Torchship Captain

by Karl K Gallagher

  “Now, Mr. Ambassador,” Ping locked his eyes on Guo, “how would you suggest we begin?”

  FNS Dread, Danu System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  Admiral Bachak provided a running narration to Mitchie and the politicians as the missiles were wiped out by three waves of Harmony counter-missiles. “And there’s the last of them. That wasn’t the most cost-effective approach they could have taken. They used half again as many missiles as we did.”

  “Are they carrying more missiles than we are?” asked Wayne. As usual he was sitting next to Guen.

  “Fewer. But I’m sure they have some freighters with more missiles waiting in the Yalu system to refill as necessary. We don’t want to make this a sniper duel. That plays to their strengths. We need to suck them in close.”

  An aide broke in. “Sir, we’re picking up a transmission from the Harmony fleet.”

  Bachak waved at the display screen. “Let’s see it.”

  Mitchie cursed as a familiar face appeared.

  Ping orated, “Spacers of the Fusion! Your leaders have thrown missiles away with no effect. So they will throw your lives away to keep the power they seized with riot and murder. You face trained, experienced crews, the elite of the old Fusion Navy. They have now dedicated their lives to bringing humanity a better way to live.

  “The people of the Harmony are peaceful and happy. They enjoy meaningful work, not passing days in worthless games.”

  “Mute,” ordered Guen. She sent a pair of flunkies to a conference room to listen to the whole speech and write up a summary.

  “I’m sorry, Madam Chairwoman,” said Bachak. “Shall I issue orders to not listen to this?”

  Mitchie laughed. “Do that and crewmen will be passing around recordings to see what the fuss is about.”

  Guen nodded. “Who’s listening now?”

  “The communications officers and their ratings on each ship,” answered Bachak. “If the captain wants to see it, their bridge crew. They can share it over the internal net if someone authorizes it. And that’s the only new entertainment we have right now.”

  “We’ll need to make a response.” Guen began making notes on her datasheet. “There’s three audiences. Our people. The Harmony crews. And the Harmony’s leadership. Ping always goes for two or three hours once he’s rolling so we have time to assemble something.”

  Wayne Searcher was pulling up transcripts. “Your Landing Day speech is a good starting point.”

  ***

  Mitchie found herself the expert on how the Harmony crews would react. She knew more Confucian Revival philosophy than anyone else on the battleship, including the fleet intelligence staff. The spooks were focused on counting ships, not the motivations of their crews.

  Being ‘the expert’ didn’t require nearly as much knowledge as she thought would be required to be ‘an expert.’ But at least she could keep them from being unwittingly silly or offensive.

  Guen knew enough Mandarin to deliver a speech well even if she couldn’t compose in it. There were enough fluent Mandarin speakers on board that they didn’t have to depend on Mitchie’s spaceport pidgin for grammar and pronunciation. She did help with some of the philosophy jargon she’d picked up from Guo.

  Once the speech was written, translated, and polished, it had to be changed to answer some of the accusations in Ping’s speech. He’d only gone on for two hours but Mitchie was glad to have it summarized for her.

  Wayne Searcher halted the editing. “That’s enough fiddling. We’re talking to spacers, not rhetoric professors.”

  A flunky suggested recording it and doing edits to polish the presentation.

  “No,” said Guen. “Everyone’s thinking on what Ping said. I want to rebut him before it sinks in. I’ll do it live.”

  Some commotion ended with a naval rating stepping back from the camera and saying, “We’re ready, ma’am.”

  “Everybody in place?” asked Guen. Her backdrop was a dozen people chosen to represent planets and classes throughout the Fusion. Wayne wore a subdued version of stipend kid fashion. Mitchie was in a pilot’s jumpsuit, with Akiak Space Guard insignia to proclaim her a Disker.

  Guen gestured start at the rating. She began speaking in Mandarin. “My friends. My fellow citizens. We are all still citizens of the Fusion of Inhabited Worlds. Your leaders have broken laws, broken traditions, broken social bonds. They have torn us apart as we face humanity’s common enemy in battle.”

  Mitchie tuned out the rest while keeping her expression serious and attentive. As important as all this was she couldn’t make herself really care. What she wanted to know was, where was her husband?

  ***

  The answer came two days later. Mitchie was asleep at the time. The dueling broadcasts had expanded until flunkies on each side were making speeches on night shift. The fleets had each turned over and were decelerating, both expecting to stop outside the other’s beam weapon range.

  Mitchie opened her cabin hatch, half asleep despite the beeping of the door chime. Guen was standing there, smiling. That dispelled the last of the sleep. Guen would have commed or sent a flunky for anything less than life and death news.

  “What?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “Guo?”

  “Yes. He was with Ping on the latest broadcast. We have it running in Conference Room Fourteen.”

  “Good.” Mitchie stepped into the corridor, then realized she was only wearing one of Guo’s old t-shirts. “Give me a moment.”

  Once in a jumpsuit she followed Guen down the corridor. The video took up all of the conference room’s display wall. Guo was frozen in mid-word, his mouth part open in a way she found thoroughly kissable. She dropped into a chair, knees weak as the worries she hadn’t let herself know she had went away.

  Guen backed up the video. Daifu Ping was explaining how the forcible annexation of worlds by the Harmony was not, despite Guen’s claims, a violation of Confucian Revival principles.

  “To expand on that theme, I present Ambassador Guo Kwan, sent by the Committee of Public Safety to negotiate with the Harmony.”

  The camera pulled back to reveal Guo standing beside Ping, dressed in a formal Confucian robe. He spoke on the duty of superiors to provide a moral example to subordinates. He gave no examples.

  “Was this live?” asked Mitchie.

  A flunky answered, “It’s all in one piece, we couldn’t find any cuts. There could have been more than one take before they broadcast it.”

  “What are you thinking?” asked Guen.

  “The gestures he’s making are so stiff I wonder if he was pain sticked.” Mitchie stepped up to the wall. “Look at the lines around his mouth and eyes. They put him through hell.” She cursed.

  Guen put a comforting arm around Mitchie’s shoulders. “We’ll get him back.”

  “Yes we will.”

  ***

  As the fleets closed on each other the propaganda war separated into three streams. Praise of their own system, condemnation of the other, and practical arguments in favor of the other side yielding. The last became a conversation between Guen and Ping as they let their flunkies handle the rest.

  Light speed lag kept it an uncomfortable conversation. Even at twenty light minutes the statements were committee-reviewed and second guessed before being sent out.

  “If I could just be in the same room with him we could hammer something out. I’d settle for a durable truce. But we’ll never get a concession from a committee,” griped Guen as she paced in her stateroom.

  “Does it have to be the same room?” asked Mitchie. “We’ll be close enough for real-time conversation soon.”

  “Wouldn’t they be shooting by then?”

  “If we closed all the way to point-blank, yes.” Mitchie visualized the range. “At a hundred thousand klicks you’d have a third of a second delay. Can you have a good conversation with that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then let’s talk to the admiral. He wants a close-in battle. Co
nducting negotiations might be a good way to improve our tactical position.”

  Mitchie opened the hatch to head toward the flag bridge. Guen didn’t follow.

  “Problem?” Mitchie asked.

  “Would he use my negotiations as a way to make a sneak attack?”

  She came back in and closed the hatch. “Only if you authorize an offensive. Right now he only has authority to respond to a Harmony attack with proportionate force.”

  “Those are his orders.” Worry filled Guen’s voice. “He could initiate an attack without permission. You gave him control of every warship.”

  “He could. Let’s consider the scenarios.” Mitchie switched to being an intelligence officer again. The stateroom had a display wall she could draw event trees on.

  “Assume he wants to attack the Harmony. First branch. If he leaves us free we can overrule his orders and arrest him. The spacers adore you, the admirals fear me, and the officers don’t want their crews to mutiny.”

  Mitchie drew another line from the starting circle. “Second branch. He neutralizes both of us—”

  “Neutralize?” asked Guen.

  “Kill, arrest, scare into running away. Whatever it takes to keep us from arresting him. You don’t have to cut people’s heads off to remove them as a threat.”

  Guen snorted at this dig at the Committee of Public Safety’s guillotines.

  “If he tries to neutralize both of us he has new problems. Will the spacers he sends after us be loyal to him or you? Will my Disconnect squadron go after his flagship if he kills me?”

  The second branch now had two decision circles under it with two branches each.

  “If both of those come out in his favor then he’s facing war with the CPS if he beats the Harmony.”

  More circles and lines grew on the graph.

  “If he wins both of those, he gets to face the Disconnected Worlds and Betrayers. Which makes this sub-sub-sub-sub-branch living happily ever after as military dictator of humanity.”

  Guen laughed. “Okay, his odds suck. But can he do that math? And is he ambitious enough to gamble?”

  “I guarantee he can do the math. I was testing for that when I sorted candidates. As for ambition . . . he wasn’t ambitious enough to join Parata’s coup.”

  “True.” Guen thought for a few more moments then leapt out of her chair. “Let’s talk to him.”

  PHS Kongbu, Danu System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  Guo’s visits to the flag bridge were driven by how much Ping needed to bolster himself against Admiral Chang rather than any event in the negotiations. They were letting him see the transmissions, both sides, with a delay for the Intelligence team to check them for any hidden messages.

  This time the guards were in a hurry, holding Guo’s arms to encourage him to a faster pace. “Haste, traitor,” said one. “The Admiral wants you.”

  That did make Guo walk faster. No one but Ping had paid any attention to him before now. Something interesting must be happening.

  Chang, Ping, and some senior aides were gathered in front of a display wall. Chang greeted Guo with, “You! Explain this.”

  He waved at the display. Guen appeared.

  “Our discussions so far have me hopeful that a peaceful resolution can be achieved. I believe our lack of progress is partially due to the friction of time lag. Therefore I propose we continue negotiations at a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers, allowing near real time conversation. We propose these coordinates—” several strings of digits appeared on the display “—for the fleets to meet. We await your response.”

  The screen went blank.

  “Well?” snarled Chang.

  “This is a sincere attempt to avoid bloodshed,” answered Guo. “Negotiations could achieve reunification, coexistence, or a long-term truce. The broadcast exchanges have laid groundwork for all three.”

  An aide snapped, “Bullshit. They plotted the trajectory of a meteor swarm and want us to sit in the path.”

  “So propose different coordinates for the meeting place. We’re far enough apart a million klicks won’t matter much.”

  “A million klicks separation would keep us safe from a surprise attack,” said another aide.

  Ping said, “That would be a noticeable gap in conversation. Miss Claret may be expected to object.”

  The naval officers were brainstorming around a hologram of the proposed hundred thousand klick face off.

  “Missiles would take ten or twenty minutes to cross.”

  “It’s the perfect situation for a sneak attack.”

  “We could sight in beam weapons to get some hits even at that range.”

  The chatter drifted into tactical jargon Guo didn’t know. “We’re preparing to reenact the Battle of Camlann,” he said softly.

  Admiral Chang caught the remark. “Camlann? I don’t know that one. Is it Age of Sail?”

  Guo shook his head. “Older, sir. From the Camelot legends. King Arthur was negotiating with a rebel lord. Their knights lined up beside them, facing each other in long lines. One knight saw a snake about to bite him. He drew his sword to kill it. The knights on the other side thought he meant to attack them and drew their swords. The battle raged until only a handful survived.”

  “Fortunately there are no snakes in vacuum. We need only fear anger, incompetence, and treachery.”

  A captain and lieutenant commander entered and saluted Chang.

  “Captain Li, good to see you. And this is?”

  “Sir, I present Commander Chu, my Spinal Weapon Officer.”

  Guo realized this was the flagship’s commander.

  Chang explained the potential standoff. “Would the spinal beam weapon be able to hit another battleship at that distance?”

  “Easily,” said Chu. “The beam would be slightly dispersed but it would do enough damage to put the target out of action.”

  “And the enemy battleship could do the same to us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How can we protect ourselves?”

  Captain and weapon officer looked at each other. Neither had a suggestion.

  One of the aides broke into the silence. “Solar sails.”

  Admiral Chang raised an eyebrow.

  “We take the emergency propulsion solar sails and spread them in front of the ship. It would absorb the beam and let us return fire.”

  Chang turned to Lt. Commander Chu. “Would that work?”

  “The sail would vaporize, that would absorb some, and the cloud would disrupt the beam . . . I need to run a simulation.” Chu took over the display wall.

  Guo leaned toward Captain Li. “A destroyer can get some useful acceleration from solar sails. I’d think cube-square would keep it from doing much for a battleship.”

  Li shrugged. “Regulations say we need a backup propulsion system. It was easier to install sails than get a waiver.”

  Chu finished his work. “We’d take some damage, but not enough to degrade the ship’s effectiveness. We could return fire immediately.”

  Admiral Chang thought a moment. “Very well. Daifu Ping, you may have your conversation.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” said Ping.

  FNS Dread, Danu System, acceleration 0 m/s2

  Mitchie nodded to Admiral Bachak as she floated past him in the corridor.

  “Morning, ma’am,” he said. “Going up to the negotiations?”

  “It’s the only show we have.” She grabbed a handhold to stop and face him.

  “True. I want to let you know I’m reducing readiness in the fleet.”

  “I thought you’d already taken them off battle stations?”

  “Yes. But Condition Two also costs them sleep. Four days of it has been rough on green crews. I’m going to start a rotation. A few ships on Condition One just in case, some more on Condition Two, and the rest on normal running.”

  Which kept spacers in better shape at the cost of being more vulnerable to a Harmony surprise attack. That was exactly the kind of dec
ision Mitchie had hired Bachak to make.

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could alert me if you see any signs of the negotiations breaking down. If the Harmony gives up on talking we’ll need to resume Condition One.”

  “I will watch for that.”

  “Thank you.” Bachak pivoted on his handhold and arrowed away.

  One of the flag conference rooms was dedicated to the ongoing conversation. Mitchie took a seat out of view of the camera. After listening for five minutes she still couldn’t figure out what the topic under discussion was. Reading the side chatter among flunkies didn’t help. They were using more obscure jargon than the conversation between Guen and Ping.

  There were four documents under consideration in the negotiations. Ping had resent the Harmony’s proposal for placing all of humanity under traditionalist rule and added a detailed set of guidelines for a truce. Guen offered a plan for reunification in a modified Fusion and another for permanent separation. Every one was being debated and quibbled over.

  Guen was annoyed by Ping’s latest objection. Her retort concluded with, “I’d rather let the missiles fly.”

  Ping gestured toward Guo in the row of listeners seated behind him. “You should be careful with threats. People can die without missiles being fired.”

  A chill went through Mitchie. Guo had implicitly been a hostage since he arrived at Tiantan. This was the first time his death was offered as a bargaining chip. She crumpled her datasheet into a wad. Crying out would just tell Ping his threat was working.

  Guen’s voice was level. “My mother died in an attack on my father. He died because someone feared his power as a Stakeholder. The man I admired most after them died to save me from being a hostage. Dying for political reasons is the natural fate of those close to me.”

  She reached behind her with her left hand. Wayne Searcher wrapped his right around it in full view of the camera.

  “There are still those brave enough to dare it,” she finished.