A Charter for the Commonwealth

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Hyperspace transition, Sir. It’s Star Maiden. Receiving message. They say no change, Sir. Scans transferring. Scans transferred,” Ganka said.

  Sigurdsen looked at the scans on his display.

  “No new orders, Ms. Ganka. They can return to station.”

  “Transmitted, Sir. Hyperspace transition. Star Maiden back on station.”

  “Hyperspace transition, Sir. It’s Star Maiden. Receiving message. They say ESN force made their flip early, Sir. Scans transferring. Scans transferred,” Ganka said.

  Sigurdsen looked at the scans on his display.

  “They’re not coming all the way out. They’re going to stay well inside the system periphery. I think somebody over there with a brain is doing the best he can within his orders.”

  “So we’re still going to have to go in after them,” Kirby said.

  “That’s what it looks like. Let’s send Star Maiden back, then get the Charter and Triumph divisions over here. They’ve concentrated their forces, and we should probably do the same.”

  “What about us joining Charter and Triumph divisions on the north approaches and coming in on the planet while the ESN is sitting over here?”

  “No, that’s not going to work,” Sigurdsen said. “They’re faster than we are, and they would be back covering the planet before we could get there. I don’t want a straight-up battle well inside the system periphery against that force. Eighty frigates can throw over five thousand rounds of projectiles a minute. Even if we burned them all, none of us would survive the projectile storm. No, we have to do something they’re not expecting, catch them by surprise. So let’s get everybody together.”

  “Yes, Sir. Go ahead, Ms. Ganka.

  “Transmitted, Ma’am. Hyperspace transition. Star Maiden back on station. Acknowledgments received from Charter and Triumph divisions. They’re on the way. Triumph reports they figure twelve hours to space around the system periphery and come back in to here, all in hyperspace.”

  “Hyperspace transition, Sir. It’s Star Maiden. Receiving message. They say ESN force is spreading out in a big arc, Sir, like the top of an umbrella, with the concave side toward Earth. Scans transferring. Scans transferred,” Ganka said.

  Sigurdsen looked at the scans on his display.

  “It looks like they’re going to come to a stop about twenty percent short of the system periphery. They know we have to come in after them. We didn’t come all this way to just sit out here.”

  “So now what do we do?” Kirby asked.

  “Ms. Ganka, send Star Maiden back to station with instructions to return with scans as soon as the ESN ships come to zero velocity. Morgen, ask Commander Tibbs to meet with us in my ready room as soon as he can.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Reporting as ordered, Sir,” said Commander Scott Tibbs, the hyperspace specialist on Sigurdsen’s staff.

  “Thanks, Scotty. Have a seat,” Sigurdsen said.

  Scott sat down across from Sigurdsen and Kirby.

  “The ENS fleet has taken up a position about twenty percent inside the system periphery, with all their guns pointed out toward our necessary line of approach. I want to hyperspace transition in behind them and catch them by surprise. Tell me why that’s a bad idea.”

  “Generally speaking, Sir, that’s a terrible idea. There’s a reason it’s called the system periphery, and hyperspace transitions within a system are a really bad idea. Ships blow up, break apart, all that sort of thing. It’s like they just get pulled apart at the seams.

  “That having been said, in specific cases it’s less of a bad idea than it might be. The actual operational system periphery is not a hard and fast line. System boundaries are conservatively stated, because that whole ship breaking up thing is so unpleasant, and further they shift over time. We don’t know why they shift over time, but there’s a theory it has to do with the positions of large planets.”

  “Explain,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Well, the biggest difference between wide open space and a solar system is the presence of mass, and the only effect of the presence of mass that extends out as far as the system periphery is gravity. So the theory is the system periphery is determined by gravitation. Now, if you have some really big planet, like Earth-5 or Earth-6, maybe that bulges the operational system periphery out farther wherever they are than wherever they aren’t.

  “When you have a published system periphery, it better be far enough out to cover the maximum extent of where ships break up and other bad things happen. So the published system periphery has to cover all the variation, which is likely due to those big planets being around, on the same side of the system as you are. But right now, the gas giants Earth-5 and Earth-6 are on the other side of the system from the populated planet, Earth-3.

  “That’s the theory, anyway. If it’s true, we can hyperspace transition that close with few if any problems.”

  “And if it’s not true?” Sigurdsen asked.

  “All the ships could break up.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “I think the theory is correct, but I wouldn’t risk a fleet on it to find out.”

  “What about a single ship?”

  “That would be a hard call for me, Sir.”

  “All right, Commander. Thank you for the briefing.”

  “How long does it take an ESN frigate to flip ship?” Kirby asked.

  “In an emergency? Twenty seconds,” Sigurdsen said.

  “And how fast can a Commonwealth battleship hyperspace transition?”

  “Nine seconds.”

  “There’s three transitions there. In and out and in,” Kirby said.

  “But the first doesn’t count, right? Because they don’t start reacting until the first transition happens. And there’s command delay. Maybe three or four seconds to issue the command, another two or three to transmit, and another two or three to implement. Call it seven to ten seconds more.”

  “So we have nine to twelve seconds? That’s it?”

  “Until they fire, yes, but we’ll be way out of their range. Three-quarters of a light-second is over a day at ten thousand feet per second. We also have a total of a hundred and twenty-eight guns and only eighty targets,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Yeah, there’s that.”

  The video conference was just ending.

  “Everyone have your assignments? Everyone clear?” Sigurdsen asked.

  After the general acknowledgements, Sigurdsen said, “All right. And good luck, Captain Hamill.”

  Captain John Hamill’s Defiance would test the hyperspace limit.

  Star Maiden returned with scans of the ESN position, the Commonwealth ships took up positions in hyperspace, and targets were allocated.

  “Whenever you’re ready Defiance. All ships stand by for transition immediately on Defiance’s return. Guns free.”

  Aboard the ENS Dexter Guptill, Rear Admiral Robert Head waited for any sign of his enemy. He was well back from the system periphery, had his forces concentrated, and had them arrayed across a wide circular section of a sphere two light-seconds across.

  “Hyperspace transition one eighty mark zero!” Lieutenant Commander Brandon Bowers screamed from the sensor console.

  “All ships! Flip ship!”

  CSS Defiance transitioned out of hyperspace three-quarters of a light-second behind the ESN formation, hovered nine seconds, and transitioned right back out again. Nine seconds later all sixteen of the Commonwealth battleships transitioned out of hyperspace.

  The ESN ships were halfway through their flip, which made them even more vulnerable to the Commonwealth’s fire, as they were broadside to the beams and easier to hit.

  Each Commonwealth battleship fired three times – a total of three hundred and eighty-four beams – at the eighty ESN frigates.

  None survived.

  On Earth that evening, Vice Admiral Courtney Ballard got slowly and thoroughly drunk looking through the scrapbooks and mementos of her navy career.

 
At a little after 2:00 AM, she picked up her service pistol and shot herself in the head.

  Regime Changes

  The Commonwealth fleet spaced for Earth unopposed.

  “Sir, I’m downloading mail and newsfeeds from the relays. There’s something here you really need to see,” Lieutenant Commander Nancy Ganka said over the intercom.

  “Route it to me here, Ms. Ganka,” Admiral Jarl Sigurdsen said back over the intercom from his briefing room on the flag deck of the Independence.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You wanted to see me, Sir?” Captain Morgen Kirby asked.

  “Yes, Morgen. Have a seat. Ms. Ganka just downloaded our mail. There was an ‘All Ships’ notice from the Invincible in there that the ESN firebombed the cities of Nadezhda, Vera, and Istina on Doma from orbit.”

  “My God.”

  “The planetary governor was attempting to evacuate the cities, but Invincible wasn’t sure how far they had gotten. There’s no information on casualties.”

  “It could be in the millions,” Kirby said.

  “Yes, it could. As I say, there’s no information on casualties – they were observing from the system periphery – but the three cities were completely destroyed in huge draft-fed firestorms. Invincible withdrew from the system because they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. The ESN ignored Doma’s surrender transmission.”

  “Those bastards. It makes me want to show them what a planetary bombardment looks like, up close and personal.”

  “Me, too,” Sigurdsen said. “But this fleet is not going to commit any war crimes. Earth has earned its reputation now, let it live with it. I have no desire to share it with them. We need to talk to our captains about it, and make sure we stay focused on our goals. Let’s let Admiral Holcomb show them the errors of their ways.”

  “You think they’re going to go to Jablonka, Sir.”

  “Yes. And they’ll find more than one Commonwealth battleship waiting for them there. That’ll just have to be good enough.”

  “Understood, Sir.”

  “All divisions reporting in position, Sir,” Ganka said.

  “Transmit the message, Ms. Ganka,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  “So we go to Phase One if they don’t accept the demands, Sir?” Kirby asked.

  “Yes. They’re fools if they don’t accept them. We could demand surrender of the planet at this point, but all we’re asking is they acknowledge the Commonwealth and sign the treaty.”

  “And turn over Andrews for trial.”

  “I added that,” Sigurdsen said. “Arlan Andrews is a war criminal. The attempted assassination of Westlake could – I say, could – be argued to be an attack on a valid military target, since he’s commander-in-chief. But ignoring a surrender message and firebombing the cities of Doma is a war crime he has to answer for.”

  “He’s not going to accept their terms,” Fournier said.

  “Of course not. They’re demanding we turn him over,” Orlov said.

  “What the hell was he thinking, bombing Doma after a surrender?” Westlake asked.

  “I don’t know. And we still don’t know how many people were killed. We still don’t even know if Edmond or Anastasiya survived,” Fournier said.

  “How badly are we going to get hurt if they start bombing the planet?” Orlov asked.

  “We could get hurt badly. And we aren’t even in a moral position to complain about it, after that bastard Andrews bombed Doma after a surrender transmission. We aren’t surrendering, and so they can keep up military activities,” Fournier said.

  “Do we have enough to move against Andrews yet?” Westlake asked.

  “Not yet. Soon, I think,” Fournier said.

  “They’re basically not responding at all, Sir,” Ganka said.

  “Ignore us and we’ll go away, huh?” Sigurdsen asked.

  “Apparently that’s what they think, Sir,” Kirby said.

  “All right, on to the next step. I want to try one more thing before we go to Phase One. I have a special target. Transmit these orders.”

  Sigurdsen keyed a file off his console to Kirby.

  “Is this for Independence, Sir?” Kirby asked.

  “No. This one’s for Vengeance.”

  “Orders incoming from the Flag, Ma’am,” Ensign Shira Tomboulian said. “Sending to your display.”

  Captain Pamela Wright, captain of the Vengeance, looked at her orders.

  “Wow. Five hits on one target. I think Admiral Sigurdsen doesn’t like somebody,” Wright said.

  The bridge crew chuckled. Wright had a wicked-dark sense of humor, and the bridge crew often found themselves laughing. That was not to say, however, that you ever took Captain Wright lightly. The crew had a saying: ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Captain.’

  “All right, Ms. Teller. What’s our time to arrival within the target cone?”

  “I make it twenty-five minutes, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Wendy Teller said from the sensor console.

  “All right, Chief Gants. Stand by your guns.”

  “Standing by, Ma’am,” Chief Petty Officer Robert Gants said from the gunnery console. Unlike most of the young officers in the new Commonwealth Space Force, Gants was a grizzled veteran of the merchant marine, and had been spacing freighters for thirty years. He also had a daughter about the same age as Jennifer Lowenthal.

  “We will have five minutes within the target cone, Ma’am,” Teller said. “Coming up in three minutes.”

  “Chief Gants, make it sixty seconds into the target cone, then thirty-second intervals.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Thirty-second intervals programmed in.”

  Teller counted it down.

  “Target cone in ten seconds. Five seconds. Begin target cone. Ten seconds in. Twenty seconds in. Thirty seconds in.”

  Gants touched the picture of Jennifer Lowenthal on his console – “This one’s for you, honey,” he said – and pushed the Launch icon.

  “First munition away.

  “Second munition away.

  “Third munition away.

  “Fourth munition away.

  “Fifth munition away. Firing sequence complete, Ma’am.”

  Before the Commonwealth fleet had left Earth, James Allen Westlake, the Chairman of the Commonwealth Council, had given Sigurdsen the coordinates on Earth of Arlan Andrews’ estate in upstate New York. Andrews spent most of his time there, pulling the strings of the puppet planetary government. He also had a serious underground shelter there, which he would take to if there were real trouble. Westlake knew all this before he left Earth, and family sources had recently confirmed it was still Andrews’ lair and retreat.

  The five twenty-ton nuclear demolitions came down out of the cloudy sky at thirty-second intervals. The first one came through the roof of the big stone house, with a delayed detonation taking place after it had penetrated to the basement. It blew out all the windows, and blew the wood floors, furnishings, and roof out the top of the stone walls, after which the stone walls crumpled and collapsed.

  Each successive detonation went off deeper and deeper into the crater they were building within the house’s footprint. The fourth one penetrated into the underground bunker, the fifth one blew the remnants of the concrete bunker out of the hole.

  “Repeat our demands now, Ms. Ganka. Let’s see if we’ve managed to change the regime down there enough for reason to see the light,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Transmitting now, Sir.”

  “I think the Commonwealth fleet has successfully managed to remove Mr. Andrews as a problem,” Fournier said with some satisfaction.

  “Are we going to be able to solve this now, before the Commonwealth fleet gets down to business?” Orlov asked.

  “Yes. I’m getting calls from people who are not sure Admiral Sigurdsen doesn’t have their home address as well and would like to see this process come to an end. Quickly. I just tell them to call the Secretary General.”

  “Has the Secretary Genera
l called you yet?” Westlake asked.

  “No, but he will once the consensus becomes apparent.”

  There was an attention tone and Fournier looked away from the camera.

  “Ah. There he is now. I’ll call you back.”

  “Sir, the Earth Secretary General has transmitted Earth’s acceptance of your terms. He wants to know where you want to have the signing of the treaty. He also notes that Mr. Arlan Andrews has passed away, and cannot be produced for trial on war crimes charges,” Ganka said.

  “I like the way he phrased that. I guess Mr. Andrews must have been home when Vengeance came calling,” Sigurdsen said.

  “Well, that’s satisfying,” Kirby said. “What about the signing of the treaty, Sir? Here aboard Independence, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I think that would be appropriate, considering. I certainly am not going down there. Not after Doma. I don’t trust the bastards.”

  “But will he trust us to come up here?”

  “He’s a puppet,” Sigurdsen said. “He’ll do what the families tell him to do. Unless I miss my guess, Claude Fournier is calling the shots now. So yes, the Secretary General will come up here. We’ll send a shuttle down to get him.”

  “Your message, Sir?” Ganka asked.

  Sigurdsen typed rapidly on his console.

  “Transmit that, Ms. Ganka.”

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  One of Independence’s shuttles made the run down to Earth to pick up the Secretary General, V. R. Konner, in New York City and bring him up to the Independence for the signing of the treaty whereby Earth recognized the Commonwealth of Free Planets as an independent polity and abandoned all claims of sovereignty over its systems. In the treaty both parties agreed they would allow mutual free trade and accord safe passage to the others’ ships across human space.