The walls of his quarters were made of hardened foam. There was one spot, indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, near the head of his bed, where it was just a bit softer. He forced his fingers into it, pushed side to side, thrust his hand deeper, and grabbed the butt of his Colt. He pulled it out of the wall, turned it on, did a power check.
Good to go.
Next he checked the door: to his surprise, it was unlocked. He turned back and checked his communication channels. The normal communication channels were open, and he pinged Fang-Castro.
“Yes, David.”
“Shots fired, somebody’s hurt, the comm’s working and the doors are open.”
“Then I’m going to the bridge.”
“Get your sidearm, but stick it in your waistband. Don’t carry it in your hand.”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t know yet, I’m looking at my personnel screen . . . hang there just one second, I can give you a reading . . .”
He pulled up the personnel screen, went to mapping. There were no Chinese heading to either his or Fang-Castro’s quarters. He could see two Chinese running away from the bridge. Barnes had armed himself and was setting up in the main hub intersection. Smart man. Francisco was still in his quarters, working his communications panel.
He tapped back to Fang-Castro. “You’re clear all the way to the bridge. I’d say we’ve got about half the ship back, but I don’t know the bridge status. Let me call Langers . . .”
Langers came up one second later: “Sir, we have the bridge. Summerhill’s . . . dead. The Chinese here have given up.”
“Hang on there, the admiral is on her way.”
To Fang-Castro: “Go. Go. We got the bridge.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“There’s a crowd of Chinese setting up opposite Barnes. I’m going that way.”
Before he went he called Greenberg and told her what had happened. “Jam the air lock. Don’t let anybody through.”
“Doing that now.”
He took one last look at the personnel screen. Where was Darlington? He tapped a couple of keys and Darlington popped up. The Commons: with four Chinese and a bunch of Americans. He didn’t bother to count them, just slipped out the door and ran toward the hub.
Everything froze. Armed Chinese and Americans faced each other, but nobody fired any weapons.
As Fang-Castro approached the bridge, she found a Chinese soldier standing outside. He started to draw his pistol, thought again, put it away. “I cannot get in.”
Fang-Castro’s slate was working again. She pinged the bridge and said, “I’m outside, with an armed Chinese soldier. His weapon is holstered.”
Langers replied: “We have control here. The Chinese have surrendered their weapons. Uh, ask him for his.”
Fang-Castro looked at the Chinese soldier, who’d overhead the call. The man scratched his face, and nose once, then said, “My commander is in the Commons. She wishes to speak to you. I have delivered the message, now I go back.”
He left, and a moment later Fang-Castro walked onto the bridge.
—
Sun kept her weapon fixed on the line of Americans; three or four minutes after she’d entered the Commons, she was pinged by Fang-Castro, whose image appeared on the large view screen. She said, “Lieutenant Cui, Lieutenant Sun, you have lost control of the ship. Please surrender your weapons to the nearest Americans and we will settle this amicably, as we should have from the start. This is not a situation we can really resolve at our ranks—”
Sun cut in. “You may call me Colonel Sun. You still have not understood the situation, Admiral. We cannot allow you exclusive control of this technology. We demand that you and the rest of the non-critical Americans return to your quarters, where you will be locked down until we reestablish control here.”
“We absolutely will not do that—”
“You had better,” Sun said. “I tell you this. We cannot allow you the tech. I will begin executing the people we have here, one every five minutes, until you are locked down again. If anyone attacks us, I will do what I can to destroy the ship. I know I can blow at least two holes in it. I doubt that you’ll survive. The five minutes starts . . . now.”
Everybody in the room looked at the clock at the corner of the Commons screen. Eight minutes after twelve, straight up.
Two minutes into the count, with no reaction yet from Fang-Castro—she’d asked to consult with her command staff—Bob Hannegan, the physicist, held up a hand. “Colonel Sun, I need to speak to you for ten seconds.”
Sun scowled at him. “Speak.”
Hannegan held up a gold stylus. “This is one of the kill trigger switches.” He gripped it and turned one side against the other. “And this is how it works.”
Sun said, “Wait!”
Hannegan snapped the stylus in half, and said, “Ouch, I cut myself.” And to Sun, “Now there’s no reason to shoot anyone. The QSUs are gone.”
As he said the last word, an alarm sounded, and he added: “There goes the fire alarm. There’s a three-thousand-degree fire in the burn box.”
Cui pinged the Chinese guard outside the strong room. “What is your status?”
“There are two Americans here, with guns, but they have not drawn them. My gun remains holstered.”
“We have been told that a kill trigger switch has been fired. Do you have any indication—”
“Yes. I heard a . . . boom . . . one minute ago, and I believe it came from the strong room. One moment, another American is running here.”
They waited and a few seconds later, the guard called again: “He has a fire extinguisher, which he says he needs to shoot on the outside of the burn box before the fire burns through. He says it will cool the box. Shall I allow him to open the door?”
Sun said, “Yes. Tell me what you see.”
The guard called again a moment later: “It is very hot in here. There is a steel box sitting on what looks like ceramic bricks. The box is glowing red at the top and white at the bottom. The American is spraying it with a freezing foam which does not stay on, but the box is cooling somewhat.”
Sun said, “I can’t believe it.”
She turned to Bob Hannegan and shot him in the head. Hannegan’s body simply dropped straight down; he might have had a surprised look on his face.
Sun looked up at the view screen, where Fang-Castro had reappeared. She shouted, “Admiral Fang-Castro. We demand that you return to your quarters. We have executed the first of your crew members, and will continue each five minutes until we are given access to the alien information.”
“The alien information has been destroyed,” Fang-Castro said. “Your own people can confirm this.”
“I do not believe this,” Sun shouted at her. “Even if so, you still have the I/O input. We demand that you return to your quarters, and return the ship to our control, so that we may access the datastore, or I will execute another crew member in”—she winked at her implants—“three minutes.”
Fang-Castro said, “Killing people won’t bring back the QSUs—”
“We can’t take the chance!” Sun shouted. “If you don’t believe me . . .”
She raised her gun, pointing it at Francisco.
Sandy shouted, “Wait, wait, wait . . . Colonel. I can fix this. . . . I promise you, I can fix this.”
Sun was wild-eyed: “And how would you fix this, Captain Darlington?”
“Let me . . .” He picked up his slate and unclipped his stylus. “A datastore switch.”
From the screen above him, Fang-Castro said, “Captain Darlington! Captain Darlington! Don’t do that. Don’t do that! That’s an order.”
Sandy looked up at the screen. “She’s crazy, ma’am. She’s going to kill Commander Francisco.”
Sun said, “Give me that switch.�
��
Sandy said, “No. Here. I’m going to fix everything.” He snapped the stylus in his hands, and said, “The datastore is gone.”
Sun shouted, “You are lying. You lie!” Spittle was flying from her lips as she looked around the room at the wide-eyed Americans. She pointed the gun at Sandy’s head and shouted, “Admiral, you have ten seconds to surrender the bridge—”
Cui shot her in the back.
Sun went down and rolled over, her eyes open, catching Cui just before she died. Cui felt nothing for her at all. She looked up at the screen and said, “Admiral Fang-Castro, if you will put me on ship-wide comm, I will order my crew to lay down their arms.”
Propulsion and Engineering’s systems ran entirely independently of the rest of the Nixon. The shift on duty had no appreciation of how much the balance of power had shifted in a few handfuls of minutes.
“Hey, Wendy, the comm channels are all open again,” one of her techs called out. Dr. Greenberg shook her head. Why did it seem like the interesting stuff always happened on her shift? So far, on this mission, “interesting” meant “bad.”
Okay, maybe not bad this time, she thought. She opened a channel to the bridge, thought about asking, “Hey what’s going on up there?” but decided on a more prudent formality, just in case she was speaking for history.
“Wendy Greenberg, here, chief engineer on duty. Can we have a status update? Over.”
“Wendy? You guys okay? Langers. The Chinese have surrendered. Summerhill, Hannegan, and Sun are dead. Over.”
There was a mutter all through Engineering: Summerhill was dead? But they had the ship back? Greenberg asked a tech, “Do I laugh or cry?”
When Fang-Castro and Crow got to the Commons, they found Sandy sitting in a chair next to a couple of Chinese soldiers. Sandy looked at Fang-Castro and said, “It’s all over?”
“It’s all over.” She shook her head: “We lost both the QSUs and the datastore. Mr. Francisco?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Take Captain Darlington to the remaining lockup and secure him there. I’m placing him under arrest for ignoring a direct order under combat conditions.”
Crow was dumbfounded. “Really?”
“I believe we could have negotiated—”
Clover jumped in. “You’re wrong. You’re flat wrong. Sun was nuts. She was going to kill all of us.”
Fang-Castro snapped: “I didn’t ask your opinion, Mr. Clover. This will all be subject to an inquiry. In the meantime, Mr. Darlington goes to jail. We’ve lost access to centuries’ worth of knowledge that would have revolutionized the world as we know it. Mr. Francisco, remove him.”
Sandy gave Crow the toothy grin: “Some days you ride the board, and some days the board rides you. That’s just life, big guy.”
63.
Santeros was all too aware of the light-speed delay. It was not improving her temperament. It would be difficult for anything to put her in a worse mood than the past week. Starting with goddamn Fang-Castro’s taking the Chinese survivors on board the Nixon, and hadn’t that worked out well?
Then came the takeover and the runaround she’d gotten from Beijing. This was an act of piracy, clear and simple. Or maybe an act of war. Nobody disputed that. How had Beijing responded? With the diplomatic equivalent of a shrugged shoulder and a mock-sympathetic “Life is hard, isn’t it?”
And in the meantime, the Chinese had started a worldwide scare campaign: they were just trying to keep the Americans from keeping the tech that belonged to all humans. The scare campaign was gaining ground.
And that goddamn general secretary, Hong, was doing his best to piss her off even more. On the phone, just now: he didn’t say it in so many words, but the condensed version was that she—the fuckin’ President of the whole United fuckin’ States—was being blown off!
She said her polite good-byes, wished the general secretary’s family well, added under her breath that she hoped they’d all get tertiary syphilis, and slammed the handset down so hard that it cracked.
The bang made Paula White and Richard Emery, the chairwoman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wince. They glanced at each other. Santeros had a famous temper, but this was off the scale.
Carefully and quietly, White asked, “No improvement, Madam President?”
“Oh no, it’s just great. Can’t you tell from the expression on my face?” She caught herself and took a deep breath, swallowed. “I’m sorry, Paula, I’m taking it out on you and I should be taking it out on that asshole, Hong. He’s got that grandpa face, and he’s a bigger hard-liner than me. Publicly, he’s all wringing of hands and bemoaning the ‘rogue activities’ of the Chinese pirates. In private he’s throwing a party. Hell, it’s not even that private.”
“Madam President,” said Emery, “we need to up the ante. Put pressure on Beijing as well as prepare for the worst. Paula and I”—he glanced over at his boss, who nodded—“we think you need to start mobilizing. Take our forces up to Tier Three. And if this doesn’t resolve soon, Tier Two.”
Her chief of staff stuck his head in: “Ma’am, you’ve got a highest priority incoming from the Nixon. You’re gonna want to look at it.”
“How bad?”
The chief of staff scratched his head. “Honestly . . . I don’t know. It’s . . . I’m just going to spool it over to you.”
“Give it to me in one word. Are we going to war?”
“Uh . . . no, but I’m not sure how much happier you’re gonna be. Let me spool it over.”
64.
Hong’s call came just past midnight in Washington, early afternoon in a sunny, flower-scented Beijing. In Washington, Gladys’s soft, synthesized voice spoke in the Oval Office. “Madam President, General Secretary Hong is on the line. May I put him through?” Santeros waved assent.
She said, “Mr. Secretary, we’re going to need something that’ll make both our populaces . . . and our governmental oppositions . . . happy. I’m getting a lot of push here just to have the Chinese rescuees shot outright, as pirates. No international tribunals, no repatriation. Just a bullet for each one.”
Hong: “And I’m dealing with folks who think they’re the Heroes of the Revolution. You shoot them and my administration won’t stand. The MSS will have me replaced with someone even more intractable within hours.”
Santeros chuckled. “Things don’t move quite so fast here, but if your ‘heroes’ get their way and my opponents can pin that on me, the next sound you hear will be the House drawing up articles of impeachment.”
Representative Cline shook her head vigorously no.
“Oh, face facts, Francie,” Santeros said. “If it looks like I caved in to the Chinese pirates, and you don’t support a motion to impeach, you’ll find yourself ex-Speaker before you could blink twice.”
Hong continued, “So, here’s our proposed joint statement: our two crews had some communications difficulties to begin with. Language barriers, misunderstood orders, which created some confusion and concern, but it was all over nothing. I can toss in something about radical dissidents trying to foment trouble, not in concert with our policies. I’m sure you can come up with something about minor difficulties in the power plant delaying the restart of the engines. The important thing being that everyone is working together now in the spirit of international cooperation to see that both our peoples come home safely.”
“That could fly, if your guys will go along. We’ll have to shut everybody up when they get back, but I can do that on my end.”
“And I can assure you that I can do it on mine. But I have to give the MSS a bone. They don’t believe that all the memory is gone. They point out that you have three major computers, not one.”
“You should know, you sabotaged one of them.”
“I’m trying to be . . . cooperative here, and find a way to save both our asses.”
“
But primarily your own.”
“Of course, and I’m sure that you have the same relative priority.”
“Yes. I do.”
“So. Since you say the memory store and the QSUs are all gone . . . here is our proposal.”
Santeros had to struggle with the various interest groups involved—and talk to the top scientific experts—but in the end, acceded to the Chinese proposal.
One last task: put the screws to Fiorella. Santeros needed just the right news to be broadcast. . . .
—
Greenberg was sucking down a bulb of coffee when she took the call from the bridge. The Nixon floated in space, fourteen million kilometers from Saturn and 1.3 billion kilometers from Earth.
“Dr. Greenberg, this is Commander Fang-Castro. You have permission to bring the engines back online, full power at your convenience. Helm has sent the navigation coordinates to your station. Let’s go home.”
65.
Saturday, November 24, 2068—a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from Earth. The Nixon was home.
That’s how it felt to the crew, anyway. They were in Earth orbit. It was a large, elliptical orbit, never coming closer than fifty thousand kilometers to the earth and extending out beyond the moon. But it was an orbit; they were captured in Earth’s gravitational field.
The Nixon would spiral in, reversing the course they had taken when they departed nearly a year and a half ago. Thanksgiving, two days earlier, had been a sober affair. Although Earth was tantalizingly close, less than a million kilometers away and rushing toward them, they still had too much velocity for orbital capture.
But nothing went wrong.
The least thankful person had been Fang-Castro. She had not taken the decisions of the two governments very well.
“I cannot believe you’re asking this of me,” she said. “You seriously expect me to scuttle my own ship?” She’d received outrageous demands in her time, but this was beyond all imagining.
Santeros was the model of calm. “Admiral, I am not asking anything of you. I’m telling you. This is what is going to happen. The Nixon will be abandoned, disposed of. The new Chinese Martian transport will retrieve you and your crew. They will bring you back to low Earth orbit. This has been decided. Debate is not being reopened.”
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