A Charter for the Commonwealth

by Richard F. Weyand

  “I’m on it,” Kevin Steverson said.

  Steverson and Jim McCoy had the back of both consoles open, and Steverson bent down to check the control run connection for beam 3 coming into the bottom of the console from the bridge chaseway.

  “What about that?” Steverson asked.

  “OK, I got beam 3 now,” Little said.

  “What about the other beam cutters, boss? We gonna hook ’em up now?” McCoy asked.

  “Might as well,” Lucas said. “As they mount each one, we’ll check them out, but no reason not to hook them up now. How’re the control runs from beams 9 through 12 coming?”

  “We’re good on those. They were easier, ‘cause they’re at this end of the ship.”

  “All right. So let’s get them connected up. There’s another crew starting to mount the aft cutters. We might as well be ready.”

  Francis Turner opened the door and stuck his head into Tully Roberts’ office in the Orlov Group’s downtown Jezgra headquarters.

  “Hey, Tully. Whatcha up to?”

  Roberts jumped, then blanked his display.

  “Christ, Frank. Don’t you ever knock?”

  “That’s OK, Tully. I won’t tell the boss you were screwin’ off. You wanna do lunch today? It’s beautiful out.”

  “Nah. I got some stuff I gotta get done.”

  “Well, then, you better stop playin’ and start workin’.”

  Turner laughed and left. Roberts thought about it, then turned his desk around so he faced the door. This way, people coming into his office wouldn’t be able to see his display.

  But it wasn’t surprising Turner thought the beam cutter targeting software for the freighter conversions was some kind of game. The gunnery console code was coming along nicely.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” Lloyd Behm said to Jarl Sigurdsen when he came out of the stairway down from the shuttle bay on the front of the Stardust. The ship was spinning, but there wasn’t much gravity this close to its axis.

  “Behm, isn’t it?” Sigurdsen asked.

  “Yes, sir. Red Team Crew Boss.”

  “And you’re going along for the testing?”

  “Yes, sir. I have a contingent aboard. In case there’s anything needs clearing up,” Behm said.

  “Excellent.”

  “This way, sir.”

  Behm led Sigurdsen aft, outboard to the circular main corridor, and down the stairs into Cylinder One to the bridge.

  “Welcome aboard, Admiral,” Captain Marc Heller said. As Heller was the captain of the freighter, and not a military captain, and Sigurdsen’s title was that of a retired admiral of the ESN, there was no saluting. It wasn’t a military operation, though Sigurdsen was in fact Heller’s two-up superior in the corporate structure. Heller’s direct superior, Rick Ewald, was the Director of Shipping Operations under Sigurdsen.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Sigurdsen said.

  “If you’ll step this way, sir, we can brief you on where we’re at.”

  “Very good.”

  Heller led Sigurdsen from the bridge to a meeting room off the corridor behind it. Waiting there was Bryan Jones, Heller’s first officer.

  “Admiral Sigurdsen, Bryan Jones, my first officer.”

  “Good to meet you, sir.”

  Sigurdsen nodded to him, and Heller waved Sigurdsen to a seat.

  “Our status right now is we are ready to move on out from Misty and test the main weapons, the beam cutters,” Heller said. “We have done some testing from here at minimal power settings, just to light things up enough to tell whether we hit them or not. Tully Roberts has been up here from Jezgra making tweaks in his gunnery code, and right now he’s got us to where we can pretty much hit what we aim at out to a couple light-seconds.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Indeed. What we don’t know yet is if, when we dial the beams up to full power, they’ll do any damage at anything like that distance. That’s what we’re about to find out. Our plan is to move out several light-seconds from Misty and see if we can’t, um, disassemble some asteroids.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, Captain. You could do all this and report it to me, sitting in my office groundside. But this is something I need to see.”

  “Understood, sir. Mr. Jones, could you please run through the detailed plans for the Admiral?”

  The Stardust folded cylinder and got underway at her normal cruise of 0.5 gravity. That was at eighty percent power. Pushing the engines to the redline would yield just over 0.6 g, but the additional speed and extra gravity shipboard wasn’t normally worth the wear-and-tear on the engines and the much higher drain on reaction mass, which went up faster than linearly as you approached the engines’ limits.

  In three hours, she was a light-second out from Misty, and they began hunting targets. Sigurdsen was on the bridge as an observer, Heller and his first-shift bridge crew were at their positions, and Shell Scott, who was a retired Earth navy weapons officer and got no end of grief about his first name because of it, was at the main gunnery panel, with the gunnery console programmer Tully Roberts on the auxiliary gunnery panel.

  “What have we got, Mr. Scott? Any good candidates within range?” Heller asked.

  “We have a rocky asteroid, couple hundred meters diameter, at half a light-second dead ahead, sir,” Scott said.

  “Light it up first. Make sure we can hit it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Scott targeted the asteroid, set the beam strength at one-tenth percent, and fired.

  “Confirmed, sir. We can hit it.”

  “Full power on one beam, then, Mr. Scott.”

  Scott fired again.

  “Confirmed hit, sir. We heated it up a bit, but we didn’t hurt it.”

  “Adjusting the focus for range,” Roberts said. He busied himself at his panel. “We have focus now, sir.”

  “Again, Mr. Scott,” Heller said.

  Scott fired again, and the asteroid blew apart. Of course, at one-half light-second no one could see it, but radar confirmed multiple small targets where there had been one large one before.

  “Direct hit. She’s broken up, sir. Velocity of fragments indicates ‘exploded’ might be a better term.”

  “Outstanding. Good shooting, Mr. Scott. Now let’s find us something out about one light-second.”

  “We have a rocky asteroid at 1.05 light-seconds, fifteen mark thirty on the ship. Four hundred meter diameter, sir.”

  “Helm, come to fifteen mark thirty on the ship. Target and engage when in your sights, Mr. Scott.”

  This time Scott was careful to adjust focus to range. He targeted the asteroid with one full-power beam and fired.

  “Target has broken up, sir. Slow-moving fragments, so this one was not an explosion like the other.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Scott. Now find me a big one.”

  “We have a large rocky asteroid at 0.95 light-second, ninety minus forty-five on the ship, sir. One kilometer diameter, give or take.”

  “Helm, come to ninety minus forty-five on the ship. Target and engage with all eight beams when in your sights, Mr. Scott.”

  Scott selected all eight beams, adjusted the group for focus to range, and fired.

  “She broke up, sir. She’s not flying apart, but she broke up.”

  “Excellent shooting, Mr. Scott. Now let’s see if we can scratch the paint at one-and-a-half and two light-seconds.”

  “Thanks for letting me ride shotgun during your exercises, Captain. I hope I wasn’t too much in the way,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Not at all, Admiral. We were happy to have you,” Heller said.

  “I have a little present for you, Captain. You can’t hang it yet. For right now it has to be our little secret. I’ll tell you when you can screw it to the bridge bulkhead in place of what’s there.”

  Sigurdsen handed Heller a flat box, eighteen inches by six inches and an inch thick. Heller cut the tape and opened the top flaps to reveal a bronze plaque:


  COMMONWEALTH SPACE SHIP

  INDEPENDENCE

  B A T T L E S H I P B B - 0 0 1

  Heller looked at it for several minutes. When he looked up at Sigurdsen again, there were tears in his eyes.

  “It’s true, then?” Heller asked.

  “It will be, if we can pull it off. I’ll let you know when you can hang it, Captain. You and your crew have earned it. You just can’t let them know yet. Couple years, I think. In the meantime, you need to fill out your crew complement from Orlov Group employees, and drill them to be ready.

  “Because, while we don’t know when you will be needed, Captain, you and the CSS Independence will be needed before it’s over, that’s sure.”

  “We’ll be ready, Admiral Sigurdsen. When we get the call, we’ll be ready.”

  The Public Debate

  Ansen stepped up his criticism of the Earth’s colonial policies in the Jablonka newsfeeds, and many of his fellow Westlake Prize winners did the same. Ansen was careful not to criticize the planetary governors, though, putting the spotlight on the costs and benefits of Jablonka’s relationship with Earth. He concentrated on the policies coming out of Earth, and not the local officials whose job it was to carry them out.

  Westlake himself took to the newsfeeds and argued the benefits to the colonies of Earth’s oversight, as did many of his fellow planetary governors as the debate spread across the colonies. As the debate heated up, some of the Westlake Prize winners got less than subtle hints their own planetary governor was less tolerant than Mr. Westlake and his friends. Visits by government agents to suggest they knock it off if they wanted to avoid prison, and even some being taken into custody and questioned, sent the message, and they backed out of the debate.

  But as the debate raged on, and was carried on all the colony newsfeeds, the public began to take notice.

  Connie Elliott, Vanessa Crum, and Karen Myers were having coffee and croissant at a table on the sidewalk of a little cafe across the street from Kabisera City Park on Bahay. The weather in Bahay’s capital was beautiful on this late spring morning, and they had just finished a long morning walk on the trails in the park, which ran well up into the hills north of the city.

  “Have you been following these debates in the newsfeeds?” Elliott asked.

  “On Earth and the colonies and all that?” Crum asked.

  “Yes. I’ve never seen anything so up front before about what Earth costs us in taxes and fees every year.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Myers said. “Those Earth bastards bleed us for every nickel and dime. The colonies would be rich if they just left us alone.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Crum said. “They do keep the peace among all the colonies. That’s the counterargument, right?”

  “Yes,” Elliott said. “And Westlake and other planetary governors, including ours, make that argument, but it’s not very convincing to me. Their arguments seem kind of thin in comparison to some of the economic analysis the other side is doing.”

  “Thin?” Myers asked. “I’ll say. His Excellency Richard Mcenroe, the Planetary Governor of Bahay, couldn’t find his ass with both hands if you kicked him there to give him a head start. Westlake is doing his best, but Gerald Ansen just shredded his argument in his latest piece. And our own Jane Paxton wrote a scathing piece on civil rights violations in the colonies. I heard her talk once. She’s got her head on straight.”

  “I hope she’s careful, or she’s going to have trouble keeping her head on, period,” Crum said.

  “I don’t know about that. This is starting to look like the sort of thing, the more you clamp down on it, the more out of control it gets. Like squeezing a wet bar of soap. Sooner or later, it squirts out of your grip,” Elliott said.

  “Yes, but where does it land? That’s the question,” Crum said.

  His Excellency Richard Mcenroe was also enjoying the beautiful morning. He was out on the patio of the Planetary Governor’s Mansion on Bahay, looking out over another portion of the Kabisera City Park.

  “But, sir, shouldn’t we do something about Jane Paxton? Her latest piece in the newsfeeds was way over the line,” Michael Jacobus asked.

  “To what end, Michael? Do you want to prove her point? She has advocated no violence, no treason, no action. It is, pure and simple, an analysis of civil rights violations in the colonies. For the most part, in other colonies. Your own police force came out relatively unscathed. Should I then have you arrest her for complimenting your restraint?

  “No, I think Westlake has it right here. In his letter, he said this was a way to let people blow off some steam, and if we suppressed it, it would just blow up in our faces. I think he’s right. As long as there’s no violence, no call to arms, we let it go.”

  “And if it turns?”

  “Then we follow Westlake’s lead. I can’t help thinking he’s got something up his sleeve. The fellow’s very bright, and he’s at the center of things. I’m content to let him call the shots.”

  The debate in the colony newsfeeds did not go unnoticed on Earth.

  “Have you seen the colony newsfeeds, sir?” Andy Hasper asked.

  “Yes, I was going to ask you about it,” Arlan Andrews said. “What’s going on out there?”

  “A few dozen academics spread across the larger colonies have begun something of a media campaign against Earth’s taxes and duties on the colonies. This Gerald Ansen on Jablonka looks to be the ringleader.”

  “And what’s Westlake doing about it?”

  “He and several of the other planetary governors are vigorously making the counterargument.”

  “But no arrests?” Andrews asked.

  “No, sir. It’s all being fought out in the newsfeeds.”

  “Young Westlake is weak, like his father. That Ansen fellow should be in jail. I knew it was going to be trouble when Fournier gave his son-in-law the Jablonka charter like some sort of damned wedding present, but he was calling the shots then.”

  “Should we try canceling the Jablonka charter, sir?”

  “No. That’s not how the game is played. That charter was granted by the families, and so it stands. Just because I’m leading the families now doesn’t mean I can go revoking charters and the like. Everybody’s got things they don’t want to lose. It would open up everything, and probably mean I end up being pushed out and Fournier’s faction takes over again. No, I can’t do anything. At least not until Westlake loses control out there.

  “When that happens, though, I damn well can do something, and I will. So keep an eye on those newsfeeds for me.”

  Costing Them Money

  Ansen, Kusunoki, and Sigurdsen were meeting once again, for another of their hypothetical discussions. They were all seated in the big armchairs in the living room, Ansen and Sigurdsen across from each other, and Kusunoki curled up in her chair next to Ansen.

  “You called this one, Admiral, so what is our topic today?” Ansen asked.

  “It’s actually a continuation of our first topic, Professor. A further hypothetical of our first discussion on fighting wars in the future.”

  “Ah. Interesting. Do we have further explorations to make in this area?”

  “I think so,” Sigurdsen said. “Let’s start out our discussion today assuming everything we discussed in that first discussion.”

  “It was a while back, but, as I recall, we discussed how such a war would end and spent quite a bit of time on warships and the like.”

  “Yes, Professor. So let’s assume for today all those things are true. The warships exist, and they have the capabilities we discussed previously.”

  Ansen and Kusunoki glanced at each other.

  “This means,” Sigurdsen continued, “in our hypothetical war between Jablonka and Earth, a force of Jablonka warships is likely to be able to attack Earth and escape again. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, but assume for today’s discussion that is true.”

  “Very well,” Ansen said.

  “And we previously ag
reed, were Jablonka to win such a war, it would be because Earth lost the will to fight on economic grounds.”

  “That the war was costing them so much, they would prefer it to end than to continue. Yes. That is easier to achieve with a situation such as the Earth government is now, for example, as plutocrats would rather not fight wars, which is not true of all autocratic states.”

  “Correct,” Sigurdsen said. “Given that, what would the Jablonka forces be best employed doing? In short, how could Jablonka cost them the most money, while not making any of the big strategic mistakes.”

  “Such as killing a huge number of civilians and uniting the population behind an increased war effort.”

  “Or destroying something of huge sentimental value and little contribution to the war effort,” Kusunoki put in.

  “Exactly. Correct on both counts,” Sigurdsen said.

  “That’s an interesting question, Admiral,” Ansen said. “I think you need to separate the costs into two parts. The cost to replace anything destroyed, and the cost in the meantime to make do with another solution while the thing destroyed is replaced. The first one is straightforward. The important thing about the second one is to make it something for which the workarounds are much more expensive and yet absolutely necessary.”

  “All right. I can see that.”

  “I’ll give some examples. I am most familiar with Europe and North America, so I can give you examples there, but there are likely similar targets in the rest of the world.

  “First, I believe you could cut off a large part of New York City from rail traffic with a few well placed hits on tunnels and bridges. This does several things. Commuters can no longer get to their jobs, which disrupts the business of the city. Food and energy now need to be delivered by alternate means, such as the highways, which are already overcrowded. A massive effort would need to be mounted on an ongoing basis just to keep everyone fed, and that would go on for the years it would take to replace those structures.