Extremis-ARC, page 17
Fleet Admiral Cyrus Waldeck, TFN/PSUN, standing at the foot of the gangway with his staff officers and task-force commanders, reflected that while he’d gone through the rituals of changing commanders many times before, it was especially unnerving when the new senior admiral had not only previously been his CO, but looked so damned young. The man descending the gangway looked like an Academy upperclassman dressed up in imitation of a flag officer.
Waldeck pulled himself together. He stepped forward and saluted formally. “Welcome to Astria and Second Fleet, Admiral Trevayne.”
The tall young man returned the salute with equal gravity. “Thank you, Admiral Waldeck.” Then his dark face formed the lopsided smile Waldeck remembered (although when he’d last seen it, a neatly trimmed graying beard had framed it). “It’s been a long time, Cyrus—at least for you!”
It had indeed.
Over eighty standard years ago, in the throes of the Fringe Revolution, Ian Trevayne had become a hero to the loyalist side (and something else altogether to the Fringers who had seceded to form the Terran Republic). He had held the systems of the Rim for the Terran Federation, from which they were isolated by the vagaries of the warp network. The war might have had a different conclusion had he succeeded in ending that isolation by fighting his way through Republic space to reestablish contact with the Federation. But in the apocalyptic Battle of Zapata, he had been stopped and killed…almost.
Captain Cyrus Waldeck, scion of one of the Corporate World dynasties whose pitiless exploitation of the Fringe had broken the old Federation apart, had been there. Trevayne had been preserved in a semblance of life by quick-and-dirty measures that had left him in a state of cryogenic suspension from which he could not be awakened without killing him.
However, just prior to the Baldy invasion, it had become possible to transplant Trevayne’s brain into a full-body clone of himself—force-grown anencephalic, to avoid ethical issues. Now his fifty-plus mind and personality dwelled in his own early-twenties body—and the coincidental timing of that reanimation had stirred deep mythic wells: Trevayne might not have exactly been sleeping beneath a mountain or on the Isle of Avalon, but he had returned when his people had needed him.
For his part, Trevayne now gazed at a sight that had become all too familiar: the decades-older face of someone he had last seen less than two years ago in terms of his own consciousness, but for whom eighty years had passed.
Although, truth be told, Cyrus Waldeck looked better than many: like all Corporate World’s old money, he had benefited from the anagathic regimen from an early age. His 130-year-old features remained distinctly those of his plutocratic clan, with a thin, pursed mouth incongruously placed between massive chin and prominent nose. That mouth shifted into a position that suggested an answering smile. “Good to see you, sir.”
Trevayne’s own smile became a shade more personal. “And you, too, Cyrus.” Then he put a brisk edge in his voice: the moment was over. “I’m eager to meet my new staff, particularly since I’ve only brought one new staffer with me.” He indicated the officer who had descended the gangway behind him. “Lieutenant Commander Andreas Hagen, my technical liaison officer.”
Waldeck looked slightly puzzled as he returned Hagen’s salute—understandably, Trevayne reflected. The title had been cobbled together to justify the presence of Hagen, previously an instructor at the Rim Federation’s Prescott Academy, subsequently assigned to Trevayne as…there had to be a better word than “nursemaid.” But he had fulfilled an indispensable role in the course of Trevayne’s eighteen months of intensive study, and Trevayne wasn’t quite ready to let him return to the classroom as he would have wished.
As protocol demanded, Waldeck introduced Trevayne to his own staff before progressing to his other unit commanders, and then several of the fleet officers of both the allied and alien contingents: Vice Admiral Alistair McFarland, RFN, of Task Force 21; Least Fang Zhaairnow’ailaaioun, PSUN, of Task Force 22; and…“Finally,” concluded Waldeck, “for the rebel…I mean the Terran Republic elements, Vice Admiral Li Magda of Task Force 23.”
For Trevayne, it was as though he were once again in the grand-reception room of Government House on Zephrain, staring into those uncannily black eyes.
“Yes, we have already met. And congratulations on your richly deserved promotion to vice admiral, Admiral Li.”
“Thank you, Admiral Trevayne,” said Li Magda primly. Then a twinkle awoke in the ebon depths of those eyes—her mother’s eyes. “But I thought we agreed at the time that you’d call me Magda.”
“So I recall. I compromised on that, not being quite ready for Mags. But for now, we’d better observe the military proprieties. Oh, incidentally, since then I’ve spoken to your mother, First Space Lord Li Han. She sends her best.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the story of your meeting with her. Everyone has.” She met his eyes boldly. “It’s my belief that you and she have written a new chapter into your respective legends.”
All at once, Trevayne could feel, in the small of his back, a hangar bay full of eyes focused on him and the daughter of Li Han.
The Fringe Revolution was fresh memory for him, but for the current generations it had receded into the numinous realms of legend, peopled with larger-than-life figures. Figures like Ian Trevayne, who had been forged into a weapon of vengeance by the nuclear fires that had incinerated his wife and daughters—a weapon that had killed his own son, who had joined the Fringe rebels. And like Li Han, who had been Trevayne’s prisoner and afterward had battered him to a standstill in the unimaginable inferno of Zapata. Their two names, taken together, had entered into the language as bywords for unrelenting enmity.
“That might be a trifle strong,” he said mildly. “But I daresay the sight of your mother and myself, together on the same podium, arguing in favor of the same strategy for ending this war, may have…well, made an impression on people.”
Her eyes held his and would not permit him to escape into flippancy. “It’s why this alliance is now unbreakable—and committed to that strategy. And you and Mother both know it.”
“Well, then,” said Trevayne with a briskness that almost succeeded in masking his embarrassment, “perhaps we’d best discuss that strategy. I’m sure you already know it, at least in its essentials, being your mother’s daughter. It was, after all, her brainchild. I’m also sure you’ve maintained security by not revealing it to anyone here. That’s what I’ve come for. Cyrus, lead the way.”
They proceeded to Zephrain’s auditoriumlike flag briefing room. It had a wide viewscreen for the two-dimensional displays that usually sufficed for displays of planetary systems, since planets and warp points tended to occur roughly in a single plane. But at Trevayne’s request, technicians had hooked up a holographic projector focused on the stage in front of the viewscreen.
The reason for the holo display wasn’t immediately apparent, for what it displayed could have been—and normally was—shown flat. It was a chart looking much like an old-style circuit diagram, with points of light representing stars (and the occasional starless warp nexus) connected by the string lights of warp lines. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the arrangement of those stars in actual three-dimensional space, nor did it need to.
Everyone recognized one segment of the warp network: the Bellerophon Arm, oriented so that the Bellerophon system itself, and its one warp connection to the rest of the Rim Federation through Astria, was at the bottom. Much else was also shown, with the stars color coded for the polities to which they belonged. Somewhat puzzling were two brilliant white star points, one in the outliers of the Bellerophon Arm, the other off to the side of the display among the lights of the Terran Republic, to which its only two warp links ran.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” said Trevayne, “is the way we always look at the universe. Since discovering warp points, it’s the only view of reality we’ve needed. Then the Baldies—whose real name remains unknown because no attempt to communicate with them has had the slightest success—arrived at Bellerophon after centuries of travel through normal space in fleets of generation ships powered by photon drives. It was miserably bad luck that they happened to appear at such a strategic warp nexus, where they’ve cut off the entire Bellerophon Arm like a tree at its base. As I needn’t tell any of you, we have tried twice to break into the Bellerophon system from here in Astria, through our one warp connection. I also needn’t tell you what came of those attempts.”
“How could it have been otherwise, by God?” Waldeck blurted indignantly. “When their smaller generation ships are designed to be broken down into system defense ships five hundred times the tonnage of a supermonitor like this one, carrying four or five hundred fighters? And don’t give me any whistling-past-the-graveyard crap about the SDS’s inherent design inefficiencies and lack of maneuverability. It doesn’t need to maneuver when all it has to do is sit on top of the one miserable warp point that is the only way we have of getting at them!” Waldeck suddenly came to the appalled recollection that he was addressing the supreme commander and mumbled an apology.
Trevayne was not offended. “You’re quite right, Cyrus. Rest assured that neither I nor anyone else qualified to have an opinion on the matter holds you to blame. Second Fleet has done all that could have been done under the circumstances. And I want to emphasize that this is not, strictly speaking, a change of command. You are still in direct charge of Second Fleet, under my overall supervision as supreme commander of a force that is going to grow to include far more than Second Fleet.
“However, the inescapable fact remains that we find ourselves at an impasse here. And while the more recent incursion by another Baldy fleet into the Pan-Sentient Union has opened a second front in the Zarzuela system, our attempts to counterattack there have not succeeded in creating a war of movement; in effect, it is merely an extension of the impasse.
“It is against this background that First Space Lord Fleet Admiral Li Han of the Terran Republic has proposed a strategy which the Alliance governments have adopted, and which I have been appointed supreme commander to effectuate. To understand this strategy, a certain amount of technical background is in order. Most of it will already be familiar to you, at least in its broad outlines, since you have access to Pan-Sentient Union and Rim Federation classified-message traffic—and Terran Republic intelligence updates.” Trevayne accompanied the last with a glare at Li Magda that he suspected probably didn’t quite come off, and which she met with a look of bland innocence. “But permit me to recapitulate.
“First of all, by now you have all heard about the new category of warship the Terran Republic is putting into production—the ‘devastator.’ Fleet Admiral Li gave me a tour of Taconic, the first ship of this type to be completed, and I assure you that whatever you may have heard is not exaggerated. At two million tonnes, it is the most massive ship that can transit any warp point.”
“But Admiral,” Cyrus Waldeck objected, “that must limit its strategic mobility.”
There was a general nodding of heads among the PSUN and RFN officers. Warp points differed in their mass capacity. A supermonitor like Zephrain could not fit through all of them. And surely this new monster—two-thirds again a supermonitor’s mass—would be even more restricted.
“The point is well taken, Cyrus. And that leads to my next item of background information. Here again, it’s something of which you’re already aware. Kasugawa generators, when activated simultaneously as a pair, can create an artificial warp line between them.”
“But this would seem to involve what I believe humans call a catch-22, although I have never understood the reference,” said Zhaairnow’ailaaioun. The felinoid Orion stroked his luxuriant whiskers in a characteristic gesture of perplexity. “One must position the second generator wherever one wants to establish a new warp point. And how can it be so transported without going through preexisting warp points?”
“That, Least Fang, is the essence of Fleet Admiral Li’s strategy. It is brilliant—as I, of all people, have reason to expect of her,” Trevayne added dryly, to general laughter and a twinkling smile from Li Magda. He used a light-pencil to indicate the two dazzling points of white light in the holo display. He pointed first at the one in the Bellerophon Arm.
“This is Borden—a lifeless cul-de-sac red-dwarf system connected to the rest of the Arm only through a starless warp nexus. And this,” he continued, pointing far across the display, “is ZQ-147, a starless warp nexus in Terran Republic space. And this,” he finished with a dramatic pause, “is why we are interested in two such worthless cosmic afterthoughts.” He made an adjustment to the remote.
With startling suddenness, the lights in the display crawled rapidly together and then exploded outward. The display was now definitely three-dimensional, with lights of all colors intermingled, and the string lights of warp lines had vanished.
“This is the actual distribution of stars in normal space. Normally, we never think about it, nor do we need to. But you will note that the two bright white lights are now almost touching. In point of fact, Borden and ZQ-147 are only 2.21 light-years apart.
“The plan is for a joint Terran Republic/Pan-Sentient Union expedition from ZQ-147 to journey to Borden through normal space—”
“Through normal space?” someone blurted.
“—carrying one of a pair of Kasugawa generators,” Trevayne continued. “On arrival, an artificial warp line will be opened between the two systems, and Fleet Admiral Li will lead a fleet of supermonitors through it, carrying another Kasugawa generator that can be used to enlarge the mass capacity of existing warp points, thus allowing transit by the devastators. They will be able to liberate all of the Arm short of Bellerophon itself, which will then be isolated and subject to attack through four warp points, not just one.”
“But Admiral,” McFarland ventured in the Aussie-descended accent of Aotearoa, “even if it’s only 2.21 light-years, that’s one bloody hell of an ‘only’! I mean, across normal space…” He shook his head, clearly having trouble coming to terms with such an unheard-of idea.
“That’s where my final bit of technical background comes into play. And this is one which, unlike the others, will come as news to almost everyone here.” Trevayne accompanied the heavily stressed almost with another attempt at a stern look in Li Magda’s direction, with no greater success than the previous one. “Dr. Kasugawa and Admiral Desai are even now in the process of testing experimental prototypes of an improved version of the Desai drive—the Desai prime drive, as they’re calling it. Theory predicts that it will be able to instantaneously impart a velocity of 0.85 c, as compared to the 0.50 c of the Desai drive. At this velocity, a significant time-dilation advantage comes into play. The voyage should take only 1.37 subjective years.”
“But from the standpoint of an outside observer?” Zhaairnow queried.
“Two point six standard Terran years,” Trevayne stated bluntly. “As Fleet Admiral Li pointed out, this is just as well, as her fleet of devastators is going to be a long time abuilding. There are, of course, other problems to be overcome, such as shielding for the crew at such velocities, but Dr. Kasugawa and Admiral Desai are confident that these are solvable. In short, this gives us a war-winning strategy—an alternative to an endless bloody stalemate here at the Astria/Bellerophon warp connection.” Stunned silence met his summation. “No questions? Well, then—dismissed,” he concluded with a smile.
As the gathering broke up, he found himself—not altogether by accident—
facing Li Magda. “Ah…Admiral Li, could you spare me a moment?”
“Of course, Admiral.”
“I was thinking…since you’re the senior Terran Republic commander here, and since the TRN is of course outside the interlocking command structure of the PSUN and the RFN, perhaps it would be useful for us to exchange a series of courtesy visits—simply to establish the closest possible professional rapport, you know.”
“It would also create a desirable impression on my personnel, Admiral,” she agreed with great seriousness. “Especially given…well, your history in relation to my family.”
“Excellent point! Well, then, I’ll have Commander Hagen set it up. He’s acting as my glorified secretary, you see. And…I’ll look forward to it.”
“As will I, Admiral.”
As he turned away, Trevayne noted that the room hadn’t emptied quite as quickly as he might have expected. In fact, it almost seemed as thought people were dawdling, surreptitiously watching him and Li Magda. He wondered why.
6
Dire Progress
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?
—Lec
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me
—Shakespeare
Headquarters, Confederation Fleet Command, Luzarix, Hyx’Tangri System
The characteristic flat plains of the Tangri homeworld, with their carpet of tough gray-green khunillatis vegetation, stretched away, seemingly into infinity.
Ultraz, gazing out across those plains from the terrace, felt within himself the emotion the sight always awoke in his race—a feeling for which the human word “wanderlust” was a pale and inadequate approximation. He was the Dominant One, the speaker of the arnharanaks or “high rulers,” the assemblage of the anaks of all the hordes. But he was no more immune to the feeling than the lowliest Tangri.
Nevertheless, his position required him to see with longer vision than others. To him, the stars were a vaster plain, on which grazed herds of prey beyond the dreams of his ancestors—prey like the humans.
He leaned on the balustrade, resting the arms of his upright torso on it while stretching out his horizontal four-legged barrel. He had read, in one of the in-depth intelligence reports, that the humans described his race as centauroid, a word derived from a legendary creature with the upper parts of a human and the body of their favorite riding animal. He regarded it as a compliment, reflecting the humans’ unconscious awareness of their own inadequacy. Their ancestors had needed that riding animal to give them the kind of mobility the Tangri possessed as part of their evolutionary birthright. It had made possible the nomadic cultures of early human history—but it hadn’t been enough to prevent the settled agriculturalists and town-builders (zemlixi, came the automatic, contemptuous thought) from eventually imposing their mud-bound pattern on all their race.
