“What we ought to do is put the document in force. Declare the Commonwealth,” Rivera said.
“And then who’s the Council, and who’s the executive?” Cotillard asked. “And what do we do when Earth comes calling?”
“That’s the big question,” Paxton said. “What will Earth do, and where does that leave us? And yet, there’s something going on behind the scenes here. As Nils said, Ansen’s being cagey. And there’s money behind this. Westlake. The Orlov Group. I don’t even want to think about the bill for a hundred and twenty round-trip interstellar passages, what with spouses and kids and all. And taking one whole section of The Dachas for eight months? That’s big money.”
“Not for Orlov,” Cotillard said. “Pocket change. The actual numbers on what the Earth is making off the colonies are huge beyond belief. We could be no more than someone’s hobby.”
“I’d like to think we’re more than that,” Isacsson said. “I’m pretty impressed with the document as it’s coming out. And it’s not all Ansen. Sure, he did a lot of work setting all this up, and his decision tree was a huge help, but he’s not just driving his own vision through. It’s all getting debated point by point.”
“Speaking of which, you had a nice argument on the conscription debate there, Nils,” Dempsey said. “I thought Manfred Koch was going to carry the day until you presented your counter. That was nicely done.”
“Thanks. But that’s my point. Ansen wasn’t even part of that. Sure, he’s mixed up in a lot of the debate, both him and Mazur, but he’s not forcing the issue anywhere. And I think he and Mazur are enjoying going after each other.”
“You got that right,” Rivera said, laughing. “Ansen’s eyes light up every time Mazur calls out ‘Debate’ from the floor.”
“I’m impressed with the document, too,” Cotillard said. “I hope it’s not all for nothing.”
“I don’t think it is, Jacques,” Paxton said. “Something else is going on here. There’s something we don’t know. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Well, Ansen better drop it soon, Jane,” McNee said. “We’ve got but two months to go on the document, and then what?”
“I don’t know, Donal. I just don’t know,” Paxton said.
Another meeting was taking place seventy light years away, on Jablonka, in James Allen Westlake’s office in the Planetary Governor’s Mansion.
“We’re picking up some indications that someone’s poking about, Georgy,” Westlake said.
“Do we know who?” Orlov asked.
“Arlan Andrews, most likely. Or one of his cronies.”
“There’s still, what, four months of the conference? And then another month or so for the news to propagate.”
“Yes. And I worry Andrews will kick off something against us before we can pull the trigger on the Commonwealth.”
“Probably not going to happen,” Orlov said. “His position isn’t that secure to be able to take any really big action. Not before we announce the Commonwealth. His coalition would likely break up and your father-in-law would be back on top. Andrews isn’t going to risk that.”
“You’re probably right.”
“But we’re ready in any case. I expect the big blow to come here, because it’s the one place Andrews can hit the Fournier-Westlake-Orlov faction the hardest. And with you as the Chairman of the Commonwealth Council, Jablonka is the obvious move. So I’ve been concentrating firepower here. We’ll have thirty-two battleships in-system by the time the Commonwealth is announced. I figure sixteen to defend Jablonka and sixteen to space for Earth.”
“Is that enough, Gerry?” Westlake asked.
“Against Earth frigates? Yeah, that’s enough. They’re practicing maneuvers in divisions of four, so they can act as units rather than as individual ships. Sigurdsen says that’s working out really well so far. As a matter of fact, they’ve discovered something interesting.”
“What’s that?”
“They practiced transitioning hyperspace together, and some wiseguys on a couple ships decided to try the radio,” Orlov said.
“The radio worked?”
“Sort of. Some garbled noise was picked up by the other ship. So the engineers played with it and figured out how to encode it or decode it or something. I’m not a radio guy. But our ships can now communicate while in hyperspace, and Sigurdsen says theirs can’t.”
“How did no one ever figure that out before?” Westlake asked.
“I had the impression our radios now work in some frequency band no one ever tried before. Everybody knew radio didn’t work in hyperspace, so when the technology changed, nobody checked it.”
“Does he think that gives him an advantage?”
“Oh, yeah,” Orlov said. “He’s real excited about it, because apparently the radio signals travel in hyperspace at hyperspace speeds. So he’s working up some new tactical possibilities.”
“What about Ansen’s request?”
“Well, I know why he wants it. At some point he’s going to move for the conference to declare the Charter and name itself the Council. He needs something to show them so they know that’s not a suicide move. So we put together a little documentary. I sent you a copy.”
“I saw it. Did you send it to Ansen?” Westlake asked.
“Yes. He’ll have it by the time he needs it.”
“All right. Good.” Westlake looked out the window, then sighed. “We’re getting close. So many variables. So many possibilities.”
“But we’ve got lots of options, too, Jim. And we’ve got all the likely moves countered. Speaking of which, what have you done about your personal security?”
“We’ve tightened it up some. There’s only so much we can do there. It was already pretty good.”
“Well, take care. You’re an obvious target for Andrews once this goes down. But you already know that.”
The Video
“You have a guest. Patryk Mazur awaits admittance.”
“Dacha, admit Patryk Mazur,” Kusunoki said.
Mazur came out onto the lanai, where Ansen and Kusunoki waited.
“Who all is for dinner tonight?”
“It’s just us tonight, Patryk. I need to show you something. I want your feedback before I share it with everyone else,” Ansen said.
“OK, fair enough.”
“First, though, how do you think it’s going right now?”
“I think we maybe have a week’s work left. Things have been moving along pretty well. And others have taken up most of the slack. You and I haven’t had a decent debate in weeks.”
“Our last big one was on the requirements for amendment to the Charter,” Ansen said.
“Yes, I was convinced you had set the bar way too high, until you rolled out some of those historical precedents. That was brutal. A ban on the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages? In a ‘free’ country?”
“So my eighty percent requirement stood.”
“Hell, Gerry, after your presentation, even I agreed with you. Some of the debates since have been pretty epic, too, though. Jane Paxton on civil rights was one we ought to release as a public video.”
“Poor Manfred Koch. I don’t think he knew what hit him,” Kusunoki said.
“Well, leave it to the German to value order over freedom. He came around, though,” Mazur said.
“He had to,” Ansen said. “She must have had every form of civil rights violation committed by government in the last five hundred years documented in her paper.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t the gross violations that were the most telling. It was the subtle ones, committed despite solid protections being in place. Asset seizure without conviction. No-knock raids. The use of eminent domain for private purposes. Forty-eight-hour police holds without arraignment or charges filed. Preferential enforcement.” Mazur shook his head. “Awful. Just awful.”
“I’m glad she took it upon herself to rewrite the protections of my proposed article on rights and freedoms,” Ansen said.
“It’s much stronger for her work.”
“The whole document’s stronger for the last six months of work. Every decision that got made, in my opinion, made it a better document.”
“I agree,” Kusunoki said.
“I agree, too. Even when I didn’t at the time. Pride of authorship and all. But looking back on it all now, it’s much improved. Really solid.”
“Yes,” Mazur said. “And now we’re getting to the big question. What are we going to do with it?”
“I think that’s as good a segue as I’m going to get into what I want to show you, Patryk. Let’s move inside.”
They all grabbed their drinks and moved to the sitting arrangement in the living room.
“Dacha, close and darken the glass wall.”
The glass wall slid out of its pocket in sections and covered the entire opening onto the lanai, then faded to black, darkening the living room.
“Dacha, set living room for display.”
The far wall was a pastel color, with a triptych of tropical paintings prominently in the center. All that was revealed now to be a display as they disappeared and the wall went dark.
“Patryk, I’m going to have to ask you to hold what you’re about to see confidential for the time being.”
“Sure, Gerry. I know how to keep a secret.”
Ansen set his comp on the table and began a video to the wall display.
The video opened with a shot of a large ship suspended in space. It had four crew cylinders toward the back, with four large black radiators like fins projecting out at right angles to each other. Along its length, it had ten circumferential belts of a hundred and sixty or so total containers. These ended in the front with eight massive containers arranged around the nose.
As the ship hung there in space, a bronze plaque faded into view against the space at the lower right of the display. It read “Commonwealth Space Ship INDEPENDENCE Battleship BB-001.’
Ansen heard Mazur catch his breath.
The video cut to the inside of the ship. The general quarters alarm sounded, and spacers headed to their duty stations at a dead run, sliding down stairway handrails multiple decks at a time. Damage control parties stood by with sealing plates and toolboxes. Engine rooms were manned. The bridge was shown, every console manned, a scene of intense concentration.
“Weapons: MINES” appeared in the upper left corner, as the camera moved along the length of the ship and the containers racked there. The scene shifted to a single container floating in space on the left, with a radar image on the right. The container exploded, seeming to disappear, but on the right the radar image tracked the shot expended by the mine, with a velocity reading alongside.
“Weapons: BEAMS” appeared in the upper right corner, as the camera played across the front of the ship and showed the beam emitters, covered in the prior view, lurking in each of those eight large containers. The view shifted to the aft of the ship, and played across the four large containers there, also with their emitters exposed. The view shifted again to a split display, with a bridge view on the left, and an asteroid hanging in space on the right. “Distance: 1 light-sec, Size: 500 meters.” appeared on the bottom of the display. “Fire,” the gunnery man said, and pushed the Fire icon. One second later, the asteroid exploded into fragments.
“Weapons: KINETIC” appeared in the upper right corner, and the camera once again played down the containers along the ship’s side. This time the ship was spinning, and one of the containers released from the ship and continued along the direction of its tangent motion. The view shifted to a planetary surface, a small island in a large ocean. “Time rate: 1:100” appeared along the bottom of the display. A canister came into view coming straight in from the top of the display, glowing yellow and trailing smoke and debris. It hit the island in a tremendous explosion.
“Weapons: NUCLEAR” appeared in the upper right corner, and the camera focused on a group of sixteen containers mounted on top of the four large containers in the front of the vessel. A hatch in the corner of one of those containers blew off and a projectile emerged in a blast of air or smoke in the vacuum. The projectile trailed off and down toward the planet. The view switched to a view of the ocean, with buoy floating in the camera view. “Time rate: 1:100” appeared along the bottom of the display. The projectile appeared in the top of the display, going much slower than the kinetic weapon, but it hit the floating buoy dead-on. The buoy disappeared into a shower of fragments as a water spout shot into the sky. A couple of seconds later, the surface of the water erupted with an explosion from below.
The display went blank, and then a gold-colored logo faded into view in the center of the display. Around the outside ran the legend “COMMONWEALTH SPACE FORCE.” Below it, the legend “CSS Independence” faded into view.
And then, across the entire display, more names faded into view, one after the other. CSS Victory, CSS Vengeance, CSS Adventure, CSS Vanguard, CSS Defiance, CSS Triumph, CSS Enterprise, CSS Freedom, CSS Avenger. It went on and on, until the display around the logo was completely covered with them, seventy in all. The Commonwealth Space Force logo in the center seemed to shine, as if a light played across it, and then the entire display faded to black.
The entire video had taken just twenty minutes.
“Dacha, open the glass wall,” Kusunoki said quietly.
The glass wall sections returned to clear and retreated back into their pocket. As outside light came into the living room, Mazur was gaping at the blank wall. He turned to Ansen.
“My God, Gerry. How many of those ships exist?”
“All of them. Seventy,” Ansen said quietly.
“But, but how?”
“The Orlov Group and the other mining companies began converting big freighters four years ago. In Jablonka, in Bahay, in Calumet, in Kodu – all across the Commonwealth. The beam weapons are mining equipment, pressed into service as ship-to-ship weapons. The nuclear demolitions in the mines and nuclear weapons are mining demolition charges. The kinetic weapons are just containers full of fernico, the densest stuff we can get cheap.
“They’ve been training up those crews for two years. There are a total of seventeen thousand trained spacers, all employees of the Orlov Group for now, on those seventy battleships, and they’re ready for battle. Right now, if it comes to that.”
“You knew. The whole conference, you knew. This is what you’ve been building up to. This is why the Charter is not just a hypothetical exercise, why you wanted it all debated so thoroughly. This isn’t some rich kid’s pipe dream. This is real.”
“Patryk, I’ve known for four years, since before the Westlake Prize was announced. The Westlake Prize was just an excuse to call a constitutional convention. And the three years’ delay was to give them time to build up the navy we needed to defend the charter we were going to write. We’re at the end of the process now, not the beginning.
“We have a Charter and we have a Navy, and now I’ll throw your own question back to you. What are we going to do with it?”
Mazur turned back to stare at the blank wall as if there was some answer there. He turned back to Ansen.
“Gerry, I quit smoking decades ago, but, if you could spare one, I could really use one of those cigars.”
Ansen retrieved a cigar from the open box on top of the bar, and they all moved back outside. Mazur lit the cigar, drew on it, and exhaled with a sigh.
“I had almost forgotten how good Earth cigars are,” Mazur said.
Ansen and Mazur sat there, smoking their cigars, staring out to sea, in silence. Kusunoki, curled up in one of the big armchairs off to the side, watched their faces carefully.
After some minutes, Mazur broke the silence.
“If we were to declare the Commonwealth, Gerry, we need a Council,” Mazur said, continuing to stare out to sea.
“The quorum requirement was most carefully drafted, Patryk.”
“Ah,” Mazur said and nodded.
Minutes passed.
“And the third delegate from each planet?”
Ansen looked over to Kusunoki and nodded.
“The planetary governors,” she said quietly. “I could explain why, if you wish.”
“No, no. I see it. It’s brilliant.”
Mazur continued to star out to sea, and more minutes passed.
“The Chairman of the Council, then. That’s Westlake?”
“Yes,” Kusunoki said.
“And that’s the reason for the non-Council ministers. He needs Orlov for defense.”
“Correct,” Ansen said.
More minutes passed.
“Does Earth have anything that can stand up to that Navy?”
“No,” Ansen said.
Mazur nodded. “So the plan is to go to Earth and blow things up until they say ‘Uncle.’”
“More or less,” Kusunoki said. “We figure to disable things without breaking them first, then give them a list of the things we could break.”
“Cause the disruption, but everything repairable. Sign on the dotted line. Or else the next round costs you big money.”
“That’s right,” Kusunoki said.
Mazur nodded. “Smart.”
Mazur continued to stare out to sea, and the minutes went by. He finally broke the silence.
“Well, I don’t see it, Gerry.”
“See what?”
“The hidden flaw. That’s what you wanted from me, isn’t it? I assume you and Mineko and Westlake and Orlov have been all over this, over the last four years, so I’m not surprised I don’t see one.” Mazur turned to look directly at Ansen. “But I don’t.”
“So what’s the answer to your question?”
“We declare the Commonwealth, and we fight.”
“Will you support me in conference?”
“I’ll even make the argument, if you wish. There will be no better time than now, and you and I both know the current situation is not going to last. One caution, though.”
“Yes?”
“Some of the Council shouldn’t go right back to their planets. The Earth’s ruling families have their own cliques and allies. If their planetary governor is allied with the current regime under Arlan Andrews, they could get executed when they get home, whereas if their planetary governor is part of Fournier’s group, they’re probably OK. I know I can’t go back to Kodu right away.”
A Charter for the Commonwealth Page 15
