A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  * * *

  “I wonder if I might ask a favor,” Nick said on com. The call was unexpected to Jeff.

  A five-second lag gave one time to think. Jeff was starting to see that as so advantageous he wished it was a feature of local calls.

  “I guess I owe you after kidnapping you,” Jeff said. He wouldn’t have dared tease him about it if he wasn’t sure Nick didn’t hold that view. “At least they didn’t fire you.”

  “At my level, they explain they no longer have full confidence in you, and politely ask for your resignation,” Nick said. “They only fire you if you are a stubborn ass about it and so sure you are in the right you make them fire you as a public spectacle. I understand it’s about the equivalent of asking for written orders in the military. You have to be quite confident the matter will embarrass them more in the end.

  “But I do want to propose something risky for my career. I’d like to arrange a Hawaiian meeting between you, or whoever Heather wants to send, and a spox for North America. To talk out how to prevent another conflict like just occurred with the Constitution. It would give me more confidence to publicly propose the idea to know at least you would accept the invitation. Diana doesn’t think it would reflect badly on me if you both declined, but I’m not sure about that.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Jeff asked.

  “For the noble betterment of humanity and my love of peace?” Nick said.

  Jeff just looked at him. A long time with the round trip five-second lag. If he couldn’t be more forthcoming than that, Jeff would be afraid to trust him as an ally.

  “Well, you are a trading partner, and I’d like to get a weekly shuttle service going. You might be better disposed to do that if I can make things easier for you. Also, if they accept you as a legitimate government worthy of talking to, aren’t they tacitly acknowledging the same about us as a third party to arrange the talks?”

  “I’d consider expanding shuttle service,” Jeff agreed. “There would have to be better security arrangements after the attack we experienced at Honolulu. Your scheme also assumes there will be some trace of human decency and gratitude on their part.”

  “If you’re going to sit and talk across the table at them like that there’s no point in doing this. Do I have to get you a cheat sheet of diplomatic expressions that damn the opposition to hell in words they can still post in a community news site?”

  “No, I speak more freely with you. I just had an interview yesterday with three Earthie news teams. I managed to be fairly polite to them. If you search you can probably find them posted.” Jeff made a face… “Except for the Mouse team. I did give him a little grief about the old logo coming back. They went from a stupid logo to an idiotic one. If you think you can lure a North American official of sufficient rank to be meaningful, I’ll talk to them. We have a video of our intercept. That’s what I was doing this morning, editing the long boring parts out where nothing happens and a few blunt exchanges I’d rather they didn’t hear. I’m thinking of releasing it so people have a clearer idea about what really happened. I offered it up and nobody jumped on it. Maybe they didn’t take me seriously. I went ahead and edited it if you want a copy.”

  “Releasing something like that without their government’s approval can be dangerous. My question is, will that work for or against you?” Nick asked.

  “Who knows? I never can figure out what will upset people,” Jeff admitted. “I’ll have to ask April and Heather. They advise me on social things.”

  “Would I be out of line to ask to preview it?”

  “I don’t see what that can hurt. You’ve flown in Dionysus’ Chariot so nothing you see will be any surprise or secret. How it actually works can’t be reverse-engineered from just watching it fly. I’d ask you not to release it independently before us now.”

  “I can agree to that,” Nick promised.

  “Fine, besides April and Heather, you can tell me what you think about releasing it. Your different viewpoint might be valuable. I’ll start the file now. It’s fairly big.”

  Jeff disconnected without specifically saying goodbye. He was a bit odd.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a high priority alert, but when Chen called all three of them outside the normal early brief it got their attention. His manner said it was important too.

  “I think you should listen to Jan directly on this rather than getting it from me second-hand,” Chen said. “He has far more assets in the West than me.”

  “Of course, you will stay on the call too won’t you?” Jeff requested.

  “Certainly. I want to hear your response,” Chen said.

  “I’ve had three separate sources quietly warn me that the North Americans are discussing going back to active war with Home and Central over the L1 rule. They say it’s worth taking the damage now because it won’t be any cheaper in the future. None of them were in positions of power or command the last time North America actually engaged in hostilities with Home. Neither were any in command when Heather dealt with China. It’s history to them, not current events. The disturbing thing is, each report named a different official. One is a hawk, and two are a conspiracy, but when you have three talking the same theme it’s consensus. Worse, I had a report of them leaking the same thing to allies. I’d take that as prepping them for possible action early enough to get feedback on how it would be accepted. I’d take this seriously. I’m pretty sure none of them know I work for you.”

  “Why would they think they can prevail against us after what we did to the Constitution?” April asked.

  “They aren’t thinking in terms of ship actions,” Jan said. “So they can convince themselves that’s irrelevant. They imagine if they barrage us with enough missiles only one has to get through. The current generation always thinks their predecessors were bumbling idiots and incompetents. The politicians think the military always exaggerates the risks and the military thinks the politicians have no idea how uncertain any military operation will always be.”

  “And for Home that’s true,” Jeff admitted. “Though it would be suicide.”

  “I suppose if they kept dropping enough of them, they could eventually dig us out,” Heather admitted. “We have to come up sometime.”

  “This morning I was talking with Nick Naito in Hawaii,” Jeff said. “He was asking if we’d attend and negotiate if he sponsored a peace conference between North America and us. Eventually, if we can find a safe place among the stars, I’d agree we don’t need to deal with Earth anymore. But for now, I think we do, and this gives us a better opportunity to do so in a public venue. All of them, not just the North Americans, are much more constrained in how they can respond to us with the world watching instead of in a private conference or on com. How do you feel about that?”

  He addressed everybody but was looking at the com and Heather.

  “If we keep visiting Earth, sooner or later they are going to manage to kill us.”

  “What April said,” Heather agreed from the com.

  “Is sitting quietly and seeing if they have the nerve to go for a total victory less of a risk than talking to them?” Jeff asked.

  “No,” Heather admitted after consideration. “Talking, we should get some early indication it is going to fail. The other way our only indication might be incoming fire.”

  “Unless they pull a Pearl Harbor on us,” April said.

  At Heather’s raised eyebrow she explained: “Surprise attack on the US naval base in Hawaii in the First Atomic War.”

  “Yes, I can see them doing that,” Heather said and looked gravely serious. “I want you to plan a response to that. Even if it is a reply from the grave, I want to know North America will cease to exist as a first-world nation and even in a long recovery will not rise again as a single entity. Can you do that?”

  “Me?” April asked.

  “You. Jeff is not bloody-minded enough to utterly devastate them. I want Jeff to talk to them. He’s sufficiently uninhibited to tell them t
o their face he’ll kill them, but you’d do it. There’s still an element of Earth Think that imagines men are all aggression and women intrinsically nicer. They never heard my Grandma say ‘Bless their Hearts’, as a curse. I would not threaten them with what they can’t properly fear. That would just be baiting them to their destruction.”

  “If it looks like we are gone I don’t have to save anything for another adversary,” April reasoned. “I can dump everything on them from both our system and the Home militia. I’d do the reverse of our previous bombardment that was meant for propaganda value and show. This would systematically remove their utilities and supply trains. The suburbs of the big cities and the core where all the com cables and command structures reside. From fifty degrees north to the tip of the Baja and Key West will remove eighty percent of their population and maybe seventy percent of their industry,” April said. “Mexico isn’t worth hitting. They seem clueless to the fact Texas is going to own them in a decade. The Texans and Quebecois can divide the broken land between them over the next generation.”

  Jeff looked horrified. “You already had the rough plan worked out.”

  “I know you don’t like the expression, but it’s all obvious,” April insisted.

  “Make three or four plans,” Heather insisted, “in varying severity.”

  “What do you expect me to get from them to avert this?” Jeff asked.

  “You drive as hard a bargain as I do,” Heather insisted. “I don’t intend to micro-manage you by com. Get us the best deal you can, that will buy us some more time to find an extra-solar refuge, and we’ll live with it.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” Jeff promised.

  * * *

  “Come look at this!” Nick called to Diana.

  “I thought Jeff gave that to you on the condition you keep it secret?”

  “He gave it to me based on agreeing not to release it. I’m not. I’m not offering you a copy and I’m not sending it to the news services. I’m not even showing it to any of my government unless he tells me that’s OK. But you have to see this.”

  “OK, though I’d think a space battle should be pretty boring. Just dots on a screen and lots of waiting without much real action. I know it isn’t like in movies or airplanes,” Diana said, swooping her hands around to illustrate.

  “Intercept program starts in twenty seconds,” Jeff said.

  Suddenly, there was a long slim ship closer alongside at the port where the Hringhorni had been visible. They moved forward beside it a little as the ship picked up a small difference in velocity.

  The scene opened from April’s view looking across at Jeff and a view of Hringhorni visible out the port beyond him.

  “Constitution, this is Jeffrey Singh in command of the armed merchant Dionysus’ Chariot, acting as a cutter for the Kingdom of Central,” Jeff declared on the emergency and ship frequencies. “You are in violation of the L1 limit imposed on armed ships. You are ordered to cut your drive and stand to immediately.”

  “Yep, that’s Jeff,” Diana said. “He might as well be ordering pizza he’s so excited.”

  “Why doesn’t the North American tell him to buzz off?” Diana asked after his prolonged silence. “I’d think he’d be objecting a lot more.”

  “Who knows?” Nick said. “They’re military. Sometimes they get stupid narrow orders that don’t allow them to use any initiative at all.”

  “Oh my goodness. It’s just right there,” Diana said. “That close can’t be safe.”

  Nick giggled, highly amused.

  “What? Don’t get all snarky with me. What’s funny?”

  “Just remembering our ride with him,” Nick said. “I don’t think safe is even a consideration, and April is certainly no better.”

  “Yeah, but I could hit that ship with a rock and I don’t have a great arm. Wow, what kind of gun do they have that shoves the whole ship sideways like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “You can ask Jeff next time we see him. Big enough to blow chunks out the other side of the Constitution. You notice it didn’t take two shots?”

  “How can they stand being twirled around like that?” Diana asked. “Do I understand correctly they did that to themselves? I’d be puking in a minute.”

  “Yep, that’s what I got too,” Nick said, “I think it was to prevent Jeff’s people from going across in suits. Wait and see what they ended up doing.”

  After Deloris volunteered to go get a snowball, Jeff came on the screen breaking the fourth wall and announced that nothing happened for hours. He specifically mentioned there wasn’t any communication in that time from the Constitution, and if the media wanted to sit through it, he’d provide it.

  They watched the ship batter itself against the snowball until most of its tumble was removed after Deloris returned.

  “That’s a multibillion-dollar ship they’re hacking up,” Nick noted when they finally boarded the Constitution.

  “You’d think it would be a little harder,” Diana said. “They seem to be doing it in slow-motion, but their speech is normal. The video isn’t slowed down is it?”

  “I understand that’s just the way you work in zero g. You don’t get carried away and move fast or without thinking unless you want to get hurt.”

  “So what do you think?” Nick asked when the video was done.

  “Other than what I said when it was running?”

  “Yes, Jeff gave it to me wanting my perspective on releasing it. What do you think? Would it hurt or help his cause to send it to the news outlets?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think anything will help. I expect them to send people who won’t be open to any agreement. The corollary to that is nothing can hurt either. I think you will look good for trying to be the peacemaker no matter if their negotiator breaks out in fisticuffs with Jeff. I noticed you didn’t ask about that.”

  “But will he just be negotiating with Jeff?” Nick asked. “Won’t his women have a hand in it even if it is behind the scenes?”

  “And their negotiator won’t? It’s like I told you. I can’t figure out what they have or how it works for sure. So yeah, that could be a wild card if the Moon Queen laid instructions on him. I do know one thing for sure. If I was USNA Space Force and saw this video I wouldn’t want to risk being intercepted the same way. It’s downright embarrassing how careful of the crew they were. It’s an armed enemy ship from their perspective. They could have just smashed it and saved the pieces. So I’d tell him to release it. Maybe it will make somebody with a trace of common sense see they are way out-classed.”

  “That’s pretty much what I’ll tell him,” Nick agreed.

  Chapter 28

  “Thanks, that’s what my ladies said too,” Jeff told Nick. “So I’ll release it today and you are free to share your copy as needed. What do your people say? Have you asked the North Americans yet?”

  “I’ll ask the North Americans in the early morning. It’s too late in their day now. My people haven’t said anything because I haven’t told them what I’m doing. If the Americans agree to send somebody, I’ll drop it on them as an accomplished fact. I’ll have to do that to ask for all the security you and they will need and a venue.”

  Jeff looked startled and then smiled amused.

  “They can hardly refuse to be the gracious hosts if you have two willing parties who have already accepted, can they? Remind me never to play poker with you.”

  “There are risks in everything,” Nick said. “I saw you taking a few in the video.”

  “A thought though,” Jeff said. “What are you going to do if they decide they’ll accept, but get back in contact with somebody over your head?”

  “I’d just put it back off on them. I’d say: Oh good. They put some feelers out and had a private businessman ask me at a party if such a thing was possible. I couldn’t see any way it could do anything but make us look good, even if they don’t reach an agreement. I thought maybe they gave up on the idea when they didn’t get back t
o me.”

  “That would be pretty hard to document, wouldn’t it?” Jeff admitted.

  “They’d never try. It would be awkward and I have half a dozen North American contacts to name and blame who aren’t on the island anymore and wouldn’t give them a straight answer if they asked if the sky was blue?”

  “About the security. We’ll bring our own to work closely with us. If your people can just provide a perimeter that would be appreciated. We’ll bring the two fellows you saw removing the missiles in the video and two others from their company.”

  “In suits like that?” Nick asked.

  “No, those are rated for vacuum work,” Jeff said, “but honestly they look pretty much the same if you don’t know what you’re looking at.”

  “After people see the video, I think that will be all to the good for you,” Nick said.

  * * *

  “The Business Minister?” the Third Undersecretary of State scoffed. “They did something like this before sending messages back and forth between Hawaii and Texas at lower levels that we intercepted. Too scared of owning a failure if they proposed something that was rebuffed. They used that third level Naito fellow then too. Sure, accept the invitation but send it over and ask them to send somebody from Commerce of an appropriate level to deal head to head with a Hawaiian Business Minister,” the Undersecretary said. “If they want to joke around, never let it be said we are humorless.”

  * * *

  “Good day, Minister Naito, I’m Quincy Love of the Department of Commerce. I’ve been assigned to negotiate with a representative of the Home – Central alliance. The Undersecretary was kind enough to give me the use of a State Department bizjet since there aren’t any commercial flights from the mainland at the moment. I can be there the day after tomorrow if you wish or I can delay if the Spacer representative will be longer.”

  “I have a promise to attend,” Nick said. “Mr. Singh didn’t set an arrival time yet. Now that I know you will attend, I’ll ask if he can meet that schedule and get back to you with timing and get a facility assigned,” Nick promised. “May I ask what you do at the Department of Commerce?”