by Ron Collins
“Perhaps it is a trick,” Casmir replied, “but what is it that makes you think so?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Casmir glared at her as they walked. “I want you to tell me what you’re thinking.”
Her words came in bunches as she kept up with his strides.
“The UG doesn’t roll over and play dead, Papa. You know that better than anyone. They never have and they never will. We’ve developed and reviewed so many strategies regarding their tactics that there’s nothing left to review, right? In all that time, we’ve never—never—spent even a minute discussing the idea of a UG surrender.”
They made their way up a wide stairway.
“And that’s because?”
“We all know it just plain won’t happen.”
“Perhaps we were wrong.”
“No, Papa. The UG cannot be trusted. We can’t meet them like this.”
“If what you say is true, there will never be a way to bring this to a close.”
“Maybe there isn’t.”
“That would be very sad.”
“We should be strong, Papa. We should take their offer and tell them to shove it right up—”
Casmir raised his hand to cut her off as they came to the top of the stairway. A pair of double doors made of dark wood led to the Exchange Room.
In the dim light of the hallway, Casmir took in his daughter’s expression. Her lips were drawn tight. Her jaw set. Fire burned in her watery blue eyes that were so much like her mother’s.
“You are young, Deidra. Aggressive and bold. I like that in a person who I know will one day be leading our people. But you know exactly how serious I am about how we make decisions. You also know I’ve learned many lessons in my time—and among the main lessons I’ve learned is that Ellyn was right when she taught us that we have to be able to engage the system to defeat it. Engage it on the fringes, yes, but still engage it. I didn’t listen to that part of her message before. I tried to force things from completely outside the United Government’s control. All that got us is an adversary who has not yet destroyed us, but only because we managed to strike first and because we are lucky enough to be farther away than its arms can comfortably reach.”
“It got us all this,” she said.
Casmir stopped. He used his gaze to halt his daughter.
“We were very lucky,” he said. “You need to always keep in mind that one misstep along the way would have meant our entire way of life could have been destroyed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s why we need to attack now, Papa. Take it to them while they are weak.”
Casmir shook his head.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said, putting his hand on the door handle. “But there are other options to discuss, first.”
Then Casmir pushed open the door and stepped into a large room.
* * *
To his left, the Exchange Room’s wall was solid and expansive, but the other three were mostly open windows, a fact that gave the area a greater sense of spaciousness than it might have deserved. The frames around those windows were load-bearing columns of rough mudbrick painted a brownish-yellow shade that reminded Casmir of the mustard his agricultural people once made from mold back when they lived on Mars. The day outside was pleasant, so the storm shades were pulled. Natural light flooded the room, and a gentle breeze kept things cool.
The staff was all here, all seated around a central table which was long, curved, and bent into a hemisphere focused on the center of the wall to Casmir’s left. They were all engaged in a collection of scattered conversations.
Casmir strode to the front and center of the room and put his fingertips on the tabletop. Deidra followed behind him at first, but peeled off to fill the lone empty seat around the table.
Gregor Anderson, Casmir’s oldest and most trusted confidante, was the first to notice his presence. Seated at the center of the table, he squared his chair and turned a comfortable gaze in Casmir’s direction. He had been speaking with Professor Catazara, who also grew quiet, though didn’t react with any particular sense of purpose. For the first time in a while, Casmir noticed how the years had changed his friend—took in the lines that ran over Gregor’s forehead, and the fact that his beard had gone from dusty gray to nearly pure white a few locals ago.
The conversations dwindled until only a single animated conversation filled the room. This, too, came to an end when Gregor made an obvious motion with his hand.
“Sorry about that,” the man said to everyone.
Timmon Keyes, the U3 captain of Icarus, sat next to Brooke Nassir, a weapons expert who had recently taken command of Einstein. They both gave bemused gazes.
“I assume you’ve all heard the news,” Casmir said.
Gregor replied for the group with his gravelly voice.
“We know the United Government has requested a parlay to discuss our future.”
“It’s a trick,” Deidra said.
Casmir gave her an exasperated glare.
“Does anyone need a grown daughter?” he quipped. There was light laughter. “She comes partially trained, but with a full set of opinions.” The laughter this time was more pronounced and took a moment to quiet down.
Deidra’s expression said she was not amused.
Casmir shrugged and raised his palms with a what are you going to do expression. Then he stood taller and paced to the far side of the room.
“We need options,” he said. “We need to discuss all ideas, and we need to discuss them now.”
Kazima Yamada sat forward in her seat, folded her fingers together, then rested her chin on the points of her extended index fingers. “I don’t think we should do anything,” she said.
Yamada had always been Casmir’s most favored adviser on various engineering systems, and she had been instrumental in devising the escape plan that the colony had used to shuttle off of Mars. Now she was leading the build-out of Atropos City’s manufacturing plants. She was also, however, a woman with a high degree of interest in and knowledge about political maneuvering. Casmir had often bounced ideas off her.
“Why do you say that?” he replied.
“Because if it isn’t broken, you don’t fix it. We’ve got a two-ship-to-one advantage. I don’t see any reason to risk that now.”
“The UG isn’t just playing humble dog,” Deidra said. “If what Intel is reporting is true, they’ll be able to build more Star Drives within a year, anyway.”
“As will we,” Yamada replied.
“Gregor?” Casmir said.
Gregor rubbed his finger and thumb through his beard. “You’ve seen the reports on their manufacturing capability,” he said. “I can’t imagine it will be more than a year.”
“And our own ships will be coming off the production line in less than two months,” Yamada replied.
“You know I’m on your side, Kazima,” Gregor replied. “But that’s an aggressive estimate, and even if it’s right, the UG has the people and resources of the entire Solar System at its disposal. We’ve got one planet and several thousand citizens.”
Yamada grimaced, but it was clear she understood and even agreed with Gregor’s assessment of the situation. Universe Three could never keep pace with the Uglies’ ability to produce.
“To do nothing would eventually put us into a position of weakness,” Deidra said. She seemed ready to come out of her seat, but somehow managed to keep her conversation to a degree of calmness that surprised Casmir.
Yamada nodded sagely. “Then our only real option is to accept their offer—”
“There are other options,” Deidra replied.
“Ms. Yamada has the floor,” Casmir said.
The room froze. The clackety sound of the city below filtered in through the windows.
“Go ahead, Kazima,” Casmir said. “How would we proceed if we meet with them.”
“I don’t know,” she said, sheepishly. “We have to think about it. But my first thought is that we would sen
d both Icarus and Einstein to the session.”
“Both with weapons trained on Orion in case something unexpected happens,” Keyes added. He glanced at Nassir, who nodded back.
“Right,” Yamada said. “We have a numerical advantage. We should use it.”
“If we do that, I suggest not telling the UG team which ship our negotiating party would be on,” Gregor said.
“I would be on that team,” Casmir said.
“That’s a bad idea,” Gregor shot back.
“I’m not letting someone else take a risk I’m not willing to take myself.”
“No one would think anything about that.”
“Yes, they would,” Casmir said.
“It’s not wise,” Gregor replied.
“I’ll be all right,” Casmir said. He turned to his daughter. “What do you think of that idea?”
“I think they’ll kill you,” she said.
“But if they do not,” he replied, “it could mean the beginning of a truly free system for us.”
Deidra crossed her arms.
Petulant, Casmir thought. That word was designed for Deidra.
“We could add some insurance,” Yamada said.
“What do you mean?”
“I like having both ships scrambled. But I think we should also make it known that we have something on each of the ships that’s important to them.”
“What are you suggesting?” Gregor said.
“Captives,” Casmir said as a full understanding of what Yamada was proposing came over him. “You’re suggesting we put captives on each ship.”
“Human shields?” Deidra said.
“Not human shields,” Yamada said. “Rewards.”
Casmir strolled to the far side of the room and stared out the window. The streets below him pulsed with movement. Yamada’s idea gave him a nervous chill, but it made sense.
“Yes,” he said. “We can communicate it as a gift, a civilized present for agreeing to speak with us. Suggest to the UG that we appreciate the opportunity to work as equals, and as such offer to transport some of their people to Orion as soon as our discussions are completed.”
“That would be brilliant,” Yamada said.
Casmir turned to his friend. “Gregor?”
The elder Anderson sat back and took in a contemplative breath. “I think it could work.”
“But you’re not certain?”
“It’s the United Government we’re talking about—they have a citizenship to govern, and they haven’t been winning. We shouldn’t assume anything for certain.”
Heads around the table nodded.
“On the other hand,” Gregor said, “retrieving their captives gives them something to spin to their advantage. If they get another concession or two, they could make it look good for themselves.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Deidra said.
“You would have us destroy Orion on sight?” Casmir said.
“It’s the safest play.”
He scanned the room. Deidra’s view had its supporters. Kyleen Lian, the group’s agricultural director, seemed particularly inclined to support the idea, but then, Kyleen had always taken interest in Deidra’s progress, and Casmir was not certain that interest was completely professional.
“If we destroy Orion, it gives us a span of ultimate control,” Deidra said. “I know how cold that sounds, but it’s a circumstance that may never happen again. A chance to be the only force in the universe with faster-than-light capability. We could use that window to shut down their entire program. I understand that sounds harsh, but the United Government has done far worse things under the guise of societal progress.”
Casmir hid a grimace at Deidra’s twisting of the “the other side is far worse” argument that Ellyn Parker had once used in her recruiting campaigns back in the days when Universe Three was just a college activist’s dream.
He scanned his leadership team. “Are there any other options?”
No one responded.
“All right, then,” he said.
He went to a pressure board and used the tip of his finger to physically write as he talked.
“We seem to have three choices. One: Ignore the request and go on. The obvious downside to this is that eventually the UG will achieve the ability to build more Star Drives. When that happens their production capability will dwarf ours. Then we could be in a position of weakness.”
He finished writing, and then scanned the room.
When there were no questions, he turned back to the board.
“Two: We meet them and try to become equals. If the offer is a ruse, the UG could use the situation to ambush our ships and disable our leadership—but we can mitigate that with the idea of offering them their captives back.”
He checked back with the team.
“And, three: Attack their ship immediately. The downside here is that overt aggression for the sake of aggression will almost certainly lead to a more intense war sometime in the future…unless victory is complete. In which case, we can make immense short-term headway.”
He turned back one last time.
“Does that capture it all?”
“It does,” Gregor said.
“All right then,” Casmir said, stretching his neck to the left and the right. “I would say it’s time to vote.”
CHAPTER 5
UGIS Orion
Local Date: January 24, 2215
Local Time: 0600
Word came through an ultrasecure channel the next morning.
Universe Three had accepted.
Between taking care of a few personal details, Torrance crammed information about this new spacecraft into his mind for two days before arriving at his post. He committed as much of each system interface into his memory as he could manage, absorbed every important element of every spec he could find. But in the end, it was all too much too fast.
As he stepped onto Orion’s mission deck and into his first technical problem, he felt completely overwhelmed.
The ship’s H-MADS—Hallway Multithreat Analysis and Defense System—was fouled up.
H-MADS was conceived after the Starburst fiasco, which had been predicated on Universe Three using moles to capture Einstein and Icarus. The system’s operational profile—the algorithms it used to monitor activity and take action to shut down insurgency at a moment’s notice—were devised by a well-paid UG think tank.
Orion had been outfitted with the H-MADS as soon as it had been developed, but the system had never really worked right and her commanding officers had ordered it turned off years ago for fear it would do more harm than good. Now it had been brought back, reconfigured and reinstalled in the past two weeks under the cloak of a simple operations refit.
Given the time, Orion’s corridors were nearly empty.
Which was good. Torrance was still feeling overwhelmed, and it was nice to have a few minutes to reacquaint himself to the ship.
Which, of course, he used up in thinking about the H-MADS problem. In the end, he was pleased to have something like this to focus on. At least with shipboard systems there was always an answer: Things either worked or they didn’t. Unlike wars, politics, or business, which got more convoluted the more you knew, shipboard systems were always clean and simple at their heart. Eventually, anyway.
As he thought, he kept in mind the old idea that a good system commander walks through a ship as if he owns it.
His gait was steady.
Crisp steps of an easy rhythm.
Where his old ship was built on a circular pattern and felt rounded everywhere, Orion was full of corners. Gravity System Command was further down the hallway, and P2—the secondary propulsion system monitoring station—was back the other way. Torrance glanced at the doorways as he passed, trying to find familiar landmarks and commit images to memory.
As Torrance passed the propulsion center he strained to see past the front offices, hoping to glimpse the cylindrical wormhole drives he had heard so m
uch about. He wanted to see the Star Drive system with his own eyes. He wanted to watch the exotic matter generators spin at near superluminal while they pushed energy into microquantum tunnels that existed for only the barest of moments in time—or, perhaps didn’t exist at all, if you believed one of the more eccentric theories about what was actually happening.
The exotic matter generators were the secret to it all.
Mathematical beauty, quantum style.
But Torrance wasn’t here to manage propulsion systems.
He was here to deal with the integration of shipboard and weapon systems, which, until he had spent the time digging deeper into H-MADS, even he had admitted was an interesting pairing.
When he turned a corner and arrived at the H-MADS post, three of his team were gathered in the hallway just under the place where a smooth sensor bulge grew from the ceiling. Each wore Orion’s green jumpers and system test belts. They had pulled a panel from the inner wall and were pointing into the open hole and arguing at enough volume that their voices were carrying. The processing unit inside lay exposed with bare wire, optical fiber, and RF sensors hanging from the equipment like snakes in a mechanical Medusa’s hair. Torrance recognized the optical processing chipset from his morning’s reading.
“So this is H-MADS, eh?” he said.
Their argument came to an abrupt halt.
“Sir!” A young man straightened to informal attention. It was Lieutenant Arthur Skiles.
Torrance took in the team.
Skiles was the systems interface leader. Lieutenant Junior Grade Angela Ramista was a shared software developer, and Lieutenant Mia Kluvac, the optical systems coordinator.
“Where’s Yuan?” he said.
Skiles hesitated for an awkward moment, still at attention.
“At ease, please,” Torrance said.
All three came down from attention, but none of them were truly at ease.
Torrance wasn’t blind to the idea that his reputation would precede him, but the effect would be even stronger with crewmates under his command—they would be dealing with a double dose of uncertainty: a new commander, and a new commander who was a media hero. He wanted to get off on the right foot.
“This might be a tough way to get introduced, but it kind of works for me, all right?” Torrance said. “At the core, I’m just an engineer, exactly like you guys.”