Vanguard

by Jack Campbell

  “Maybe it was easier,” Danielle suggested. “Everybody actually looking forward to the future is heading out here. Like you.”

  “And you.” Rob paused as a thought struck him. “And the people who colonized Scatha. You told me they’re recruiting citizens by promising they won’t let anyone push Scatha around. Are the old places exporting their troublemakers? Sending them off to mess with each other and leave the past to slumber undisturbed?”

  “If so, you’re in on the ground floor of a growing business,” Danielle commented.

  He laughed. “Yeah, nothing but opportunity. Look how far I’ve come! I have a temporary, conditional sort of command of a Buccaneer Class cutter, whose few weapons I am not allowed to employ, crewed mostly by inexperienced volunteers who are discovering that this stuff is a lot more fun when viewed on a vid, and under the orders of a council that wishes none of this was happening. And if anything goes wrong, it will be my fault.”

  “You didn’t think that would change, did you?” She gave him a sharp look. “Why did you ask me to view that message?”

  “I needed someone else’s point of view,” Rob said.

  “That wasn’t the only reason.”

  Rob grimaced. “No. I wanted to vent to someone.”

  “So you picked me. May I speak freely, Lieutenant Geary?”

  Rob’s expression changed to a frown as he looked at her, wondering why Danielle Martel had adopted such a formal demeanor. “Of course you can.”

  “You’re the commander of this ship,” Danielle said. “The senior officer in what military force Glenlyon has. Which means you can’t vent like that. Not when it comes to civilian oversight. Your crew is listening. Maybe hearing you talk like that would make them respect you less as well as respecting the government less. Or, worse, maybe they’ll continue to respect you but respect the government less. Where does that vector lead?”

  Rob shook his head at her. “I would never threaten the government.”

  “What about those who come after you?” Danielle Martel asked. “Everything you say and do will play a role in what becomes the traditions of Glenlyon’s military. You’re laying the foundation for whatever military Glenlyon ends up with. What do you want that foundation to look like?”

  He hadn’t really considered that before. “I’ve just been trying to get by, doing what needs to be done. Do you really think what I say matters that much?”

  “Do you really think it doesn’t?”

  Rob shook his head. “No. You’re right. I guess I’ve spent too much time thinking about what I can’t do. But I can do other things without even realizing I’m doing them. This is the first ship in Glenlyon’s fleet, no matter how much larger that fleet someday gets or how small it stays. What we do here, what I do here, will influence what comes after, won’t it? All right. I’ll set a good example.” As she got up to leave, he looked at her, feeling depressed. “Nobody will remember, will they?”

  “What?” Danielle asked.

  “What we did. Stuff like this. Maybe people will remember the traditions, but not us. That will be in the footnotes of history, buried in databases. No one will remember you and me.”

  She shrugged, looking down at him. “Is that why you do things? Because history?”

  “No. Because of me or people or things I care about.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I’d like to think it mattered what I did,” Rob said.

  Danielle shrugged again. “I thought we’d agreed it did matter. But its mattering and your being remembered are two different things.”

  “It really doesn’t bother you?” Rob asked.

  She smiled slightly. “Rob, I come from Earth. It’s old. Countless men and women have come and gone there. They’ve left their marks. Old ruins and new ruins, changes to the landscape, species wiped out and species preserved, structures thousands of years old. It gives you perspective, I guess. A lot of their names aren’t remembered, but what they did contributed to what Earth is. There’s no sense complaining about it. That’s how things work. If you want something different, you could try some of the reverence for ancestors movements that are spreading everywhere.”

  “I thought that was mostly on Alfar,” Rob said. “Looking back to Old Earth, where we came from, and the people we came from.”

  “I’ve noticed it seems to be everywhere out here,” Danielle said. “There’s always been that form of belief among some groups on Earth, but it’s very popular in the new colonies. Reverence for the past, for the Earth, and for our ancestors, who hopefully care about us in places where everything else is unfamiliar. It might be a fad, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a fad. Is death a final ending or a new beginning? We still don’t know. Maybe we never will.”

  He grinned, for some reason feeling better. “We’ll all find out eventually. If they don’t come up with the immortality fix that’s been on the horizon for how many centuries now?”

  She smiled back. “Do you know what a horizon is? It’s an imaginary line that recedes as fast as you approach it.”

  “Thanks, Danielle. I really appreciate being able to discuss problems with a real pro.”

  “You’re a real pro, too, Lieutenant,” she replied, saluting him with a solemn expression. “Don’t forget it.”

  • • •

  Wary that the freighters from Scatha might be Trojan horses filled with well-armed troops that would try to board the Squall and retake the ship, Rob brought Squall to only within a light second of the other ships before matching vector with them. No matter how well trained or equipped they were, no soldiers were going to be jumping three hundred thousand kilometers through space.

  Nervous as well about the potential for a Scatha hack aimed at Squall, Rob kept checking the firewalls that Ninja had installed to protect the systems on the warship.

  “They’re trying to get in,” Danielle Martel reported. “But our firewalls are holding. That stuff Ninja patched in is solid.”

  “But the automated intrusion routines that Ninja sent still aren’t finding any way into their systems,” Rob said.

  It felt odd to realize that on the surface, the three ships were racing through space, no sign of conflict or hostility between them, yet on a level outside of direct human observation, battles were being fought at light speed. The only immediate casualties in those invisible battles where codes and radiation strove against each other would be in damaged code or deflected intrusion attempts. But should one side triumph, the men and women on the losing side would suffer for it.

  “This looks like a standoff,” Drake Porter said, putting Rob’s thoughts into words.

  “Let’s try some macro coercion,” Rob said. He put on his best “I am in charge” attitude and tried not to be self-conscious about using the command voice that he hadn’t been aware of having until Danielle pointed it out. “Ships from Scatha, this is Lieutenant Robert Geary of the Glenlyon fleet, aboard the cutter Squall. You are in space owned by and controlled by the government of Glenlyon. You are directed to immediately identify your intentions in this star system and to open your automated systems to examination by my ship. You are also to signal your willingness to be boarded by inspection parties to determine what you are carrying. If you fail to respond as ordered, you will be required to reverse vectors and return to Scatha.”

  Only a light second lay between the freighters and Squall. No noticeable delay should have held up the reply. But no reply came as the minutes went by.

  “Now what?” Drake Porter asked.

  Rob exchanged a glance with Danielle Martel, who spread her hands in the age-old gesture of helplessness.

  He could repeat his demands, but that would just emphasize his inability to get the freighters from Scatha to reply. He could increase the level of menace in the demands, but the only way to do that was to threaten to fire on the freighters, and if
they continued to ignore him he wouldn’t be able to make good on his threat. Aside from personally embarrassing him, that would create an impression with whoever was on the freighters that Glenlyon was all talk and no action, which might lead to further problems.

  There was only one thing he could do. “Given my orders from the council,” Rob told Drake Porter and the others on the bridge, “all I can do is request permission to threaten those freighters.”

  “How about powering up the pulse cannon and locking it on one of them?” Drake said.

  Rob saw Danielle Martel shake her head so fractionally that it was barely noticeable. Her opinion was clear though she was diplomatic enough not to openly say it.

  The idea was tempting, though. Technically, that wouldn’t be a violation of what the council had told him.

  But it would violate the spirit of those orders. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  “No,” Rob told Drake. “My orders are clear. I’ll request that the council permit us to take other action.”

  “If we did something, it’d be over long before the council even saw it,” Drake argued.

  “This isn’t a matter of debate,” Rob said, his resolve stiffening. “Drake, if we decide we can do whatever we want, even if the government has told us not to, then we’re introducing a fatal illness into Glenlyon. The government gives us weapons and responsibility. We follow orders. That may sound dumb, but it’s far preferable to what would happen if we established a tradition of the military ignoring orders from the government. None of us want to go where that would lead someday.”

  He waited, watching the others, and one by one they nodded. Danielle Martel smiled as she nodded as well.

  All right, Rob consoled himself as he went to his stateroom to compose his message to the council. So he hadn’t stopped the freighters yet. But he had stopped something that might have done a lot more damage in the long run.

  • • •

  “The freighters have refused to answer my transmissions. They are not responding to demands to allow us access to their systems and that we be allowed to inspect them, and are not responding to orders to return to the jump point and leave this star system. If I am not given more options for dealing with these ships, I will not be able to prevent them from reaching the planet. Given my current orders from the council, I have no means of discovering what the freighters are carrying or what their mission is or whether they are carrying anything that would be a threat to the population of Glenlyon. I recommend that I be given authorization to threaten firing on them to enforce our demands. If I am allowed to fire on them, the shots can be aimed to damage equipment such as the main propulsion unit with minimal risk to whoever is on the freighters. I must repeat that given my current orders, I cannot prevent the two ships from Scatha from reaching the planet and cannot determine who or what they are carrying before they reach the planet. I must also remind the council that according to our best information, Scatha has a significant number of ground forces at its disposal, while Glenlyon has no effective means of dealing with hostile soldiers if they are landed on our world. Geary, out.”

  He couldn’t spell it out any more clearly than that.

  This time the reply took nearly a full day, as the three ships continued on toward the planet at point zero two light speed, or twenty-one million kilometers per hour, and Rob as well as his crew continued to grow more worried and frustrated.

  Rob was surprised to see that this answer came from Council Member Leigh Camagan. She didn’t look happy, her expression as stern as her voice. “Lieutenant Geary, we understand your concerns and your recommendations and the reasoning behind them. However, you are not authorized to fire on the civilian vessels from Scatha. You are not authorized to threaten to use force against them. Glenlyon cannot be seen as the cause of any conflict or as having acted aggressively. The council does not trust Scatha and is worried about Scatha’s intentions, but if Scatha intends expanding aggression against us, we cannot stand alone. If we are to gain any support from other star systems, it has to be clear that we were attacked and that we did nothing to provoke that attack. We will take the first punch if necessary, Lieutenant, so that when we strike back it will be clear that we had no choice. I know that we can count on you to ensure that the Squall remains ready for whatever tasks are required. Camagan, out.”

  Rob sat back, staring up at the overhead. “Great. Take the first punch.” He wondered where and how that would land.

  And realized what the council must surely know as well, that whatever Scatha attacked, it wouldn’t be the Squall since the freighters lacked any apparent means to do so. Any blow might fall instead on the planet and on the council itself.

  “They’re going to take the first punch, aren’t they?” he asked Danielle Martel after sharing the message with her.

  “Yeah,” she agreed, nodding and looking impressed. “Maybe it’s because they can’t agree on what to do until that happens, but still they have to know Scatha is aiming at the planet. There’s no other explanation for those heavy-lift shuttles.”

  “Is that why Camagan looked so grim?”

  “Maybe.” Danielle shook her head at Rob. “But maybe she wanted you to know that she meant every word. If she had displayed any other behavior, there was a chance you could have taken it as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that disobeying those orders would have been all right in the eyes of some members of the council.”

  “That’s possible,” Rob admitted. “Their experience with me is limited, so I can understand their not wanting to take chances. And Scatha is being very clever with this whole game. If they had responded to our capture of the Squall by immediately sending warships to attack us, then they would not be able to deny being the aggressor. Instead, they sent civilian ships, so if we fire on them we’ll be seen as the ones who started a war.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you think Scatha would have sent noncombatants on those freighters?”

  “Civilians?” Danielle paused to think, frowning. “I wouldn’t put it past them to have families on at least one of those ships.”

  “And there’s no way for us to know.” Rob sat for a moment, brooding, then looked up at Danielle Martel again. “If those freighters are carrying troops, and they land them on Glenlyon, they’ll be able to take over the one city we’ve got easily. The police won’t be able to stop them.”

  “Yes. And?”

  “Council Member Camagan told me to ensure the Squall was ready for any mission that is required,” Rob said. “If our city is attacked and taken, other colonies are almost certain to do something. But only if they hear about it before Scatha has dug in.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Your mission will be to carry the word to other star systems. Scatha must know that you’d do that, though.”

  Which meant that Scatha had something on those freighters designed to knock out Squall.

  But what?

  Chapter 6

  “The freighters appear to be loading their shuttles. We can’t tell what’s being loaded,” Rob said. The blue and white and brown and green globe of Glenlyon slowly went by beneath as Squall continued to monitor the two freighters from Scatha. In order to do that while the freighters were in orbit, Squall had been forced to come much closer to the other ships, only about fifty kilometers away.

  “Can you tell where the shuttles are going to land?” Council Member Leigh Camagan asked.

  “I have no way of knowing at this time. A lot of the planet is accessible from this orbit. About all we can rule out is the north and south polar regions. When they launch, it will give us some ability to estimate the general area they are aiming to land at. But until they launch, we can’t even guess.”

  “Ninja tells us she is still having no luck hacking into the freighters’ systems,” Leigh Camagan told Rob. “Are you prepared for anything?”

  “As well as we can be,” Rob said. “Our weapons are ready.”
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br />   “Be advised that half of the council remains in the city. The rest of the members have been dispersed to three different locations outside the city. If the city is overrun by whoever comes out of the first shuttle drops, someone will be able to contact you to give you approval to destroy the shuttles when they rise back into orbit.”

  “What if Scatha jams your signals?” Rob said. “They could have gear to do that hidden on their freighters.”

  Leigh Camagan paused before replying. “Use your best judgment, Lieutenant. You have followed the spirit and letter of your instructions up to this point, so I feel confident that you will not act contrary to what you know the will of the council to be.”

  Apparently, there were times when good deeds were rewarded. Or at least acknowledged. “I understand,” Rob said. “Glenlyon can count on all of us up here. We are still concerned about the freighters, whether they have some means available that will neutralize Squall. Because they will want to do that.”

  “Do you have any idea what that means could be?”

  “No,” Rob said. “Our best guess is that they may have intended to hack our systems just as we once did to this ship, but Ninja’s firewalls have prevented that.”

  “Let’s hope you’re correct,” Leigh Camagan said.

  As Leigh Camagan’s face vanished, Danielle Martel called out from her watch station. “The freighters are altering orbit again!”

  Rob frowned at his display, seeing the ships from Scatha using their thrusters and main propulsion to nudge themselves higher in orbit and closer to the planetary equator. “That’s the third time since they reached the planet. What are they doing?”

  “No idea,” Danielle said. “You can set the maneuvering systems to automatically maintain position on the freighters so we don’t have to order maneuvers every time they shift.”