddeley will accompany another, and Chen will accompany the lieutenant here with a third. Roam the ships as you wi
ll, but obey the peacekeepers, lest you wander into a nuclear reactor room and come out glowing in the dark. Or for that matter, just get so lost we have to send a team to find you.”

  The lieutenant spluttered, “I was planning to have twenty separate two-man teams. Even with twenty teams, there are an awful lot of passages and holds to inspect here.”

  Fan raised an eyebrow at him, then turned and raised her eyebrow even higher at the captain. Finally the captain growled, “Do as she says, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Moments later only Fan and the captain remained on the dock. For the first time, Fan relaxed and smiled, though danger still lurked in her eyes. “It was so good of you to come aboard, Captain. Since we seem to be sharing this part of the ocean on a somewhat permanent basis, I thought it would be well to have a meal together while our troops are inspecting the ships. I’ll introduce you to the other members of my management team.”

  The captain gave her a baffled smile. “These are really your ships? These people are your employees?”

  Fan tossed her hair impatiently. “Well, they might as well be, although they don’t entirely realize it yet.”

  Captain Chunlan found dinner unexpectedly entertaining. For one thing, the food was excellent. Sure, he found a certain excessive emphasis on seafood, between the shrimp salad and the lobster bisque and the broiled kahala, but it was all fresh. The food on board the Renhai was adequate, but hardly in this category, no matter that his chef strove so mightily.

  Try as he might, Han could not help being entertained by the story of the rocket ship that had invaded China’s sovereign territory. It had taken much coaxing to get the story, but sitting at dinner in his elegant dress uniform, doing his best to look and sound harmless, the tale eventually came forth.

  The spaceship had been launched by people far outside his jurisdiction, with neither consent nor even discussion with the local management. There had been no pilot. He had had thoughts of detaining that individual, but there was none. The lone woman who had been aboard as the rocket entered Chinese airspace was currently lost at sea.

  He suspected the parachute that fell too fast from the capsule near the end had carried her. His sonar people had picked up some kind of bizarre sonic event as he approached her drop point, and a copter sent to investigate had found only blood and sharks. He warned his hosts what his men had found, urging them not to get their hopes up for finding her. The sanguinity with which they greeted his news suggested that a larger tale surrounded this woman. He would look in his briefing materials for information about a woman named Ping when he returned to his ship.

  The captain tried to finagle a little data about possible fighter planes in the vicinity that might have shot up the Chinese jets as they zoomed around the spacecraft. On this, his hosts offered not one iota of information. He’d sent a copter to buzz the BrainTrust and look for signs of fighters on board; the only thing the copter had found suspicious was a blackened and burned helicopter pad, which his people surmised could have been caused by an F-35B, the VTOL version. But if an F-35 had been involved in the action, and if it had landed here, it was clearly now long gone—another item upon which he could take no action.

  The direction of the conversation changed once more and could not be further diverted. He should have found the topic of this new unrelenting discussion tiresome, but the impassioned voice of the principal speaker gave it a certain verve.

  Lenora Thornhill had clearly been born to teach. Whether she was one of the best teachers or one of the worst he had ever encountered remained undecided. “So as you can see, Captain, we can accelerate children, even children who would be considered unexceptional, through an educational process that will prepare them for the most challenging endeavors at far greater speed than the traditional teacher/classroom setup.”

  Captain Ainsworth interrupted, “Captain Chunlan, do you have children?”

  Chunlan nodded. “A boy, twelve, and a girl, eight.”

  Lenora pounced. “How well is their education coming along? Will they be able to get into the top universities China has to offer?”

  The topic was a sore point for Han. “We are about to engage a tutor for my son. His grades are poor.” He added a justification. “I am convinced he is bored.”

  Lenora snorted. “Of course he’s bored! Either he’s ahead of the class, in which case he needs more material, or he’s behind, in which case he needs better cognitive scaffolding for the material already in hand. Either way, the best answer is a custom-tailored educational experience, the kind Accel can supply.”

  For a moment Fan Hui vibrated in her seat, making him think of the excited college kid she should have been rather than the…person…she seemed to have become. “Captain! Do you think you could bring your son here to the Fuxing for college preparatory work? I can personally vouch for the excellence of the materials, you know. In addition to being a lead investor and the onboard Politburo liaison, I am also a student here.” Her enthusiasm spilled across the table. “You simply must bring him to us.” She deflated a little as she looked at Lenora. “We can take him, can’t we?”

  Lenora chuckled. “We’d be delighted to have him here.” She looked meaningfully at Han. “If the captain would allow him, of course. Our system’s a bit nontraditional, Fan. Not everyone wants their children to experience something this radical.”

  Chunlan kept his expression impassive. He was now in a very tight spot. Letting his son go to school on the Fuxing would imperil his mission. If he needed to fire on the archipelago, could he do so knowing his son was here? On the other hand, could he really say no to this most determined, dangerous, and frightfully competent daughter of the Politburo who would one day be his unquestioned superior? He started to speak, still not sure what he would actually say, when his lieutenant charged into the room.

  “Captain! None of the workers on these ships have their papers! But I am certain they are all hukou peasants!” He paused, his face shading into purple. “And they all have guns!”

  Captain Ainsworth stood with a roar. “Nonsense! None of the children have guns, and the rest keep their guns locked in the armory except when we are at Condition Red Defense of Ship.” He sat back down again. “Which is our current status, actually.”

  Captain Chunlan stared at Captain Ainsworth. “Your ship is at battle stations?”

  Ainsworth shrugged. “Well, as much at battle stations as we can muster. It’s not like we really have any battle stations worth manning.” A glint in Ainsworth’s eyes suggested this was not the entire truth, but enough for this discussion.

  Chunlan prepared to shout back a bit himself, but Fan beat him to the punch. “Really, Captain Chunlan, what did you expect? You send forty heavily-armed soldiers to board us with no invitation or even a request, just an assertion that your troops will arrive in a few minutes. For a fleet with no professional fighting capacity beyond five peacekeepers, this constitutes an invasion with overwhelming force. Of course, Captain Ainsworth went to Condition Red. It demonstrates excellent initiative. It would be terrible if he had to consult me before performing his obvious duties.”

  Everyone was left speechless by this. Fan turned to the lieutenant. “And of course all my workers are hukou peasants. Why would I bring valuable urban workers to labor in my enterprises when peasants will do just fine?”

  The lieutenant stuttered. “But…they have no papers!”

  Fan waved her hand dismissively. “The captain probably has them locked in a safe somewhere. There’s no need for them on these ships. No one cares.”

  This left the lieutenant gaping. It gave Captain Chunlan a moment’s pause as well. Could it be that no one cared if they were hukou peasants? He couldn’t quite wrap his head around the idea, but it made sense. The special privileges of the urban Chinese were irrelevant here. In fact, the irrelevance of those privileges—privileges he had—was not only an affront, but it was also…amusing in its own way.

  The lieutenant recover
ed somewhat. “And they have guns!”

  Fan Hui smiled angelically at Captain Chunlan as if the lieutenant did not exist. “Of course they have guns. They are descendants of the peasant army that fought so bravely for Chairman Mao. ‘The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.’ I’m sure you know this better than I, Captain.”

  The lieutenant spluttered again. “But…private citizens are not allowed to own firearms!”

  Fan glared at him. “Really, you become tiresome. On the mainland, of course, private firearms are illegal. A necessary rule for the protection of the State. But here we are part of the BrainTrust, lieutenant. Our local rules reflect our local needs.”

  Captain Chunlan listened in amazement. This girl turned everything on its head! She was right, of course, about Mao. Peasant armies indeed! No one in the current Politburo would approve of private firearms today, of course—not even Fan’s parents, he suspected—but in this place at this time Fan could stand on Mao’s teachings and not even the Politburo would dare disagree openly.

  The lieutenant would not give up. “Captain Chunlan, there are vidcams all over these ships. Presumably they have comprehensive recordings of everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours. If we confiscate those recordings, we can stop this futile search and know for sure where the kidnapped villagers are.”

  For a moment the captain marveled at the lieutenant’s determination. He moved on to envy the lieutenant’s simplistic view of the situation. Sure, they could demand those recordings, but what would actually happen next? Looking at the stony faces of both the Fuxing Fleet Captain and the Mission Commander, he became quite certain that such a demand would lead to a most sincere Defense of Ship action.