Commander

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Your awards will be shipped directly to you on all your different planets, but I wanted to come here and say thank you to each and every one of you.”

  “Mr. Vipin Narang, please come up and shake our hands,” Peters said.

  Narang got up, as in a dream, and walked up to the Emperor.

  “Thank you, Mr. Narang,” Dunham said.

  Narang simply nodded, and shook the Emperor’s hand. He moved to Peters and shook her hand as well.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Narang.”

  “Thank you, Milady.”

  “Liu Jiang,” Peters said.

  One at a time, Peters called out their names, and each came up to receive the thanks of their Emperor and the congratulations of their Empress. Last were Robert Stewart, Ilia Sobol, and Jared Denny.

  “Last but not least. Thank you, Mr. Denny,” Dunham said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Congratulations, Mr. Denny,” Peters said, and she winked at him. It was she who had given him the DP warship point-defense system specifications.

  “Thank you, Milady.”

  Denny returned to his seat, and Dunham addressed them all.

  “We’ll not keep you any longer from your important work. We just wanted to let you all know, personally, how much it is appreciated. Once again, thank you all.”

  At that, the Emperor and Empress bowed their heads to them and disappeared from the channel.

  After Dunham and Peters had left the channel, the lecture classroom descended into bedlam.

  “Wow. That was incredible.”

  “It’s nice to know we’re appreciated.”

  “The dividends have been doing that for me.”

  “Yeah, but the Emperor.”

  “The Empress was even more special. The Emperor makes his annual address, but you never see her.”

  Sobol and Stewart walked up to Denny, who was standing at the front of the room. He had not tried to restore order yet.

  The two senior consultants also held stock in the company. In fact, double everyone else’s equal share. Every month since the money started rolling in, Denny decided what the company could spare, and gave everyone five percent of the excess, with ten percent to each of the two consultants. It was money well spent. Denny was very much aware not just of how much help they had been, but of how much the organization’s reputation had depended and still depended on their involvement.

  “That was nicely done, Jared,” Sobol said.

  “That was a first for me,” Stewart said.

  “Really?” Denny asked.

  “First time meeting the ruler of the Empire? Absolutely. Do you have any clue how little the Empresses and Emperors do in terms of appearances outside their inner group?”

  “I’ve never really understood that,” Denny said.

  “Oh, the psychology of it is simple enough,” Sobol said. “It makes them mythic figures. To the extent they actually appear in public, they become simply human.”

  “But they die, Ilia. The last Empress was assassinated, in fact.”

  “Yes, but they had to blow up part of the Imperial Palace to do it. You see? It took a Marine assault shuttle to kill her. It wasn’t some lone assassin with a knife or a gun or something. It didn’t shatter the myth.”

  “In any case, Jared, Ilia’s right,” Stewart said. “That was nicely done. Big surprises aren’t always pleasant ones, but that one was.”

  “Thanks. He called me.”

  “So I assumed,” Stewart said with a smile.

  “On another point, Jared. Bob and I have been talking, and I have another project for us.”

  “Excellent. Let me call for order here, and let’s hear it.”

  Sobol and Stewart took their seats in the front row, and Denny called for order. People gradually took their seats and quieted down.

  “Well, after all the excitement, I guess it’s time to get back to work. Bob and Ilia have an idea for us for a new project, so I’ll turn it over to them.”

  Sobol and Stewart got up and walked into the well of the lecture room. Two club chairs appeared in the simulation, and they sat facing the group.

  “All right,” Sobol said. “One of the things you have to assume in creating military systems is the other side is going to be trying like crazy to figure out what you did, particularly when something you did is out of the ordinary. So what is the natural response of the other side going to be to the incidents between our picket ships and their warships?”

  “They’re going to go out to the debris field and look for clues,” Narang said.

  “Correct, Vipin. Now, when they do that, what will they find?”

  “That the picket ships have no crews?” Narang asked.

  “Unlikely. The debris field is going to be strewn with human remains from their own ships, and the condition of those remains after a plasma explosion is going to make it difficult to get an accurate count. And the ship itself will be so utterly destroyed even the lack of crew spaces won’t be evident.”

  “The uranium,” Liu said suddenly. “They’re going to find the nose cones.”

  “Correct,” Sobol said. “The uranium alloy nose cones are likely to survive at least to some extent. Likely in one piece, in fact, though they will perhaps be misshapen or otherwise damaged. We are talking about a plasma explosion after all. So what does that mean for us, if they find the nose cones?”

  “They’re going to reprogram their point-defense lasers not to fire at the nose cones if it’s a picket ship,” Narang said.

  “Correct. They will try to disable the engines, because it would be easy to evade the ship if it were simply ballistic. They can’t evade it now because it is a seeker, and it is so maneuverable. So what do we do? I posed this question to Bob last week when we had received the AARs from Phalia and Garland.”

  Sobol waved to Stewart.

  “I was wondering if we might not do something for the picket ships similar to what we did for the ECM missiles,” Stewart said. “It’s a different problem in that the picket ship is so much bigger than a missile, but that also reduces the size and power constraints we have.”

  “Of course,” Liu said. “With that much power and space, we can make a more capable suite. And it would have to be, because of the size of the ship, but I think we can work something out that would work.”

  “What about hyperspace, though?” Narang asked. “The picket ships’ offensive capabilities were originally intended for planetary defense in hyperspace. I’m not sure how much of what we’re doing will work in hyperspace.”

  “But their sensor capabilities are degraded as well,” Bertha Townsend said. “Missiles can’t be used in hyperspace. Anything drops out into normal space when the acceleration is below 0.35g, so missiles drop out of hyperspace no sooner than they exit the impeller. So nobody really fights in hyperspace. None of the systems work very well there.”

  “Well, they have to rely mainly on the visual sensors for their point defense in hyperspace,” Narang said. “Can we spoof those?”

  “How?” Townsend asked.

  “Projections maybe,” Narang said. “Proliferate the targets.”

  “They wouldn’t be very realistic.”

  “In hyperspace, it probably wouldn’t matter.”

  “Maybe we can do something to make the actual ship look like a projection, as well,” Liu said.

  “That could help,” Townsend said.

  “You know, the other thing we need is an evasive maneuvers package,” Narang said. “That would help in both hyperspace and normal space.”

  “Well, Mr. Denny,” Stewart said softly, “It looks like we’ve gotten things rolling. We’ll see you next time.”

  Sobol nodded and made a little wave of his hand.

  Denny nodded and they both disappeared from the channel. Once they disappeared, the simulation dropped their chairs as well.

  Denny turned back to the discussion as it continued.

  Quiet But Simmering

  King
James III of Garland paced back and forth as he vented his anger.

  “Again and again and again, those damned robot ships come into our space, and we can’t do a damned thing about them. They can lose those ships and not care, because there’s nobody aboard. Robot ships! Can you imagine? After the Fifty Years War, I can’t believe even that arrogant white-eyed bastard would be that irresponsible.”

  “We don’t know for sure that they’re robot ships, Sire,” said his foreign minister, His Excellency Baron Francis Schmitt-deVries.

  “The DP says they’re robot ships, and that’s good enough for me. They have no axe to grind in the matter, way out here. Besides, it explains why that white-eyed bastard is willing to just crash them into our ships. What does he give a damn? He doesn’t even have any crew aboard. He doesn’t lose anybody. They took out a battleship, and killed Admiral Vorhees and his whole crew, and it cost them nothing but a damned robot.”

  Schmitt-deVries knew better than to argue with King James when he was on one of his rants. Vorhees had been the king’s first cousin and boyhood friend, and he had not taken his loss well. Pointing out to His Highness that he had warned him would not go over well.

  “Sintar’s just too big. Every one of its provinces is big enough to be its own country. Was its own country, in fact, before the Fifty Years War. And they were the bastards responsible for the robot ships in the first place.”

  “The Kingdom of Sintar had robot ships, Sire?”

  “No, no, no. The kingdoms Sintar consolidated to form the Empire. Some of them launched robot ships, and others were the targets. It took Sintar thirty years to track them all down. And now this Emperor, instead of taking lessons from his predecessors who fought that scourge, is listening to the ghosts of the people who launched them.”

  King James shook his head.

  “Someone that arrogant should at least feign intelligence. Being that arrogant and stupid at the same time is a really bad look.”

  “What are we to do, Sire?”

  “Against Sintar? By ourselves? Nothing. It galls the hell out of me, but there’s nothing we can do by ourselves. I need to talk to Queen Anne over in Phalia and some of the others, and see if we can’t consolidate our power somehow to generate some pushback. That’s the only way to fight something as big as Sintar.”

  The hereditary ruler of the Captaincy of Midlothia, Captain Mark Roberts, was having much the same conversation with his prime minister, who in Midlothia was known as the executive officer, Kevin Shingle, without the hysterics.

  “That’s two hundred and twenty-four incursions in the last week, Sir.”

  “Which is to say, two hundred and twenty-four Sintaran freighter calls across the six thousand planets of the Captaincy, which is the normal freight volume from Sintar. It’s actually down a little bit.”

  “Yes, Sir. But it’s two hundred and twenty-four instances of robot ships operating in our space.”

  “Are we sure about that, XO? The robot ships part?”

  “That’s what the DP is calling them, Sir.”

  “Yes, and what favors has the DP done for us lately, eh? They’re on the other side of Garland, Estvia, Sintar, and Annalia from here. That’s a long ways away to be telling us what we’re seeing. You have to wonder what their motives are.”

  “Motives, Sir?”

  “The DP doesn’t do anything without a motive. One has to wonder just what they’re up to.”

  Roberts sighed.

  “I suppose I ought to ask around, and see what others think. Life is so much simpler without hidden motives and whispered accusations. Still, I do wish Sintar had taken a more, I don’t know, conciliatory approach. This trampling on the sovereignty of other star nations has got to stop.”

  “They don’t seem likely to change their operations any time soon, Sir.”

  “Yes, and it’s unlikely to lead anywhere good.”

  The Regent of Preston had a similar meeting with his foreign minister. The royal line had died out two hundred years before, and a series of regents had ruled in the name of the throne since. They were, generally speaking, capable men, but they did not have the identity with the people of a true monarch. It was a subtle difference, but it was real. In the case of Gerald Monroe, however, the difference was even less than normal. He was a good ruler in a difficult time.

  “I’m telling you, Ben, the situation is intolerable,” Monroe said.

  “In what way, Sir?” asked Preston prime minister Benjamin Novak.

  “These Sintaran robot ships running around all over the place, in other nations’ space, without regard to sovereignty issues.”

  “They claim right to escort their commercial ships, Sir, under the anti-piracy provisions of the commercial shipping treaty.”

  “And when was the last act of piracy? When was the last freighter fired upon? Do the escorts persist forever, absent any threat? Does the treaty allow robot ships, or just military vessels? For that matter, can a robot ship even be claimed to be a military vessel, with no military aboard? Or is it an armed privateer?”

  “A lot of questions, Sir.”

  “Indeed. And with no easy answers. And Sintar is deploying these escorts without regard to where their freighter losses were incurred. Did they lose any freighters within Preston?”

  “Just two, Sir, before we clamped down on ships not squawking transponder codes.”

  “That’s right. And then we chased those ships off. I still think they were DP warships, whatever Hanson says. But we ran them off, and they haven’t been back. And yet, we still get Sintar robot ships running escort on every freighter, despite our complaints and assurances to Sintar.”

  Defense Minister Gary Hanson had maintained he thought the raiders were from one of the bigger star nations, like Phalia or The Rim.

  “The issue, Sir, is we are not in a position to enforce our demands against Sintar.”

  “No. No one is. Not by themselves. Together we could, but what’s the likelihood of that ever happening?”

  “OK, that’s the fourth call in the last two weeks. What’s going on?” Queen Anne of Phalia asked her prime minister, The Honorable Bruce Mallory.

  “I’m not sure, Ma’am. Who was it this time?”

  “King James, of Garland.”

  “Ah. And the topic, Ma’am?”

  “What else. The Sintar escort ships. He went on and on about robot ships.”

  “That is what the DP ambassador is calling them, Ma’am.”

  “Yes, and DP assurances and five dinar will buy you a cup of coffee. I just don’t trust them. I don’t trust Sintar, either, for that matter. I do wish I had not let Boris talk me into letting those raiders operate here, though.”

  Boris Gorsky, her foreign minister, had pushed for allowing the commerce raiders, origin unspecified, to operate in Phalian space. Something about pushing back against ‘disruptive foreign influences.’

  “But robot ships as a response, Ma’am? Sintar – some of its constituents, anyway – were the sources of the robot ships that made the Fifty Years War so destructive.”

  “I know, Bruce, I know. But are they really robot ships, or just remotely piloted? Darrel thinks they’re remotely piloted. They don’t respond like robots, they respond like people. And people answer our hails, when they answer at all. His people have done quite a bit of looking at that, trying to answer the question. And their only offensive capability appears to be ramming.”

  Darrell Dunning was her defense minister, and had argued against provoking Sintar by allowing the commerce raiders to operate in Phalian space. His credibility in the court had moved up quite a bit recently.

  “With regard to the ramming, Ma’am, I notice you haven’t informed any of your colleagues of the uranium alloy nose cones. Or have you?”

  “No. Our little secret for now. What would Sintar do if we were suddenly able to take out their escort ships? Or if the raiders were? I don’t want to enflame the situation any more than it already is. And somebody like King Ja
mes would be sure to do just that. I want to hold that little bit of information in reserve.”

  “I see, Ma’am. Probably wise.”

  “I mean, if we need it, fine. But I don’t want to encourage others to go after the Sintar escorts. And it would. Perhaps especially the commerce raiders. My growing suspicion is those are DP warships out to cause trouble.”

  “Really, Ma’am? Why would the DP do that?”

  “I don’t know, and I suspect I wouldn’t like the answer if I did. But everybody else thinks it’s us, or maybe The Rim, one of the bigger players. And we know it isn’t us, and I don’t think it’s Albert. So who is it? You run out of good answers pretty quickly.”

  “The DP. That does raise a lot of questions, Ma’am.”

  “It sure does, Bruce. It sure does. But the more hotheaded of my colleagues are pushing for joining forces against Sintar. And that may be just what the DP wants.”

  “So what do we do, Ma’am?”

  “Well, if there’s going to be some alliance or something, I think we need to be a part of it. I think that may be the only way to keep the hotheads bottled up.”

  She looked over to her prime minister with serious eyes.

  “But I’m not sure if even that will work.”

  “Thanks for meeting with me, Bob, Ilia,” Jared Denny said.

  “Of course,” Sobol said. “No one else, though?”

  “No. Not yet. I want to see what you guys think of this before I bring it up to the rest. They’re all knee-deep in the ECM for the picket ships at the moment, and I don’t want to distract them.”

  Denny collected his thoughts for a few seconds.

  “I’ve been reading up on picket ships. Other capabilities, stuff to include in the ECM suite, stuff like that. And I ran down a bunny trail in my research and ended up reading about the historical uses of picket ships. Way back on Earth, with ocean-going navies. One use was to throw out a line of picket ships, in open water, to detect fleet movements. And I started wondering, could we do something like that?

  “I mean, the uses Sintar has made of picket ships is around its own planets, to detect fleet movements toward us or around us. Like we did in Pannia, when we saw the Berinia and Celestia fleet movements. OK, that makes sense. And, since picket ships can’t report while in hyperspace – they have to drop into normal space to report – they have to operate in the vicinity of a hypergate.