by Rolf Nelson
He looked at Allonia. “You’re right. Losing a carrier group might cost the government blood and treasure, but it gives the politicians tremendous propaganda, actually handing them more political power because they can claim emergency powers and measures…. Back before Earth discovered nuclear power, a dictator by the name of Stalin engineered a famine to kill millions of farmers, then used the resulting food shortages as the excuse for all sorts of actions that involved arresting and killing millions more. Another nation of the time simply ignored the tens of millions that died as long as the state plan moved forward. No, what we need is something different, events that can pit one power faction against another, and doesn’t matter to the guy on the street, but makes the pols look bad. The big ego behind the podium doesn’t care if a hundred billion get wasted, or a million die, but he can’t stand being told he’s got no clothes, that he’s an empty chair, let alone being seen that way.”
“So we hold an election?” Bipasha asked, skeptical.
“No. You win a war not when the enemy can’t fight, but when they lose the will to fight. Not just the rank and file, but at the top. If the leadership thinks they have more to gain by giving up or switching sides than continuing the struggle, they will. Rulers want to rule. Many think it better to be the biggest fish in a tiny pond than a medium fish in a vast sea. Make them see that changing positions and tolerating us with minimal interference as the low-cost path to their personal situation.”
“Any bright ideas on how exactly to do that?”
“For individual targets, thousands. Skeletons in the closets. Assassinations. Wedge issues. Rigged elections. Leverage on media big-wigs. Connecting business deals. Fomenting popular revolutions. Expanding your targeted messaging campaign. Backing military coups. Endless possibilities, each with its own good points and bad points. But we need to kick around the overall strategy and specific goals before we try to nail now what sort of operations we should pursue with our amazing but limited resources, and what sort of tactics will best implement it. A perfect hit on the wrong target doesn’t get us anything, while hitting the right target the wrong way can be just as problematic if the blow-back isn’t worth it. We need to show them we can hit them, personally, where it hurts.”
“Piece of cake, right?” Helton replied. “Sounds like the sort of thing you’ve been doing for years.”
The corner of Lag’s mouth turned up in a slight smile. “On a much smaller scale. Do you realize just what you are trying to do?”
Helton frowned and thinks a moment. “Get the government to recognize out right to exist.” Lag sits silently watching him. “Uhhh. I guess technically it’s making them change their laws to allow AI and heavily genetically engineered people to not be criminals automatically.”
Lag let the silence drag as people turn things over in their minds, trying to understand just what he’s getting at. Finally he uncovered the tip of the iceberg for them. “You are trying to get hundreds of national governments on scores of planets with varying and competing interests, and thousands of factions with millions of individual vested interests, to all agree to something that they likely see as an existential threat to their well-understood and comfortable status quo. Within their spheres, each will guard their monopoly on power jealously. We need to simultaneously make some of these players in what they view as a zero-sum game fear us so much they will accede to our demands, yet not so much that they can’t work with us, and convince other factions we are their ticket to gravy-train. Each must be made to think it will not benefit their enemies more than themselves, and each is deciding what to do within their own context. While at the same time, we hope to disrupt the average person so little they just roll their eyes at the news and wonder why it isn’t over yet already. A rather tall order to deliver on short notice.”
Tajemnica’s armored woman avatar finally spoke up from a small screen propped up in the middle of the table. “Fortunately, elephants are edible,” she said with a smile, receiving many confused looks in return. “An old joke. How do you eat an elephant? You just laid out an elephant-sized problem.” The humans exchanged glances, not knowing the answer. “One bite at a time. You have a goal, and the start of a general strategy, but there may not be any single magic fulcrum point. You just need to find a place to start carving, and take bites as you can. It will be interesting to see where it leads you.”
Emigrants
The bridge was quiet as they approached Niven. They had masses of data, but nothing particularly fresh, highly reliable, or from deep inside any government organizations. Lots of news reports, rumors, and numerous messages claiming to be from émigré wanna-be’s. Trustworthy military movement reports had become much harder to find. Nobody was absolutely sure this was the right thing to do, or the right system to hit next. But, given that they wanted to send a message to Sharon’s family, Lag expected to be able to pick up some solid intelligence in-system, and they suspected Trask might be in the system, it seemed as good a place as any.
“Do we really know for sure how many there will be?” Allonia asked pensively. Helton shook his head. The countdown toward transitioning in-system continued as silently as the crew. On one screen Taj’s privateer avatar relaxed in a deck chair with his feet up on the railing aboard the deck of a sailing ship. He cleaned his fingernails carefully with a long knife as the ocean swells rolled by behind, indicating that subspace wasn’t glassy calm, but quite manageable.
Transitioning into the normal universe, Tajemnica sent out a powerful spherical ping of EM detection energy, forgoing any claim to stealth in the name of security. Twenty seconds later, they were back in subspace. “I hate mines,” was her only comment as they headed for a different entry point, this time vectoring deep into the stellar south of the system.
The new entry point wasn’t as exciting, in fact it was downright boring, but after watching and listening intently for two hours they had a pretty good idea where the items of interest about the system were passing the time. The common ecliptic-plane transition points were mined, there were at least three groups of navy ships near the planets with significant human activity (Niven proper, a populous terraforming success story; the fifth planet, a frozen mining planet; and the innermost gas giant and its moons), and a cluster of civilian ships about five AUs out. The civilian cluster was very loose, mostly five to ten thousand kilometers apart, just a little inside the edge of where Tajemnica could transition in and not far from a congested region of one of Niven’s two asteroid fields. One ship among them was broadcasting a low-power recording saying, in effect, “Save us, Tajemnica. You are our only hope!”
“I don’t like it,” the Colonel said at last. “This has Akbar written all over it.”
Helton concurred. “Those civilian ships are just waiting, but they are too obviously being ignored by the navy, but they are not far from a great hiding place. It’s a trap. Soooo… Hit it hard, ignore it, pass through and flip the bird, nibble a bit, or something else?”
“Assuming they are waiting for us,” Bipasha asked, “how many could we take?”
“All of them… I think… couldn’t we?” Quiritis asked, uncertain about it herself.
Taj’s armored woman avatar looked thoughtful. “The aggregate mass shouldn’t be a problem – a rough estimate is no more than Borealis – but the multiple drive-centered masses and highly variable field configuration would be. More than three separate ships haven’t ever been seriously attempted as far as I know. Even a set of very similar small ships would pose very difficult calculations. A dozen ships of disparate sizes, drive configurations, and power systems is likely impossible.”
“They are too deep in to simply skip in, grab one, take it to a rendezvous point, then grab the rest one at a time from there. So, what now, Boss?” Quiritis asked pointedly. “If we just disappear when there’s no obvious problem, we look bad. We said we’d take ships into the deep, but this…”
“We could skip out to five light hours from the navy near the gas gian
t, spend five minutes accelerating in, then transition to four light hours fifty minutes at some other distant point and spend ten minutes accelerating in, then move to another point four hours forty minutes away from them.” Helton contemplates the thought a moment longer. “Do that a half dozen more times, make them think they are surrounded and getting hit with ten ships, maybe they’ll panic and tip their hand.”
Quiritis shook her head. “Sorry dear, that’s a very old trick to make your force appear larger than it is. They are not likely to fall for it.”
“What if we skip back into one of the trajectories we’d left before, so that something they assumed was a distant decoy that would disappear kept coming?”
“A trick about two days younger than the first one,” she replied, again rejecting the idea.
“So they’d assume we wouldn’t try it, right?”
“Maybe, at some point. Not sure if this is the right time.”
“How about pop in about halfway between our closest point and theirs, just hang out a while, maybe cruise along the grav-well line, and see what they do?” Lag offered.
After debating the merits of the visible alternative actions, they decide to go with the Colonel’s idea as it allowed them to gather more intelligence and get a closer view of things. But after being studiously ignored for the better part of a day, nothing much has changed. They’d not been challenged by any of the navy ships, hailed by the assumed emigrant ships, or intercepted anything much more interesting than I Love Lucy reruns. It looked like everyone was playing it cool.
“They’re keeping a tight lid on things,” Taj said, wrinkling her avatar’s brow in thought. “No stray EM anywhere. Either there really isn’t anything awaiting us, or they are hiding unusually well. And neither of those options really sit comfortably.”
“I’m tired of waiting. I say we charge in, hail them, take the largest one with us, and see what happens.” Allonia’s opinion was well known, and was sounding more appealing all the time.
“Risky,” Lag said, shaking his head. “We’re missing something.”
“What about hailing a Navy ship from range?” mused Kaminski, having joined the discussion more recently.
“None of them are anywhere we can transition and they can’t. So we either have to hail from nearly a half light-hour away at closest and let them lie to us with a long reply wait, or we go in where they have a whole fleet on tap.” Helton points to the tactical display locations casually. “We show up outside, they send a drone, and twenty second later the cavalry show up. The interceptor screens are a lot closer than old doctrine mandates. They can give supporting fire much better. They are playing it smart; all the way out, or deep in, no mid-field where the advantages are all ours. They are learning. Slowly, but learning none the less.”
“Thennnnn…?”
“Any way to ping a navy ship or two and get useful intel?” Helton asked, looking at Lag.
“Other than general drive and weapons status, not really. With a good terahertz array and some time you can get a lot more, but on a quick skip by they are usually pretty well sealed against such intrusions. And most of my military contacts are not likely to be talking much on an open band to this ship right now.”
“Weeellll…. I guess it’s time to taste the cheese, see what they have planned,” Helton said at long last. “Quiri, let’s skip by a dozen or so of the larger Navy ships, maybe a few interceptors too. Close in but spending five seconds or less next to each one. Ping them hard, random pattern, hit some from two sides, maybe even three or four. No shooting or weapons locks, but all weapons at the ready. We can check responses and data, see if there are any surprises. Then we drop in a ways outside our inner limit near the ships awaiting us and charge in at eighty percent acceleration. Come in high, so directionals won’t hit the asteroids in the background, and hail them on tight beam. We’ll need one person per ship live on screen, and Taj can monitor. We’ll prioritize them based on what we find out. Most likely tell them all to scatter, maybe some can consolidate people aboard one ship, then we grab the largest one and head out-system with her. Stay frosty, be ready to change plans and bail if it gets ugly. Any objections?”
“Many,” replied Lag quietly. “But other than wait longer, no better ideas, either.”
Thirty four jumps around the system (and likely more than a few changes of interceptor-pilot underwear after a close encounter) later, nobody had shot at them, nobody had replied to them, and nothing more than normal active scans had hit them. Which made Taj and the Colonel all the more nervous, but there still wasn’t any articulable reason to not follow through with the rest of the plan. Entering normal space somewhat above the ecliptic, they started a moderate dive for the assemblage of ships, hailing them on narrow beam as soon as they were solidly in normal human universe. Even accounting for the speed of light delay, it still felt an inordinately long time before any live reply finally came back.
“Glad to finally see you here,” Captain Blintz said from the bridge of the largest ship awaiting them, in an unexpectedly subdued voice, his expression flat. “The navy said we could wait for you here. Anywhere else in the system and they would inspect, check, tax, and clear every ship and person aboard.” The body language didn’t match the words.
“Did they tell you why here? How long have you been waiting?” Helton asked.
“They said nothing but ‘wait there.’ They have had a blockade up for weeks, didn’t let anyone through without prior authorization. A week ago they started allowing some ships to come here, but three days ago shut things down again. No reasons given.”
“They said you could leave, no problem?”
Blintz shook his head. “Yes… Not exactly. Just said we could wait here for you.”
Lag, watching the conversation off to one side, smiled without humor. “The only trap more obvious would need clay pigeons and someone shouting pull! The question now is how?”
Helton nodded, thinking furiously. “Captain… do you have anything on your scanners other than the waiting ships and us?”
Blintz started to say something, thought better of it, then started over, clearly choosing his words carefully, and putting a very slight extra emphasis on certain words. “Our… radar… shows no cruisers in the area, if that’s what you are asking.”
“Ah, I see. Good. Have you discussed with the other ships which will go with us?”
“We all want to go, of course.”
“We can’t take you all. We can piggyback one at a time into The Deep, but we still have to transition out of here further out of the well. So, which of you will come out first?”
After some uncertain posturing and vague and unconvincing requests to just come and get them, Captain Blintz said he guessed that the second-largest ship, an old in-system ferry shuttle, would be best as its drives were in the worst shape, and the most likely to have life-support problems soon. He really hoped that they would be able to come in and pick them up. After acknowledging, Helton signed off for a little while to see how the others were doing.
The same basic story was heard from all the ships. None of the “captains” were particularly convincing, nobody thought their ship should be first, and the ship they all pointed to was the same (though for different reasons), but that ship had a suspiciously long reply delay, which Taj noted was what would be expected from an extra round-trip to the nearest large asteroid. Further, that captain seemed just off in some undefined way, and unconvincing in his insistence that he be first because the passengers were at risk.
So the only question to debate was to run, spring the trap to find out the details, or do something unexpected and hope for a useful or informative reaction.
“Taj, how many long-range sensor probes do we have?”
“Four, Captain,” came the prompt reply.
“How good are they?”
“Depends. What are you looking for?”
“I think… I think that we should hit it. If we run now, they’ll try something les
s transparent next time. If we spring it right, there should be enough internal turmoil and finger-pointing that we might be able to learn a lot. And we should never pass up a chance at letting them look bad.”
“What are you planning, exactly?” Lag probed.
“Reduce acceleration in-system. Launch probes at three of the ships – the largest, the one they want us to take, and one of the others. Keep one in reserve. Scan them closely, see what’s up. Then pick our targets and act accordingly. I’d bet one of them has heavy weapons to fire at us, or a load of marines that are going to attempt a boarding.”
“And if they are clean?”
“Scan another three while we pick one up. Not the one they want us too, of course.”
The hum of the drives lowered as acceleration was cut in half and probes launched, speeding off to get a close-up on what lay ahead. Not long after, they were talking to angry and fearful sounding people on the ships wondering why they were being fired upon with torpedoes, who didn’t appear inclined to believe that they were just probes.
As the drone sensors got closer and decelerated to allow for examining the ships more closely the calls became more strident and less coherent. The largest ship was the first to be scanned closely. The probe circled around it several times as it moved from one end to another, while the captain protested continuously. Nothing unexpected could be seen: lots of people, no weapons, not a lot of supplies. Power systems readings appeared normal, but the drive and synthetic gravity fields were off in unusual ways. The second ship scanned, a modified cargo hauler, had no weapons, but only two dozen people at first glance. Scanning more deeply, most of the cargo hold appeared to contain hundreds of medical support robo-doc tanks. When pressed for details, the captain claimed they were all in cold medical comas to reduce life-support demands, but they were all healthy and fit and ready to move to a new world. In fact, he couldn’t stop singing their praises enough.