Stealing the Sun: Books 4-6, page 5
The conversations dwindled until only a single animated conversation filled the room. This, too, came to an end when Gregor made an obvious motion with his hand.
“Sorry about that,” the man said to everyone.
Timmon Keyes, the U3 captain of Icarus, sat next to Brooke Nassir, a weapons expert who had recently taken command of Einstein. They both gave bemused gazes.
“I assume you’ve all heard the news,” Casmir said.
Gregor replied for the group with his gravelly voice.
“We know the United Government has requested a parlay to discuss our future.”
“It’s a trick,” Deidra said.
Casmir gave her an exasperated glare.
“Does anyone need a grown daughter?” he quipped. There was light laughter. “She comes partially trained, but with a full set of opinions.” The laughter this time was more pronounced and took a moment to quiet down.
Deidra’s expression said she was not amused.
Casmir shrugged and raised his palms with a what are you going to do expression. Then he stood taller and paced to the far side of the room.
“We need options,” he said. “We need to discuss all ideas, and we need to discuss them now.”
Kazima Yamada sat forward in her seat, folded her fingers together, then rested her chin on the points of her extended index fingers. “I don’t think we should do anything,” she said.
Yamada had always been Casmir’s most favored adviser on various engineering systems, and she had been instrumental in devising the escape plan that the colony had used to shuttle off of Mars. Now she was leading the build-out of Atropos City’s manufacturing plants. She was also, however, a woman with a high degree of interest in and knowledge about political maneuvering. Casmir had often bounced ideas off her.
“Why do you say that?” he replied.
“Because if it isn’t broken, you don’t fix it. We’ve got a two-ship-to-one advantage. I don’t see any reason to risk that now.”
“The UG isn’t just playing humble dog,” Deidra said. “If what Intel is reporting is true, they’ll be able to build more Star Drives within a year, anyway.”
“As will we,” Yamada replied.
“Gregor?” Casmir said.
Gregor rubbed his finger and thumb through his beard. “You’ve seen the reports on their manufacturing capability,” he said. “I can’t imagine it will be more than a year.”
“And our own ships will be coming off the production line in less than two months,” Yamada replied.
“You know I’m on your side, Kazima,” Gregor replied. “But that’s an aggressive estimate, and even if it’s right, the UG has the people and resources of the entire Solar System at its disposal. We’ve got one planet and several thousand citizens.”
Yamada grimaced, but it was clear she understood and even agreed with Gregor’s assessment of the situation. Universe Three could never keep pace with the Uglies’ ability to produce.
“To do nothing would eventually put us into a position of weakness,” Deidra said. She seemed ready to come out of her seat, but somehow managed to keep her conversation to a degree of calmness that surprised Casmir.
Yamada nodded sagely. “Then our only real option is to accept their offer—”
“There are other options,” Deidra replied.
“Ms. Yamada has the floor,” Casmir said.
The room froze. The clackety sound of the city below filtered in through the windows.
“Go ahead, Kazima,” Casmir said. “How would we proceed if we meet with them.”
“I don’t know,” she said, sheepishly. “We have to think about it. But my first thought is that we would send both Icarus and Einstein to the session.”
“Both with weapons trained on Orion in case something unexpected happens,” Keyes added. He glanced at Nassir, who nodded back.
“Right,” Yamada said. “We have a numerical advantage. We should use it.”
“If we do that, I suggest not telling the UG team which ship our negotiating party would be on,” Gregor said.
“I would be on that team,” Casmir said.
“That’s a bad idea,” Gregor shot back.
“I’m not letting someone else take a risk I’m not willing to take myself.”
“No one would think anything about that.”
“Yes, they would,” Casmir said.
“It’s not wise,” Gregor replied.
“I’ll be all right,” Casmir said. He turned to his daughter. “What do you think of that idea?”
“I think they’ll kill you,” she said.
“But if they do not,” he replied, “it could mean the beginning of a truly free system for us.”
Deidra crossed her arms.
Petulant, Casmir thought. That word was designed for Deidra.
“We could add some insurance,” Yamada said.
“What do you mean?”
“I like having both ships scrambled. But I think we should also make it known that we have something on each of the ships that’s important to them.”
“What are you suggesting?” Gregor said.
“Captives,” Casmir said as a full understanding of what Yamada was proposing came over him. “You’re suggesting we put captives on each ship.”
“Human shields?” Deidra said.
“Not human shields,” Yamada said. “Rewards.”
Casmir strolled to the far side of the room and stared out the window. The streets below him pulsed with movement. Yamada’s idea gave him a nervous chill, but it made sense.
“Yes,” he said. “We can communicate it as a gift, a civilized present for agreeing to speak with us. Suggest to the UG that we appreciate the opportunity to work as equals, and as such offer to transport some of their people to Orion as soon as our discussions are completed.”
“That would be brilliant,” Yamada said.
Casmir turned to his friend. “Gregor?”
The elder Anderson sat back and took in a contemplative breath. “I think it could work.”
“But you’re not certain?”
“It’s the United Government we’re talking about—they have a citizenship to govern, and they haven’t been winning. We shouldn’t assume anything for certain.”
Heads around the table nodded.
“On the other hand,” Gregor said, “retrieving their captives gives them something to spin to their advantage. If they get another concession or two, they could make it look good for themselves.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Deidra said.
“You would have us destroy Orion on sight?” Casmir said.
“It’s the safest play.”
He scanned the room. Deidra’s view had its supporters. Kyleen Lian, the group’s agricultural director, seemed particularly inclined to support the idea, but then, Kyleen had always taken interest in Deidra’s progress, and Casmir was not certain that interest was completely professional.
“If we destroy Orion, it gives us a span of ultimate control,” Deidra said. “I know how cold that sounds, but it’s a circumstance that may never happen again. A chance to be the only force in the universe with faster-than-light capability. We could use that window to shut down their entire program. I understand that sounds harsh, but the United Government has done far worse things under the guise of societal progress.”
Casmir hid a grimace at Deidra’s twisting of the “the other side is far worse” argument that Ellyn Parker had once used in her recruiting campaigns back in the days when Universe Three was just a college activist’s dream.
He scanned his leadership team. “Are there any other options?”
No one responded.
“All right, then,” he said.
He went to a pressure board and used the tip of his finger to physically write as he talked.
“We seem to have three choices. One: Ignore the request and go on. The obvious downside to this is that eventually the UG will achieve the ability to build more Star Drives. When that happens their production capability will dwarf ours. Then we could be in a position of weakness.”
He finished writing, and then scanned the room.
When there were no questions, he turned back to the board.
“Two: We meet them and try to become equals. If the offer is a ruse, the UG could use the situation to ambush our ships and disable our leadership—but we can mitigate that with the idea of offering them their captives back.”
He checked back with the team.
“And, three: Attack their ship immediately. The downside here is that overt aggression for the sake of aggression will almost certainly lead to a more intense war sometime in the future…unless victory is complete. In which case, we can make immense short-term headway.”
He turned back one last time.
“Does that capture it all?”
“It does,” Gregor said.
“All right then,” Casmir said, stretching his neck to the left and the right. “I would say it’s time to vote.”
CHAPTER 5
UGIS Orion
Local Date: January 24, 2215
Local Time: 0600
Word came through an ultrasecure channel the next morning.
Universe Three had accepted.
Between taking care of a few personal details, Torrance crammed information about this new spacecraft into his mind for two days before arriving at his post. He committed as much of each system interface into his memory as he could manage, absorbed every important element of every spec he could find. But in the end, it was all too much too fast.
As he stepped onto Orion’s mission deck and into his first technical problem, he felt completely overwhelmed.
The ship’s H-MADS—Hallway Multithreat Analysis and Defense System—was fouled up.
H-MADS was conceived after the Starburst fiasco, which had been predicated on Universe Three using moles to capture Einstein and Icarus. The system’s operational profile—the algorithms it used to monitor activity and take action to shut down insurgency at a moment’s notice—were devised by a well-paid UG think tank.
Orion had been outfitted with the H-MADS as soon as it had been developed, but the system had never really worked right and her commanding officers had ordered it turned off years ago for fear it would do more harm than good. Now it had been brought back, reconfigured and reinstalled in the past two weeks under the cloak of a simple operations refit.
Given the time, Orion’s corridors were nearly empty.
Which was good. Torrance was still feeling overwhelmed, and it was nice to have a few minutes to reacquaint himself to the ship.
Which, of course, he used up in thinking about the H-MADS problem. In the end, he was pleased to have something like this to focus on. At least with shipboard systems there was always an answer: Things either worked or they didn’t. Unlike wars, politics, or business, which got more convoluted the more you knew, shipboard systems were always clean and simple at their heart. Eventually, anyway.
As he thought, he kept in mind the old idea that a good system commander walks through a ship as if he owns it.
His gait was steady.
Crisp steps of an easy rhythm.
Where his old ship was built on a circular pattern and felt rounded everywhere, Orion was full of corners. Gravity System Command was further down the hallway, and P2—the secondary propulsion system monitoring station—was back the other way. Torrance glanced at the doorways as he passed, trying to find familiar landmarks and commit images to memory.
As Torrance passed the propulsion center he strained to see past the front offices, hoping to glimpse the cylindrical wormhole drives he had heard so much about. He wanted to see the Star Drive system with his own eyes. He wanted to watch the exotic matter generators spin at near superluminal while they pushed energy into microquantum tunnels that existed for only the barest of moments in time—or, perhaps didn’t exist at all, if you believed one of the more eccentric theories about what was actually happening.
The exotic matter generators were the secret to it all.
Mathematical beauty, quantum style.
But Torrance wasn’t here to manage propulsion systems.
He was here to deal with the integration of shipboard and weapon systems, which, until he had spent the time digging deeper into H-MADS, even he had admitted was an interesting pairing.
When he turned a corner and arrived at the H-MADS post, three of his team were gathered in the hallway just under the place where a smooth sensor bulge grew from the ceiling. Each wore Orion’s green jumpers and system test belts. They had pulled a panel from the inner wall and were pointing into the open hole and arguing at enough volume that their voices were carrying. The processing unit inside lay exposed with bare wire, optical fiber, and RF sensors hanging from the equipment like snakes in a mechanical Medusa’s hair. Torrance recognized the optical processing chipset from his morning’s reading.
“So this is H-MADS, eh?” he said.
Their argument came to an abrupt halt.
“Sir!” A young man straightened to informal attention. It was Lieutenant Arthur Skiles.
Torrance took in the team.
Skiles was the systems interface leader. Lieutenant Junior Grade Angela Ramista was a shared software developer, and Lieutenant Mia Kluvac, the optical systems coordinator.
“Where’s Yuan?” he said.
Skiles hesitated for an awkward moment, still at attention.
“At ease, please,” Torrance said.
All three came down from attention, but none of them were truly at ease.
Torrance wasn’t blind to the idea that his reputation would precede him, but the effect would be even stronger with crewmates under his command—they would be dealing with a double dose of uncertainty: a new commander, and a new commander who was a media hero. He wanted to get off on the right foot.
“This might be a tough way to get introduced, but it kind of works for me, all right?” Torrance said. “At the core, I’m just an engineer, exactly like you guys.”
“Yes, sir,” Skiles said.
“So you can help me get started by calling me Commander, or in our most informal moments you can probably get away with a simple Torrance. I’m not going to bite anyone who’s working hard.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
Skiles relaxed.
“So, where’s Yuan?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I would think she would be here.”
LiJuan Yuan had been the chief weapon systems officer. As a result of Admiral Umaro’s assignment, however, she now reported directly through Torrance, a fact that she had clearly taken as a demotion, a reaction that was as predictable as it was appropriate. No officer wants to move backward on the scorecard. The fact that he understood why she would be upset did not, however, mean he had to be any happier to deal with the fallout, and the reputation that preceded her didn’t help any. Every performance report he read about Yuan said she was brilliant and infinitely capable, but was also a person with fixed opinions who could be hard to deal with if you didn’t see things her way. He could already hear her excuses. “It is a systems issue, not a problem with my weapons,” she would explain in a tone that would hold a clear undercurrent of her contempt for the situation.
Skiles ran a nervous palm down the side of his jumper. He was a kid, really—twenty-four years old with an unlined face and a shock of hair as dark as a black hole. His age made Torrance think of Thomas Kitchell, but Skiles’s pedigree was as different from Kitchell’s as a diamond’s was from coal. Arthur Skiles made his mark early by graduating from the academy in only three years. His focus was in control systems and automation. Where Kitchell had been a bit of a snot-nosed idiot until he grew comfortable in the team, Skiles had a quick smile and a natural tendency to draw people to him. He had lettered on the track team.
He was supposed to be good at what he did.
“I don’t know where she is,” Skiles said. “We don’t seem to hook up very well sometimes.”
Ramista and Kluvac shuffled their feet and did their best I’m not really here imitations, so he didn’t press the point.
“Show me the problem, Lieutenant,” Torrance said.
Skiles pointed to a display tacked to the wall.
“We’ve followed the test procedure exactly. The sequence is on cube—meaning we’re feeding false video to the sensor algorithm to test it.”
He toggled the test sequence.
The system was supposed to gather video from the hallway sensor, then pass it to a distributed computer which would compare the data stream to items in a threat library. The system analyzed language, movement, and objects to categorize the moment. If H-MADS saw the situation as dangerous, H-MADS was supposed to engage whatever weapon systems were nearby, and deliver alerts in whatever manner was appropriate.
Torrance watched the video monitor as it pumped the false image of a drone robot wearing a service jumper and deck boots entering the hallway. H-MADS registered its presence. Everything seemed to be fine.
“Now watch,” Skiles said.
The robot’s arm swung upward as if to scratch its head. The H-MADS threat analysis program recorded the movement and incorrectly assessed it as aggressive, then engaged the local energy beam. Laser weapons clicked on a moment later. If Skiles hadn’t followed proper safety protocol and deactivated the weapons prior to the test scenario, the wall would have been toast.
“See?” he said.
“I see,” Torrance replied. “That’s not good.”
Kluvac broke in. “At this rate, waving at a friend will get you torched.”
Torrance chuckled. “Very succinct, Lieutenant.”
He looked at Ramista. Her face grew a shade darker with his glance. She was younger than Skiles, with a fresh face and widely spaced eyes.
“I read the daily brief on the issue this morning,” Torrance said to her. “Have you already installed the latest movement algorithm patch on this system?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“So that should be fine,” Torrance mused. “Maybe a code problem? Something in the pattern recognition area?”
“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Skiles replied. He motioned toward Ramista. “But Angela’s been over the source code and its module-level test reports twice. We fixed some autogen bugs in the software’s original installation, and patched a problem with an error-state parameter, but nothing else seems out of order.”
