The Hot Gate - [Troy Rising 03]

by John Ringo

  “What if we already stole it?” Tyler asked. “We’ve got an intelligence department.”

  “Oh, look, here it is,” Argus said.

  “You could have just gone there, Argus,” Tyler said. “Download. I want to read it.”

  “Are you sure?” Argus said. “Have you taken your blood pressure medicine?”

  “I don’t take blood pressure medicine, Argus,” Tyler said. “In fact, don’t download it.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Print it out.”

  A couple of minutes later he looked up.

  “Argus, don’t screw around with this or I’ll fly back to Troy and pull your core again. I want every similar communication.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * * *

  SEVENTEEN

  “We may just have a break,” Toer said, ruffling his scales.

  “That would be nice,” To’Jopeviq said, perusing the newest production estimate on the Wolf system. “Every time I think the Terrans have to have some limits I read something like this. Apollo has taken Granadica offline for a partial rebuild. You would think that would drop their productivity, right? So how come it continues to increase? And while I would normally take that as disinformation, their systems are so open, there are people who do our digging for us. They have ... these blasted ‘web-logs’ devoted to nothing but analyzing production for people who use their... ‘stock markets.’ This should be secure information! Not spread to the entire universe!”

  “Be glad they do,” Toer said, dumping a data set to his computer. “There was a news article I just picked up. I went onto their hypernet and checked. It’s not disinformation. They are taking the Troy drive offline for upgrades. Malta’s drive is still not installed. That will leave only Thermopylae mobile.”

  “How long will it take?” To’Jopeviq asked, looking at the information.

  “At least a month this time,” Toer said. “The drive took damage in the last battle. They are putting in a new one that they believe will be more robust. That is, by the way, the most valuable target on a tactical level. If you can take out the Orion drive, you can stand off and pound them with missiles.”

  “Which they can absorb all day,” To’Jopeviq said, reading the full report. “But, yes, this gives one of our plans a chance. I will forward it with the note that you pointed it out. Where is that update... Ah, the newest load of missiles has arrived in the Glalkod system. Good. Still not enough, but... Hmm ...”

  “That’s an interesting hum,” Toer said.

  “The Orion drive is not their only vulnerability,” To’Jopeviq said. “Their great strength in offense is their missile ability and volume. Also a great defensive strength.”

  “Their lasers are not ineffective,” Toer pointed out.

  “But the missiles are the real danger,” To’Jopeviq said. “If they lack the Orion drive they lack maneuverability. If they also lack missiles...”

  “You can stand off and pound them into rubble,” Toer said. “And how do you take away their missile capability? The armories are deeply embedded.”

  “And they have an increasing multiple of tubes,” To’Jopeviq said. “It will not be simple but... yes ... There may just be a way to at least take out one of these damned things. Alas, I see another meeting in the future....”

  * * * *

  “Admiral Duvall,” Tyler said. He was perusing some printouts in a folder. A thick one. “Thank you for coming to the meeting.”

  “The question is,” the admiral said, sitting down, “why everyone else was asked not to attend.”

  “Oh,” Tyler said. “The... what is the term, the Suds are attending. The senior members.”

  “That can be taken as an insult, sir,” Admiral Duvall said carefully.

  “Oh, it is about to get sooo much more insulting,” Tyler said as the door opened. He didn’t look up. “Even Granadica is insulted. It’s been excluded from the meeting. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Have a seat.”

  “The agenda for this meeting has been removed,” Dr. Barreiro said. “There should be a discussion of the agenda before the meeting.”

  “But then we’d have to have a meeting about the agenda for that meeting,” Tyler said, still reading. “And meetings to discuss the agenda for the meeting about the agenda. Well, not us. Our staffs. A dance of beautiful butterflies, flying around to meetings to discuss the agenda for meetings about meeting agendas. And so on and so forth.”

  He looked up and smiled at them, thinly.

  “When I met with the vice president for interstellar commerce of the Onderil banking corporation, on Glalkod Station, to finalize the funding of the Wolf gas-mine, which was going to cost more than the whole of Terra’s balance of trade, it was in a small and rather good restaurant on the station. Alas, things had changed. War was coming. Onderil could not afford it. As I was walking out I ran into Niazgol Gorku, then the chairman of the board of a corporation so large it could buy Earth ninety-three times over. Not a coincidence. He invited me to another lunch. I had quail. I walked out with all the paperwork signed to buy Granadica and the loans for the Franklin Mine.”

  “Your point?” Dr. Werden asked.

  “I don’t need a staff to have meetings about agendas for meetings,” Tyler said. “That’s what AIs are for. I also don’t have time or interest.”

  “There are protocols,” Dr. Barreiro said. “We worked very hard to prepare the agendas for these meetings in so short a time—”

  “And we both know that the agendas were so much show,” Tyler said mildly. “You’re not here about the faults in the One-Forty-Three because you know damned well it’s a maintenance issue.”

  “That is—” Dr. Barreiro said angrily.

  “SHUT YOUR STUPID MOUTH!” Tyler shouted. “Just shut your idiotic pie-hole!”

  “This has gone far enough,” Dr. Werden said, standing up.

  “Oh, has it?” Tyler said, mildly. He opened up the folder and started tossing thick chunks of paper to the various other attendees. “This is not the agenda for the meeting, either. This is the reason that the agendas for all the rest of the meetings have been cancelled.”

  Dr. Barreiro looked at the title of the stack of paper and blanched.

  “Simply because you have a personal relationship—” Dr. Werden said.

  “It’s not about Comet Parker, either, gentlemen,” Tyler said furiously. “This is the agenda for the meeting. Your countries have impugned my company. You have repeatedly cast aspersions upon our products and you have accused us of deliberately killing your people. You have accused me of killing your sons! And when I found these and started reading them what became obvious was that the reason your sons were dead was that your governments, you gentlemen, personally, had deliberately interfered in normal and necessary processes related to ensuring the maintenance of ships and the training of their crews!”

  “Our culture is not one in which—”

  “I SAID SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!” Tyler screamed. He suddenly stood up, picked up the station chair and threw it against the bulkhead. Then he picked it up and banged it on the table until it broke.

  “You want something from me!” Tyler said, squaring his hands on the table and sticking his face into Dr. Barreiro’s. “That is why you are here! And now I find out that you have been deliberately sabotaging my equipment? You want to talk about honor? That is MY honor you have been raking in the mud! And you want me to do something for you?”

  He grabbed another chair and sat down, leaning forward.

  “Everyone wants to talk about culture,” Tyler said coldly. “How we have to understand your culture. Nobody ever seems to wonder if I have a culture. What my culture is about. This is my culture, gentlemen. This is my child. Apollo. I was on the first design teams of the Myrmidons. I created Troy and Thermopylae and Malta. This is my all and everything. To go to the stars. To save humanity. To be free.

  “Which takes ships,” Tyler said softly. “And people who can use them and maintain them. I
am Apollo, Apollo is me. I put my stamp on every bulkhead, every relay. ‘Vernon was here.’ Look upon me ye mighty and despair.

  “And if there is one group of special and protected people,” Tyler said, warming up, “one group that is the class of the world, it is the Marines and sailors, the engineers and warrants and coxswains who fight the battles that will ensure our freedom and give my grandchildren the stars. And you have accused me of KILLING THEM? WHEN IT WAS YOU GENTLEMEN AND YOUR STUPID GAMES AND YOUR ‘THIS IS NOT THE PROPER PROTOCOL’ THAT ARE THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM!”

  “Mr. Vernon...” Dr. Barreiro said.

  “You want something,” Tyler said, calm again. “I’m pissed off, but I’m a professional. Right now all I want is to toss all your stupid ‘You have to respect my culture’ asses right out of an air lock. But I am a professional. That does not mean my professionalism is unbreakable. So you are going to respect my current mental state and my culture and just tell me, simply, in as few words as possible, with no ‘given’ this or ‘due to’ that, what you want. Just say it. Then we will discuss it. Or you can get back on the shuttles, as long as we’re sure the maintenance has been done, and go back to Earth. And if I ever hear any of your names again I will personally ensure that it is the last time. I can and will make you, and your Families, capital F, dust. Do I make myself clear? Yes or no, Dr. Barreiro?”

  “Yes,” the foreign minister said.

  “What. Do. You. Want?”

  The group looked around, clearly unsure how to start. Finally, General Barcena cleared his throat.

  “Malta!’

  Tyler just blinked for a moment.

  “I don’t own it,” Tyler said. “I have the mining rights...”

  “If you use your position to recommend that Station Three become an all South American station, that will be respected,” Dr. Palencia said. “South American commander, all military personnel drawn from South and Central America. Including the Marines. We are considering...” He paused and glanced at General Barcena. “Chilean Mountain Commandoes for those.”

  “Battlestation Del Sud, so to speak?” Tyler said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Barreiro replied. “This is a—”

  “Point of honor?” Tyler said. “Gentlemen, first of all, we have established, at least to my satisfaction, that you cannot even keep one squadron of shuttles running.”

  “That is a...” Dr. Werden said.

  “I said to my satisfaction,” Tyler said mildly “I did not ask for agreement or concurrence. That the issue is based upon lack of maintenance by a group of spoiled rich kids who are just marking time until they become the officers they properly should be is established, quite well, to my satisfaction. Equally that they would make as bad officers as they did engineers.”

  Tyler nudged one of the folders closer to the foreign minister.

  “I believe that one is your signature complaining about Dr. Velasquez’s son being treated in a ‘racist’ manner. The reply details the duties he failed to perform to his division chief’s satisfaction. I did not download the plant recordings that serve as a rather definitive proof of reality, but they exist. Those rather trail off after a bit which means, I suspect, that Dr. Velasquez’s son, at least, has learned how to maintain a shuttle. You had better hope so because we’re going home on those same shuttles.

  “My understanding of the situation is satisfied. I do not require agreement. Simply that you understand that I am, now especially, unpersuasible on this argument. Do you understand my lack of persuasibililty, Dr. Werden? Only that.”

  “I understand your lack of persuasibililty, Mr. Vernon,” the foreign minister said, his jaw firming.

  “Thus I would look like a fool in my own eyes making such a suggestion,” Tyler said. “But I am persuaded it would be a good idea.”

  “Excuse me?” Admiral Duvall said. “What?”

  “In time,” Tyler said. “I believe it is doable. But not in the present condition.”

  “You don’t think we’re ‘ready’ for such an honor?” Admiral Benito asked angrily.

  “Duty, Admiral,” Tyler said. “Duty, not honor. That is one of the large things you don’t understand. You refuse to understand. Who makes up the bulk of the Alliance Navy at present, General Barcena? And by that I mean the flotillas of the Troy and the personnel of the Troy and Thermopylae?”

  “North Americans,” General Barcena said.

  “Notably Americans, Canadians, British, Australians, Germans, Scandinavians and a touch of French,” Tyler said. “In the Troy. In Thermopylae, deliberately, the Alliance has tried to make a more mixed group. And has run into not only... cultural issues but cultural issues.”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Barreiro said. “Could you clarify that?”

  “There has been... angst expressed, very quietly but very firmly,” Admiral Duvall said. “By both other Alliance countries and non-Alliance countries.”

  “Two things,” Tyler said. “Both based upon trust. One, the groups that are starting to be used for the battlestations, the countries from which they derive, their motivations, have been questioned by other countries. Such was the case, officially, about Troy. ‘Instead of Horvath owning the orbitals, it’s the dangerous Americans.’ Unofficially, we were given every green light except by the Russians and the Chinese. Because when it comes down to reality, you gentlemen know very well that you trust us to fight and die as hard as possible to protect the solar system. And you also trust us not to use that power to dominate directly. We don’t say ‘Send us stuff or we’ll drop a rock on Santiago.’ Do we, Dr. Werden?”

  “No,” Werden said. “On the other hand—”

  “On the other hand we do throw our weight around rather aggressively when it comes to trade,” Tyler said. “And we do tend to tinker in other people’s governments. Wish we wouldn’t. However, two points have been expressed, quietly but definitively, by various countries. The first is that, especially after the MASSEX, very few countries other than your own feel that you are capable of defending the solar system.”

  “That is—” Dr. Barreiro said.

  “An insult?” Tyler asked. “How about a rational examination of the facts at hand, Mr. Foreign Minister? Then there is the fact that Argentina, Chile and El Salvador, primarily, have at their fingertips a fleet of boats that are capable of dropping an invasion force into Brazil, say, has come up, very quietly, as a very real and serious, not for the cameras at all, point of concern.”

  “We would never...” Dr. Barreiro said.

  “I know that,” Tyler said. “Among other things... you’re still not exactly omnipotent in that area and you can’t get them to fly at all. Also, I trust that you would never do that. But other countries are less trusting. Giving South America its own, mobile, mind you, battlestation? Especially select South American countries? I do, you see, pay attention to politics, Dr. Barreiro.”

  “So it is out of the question,” Dr. Barreiro said.

  “No,” Tyler said. “I said I thought it was a good idea.”

  “Sir, with respect,” Admiral Duvall said. “I doubt you could get any traction. That is not a definitive policy statement of Alliance Navy, but from the point of view of my department, that is the official position based upon the experiences of the One-Four-Three.”

  “Due to the purely mechanical aspects,” Tyler said.

  “Yes, sir,” Duvall said. “That is the only department on which I can make a definite statement, sir. But it is definite. I believe you used the word unpersuasible. As would be the department of tactics and department of astronautics.”

  “You don’t think we can do it,” Dr. Palencia said nastily.

  “Cultural, gentlemen,” Tyler said, raising a hand. “Trust is the word. In your culture, trust, to the extent it truly exists, is based upon relationships. Would you agree to that statement in a non-binding but generally positive fashion, Dr. Barreiro? You know someone for a long time, they are generally an ally socially and therefore you can generally trust them to act i
n a manner in support of your position?”

  “Yes,” the foreign minister said.

  “Dr. Werden?”

  “I believe that statement has some validity, Mr. Vernon.”

  “Then try to understand that in North American, and by that I mean what is generally meant by Norté, bianco, gringo if you will, culture, relationships are based upon trust. That may sound like a simple rephrase but it is as completely opposite as you can get. Especially when I add ‘proven trust.’ Experience of actions which prove that a person or group can be trusted. I would have you gentlemen really apply your unquestionably fine minds to that statement. Especially given the request you have posed to me. Relationships are based upon trust.”