Ep.#15 - That Which Other Men Cannot Do (The Frontiers Saga)

by Ryk Brown

  “Gentlemen,” President Scott interrupted, “we are arguing over details that can never be proven one way or the other. Yes, the Jung could show up in any system, at any time, with any number of ships. However, Tanna was the only world that was outside of our one-minute jump range, which, I might add, could be extended to forty-two light years, given a few more months. If the Jung should suddenly arrive in any of our systems, the Alliance will be able to respond, in force.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” the representative from Weldon said irritably. “The Alliance is based in your system.”

  “Weldon is a mere seventeen light years from Sol, Mister Paulson,” The representative from Tau Ceti pointed out. “You have little to worry about.”

  “Said the man whose system has two, soon to be three, warships parked at home.”

  “You are only twenty-five light years from Tau Ceti,” President Kanor replied. “Short of a battle platform showing up on your doorstep, all of the Alliance ships would arrive before the Jung made it into orbit over your world!”

  “Please, gentlemen,” President Scott urged as the men raised their voices to be heard over one another.

  “How many lives were lost defending Tanna?” Mister Paulson asked in a louder voice.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” President Kanor asked, irritated.

  “What would you suggest, Mister Paulson?” President Scott wondered. “Would you like to offer your world back to the Jung? Beg their forgiveness?”

  “That is not an option, and you know it,” Mister Paulson said in an accusatory tone. “After all, the Alliance liberated my world without consent.”

  “How were they supposed to get consent?” President Kanor wondered. “Jump in and ask the Jung for permission to conduct a planet-wide poll, or something?”

  “Do not mock me, sir,” Mister Paulson warned.

  “Sit down, Paulson,” President Kanor said, waving him off.

  “And what if a battle platform did show up in one of our systems?” the representative from Delta Pavonis questioned. “What would the Alliance do?”

  “Battle platforms come out of FTL several hours sub-light travel time from inhabited worlds,” Admiral Dumar said. “In fact, they usually stay a considerable distance out. It would be quite easy to launch a jump KKV attack against a target at such a position.”

  “But that takes time,” the representative from Delta Pavonis argued. “An hour, if I remember correctly. Those battle platforms have gunships inside. Gunships that could be used against any of our worlds while you are preparing your jump KKV attack.”

  “Gunships that could easily be handled by Super Falcons, or our own gunships, not to mention our larger ships,” Admiral Dumar explained.

  “You don’t have any more gunships,” Mister Paulson reminded the admiral.

  “We have already begun planning a new gunship manufacturing plant on Sorenson,” President Kanor assured them. “In six months, we will have at least fifteen to twenty new gunships, fully crewed and ready for action.”

  “Six months?” Mister Paulson said indignantly. “I’m talking about right now! We have to take action, and we have to take it now!”

  “What would you have us do, Mister Paulson?” President Scott inquired.

  “We need to attack!”

  “We have been,” the president replied patiently.

  “I’m talking about the Jung homeworld! We need to show the Jung that we can take the fight to their home system, the same way that they have taken it to everyone else’s!”

  “Are you mad?” President Kanor asked, almost laughing. “You saw the preliminary intelligence reports, Paulson. The Jung have more than one hundred ships in their home system, many of them battleships and battle platforms! It would be suicide.” President Kanor looked at Admiral Dumar for support. “Tell him, Admiral!”

  Admiral Dumar said nothing.

  President Kanor stared at the admiral. “Admiral?”

  “Mad is a strong word,” the admiral replied. “It implies an impulsive act, one without forethought, one without a specific, tangible goal in mind. Aggressive? Yes. Risky? Most definitely. However, risk can be mitigated.”

  President Kanor continued to look at the admiral, waiting for him to continue. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “The question you must ask is, ‘Why?’” Admiral Dumar said. “What would you hope to accomplish with such an attack? What message would you like to send?”

  “That we can hurt them as much as they can hurt us!” Mister Paulson declared.

  “That is an untrue statement,” Admiral Dumar disagreed in his usual calm demeanor. “The Jung outnumber us by a sizable margin. Granted, we may have technology on our side, but if they were to gather their numbers into a unified force, and then go on a rampage, there would be no stopping them.”

  “Then you don’t believe we should attack their homeworld?” President Kanor surmised.

  “I did not say that. I said you must be fully aware of what it is you wish to accomplish by attacking their homeworld.”

  “To show them that we can,” Mister Paulson said.

  “That, sir, is a stupid reason, by itself.”

  President Scott took a moment to consider his words. “Admiral, if you decided to attack the Jung homeworld at this time, what would you be trying to accomplish?”

  Admiral Dumar stared at the others for a moment, considering his answer. It was a question he had asked himself many times before. “Attacking the Jung homeworld for the purpose of destroying as many of their ships as possible would be a foolish waste of time and resources. Yes, destroy as many ships as possible, but more importantly, we must show them that we are able, and willing, to take innocent human lives, in the same fashion as they have demonstrated, time and time again. So far, they have seen us fight when our backs were against the wall, and we had no choice. They have also seen us go on the offensive, using the element of surprise to minimize our losses, in order to secure a safe perimeter around our worlds. What they have not yet seen, is that we are willing to go above and beyond, to take that extra step, to cross the furthest line…that we are willing to do what other men cannot do…what the Jung already do. That is a valid reason to attack the Jung home system.”

  “You want us to target the innocent citizens of the Jung Empire?” Mister Paulson exclaimed, outraged. “Kill innocent women and children?”

  “Of course I do not want to do such a thing,” the admiral defended. “But I do recognize that such a thing must be done in order to send the correct message. And for the record, we do not have to directly target the innocent. We simply have to ignore concerns of collateral damage, which, I might point out, is still a far sight better than what the Jung themselves do.”

  “Using the same moral measure as the Jung would not serve us well,” President Kanor warned.

  “Of course,” Admiral Dumar agreed. “Which is why we should not directly target non-military targets. However, if the Jung chose to locate their military assets in the middle of heavily populated areas, that is their own problem. We should not make it ours.”

  Neither President Kanor nor Mister Paulson had a response.

  “Do you believe you can successfully execute such an attack?” President Scott wondered.

  “Without incurring losses that would put us at further risk?” Mister Paulson added.

  “I do,” Admiral Dumar replied, without hesitation. “However, there is another question to ask, before considering such an attack. ‘How will the Jung react?’”

  Those assembled exchanged concerned glances.

  “Will they request a cease-fire, or will they become so enraged that they set out to destroy all our worlds?” Admiral Dumar continued.

  “Assume the latter,” President Scott suggested. “How would they go about it? Could we defend against it? What kind of time frame are we talking about?”

  “All legitimate questions, yet all of them irrelevant to this discussion,”
Dumar replied. “There are only two ways to prevent the Jung from eventually destroying us all. Either we must destroy them, or we must convince them that our destruction would guarantee their own.”

  * * *

  Nathan entered his quarters and closed the door behind him. The last five days had been grueling for him and his crew. In fact, it had been difficult for everyone throughout the Alliance. Every member world had pitched in to help the Tannans in any way that they could. But even with all that help, there was nothing that anyone could do to save their world. Tanna was lost.

  That fact was what weighed on Nathan’s mind the most these days. It wasn’t the one point five million people who had died, or the tens of thousands who were now fighting to recover in hospitals all over the Alliance. It wasn’t even the Tannans who were now homeless. It was simply the knowledge that they all lived in a galaxy where someone could do this to an entire world, and feel justified in doing so.

  It wasn’t the first time that Nathan had experienced this feeling. The Ta’Akar Empire had been just as heinous in some of their acts. That made it even more difficult. It might be easier for him to accept that a single, evil empire was willing to commit such atrocities. But seeing two completely unrelated empires, each of them unaware of the other, and both capable of such acts, it left Nathan with little hope for humanity as a whole.

  Nathan tossed his uniform jacket on the chair in the corner of his bedroom and sat down on the edge of his bed. After untying and removing his boots, he fell backward onto his bed, his arms spread wide. All he wanted to do was sleep—for days if he could—perhaps to dream of anything other than his current reality.

  Perhaps a mountain cabin, on the edge of a lake, he thought, his eyes closed. No spaceships, no comm-sets, no Alliance. Just peace and quiet.

  Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, his door buzzer sounded. He ignored it. It sounded again. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said, sitting up. The buzzer sounded a third time.

  Nathan rose from his bed and headed back into the living room. The buzzer sounded a fourth time. “Unbelievable,” he said as he reached for the door latch. He swung the door open, and found Vladimir standing on the other side, a bag in one hand, and a bottle in the other.

  “I’m not hungry,” Nathan said as he turned around and headed for the couch.

  “Of course you are,” Vladimir disagreed.

  “How would you know?”

  “Your cook told me you haven’t been eating,” Vladimir said, closing the door and following Nathan to the seating area in the middle of the living room. He sat down in one of the chairs, opened the bag, and pulled out something wrapped in plastic and tossed it to Nathan.

  “What’s this?” Nathan wondered, catching the item.

  “Dollag steak sandwich,” Vladimir answered, as he pulled out one for himself as well.

  “Oh,” Nathan drooled. “With the spicy green paste?”

  “And tomato and onion.”

  “Damn,” Nathan said, opening the wrapper. “I thought we ran out of dollag steaks months ago.”

  “You should check your own pantry,” Vladimir said. “You’ve still got several kilograms of it in the freezer.”

  Nathan bit a large piece off his sandwich and chewed it with vigor. “You are such a good friend.”

  “I know,” Vladimir agreed as he took a bite of his own sandwich. He set his food down on the coffee table and picked up the bottle from the floor, opening it. He took a healthy swig, then passed it to Nathan. “Drink this.”

  Nathan took the bottle from him, held it up to his nose and sniffed it. “Whoa. What the hell is this? It smells awful.”

  “Better you don’t smell it,” Vladimir instructed.

  “What is it?”

  “Better you don’t know.”

  “I’m not going to drink it, if I don’t know what it is,” Nathan said stubbornly.

  “Just trust me.”

  “That’s why I want to know what it is.”

  “It’s homemade beer, alright?”

  “In whose home was it made?”

  “A good friend.”

  “A good friend?” Nathan sniffed it again. “Damn, the smell makes my eyes water. Who the fuck made it, Vlad?”

  “Okay, I did,” Vladimir finally admitted. “I made it.”

  “On board?”

  “Actually, no. Well, yes and no. The first couple of batches I made on Porto Santo. This batch, I made in my quarters.”

  “You have a brewery in your quarters?” Nathan took a swig.

  “In my head, actually.”

  “How big is your head?” Nathan asked as he took another drink of the foul smelling beer. “Mine’s barely big enough for me.”

  “For some reason, my head is twice the size of every other head on this ship,” Vladimir told him. “It is very odd. There is this big empty space between the toilet and the shower. Almost enough room for a second shower.”

  “So you decided to put a brewery in there instead.”

  “It made sense, especially since this stuff smells like shit,” Vladimir said, a grin on his face.

  Nathan laughed. “Yes, it does. Exactly like shit, in fact.” He took another drink. “It doesn’t taste like shit, though.” He handed the bottle back to Vladimir. “It actually tastes pretty good.”

  “That’s the alcohol in it talking,” Vladimir told him, then took a good long drink himself.

  “How much?” Nathan asked, taking another bite of his sandwich.

  “Eighteen percent, I think.”

  “Holy crap,” Nathan replied, shocked. “You realize this is totally against regs, right?”

  “It is okay,” Vladimir said. “The captain and I are close friends.”

  “Give me that,” Nathan insisted, taking the bottle from Vladimir and taking another drink. “I should confiscate this, you know.”

  “You can keep it,” Vladimir told him. “I have more.”

  Nathan laughed, placing the bottle on the table and leaning back on the couch as he took another bite of his sandwich. He let out a long sigh.

  “It has been a difficult week,” Vladimir commented, noting his friend’s general melancholy.

  “I’ve had worse, I suppose,” Nathan replied. “Not much worse, of course.”

  “It is not your fault, Nathan. You know this.”

  “I never said it was my fault.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Vladimir replied. “I know you. You think everything is your fault.”

  “I do not.”

  “Well, maybe not that everything is your fault, but you do always wonder if you could have done something different, something that would have prevented something bad from happening.”

  “Perhaps, but that’s not the same thing.”

  “No, but it is close. I know you,” Vladimir reiterated.

  “Oh really? Then what am I thinking?”

  Vladimir took another swig from the bottle, looked at Nathan, and thought. “You are thinking, ‘If only I had never struck up that deal with Tanna, and helped them get rid of the Jung, then all of this never would have happened.’”

  “Not bad,” Nathan admitted, as he took another bite of his sandwich. “And it’s true, by the way. The entire planet, and everyone on it, would still be alive today, if I had never agreed to help them.”

  “And if you hadn’t helped them, we would have run out of propellant. The Jung would have captured the Celestia, or at least, the Celestia would no longer exist, and Earth would probably still be under Jung control. You were doing what you thought was the right thing to do for your people, just as that Tannan… What was his name?”

  “Garrett.”

  “Da, Garrett. Just as Garrett thought he was doing at the time. It was just as much his decision as it was yours.”

  “That’s the thing,” Nathan said. “Did I really have the right to make such a decision? Did I have the right to put so many lives in jeopardy?”

  “You didn’t know you were puttin
g their lives at risk at the time, Nathan,” Vladimir argued. “You thought you were improving their lives, by giving them their freedom.”

  “But I was wrong.”

  “No, you weren’t wrong. You simply could not have foreseen all the possibilities. Your decision to get involved with the Tannans, to help them achieve their freedom from the Jung… It is not the reason they died. They died because the Jung attacked them.”

  “Because we helped them overthrow the Jung,” Nathan reminded him.

  “I ask you which shirt looks better on me, the red or the blue, and you say the red, and then a madman kills me because he doesn’t like red shirts, is that your fault?”

  “That’s not the same,” Nathan argued. “There’s no way for me to anticipate that a madman hell bent on killing people wearing red shirts is going to see you and kill you.”

  “And at the time that you struck the deal with Garrett, you had no idea that the Jung routinely glassed worlds that defied them, did you?”

  Nathan shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose not.”

  “You can only do what you think is right, based on the information you have at the time that you make your decision,” Vladimir explained. “When are you going to get that through your head, Nathan?”

  “Get what through my head?”

  “What?”

  Nathan smiled. “Must be the beer,” he said, taking another swig. “I get what you’re saying, Vlad, I really do. It’s just that being the captain, you sometimes get put in situations where you have to make decisions that affect far more people than you could imagine. You know it when you make the decisions. But you make them anyway, and then you have to live with the consequences. It’s damned tiring, sometimes.”

  “Then quit,” Vladimir suggested.

  Nathan looked at him, confused. “I can’t quit.”

  “Sure you can,” Vladimir insisted. “I mean, you can’t quit the EDF, you enrolled for a ten-year term…”

  “Actually, the EDF doesn’t exist anymore, so technically…”

  “Da, da, da,” Vladimir replied. “That is a good point. It is also another discussion entirely. What I mean is that you could step down as captain, take some other job. Something less stressful, like, flying a cargo shuttle, perhaps?”