A Charter for the Commonwealth

by Richard F. Weyand

  “On the contrary, Admiral. Ultimately, I won’t be able to do it for everybody, and so, for her, I must.”

  Sigurdsen looked at Westlake a long minute.

  “I understand completely, sir.”

  It was hard. It was always hard. They stayed for a couple of hours, and listened to the sobbing parents’ stories of their beloved daughter, the Commonwealth Space Force’s first death in action.

  Patryk Mazur stopped by to visit Mineko Kusunoki that day. Kusunoki was dressed all in white, the traditional color of mourning in Japan. She let him in and they took seats in the living room.

  “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Gerry,” Mazur said.

  “Thank you. I will tell you he felt complete, as if the Charter was something he had prepared all his life to do, and he had completed his task. It is a tremendous blessing to me to know that. We always thought he would die before me, but to have him die before completing his life’s work would have been a tragedy.”

  “And he died protecting Westlake. No small thing.”

  “It is a huge thing,” Kusunoki said. “Mr. Westlake is a father, with a wife and children. What a tragedy that would have been. And Mr. Westlake understands what we tried to do, and has the administrative experience to succeed in leading the Commonwealth. He is the best person to carry Gerry’s work forward. In some sense, Gerry’s work was done, but Mr. Westlake’s real task is just beginning.”

  Mazur looked down at his hands. He didn’t know what to say. Kusunoki seemed already at peace with Ansen’s death, where for Mazur it was very difficult. Granted he had not seen Ansen for fifty years, but for the last year they had both been more alive and engaged than in years, and he felt the loss keenly.

  “Well, I will be staying at the Jezgra Suites Hotel downtown. If you want to get in touch with me, or if you need anything –”

  “But you were invited to stay here, Patryk.”

  “But Gerry is gone.”

  “And your staying at the Jezgra Suites Hotel will not bring him back.”

  “I just worried about what people would think. About your reputation.”

  Kusunoki laughed.

  “Gerry and I never cared what people thought. Or rather, he cared that they not think us too conventional. That was always his concern.”

  “Ha! He had little to worry about there.”

  “Indeed. Patryk, there is absolutely no sense in you being alone and lonely downtown and me being alone and lonely here. I am not quite the group conversationalist Gerry was, but you may be surprised how well I can hold my own in a one-to-one conversation.”

  “If you’re sure....”

  “I am sure, Patryk. You are always welcome here.”

  Mazur moved his things into Kusunoki’s guest room that same afternoon. That evening they sat in the living room and watched Westlake address the Commonwealth on video.

  “My fellow Commonwealth citizens:

  “Yesterday, an assassin tried to kill me, but Gerald Ansen knowingly stepped into the path of the assassin’s bullets. Gerald Ansen – the Architect of the Commonwealth, the Drafter of the Charter – died defending me from this cowardly attack.

  “Last night we captured the assassin, and this morning I was briefed on the status of the investigation. The one thing that is sure at this point is that the assassin was paid by, and operating under the orders of, the Earth government.

  “That briefing was interrupted by the news that the Stardust, a Commonwealth ship, was the victim of an unprovoked attack by the Earth Space Navy on entering the Earth system. She was struck several times, and one of our spacers, Jennifer Lowenthal, was killed in the attack. Jennifer was only twenty-eight years old. I visited her parents this afternoon to give them that terrible news and to hear their stories of their remarkable daughter.

  “It is clear the Earth does not wish the Commonwealth to survive, does not wish the colonies to be out from under its domination, does not want the citizens of the Commonwealth to enjoy the freedoms protected by Gerald Ansen’s Charter.

  “I am sorry to give Earth some bad news. The Commonwealth will survive, and if Earth desires to throw itself against the rocks of our determination, their ruin will be a shipwreck on the shore of history.”

  Countermoves

  Hopalong Ginsberg was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he did as he was told, and he was caught, he would be executed. Attorney-client privilege wouldn’t protect him. Not on Earth. But if he didn’t do as he’d been told, he’d be guilty of standing aside rather than prevent an act of mass murder.

  Nobility won out over personal fear, and he sent the message.

  It took two weeks to ensure every ship of the task force was topped off on stores and reaction mass, and to effect more permanent repairs to the Stardust, now under her CSF name, the CSS Independence. There was no way Admiral Sigurdsen could not take her with him for the attack on Earth. She had earned her battle honors.

  In fact, he decided to fly his flag on the Independence. Was it the correct thing to do? He wasn’t sure, but he was sure it was the right thing to do. Of such simple things are legends made, on such simple things do traditions grow.

  Sigurdsen had with him detailed instructions from higher, strategic goals, tactical plans, and even the text of a treaty the Commonwealth would accept.

  Sixteen ships in four divisions spaced for Earth the week after Ansen’s death:

  - the Independence, the Victory, the Vengeance, and the Vanguard;

  - the Challenge, the Endeavor, the Enterprise, and the Adventure;

  - the Charter, the Freedom, the Liberty, and the Citizenship;

  - the Triumph, the Defiance, the Vigilance, and the Endurance.

  There were no cargo containers, there were no beam emitter covers, there were no fake transponder codes. The Commonwealth Space Force wasn’t hiding from anybody anymore.

  Before they left, each crew member on every ship was given a photograph of Jennifer Lowenthal, a photograph of Gerald Ansen, and a copy of the Charter they had sworn to defend.

  It was eight weeks transit to Earth, and the ships would be in radio contact with each other all the way.

  The Destruction of Doma

  A week after the news of Gerald Ansen’s murder and the ESN’s attack on the Stardust arrived in Doma, Planetary Governor Edmond Fournier was meeting with Kim Sommer, his chief of staff.

  “This message came in to me personally, anonymously,” Fournier told Sommer, and handed him a printout.

  Sommer read the printout and whistled.

  “Anonymously? That’s not easy to do.”

  “I know. I can’t decide whether that gives it more credibility or less. So now what do I do?”

  “But it’s from Earth?” Sommer asked.

  “Last hop, anyway. It came in on the courier ship from Earth.”

  Sommer looked at the message again: “ESN has orders NOT to accept surrender. Evacuate your cities NOW.”

  “Would Andrews do that? Ignore a surrender? Bomb cities?” Sommer asked.

  “Over this Charter business? I don’t know. Maybe. He’s not completely rational where my father is concerned. Maybe he thinks the charter was our doing, since it was signed here and the press release issued from here.”

  “But you looked into that, right? Doma was just the nicest place to call the conference. I mean, if everybody has to travel to get together anyway, why not here?”

  “I understand,” Fournier said. “But Andrews may not. He’s been getting more and more paranoid.”

  Fournier sighed.

  “I can’t ignore it,” Fournier said. “If Andrews is that crazy – and I’m not sure he isn’t – it would be too catastrophic to think about if I ignored this. Get plans together, quickly, and let’s get moving. And let’s plan on getting everybody into the forests, not out in the open.”

  “Plans? I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, food and water is the biggest one. We don’t really need shelter
in this climate. Pick the hiding places. Access to fresh water is an important selection criteria. Then collect all the non-perishable food and drink you can and get it to the hiding places. Then let’s start moving people. And let’s get going on it. I’m not sure how long we have.”

  The next two weeks were a madhouse on Doma as everyone was to be moved out of the three big cities of Nadezhda, Vera, and Istina. Each of the cities had lush tropical forests with fresh water streams flowing down from the mountains in the twenty to forty mile range from town that was considered optimal.

  Under Planetary Governor Fournier’s emergency order, all non-perishable food items were packaged up in containers and trucked to the sites, where the containers were dropped off in open areas within the forest. The populace ate the perishable food in the meantime.

  When all the food was moved, the next task was to move fifteen million people from the cities out into the woods. Most people went without trouble on the assumption Fournier, who had been a good planetary governor, knew what he was doing.

  The holdouts stopped being holdouts and became enthusiastic volunteers when the ESN dropped out of hyperspace.

  “Captain, we have a large group of hyperspace transitions, one-thirty-five mark forty on the planet, and thirty light-minutes out. It looks like seventy or more of those ESN frigates and ten larger vessels,” Lieutenant Jon Glenn reported from the sensors console.

  “Thirty light minutes out?” asked Captain Dave Mann, captain of the CSS Invincible.

  “Yes, Sir. It looks like they’re making for Doma-5.”

  “They’re going after the mining operations there.”

  “That looks like it, Sir.”

  “All right. Keep an eye on them. Mr. Blackard.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Ensign David Blackard said.

  “Transmit a message to Doma Space Traffic Control. Warn them about the ESN fleet. They probably already know, but let’s be sure.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Mr. Weese, let’s fold cylinder and get under way. Southern system periphery, closest approach. Those frigates are faster than we are, and I don’t want to be racing them on short notice.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Lieutenant Derek Weese said. “Sounding maneuvering alarm.”

  The klaxon blared, then three bells sounded.

  “Halting spin.

  “Spin at zero. Folding cylinders.

  “Cylinders confirm locks. Engaging engines.

  “Engines at eighty percent, making for southern system periphery at closest approach. Steady on zero minus ninety on the planet. Securing from maneuvering.”

  The speakers sounded two bells.

  “Flip us over in time to hit zero velocity at the system periphery, Mr. Weese. I want to watch what happens from a safe distance before we abandon the system.”

  “Yes, Sir. Plotting for zero velocity at system periphery. Approximately eighty hours to mid-course flip.”

  “Mr. Glenn, keep an eye that none of them slip over the system periphery and into hyperspace. I don’t want any of them dropping out of hyperspace in front of us.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Almost four days passed before the ESN fleet arrived at Doma-5c.

  “Confirmed, Sir. The ESN is firing on the mining operations on Doma-5c,” Glenn said.

  “What are they using, Mr. Glenn?”

  “Looks like nukes from here, Sir.”

  “Did anyone get away?”

  “Yes, Sir. Two ships spaced from the mining operations in the other direction three days back. ESN didn’t send anyone after them.”

  “All right. Let’s see what they do next.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  It was just a couple hours later when Glenn reported again.

  “The ESN has set course for Doma, Sir.”

  “Across the system? That’ll take them more than a week. They should have gone back out and hypered around.”

  “It’s about the same either way, Sir.”

  A week out from Doma, the Invincible reached the system periphery.

  “We’re at the system periphery, Sir. Zero velocity relative to the star.”

  “Well done, Mr. Weese. Let’s spin the ship. We might as well be comfortable while we wait.”

  “Sir? My sensors will have better resolution if we’re not spinning.”

  “Understood, Mr. Glenn. Let us know when they get close to Doma and we’ll stop spin.”

  “Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

  “What kind of communications are you picking up, Mr. Blackard?”

  “Doma sent out a surrender, Sir. It’s repeating.”

  “And the ESN fleet?”

  “They haven’t responded, Sir.”

  “Boy, I don’t like the sound of that. Mr. Blackard, Mr. Glenn, make sure you’re recording everything.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “They’re getting close to the planet, Sir,” Glenn said.

  “All right. Mr. Weese, halt spin.”

  “Halting spin.”

  The gravity gradually went to zero g.

  “Spin at zero.”

  Admiral Philippe Bruneau had had his chief of staff quietly run a selective infrared scan of the surface of Doma. The cities were quiet, shut down, cold on the infrared. But there was a large thermal bloom outside each of the cities, a thermal bloom centered in the mid-90s Fahrenheit.

  Hoppy Ginsberg must have sent Bruneau’s message to Fournier. Bruneau had certainly dragged his feet long enough getting to the planet. His orders had said to burn it down, to leave nothing. No ‘thing.’ His orders didn’t say anything about killing civilians. They said nothing about people at all.

  It was a fine point, but an important one. Leave it to a paranoid bastard like Arlan Andrews to have agents within Bruneau’s own fleet, within his own staff. If he refused to carry out Andrews’ orders, he would probably be shot and the orders carried out anyway. And, given the sort of people Andrews hired, they would probably bomb those thermal blooms as well.

  It wasn’t much, but what he could do, he had done.

  Edmond Fournier stood on a rocky hill in the woods twenty-five miles north of Nadezhda. He could see the city clearly from here. There the Planetary Governor’s Mansion, there the spaceport, there the city park. The homes, the shops, the churches, the schools.

  A faint whistling noise got his attention. He looked up and he saw hundreds of projectiles coming down out of the sky. He watched, sickened but helpless, as they impacted across the city, smashing homes, crashing into streets and shops and parks and schools indiscriminately across the whole city.

  It was three minutes before the noise got to his location, sounding like distant thunder.

  And then, the faint whistling noise again, but this one was different. He looked up, saw more projectiles, but this wave was different. Fewer, but larger, projectiles. He watched them come down, but they did not impact. Short of the ground they exploded in huge white snowflakes blanketing the city, and wherever the white hit, the fires started.

  The initial projectiles had shattered buildings and created debris, and the incendiaries set it on fire. Fournier watched in horror as the fires grew and grew, until a firestorm developed, all the fires contributing to the updraft, sucking in more and more air, generating more and more heat.

  It built and built, that blast furnace of destruction, consuming everything. It was so hot steel buildings twisted and bent and ultimately collapsed as the temper went out of the steel and they could no longer hold their own weight. Concrete cracked and failed, and those buildings, too, collapsed.

  It took several days for the fires to go out. When they had, there was nothing left.

  Where Nadezhda had been, there was only ashes.

  “Oh, God,” Glenn cried out in despair.

  “What is it, Mr. Glenn.”

  Glenn turned to Captain Mann with tears in his eyes.

  “They’ve firebombed the cities, Sir. Nadezhda, Vera, Istina. They’re all on fire. Huge fires. It’s like the who
le city is just one big fire.”

  The bridge crew collectively made a muffled cry like a wounded animal. All the crew had had shore leave on Nadezhda, and if there was a more beautiful place in human space, with more wonderful people, Mann hadn’t seen it.

  “Make sure you record everything, and save the recordings, Mr. Glenn. For the war crimes trials.”

  “War crimes trials, Sir?”

  “Hopefully, Mr. Glenn, we’ll get the chance to kill the bastards outright. But sometimes you have to settle for second best.”

  Invincible could not make it to Jablonka before the Earth Fleet could, even at one hundred percent on the engines. But the system’s mail relays, hovering on the system periphery, were undamaged, and Invincible transmitted her sensor recordings to the mail relays for transmission to the courier ships that connected human space together. Those ships never entered the system periphery. They dropped out of hyperspace, collected and delivered the mail via high-speed transmission to and from the relays, and transitioned right out again.

  The news of Doma’s destruction would take just three weeks to reach Jablonka, and four weeks to reach Earth.

  Reaction To Doma

  Westlake and Orlov were in Westlake’s office in the Planetary Governor’s Mansion. Westlake sat and stared at his hands, clasped between his knees.

  “You knew Andrews was going to do something, that this wasn’t going to be all daisies,” Orlov said.

  “I know, I know. I’ll be all right. It’s just getting to be a bit much. Ansen shot and killed right in front of me. Visiting Lowenthal’s parents. And now Doma. I could never have imagined Andrews would pull something like this.”

  “Captain Mann’s report said they were evacuating the cities well before the ESN showed up. Somebody on Earth tipped them off.”

  “I wonder if Edmond got everybody out. If Edmond and Anastasiya are OK,” Westlake said.

  “No way to know yet. Hopefully my sister and our mutual brother-in-law were smart enough not to go down with the ship. So the question is, What do we do now?”