Monroe noted her critical eye, and raised an eyebrow. Jan smiled.
"I have some experience here, Admiral. My first duty station was the galley," Jan said.
Monroe was a bit nonplussed by that. Before they left Earth, President Tucker himself had described her to him as the greatest tactician of her generation. The decorations on her uniform, topped off with the only examples of either the Earth Medal or the Commonwealth Charter Medallion he had ever seen, and including four awards of both the Combat Medal and the Distinguished Service Medal, and seven Victorious Action awards, attested to her skills. And the CSF had started her out in the galley?
Jan caught his expression and laughed.
"That was a long time ago, Admiral," Jan said.
"Ah."
They were in the shuttle on the way back down to the shuttle pad on the roof of the NOC at Sigurdsen.
"Everything looks in order to me, Admiral. I think you made wise choices in the design, such as making the cabins small so as to allow a larger public space, and limiting passenger movement between decks. It's perfect for its intended mission," Jan said.
"Thank you, Ma'am. We gave it quite a bit of thought," Monroe said.
"Clearly. I will tell Chairman Desai and President Turner all is in order with the ships. Thank you for humoring me with the tour, especially since our technical people have been over it all already."
"No problem at all, Ma'am."
Jan pulled out her portable and sent a quick message.
FROM: CHILDERS
TO: DESAI
SUBJECT: SHIPS
NEW COLONY SHIPS PASSED ALL INSPECTION.
JUST FINISHED PERSONAL TOUR.
ALL GOOD.
Jan was surprised when she got an almost immediate message back.
FROM: DESAI
TO: CHILDERS
SUBJECT: SHIPS
PLS SIGN OFF FOR ME THX
"That was fast," Jan said.
Jan, Bill, and Monroe went down in the elevator to one of the conference rooms in the basement. While the three of them had snuck out for the tour, their staffs had worked all afternoon on details. It was just about time to break for supper.
Jan looked around the room.
"Who has the transfer papers?"
"Here they are, Ma'am."
One of the staffers handed her the papers that transferred ownership of the colony ships in consideration for, and in payment of, the prior transfer of the ENS Victory and the ENS Golden Hind. It was a big sheaf of specifications and technical requirements. On the cover sheet, there was a list of department and technical sign-offs, with initials on each of them, running in two columns down the page. There was one big empty signature line on the bottom of the sheet.
After "ACCEPTED," Jan signed, "ADM Jan Childers, for Chairman Desai."
Jan looked up at the twenty others in the room, who had all gone suddenly silent. She handed the papers to Admiral Monroe and shook his hand.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Admiral."
"And you, Ma'am."
Jan signaled the staff and they opened the doors to the adjoining dining room.
"OK, business is concluded. Let's eat."
At that, the spell was broken. The CSF and ESN technical people in the room applauded, and they shook their counterparts' hands, before everybody filed into the next room for supper.
Refining the Search
A single courier drone transitioned into normal space at its hyperspace-1 limit from Brunswick. It broadcast its presence as the new mail drone for the Jablonka run, and picked up the outbound mail. It also dropped inbound mail into the planetary mailbox on Brunswick.
The inbound mail included a news story that the Earth and the Commonwealth of Free Planets were looking for colonists, of breeding age and with an education or applicable skill, for settling new colonies being established on near-Earth type planets. It gave an electronic address from which to obtain an application. There was no charge for the application, and no charge to participate as a colonist. The transit to the colony and all necessary supplies were being provided by the Earth and the Commonwealth.
The same scenario played itself out across all one hundred and twenty Outer Colony systems.
Jan, Bill, Admiral Durand, and Vice Admiral Jessen were meeting in a basement conference room in the Science Division headquarters with the head of the Science Division, Admiral Anton Lee, and his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Janet Ostrowski.
"Thank you all for coming," Lee said. "I wanted to update you on where we are in putting together science teams who can do the on-site survey of the planets that look good from a review of the survey drone data.
"It's been a bit of a challenge, because we haven't surveyed new planets for colonization purposes for a long time. There is no existing in-house expertise in this area, at least none with any experience. We have had to go back and look through our archives, as well as those of other planets that did initial surveys, especially Earth. The cooperation of President Turner in that area was especially helpful.
"We reviewed those records looking for the things they did, as well as they things they didn't do which caused problems for the colony later. We think we have a pretty complete list, at least for those things which are known issues. Science is mostly a method of characterizing the things you already learned the hard way, so we don't know we won't run into things outside of humanity's past experience that will cause problems."
"Understood. There could be some totally new kind of virus or something that we don't test for or don't recognize because we don't know it exists," Jan said.
"Precisely," Lee said. "Given that caveat, however, we do have a complete list, and we have ways of testing for all of these things, whether positive or negative. We also think we have a handle on how to test for things that vary over time or are episodic, like orbital wobble and magnetic field inversions and solar coronal ejections and things like that. We could visit a planet that is just lovely, except every ten thousand years something stupid happens and oh, by the way, it's overdue. That sort of thing. We think we have ways to spot those, but again, we only know how to test for the things we've seen before.
"We've trained up enough people for four initial teams. They're big teams, fifty or so people in each, for the first runs. We think we can get it down to twenty or so as we gain experience. Our thought is to send the first teams out to survey perhaps four planets each, and then come back and fine-tune the training for additional people given their experience. We then split the trained group up into maybe a dozen teams, with some of the experienced people in each of those.
"Does that all sound like it will work for you?"
Jan, Bill, Durand, and Jessen all looked back and forth at each other. Jan was pretty good at reading that group by this point, and answered for all of them.
"Yes, I think so. How long will the on-site surveys take?"
"I would think two to three weeks for a successful candidate, less for one where some disqualification becomes apparent sooner. We may be able to get that number down somewhat as time goes on, but not much," Lee said.
"Why is that?"
"There are some things, like doing soil cultures, that simply take as long as they take. Even if we start a number of those things the first day on-site, they still take more than a week to run. Getting faster and more efficient at our jobs with experience won't make those processes go any faster."
"I see. When can your first teams depart?" Jan asked.
"Oh, they're ready now. A couple of days to get packed – there's an entire container of supplies and equipment that has to go with each team – and then they would be set to go. It more depends on when you want to start."
"Admiral Durand, do we have twenty candidate planets for on-site survey right now?"
"Almost. We will when the next round of reports come in later this week. Can you spare the ships right now?" Durand asked.
"The most recent division of the new ships just arrived. They'll be wor
king up over the next several weeks, but I don't have a problem with sending out four of the twelve that are worked up right now."
"Then we should be able to send them as soon as the new planet survey results come in," Durand said.
"All right, Admiral Lee. I think you should start your people packing. Looks like they will be departing in the next four days or so."
"Very well, Admiral Childers. We'll get started on that."
After the courier trip in which the news story about the colony project was included, an advertisement for the colony project was included in every news packet circulated by the courier drones.
The Outer Colony system of Guernsey had not participated in the alliance to attack the Commonwealth. It had decided to wait until an initial success was in hand before it joined, and it was glad it did. The system views captured by merchant ships and surviving warships of the Commonwealth's defense of Waldheim, Parchman, and Kodu, and of the retribution against the Outer Colonies who did participate in the attacks, had circulated among all the Outer Colonies.
Nevertheless, the regime in Guernsey took exception to the distribution of the advertisement. It first tried to block the distribution on the planet and found cross-encryption was set up so blocking that one item resulted in no mail being uploaded or downloaded, and no news being delivered. The ad was embedded in the package in such a way it could not be removed.
The Guernsey regime then decided to kill the courier drone. They dispatched a light cruiser to destroy the drone. As the light cruiser approached, the courier drone warned it off. When it continued to approach, the courier drone fired a battleship-grade beam weapon and destroyed the light cruiser.
The word that these were armed courier drones went out among the Outer Colonies – ironically, in messages carried on the new fast mail system – and there were no further attempts to interfere with the mail.
Return to Paradiso
"All right. Let's be careful when we transition. We don't know what we're going to find," Admiral Harold Anderson said.
"Yes, Sir," Jane Gunther said.
In the frantic abandonment of the heavy cruisers in Kodu, he had crammed the crews of his four Paradiso heavy cruisers into the Paradiso squadron of light cruisers. They had been hot-bunking twelve-on, twelve-off, and the waking shift filled all the empty spaces in the smaller ships. The galleys had been running twenty-four hours trying to keep everybody fed, and they had burned through their stores during the month-long transit back to Paradiso. He hadn't even tried to put additional people on his squadron of destroyers.
Fourteen hundred people on a ship made for eight hundred is a bit of a stretch, though, he thought.
"Hyperspace transition complete, Sir. Scanning the system. Everything looks pretty normal. Except... Sir, there are no heavy cruisers in the system. None."
"Looks like the Commonwealth came through here and cleaned them out at home as well."
They had taken four heavy cruisers to Kodu, and left six at home. Those were now gone, too. Probably with their crews. They had just finished building back up to their normal heavy cruiser strength after having tangled with the Commonwealth in Kodu ten years ago. They had concentrated on building the light combatants back up first, since they were so much cheaper.
"The light combatant strength looks undamaged, Sir. Showing one squadron each of destroyers and light cruisers."
So the Paradiso Space Navy was now thirty-two ships – two squadrons each of light cruisers and destroyers. Anderson sighed. It would be a long time before they came back up to strength. If ever.
"Sir, the Paradiso State Police space station is missing."
"Are you sure?" Anderson asked.
"Yes, Sir. It's just gone. So are their ready squadron in orbit. No PSP vehicles in orbit at all."
"That's curious. Have you scanned the planet?"
"Scans are running, Sir. It's taking a while, and we just have this side, although the eastern hemisphere is toward us."
The capital, Corazon, would be on this side, then. Curious to see what happened there, if anything.
"Sir, the Paradiso State Police Base is gone."
"What do you mean gone? That's a huge facility."
"Yes, Sir. It's gone. I'm reading some hard radiation figures there. Estimate of blast size is ten megatons.
"Also, there are three, no, four kinetic weapon strikes in the capital, Sir. The Foreign Ministry, the Executive Mansion, the Parliament, and the Ministry of State Police were hit. They're all gone."
"What about the Defense Ministry?"
"No, Sir. That looks OK."
"Are you monitoring news channels?"
"Yes, Sir, we're recording them. I haven't looked at them yet."
"All right. Let me know when you have something to share."
"Yes, Sir."
The State Police Headquarters, the Foreign Ministry, the Executive Mansion, and the Parliament, together with the huge Paradiso State Police Base, as well as the Paradiso State Police space station and ready squadron. All gone. But not the Defense Ministry.
Whoever said you were smart, Jan Childers, they didn't know the half of it. I suspect you and I could have been friends in another universe, Anderson thought, as he worked to suppress the smile that kept trying to break out on his face.
GALACTIC MAIL
Designing the Future
Jan and Bill were sitting on the front porch, looking out over Sigurdsen on a beautiful Saturday evening after Peggy and Max were in bed.
"This is what? The third set of colony ships delivered by Earth?" Bill asked.
"Yes. Thirty-six ships. Six colony squadrons. At the rate they're turning them out, you're going to be able to walk around Jablonka in orbit if we don't start sending them out soon," Jan said.
"So they're almost caught up in the trade."
"Almost. They've taken delivery of eight cruiser destroyers. They'll catch up in the next month or two."
"Then what? Are they going to slow down on deliveries to match our pace?" Bill asked.
"Apparently not. Since we delivered warships and drones before they could deliver colony ships, they don't see any reason to slow down delivery of the colony ships to match our warship production rates. They're just going to keep showing up until we're swimming in them."
"Oh, my. And of the two hundred and sixteen ships – thirty-six squadrons – we're scheduled for how many?"
"Half of them. Eighteen squadrons. We're probably going to give them an entire squadron of the cruiser destroyers at some point, because we started one squadron up on them. Just to maintain parity." Jan said.
"What about the on-site surveys? None of those have come back yet. They've been gone a couple months now."
Jan put her tea down on the side table.
"No, but the longer it takes for them to get back, the better off we are. We were looking at eight to twelve weeks to survey four planets each, assuming there were no big deal breakers discovered early. If they go the full time, that means no big early fails."
"And there are four ships out. So that's sixteen potential colony planets," Bill said.
"Eight ships. Earth sent four out as well."
"They only have the eight cruiser destroyers. They sent out four of them?"
"Yep. Jake said he had the whole conventional navy plus the drones to deal with the Outer Colonies, and he wasn't afraid of us, at least not for the time being. We already had our chance at them, and passed," Jan said.
"Wow. So thirty-two potential planets. Almost instantly. And that's just the first round."
"Well, they'll be tiny colonies at first. A couple of generations of expansion and additional immigrants, and then they'll start being going concerns. It takes a while. We're just planting seeds right now."
"But what a harvest that will be," Bill said. He looked back out over Sigurdsen. "It'll be a whole new galaxy."
"And then what? What do you do to keep peace in this new setup? How do you keep individual planets from staging raids o
n others to destroy infrastructure and gain a commercial advantage, destroying lives and economies in the process?"
"I've been thinking about that. We've been fighting these skirmishes with the Outer Colonies for our whole careers, and it was going on well before that. I mean, conquering a planet is more or less out of the question. You can't move enough troops in over interstellar distances to hold down a planetary population."
"Are you sure about that?" Jan asked. "What about the new colony planets?"
"OK, there it might make some sense. But you're not going to hold down a populated, established planet with an off-planet force. That was difficult even when there were different nations just on the Earth. If they didn't border one another, it was pretty much impossible. Herding cats would be easier. And there is no equivalent to one planet bordering another. You can't just march your armies in, you have to transport them. Look at the infrastructure we need just to transport twenty thousand people to an empty planet."
"All right. I can see that. So what we really need to worry about is interplanetary depredations – raids like the Outer Colonies just tried on us. What about the planetary governments. Despots and dictators?"
"That's the flip side of the coin. Very difficult to do anything about that. Once you kick it over, then what do you do?" Bill asked.
"Well, we did it on Earth, and with those twenty Outer Colonies."
"Yes, but the Earth was a special case. We co-opted their military, took over their VR, and managed to find two guys who could run with the ball, one of whom was a political genius. That was pure dumb luck. We kicked over the anthill, and then you just sort of winged it from there. You're good at that – mapping out a hundred possibilities, and then playing it out as it unfolds – but we got lucky.
"And we don't know what's going to come out of the Outer Colonies mess yet. It could be worse. On some planets, it almost surely will be, given the numbers."
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