by Stephen Moss
The chairman took a long breath, settling herself. “You make a valid point, I suppose. I do not object, in principle, to the separation. It took a long time for me to admit it, but I agree, that act, in and of itself, can potentially be justified as a necessary wartime sacrifice.” It was a visible effort for her to say that, and she let the strain show, trying to warn her subordinate that he was stepping into dangerous waters. But then she added, in a different tone, “What came after, though, that went beyond justified action. That was a step too far.”
Freyam’s defiance faltered a little. Even he could not say with a straight face that he agreed with that final mercenary adjustment, that pointing of the severed Yallan colony ships, like nothing more than a loosed cannonball.
But he was not done, not even now. “Even if I agreed with you, I still state that you stepped outside your authority in using the beacon to send a message,” said Freyam now, his face hardening, not with confidence, but with the false authority of an expression made forcibly bereft of the very real trepidation Freyam felt at what he was about to say. The chairman could have overridden the sheen, exposing the true emotion beneath, but she did not need to. She was pretty certain where this was going as he now said, “I move for a vote of no-confidence in the chairman, and that she be suspended from the board while this action is investigated.”
She began laughing. It started as a chuckle, but then, as the ridiculousness of the motion overcame her, it grew. She did not tether it, she did not mask it as was her privilege, but let it ripple and shake her as it flourished into a full-bodied hilarity.
He stared at her agog, forgetting his own mask for a moment as well, and then said with renewed vigor, “You see, she laughs! She has lost her grasp on this situation. She is no longer fit …”
“Enough!” she shouted at last, her mirth falling from her like a ripped veil. “It is you, Freyam, that has lost your grip on the situation. I did not ask for your permission because I did not need it, and frankly didn’t care a jot for your opinion. We are dead! That is the situation. Is that a clear enough grasp for you? Dead! Our only chance now lies in choosing the manner of that death.
“Do we allow ourselves to be used as a softening blow, hurled through Earth’s orbital plane so that our very flesh can be used to wipe clear some measure of their defenses?”
She paused long enough for that image to sink in, then went on, “Or do we submit ourselves to our enemies, surrendering to them in the hope that they might help us avoid that more immediate end, so we can live out our days on the other side, and leave this war to those that still stand to benefit from it?”
There was a long silence, then Freyam said, meeker now, “Maybe they can still help us?”
“Who?” but she knew who he was referring to.
“The ones behind us.”
They had seen the massive Skalm squadron silhouetted against the Armada’s engines, just as Mynd and Minnie had, but without the millions of additional miles to cloud the image and obscure its harsh reality. They had tried calling them, but the dark mass had stayed ominously silent, about four days behind them, slipstreaming them through the cosmos.
“Freyam,” said the chairman, somewhat sympathetically, “among that group that sits behind us now are the very Skalms that set us on this course. What, exactly, do you think would make them decide to help us now?”
He faced her, and the simple instinct behind his blustering attempt to overthrow her became clear. “Maybe, if we tell them that we can, instead, warn the humans of their presence, we could bargain for a contingent of them to help change our course, and then come after us after the battle is done?”
She almost felt sorry for him, and was about to, more gently now, disabuse him of that last vestige of futile hope, when a call came in. It was a reply. And it had come far faster than they could have anticipated.
Yallan PM:
All of the chairman’s somber certitude left her for a moment, and she was once again as confused as she had been after the attack, as she watched as her family and friends were cut loose by a coldhearted swipe of the Council’s pen. Bereft of the somber certainty that she had worked so hard to develop, she now said into the silent air of the still gleaming board room, “Please put it through.”
They all waited, not daring speak as this new turn in their involuntary fate revealed itself. It came in the form of a man, a human simulacrum, one whose visage they were well familiar with. For it was a man some among them had been party to designing, long ago. He had been crafted based on returned images from their goal, an ideal, olive-skinned, tall, young, the very image of perfection, or at least humanity’s version of it. As the Yallan Prime Mind informed those that needed reminding who this person really was, he spoke.
“Greetings, Chairman. I am Agent John Hunt, formerly of the Mobiliei Advanced Team, now of the Terrestrial Allied Space Command.”
As the room staggered from the sight of the Agent’s image, he went on, “I have come in response to your message. I speak on behalf of Earth. Your arrival was somewhat anticipated, though we had not expected any expelled debris from our first strike to still be inhabited. Yet another example of the callousness of our former masters.
“It would seem from your message that you wish to negotiate. The humans are willing to hear you out, but require two things from you immediately. Firstly, your unconditional surrender. Secondly, your exact trajectory, mass, and speed. We will know it soon enough, that is clear from the source of your laser transmission, but you will tell us anyway, as a gesture of goodwill.”
The chairman looked around the room quickly. Realizations were dawning within her mind so quickly they were spilling over each other. This explained everything. This man, this traitor, he had doomed them all. She fought an urge to scream at him, not that he would hear her anyway.
“I know you cannot reply immediately, as our estimates about your speed tell us you are probably still outside your own subspace range. But be assured, you are well inside ours, and soon will be within range of Earth’s growing defense systems. You have until they can pinpoint your location with their deep space tracking equipment to comply. After that they will have no choice but to come for you. I leave you with a promise, from one Mobiliei to another, that if you negotiate in good faith, I will guarantee the same from them. I can promise you honesty. Perhaps that is all I can guarantee, but it is more, it would seem, than you were given by our brethren.
“Given our estimates, you probably have days, maybe only hours until this comes to a head. I hope you will do the right thing.”
“But …” The word escaped the chairman’s lips unbidden, just popped out as the reality of their situation once again divulged itself to her, an ever-evolving story that someone else always seemed to be writing. She did not like the sensation, the lack of control.
“So he betrayed us,” said Freyam, pointlessly.
“That much would seem clear, yes.”
The room was silent a moment, but then a kernel of an idea began to form in her mind.
“We can use this,” she said, ignoring the younger man’s vitriolic look. “We can sell this information.”
“Sell it to who?” said another among the otherwise cowed group.
“To our friends behind us. We can buy at least a resumption of talks with the promise of the traitor’s identity.”
“But,” said Freyam now, confusion showing on his face now as he recalled the chairman’s own very valid point about how little they could trust the fighting fleet behind them to help them out.
“We have been betrayed, we know that,” she said, a trickle of optimism dripping into her long-empty emotional fuel tank. “Not just by the council of my peers that cut us free, but by the Nomadi traitors who gave the humans the technology to strike at us in the first place.”
She steadied herself, “We will negotiate with the humans, and
we will also negotiate with the strike force behind us. We will see what each can offer, and then we will make our decision.
“And it will be our decision, if nothing else.”
Chapter 55: Strategic Imperative
As the USS Truman was dismembered and placed, in parts, into the Dome for reconstitution, and several others cruised southward to a similar fate, another was sailing by, fifty miles or more to the east, oblivious to its kin’s fates.
It bore a series of capsules, each broad and each unique in design, but unified in purpose.
Captain Jennifer Falster was aboard the ship but not as its commanding officer. She knew little of the sea. She was a pilot, or at least she had been. That part of her had been lost. When, she did not know, but it was a long way back on a once-pleasant journey.
“Captain, you asked to be notified,” said a bearded officer, his naval heritage shining through in these relaxed confines, his grooming taking a backseat to the comfort of a thick beard in these cold climes, like it had for many of the crew. This was a military mission, that was sure, but it was not like the many thousands of operations moving with purpose around the world and above the confines of its atmosphere. This was a mission without happy conclusion. This was an insurance policy, and like all such coverage, it existed in anticipation of worst-case.
“Thank you, Lieutenant, is it?” Jennifer replied, using the English pronunciation of the rank, with the Germanic ‘f.’
He smiled, “It is, ma’am.”
“I’ll be up shortly, Lieutenant,” she said, with a nod to the British sailor as he left her cabin door.
She was a guest. She had not been certain of her role at first, but she had been offered a supervisory position by a reticent Jim Hacker after the … she still did not know what to call it. Either way, it was behind her now. She had accepted, and taken the opportunity to lose herself in the work of designing the capsules, enough so that she had seen them as a respite from her regrets.
They were not military in nature, unless you counted their passive sensor suites and limited defensive abilities, and perhaps their most military component, their thick shielding.
These were hides. Individual and customized to their environments, they were designed to disappear, under the water, under soil, under sand, under rock, and here, in their next destination, under ice. They had designed over a hundred of them in total, most of which were still under construction.
As she made her way to the bridge, she took the outside route, bracing against the darkness of the persistent twilight as she leapt up the clanging metal stairs, taking her breath in short, clipped gasps of the bitterly cold air.
As she breached the uppermost deck, she paused for just a second before wrenching open the heavy door and looked out across the four black cylinders that crowded the ship’s long, open hold. They were huge, like submarines shorn of their conning towers and planes. Time capsules that they hoped would be able to avoid detection should they lose the coming war.
She could look no more, the cold was seeping in through her thick jacket and causing her to shudder. She gripped the thick handle of the door with both hands and put her back into it.
It was usually the prerogative of the captain and duty officer to use the outer bridge doors, if only because of the fearsome draft they let in when opened, but no one voiced an objection as the Air Force officer stumbled in and banged the door shut behind her.
“Hello, Captain,” said the ship’s real commanding officer. He was, in fact, only a commander, but aboard his ship all referred to him as Captain, per ancient mandate, and so Jennifer tapped her forehead and replied with a smile and a shiver, “Captain.”
They were not born of the same country’s military, but Jennifer’s uniform bore TASC’s crest, as did his, and that superseded old allegiances. That she was his superior on paper did not affect their relationship. They had grown comfortable with ignoring irrelevant niceties in the two months they had been at sea, and that applied nowhere more than this isolated underside of the world, as they cruised southward toward the icesheet.
“All is well, I assume?” she said, stepping to his side.
“It is, ma’am, yes. I only sent Lieutenant Briggs down because you …”
“Yes, yes, Captain, of course. And thank you.”
The commander cast a sideways glance at her. She was an enigmatic sort. She clearly enjoyed an influence far above her rank, that was obvious by the deferential way his commanding officer had treated her when they had first been introduced. But who she was, or why she received such preferential treatment, he did not know.
His initial skepticism at having some toadie aboard his ship had been slowly eroded, though, by her pleasant and polite demeanor. He certainly saw no signs of the arrogance or ambition that he had assumed would come with her apparent standing.
He had asked about her background, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, during their many dinners together over the last months, but she had always merely smiled and looked away, wistful. She was profoundly sad, he had no doubt about that. He feared, sometimes, that she knew something he did not, and that was why she had volunteered for this final part of the assignment. For she was not here as just an observer.
She had, he knew, helped orchestrate the time capsules, the mobile bunkers that had been seeded with exhaustive data stores and DNA records to try and encapsulate the breadth of human knowledge and existence. They had then been inserted into their long, thick sheaths, and joined with a power source, air and waste recycling plants, and accommodations for one human.
One lone technician in each long tube, to be sealed in and then interred, sunk, buried, and forgotten. The last remnants of a potentially lost civilization, hidden away to wait for more peaceful times to come, or just to mark our passing into history, and tell the story of our extinction.
Many governments had focused some measure of their resources on bunkers of some kind or another, either in case of defeat or to survive the aftermath of hard-won victory, but these were the concerted effort of TASC, and as their construction had neared completion, Captain Jennifer Falster had volunteered, for reasons the British officer to her side could only guess at, to be buried alive in one of them.
He looked at her once more, and saw she was staring away, to the west, to an island on the horizon. When she had mentioned a passing interest in the famous Deception Island, the second district of the now world-spanning TASC, he had offered to request a short furlough there, certainly he was curious about the legendary birthplace of the Skalm as well.
But she had refused, at first politely, and then more emphatically, until he had finally dropped the subject.
“Just let me know when we are close, if that is OK,” she had said, “I would like to see it as we go past.”
And so now she watched it drift quietly by. A haze of artificial light could be seen faintly wafting up from inside its sheltered bay. It was the only thing distinguishing the island’s dark silhouette from the expansive Antarctic Peninsula that encircled it.
She watched it, her eyes clearly drawn to something about that place, though what that was, the commander could not know. But he knew her well enough to know she did not want to talk about it, so he left her to gaze at it in peace and returned his focus to the seas ahead. They were heading into the winter ice, into the season-long darkness, to meet the submarine that would begin tugging the four time capsules under the ice shelf to chosen crevices and trenches in the seabed far below.
Chapter 56: Tactical Imperatives
Jack Toranssen ran the meetings as a matter of course. He was not the most expert in the room, not by far, but he was the most senior, and he held the respect of all, even the like of most, a rare thing in a senior officer.
But these were strange times, and this was a strange meeting. The array of military strategists in the room came from as varied a background as any gathered in history. This was a veritable Tehran Conference of opposing ideals forced into unity, enemies of enemies, cor
ralled after years of wrangling.
Jack was not immune to the irony of his position here. He was not unaware of how instrumental Neal and Ayala had been in quelling resistance as they moved toward this still young ideal, a truly global military council. But here they were, and here he now sat, at its head, as the most senior TASC officer, a force not destroyed by the quiet unseating of its leaders, but strengthened by the emergence of Minnie and Mynd as its true core.
The minds were the heart of TASC now, and every day they continued to cement their reputation for being inviolate and unswayable. Jack spoke with them often, and here, for all intents and purposes, he spoke for them, even though subroutines of theirs monitored this meeting place and even provided the means by which such disparate parties could communicate with each other.
He spoke now in English, and all heard in their respective tongues without delay as he said, “I know we all want to focus on the pending reply from the … Yallan fleet, is that right, John?”
John nodded, not smiling. This was not how John wanted his allies to meet the rest of his race, many of whom he knew were no more in favor of this war than he was. But it was what it was.
At John’s nodded approval, Jack went on. “The fact is, though, that any reply from them will necessarily take hours, maybe longer, and while our orbital and lunar observatories try to pinpoint their location in the night sky, we have much to do.”
With acquiescing nods from around the room, Jack went on, “Okay then, let’s start with a report from one of those observatories, shall we? Moira?”
At the vocal request, Moira appeared as a participant at the table. It was a clever trick. They had long ago relocated the bulk of the members of the committee to accommodations at District One, a complex that now spread for twenty miles up the southern tip of Sao Tome, and exceeded the island nation’s entire population several times over.
This allowed this group to meet in person, but when a member or a presenting party could not be present, as was often the case, Remy did what was called a partial virtual construct, overlaying an image right into the visual cortices of the meeting’s participants. So Moira now appeared to all the meeting’s participants to be sitting in front of them, her bashful smile juxtaposing her sharp eyes as she waited expectantly.