“Then, over time, the Pfelung industrial capacity can become an asset. Given several months to retool, they could make spare parts, missiles, ammunition, and so on. Finally, don’t forget that they have some of the best shipyards in Known Space. There’s no reason they couldn’t repair or even build Union warships out here. As you recall, that’s an option under the treaty to be negotiated at a later date. If we could increase ship production 10 or 20 percent, it could make a huge difference.”
“Well, then, things are starting to make a bit more sense to me. But I must be missing something. I can see how all of these facts mean that this treaty is very, very important. But if I am any judge of official language—and I like to think that I am—the admiral attributes to this pact greater significance than can be explained by these things. I am becoming increasingly convinced that there is something important that I do not know.”
“What you do not know, Doctor, is that we are losing the war.”
The statement, delivered in a calm, matter-of-fact tone, struck Dr. Sahin like a punch to the solar plexus. The words hung in silence. For once, the doctor was aware of the sounds of the ship: the ever-present hum of the life-support systems, the minute vibration imparted by the fusion reactor’s coolant pumps, the almost subliminal babble of the ship’s main internal comm channel, which Max kept turned on in his cabin day and night, at this moment summoning the perpetually late-for-duty Ensign Friedrichs to his station in Auxiliary Fire Control. He perceived keenly the sounds of life in space, in the way that a pleasing background music that has always been present leaps into relief after the sounding of a funeral dirge’s dark, jarring, opening chord.
Knowing that disbelief was evident on his face, the doctor struggled to find words to give it voice. After several seconds, he managed. “But Max, the news reports! I hear them daily. I see the headlines on the NewsWeb: broad offenses meeting victory, enemy attacks stopped and turned back with heavy loss, war production surging beyond expectation, new ship and weapons designs being introduced continually.”
“Lies,” Max said bitterly. “Well, maybe not lies exactly, but propaganda, clever ‘information management,’ the selective transmission of some facts combined with the selective withholding of others. If not blatant untruths, then they are at the least misleading. Even with the level of command access and the security clearance I have as the captain of a rated warship, I have to read between the lines, look at the raw data, locate the engagements on a star plot, and watch as they inch closer and closer to the Core Systems week after week.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
“All right. I’ll prove it to you with evidence that you have already gathered, facts you already know. Set aside the ‘victories’ that you’ve heard of from outside sources. Think only of the fleet engagements of which you have some more direct knowledge—what people said around Travis Station about battles that were fought in this theater. You know, where people who had seen the battle or fought in it or received unfiltered reports about it were talking. In the years that you have been posted to this area, how many of those battles were victories for the Union? You’re a trained scientist—evaluate objectively the best data you have at your disposal. What’s your conclusion?”
The doctor thought carefully for at least half a minute. “I recall there being general talk of thirteen fleet actions. Of those, my impression is that we won two.”
While the doctor was thinking, Max was ticking off the battles in his mind. He nodded at the doctor’s answer. “I’m impressed, Bram. We might make a real Navy man out of you yet. Yes. That is exactly right. Two of those eleven defeats could, arguably, be scored for the Union as strategic victories, as we turned back Krag attacks and remained in possession of the battle area, though losing more ships as measured by tonnage than we destroyed, but that’s a fine point. So, as far as we can verify from our own experience, we are losing the war in this theater of operations.”
The doctor was not ready to concede the point. “But speaking as a scientist, I must point out that our sample might not be representative. Things might be going less well here than in other areas. I know that I have heard the former commander, ‘By the Book’ Bushinko, spoken of in unflattering terms. Other commanders in other areas might be having more success.”
“Bushinko was better than a lot of people think. Some of the other theatres have had worse than him by far, although I think the current crop is pretty good all around. No, from what I can tell from unfiltered reports, things here are going about as well here as they are everywhere else. Although we are putting up stubborn resistance and imposing huge losses on the enemy, and although we haven’t had anything like the lightning series of defeats we suffered early in the war, we are slowly and inexorably falling back, losing system after system. The enemy had nearly a hundred years to build up a huge reserve of ships, to stockpile immense caches of ammunition, fuel, and supplies, and to plan his campaigns and diplomatic maneuvers step by step.
“We, on the other hand, were caught entirely with our pants down. Our forces were out of position, our economy wasn’t on a war footing, and we had no training infrastructure or reserve of skilled manpower adequate for total war. We were caught by surprise and have been improvising from the very first hour. Sure, we’ve made great strides, but with the systems we’ve lost, with the casualties we’ve already suffered, with what the Gynophage did to our population and birthrate, and based on our estimates of the enemy’s industrial capacity and his rate of population increase, they will eventually overwhelm us.”
“What about the victory we just won? Will that not make a difference?
“Some. Not enough. I don’t have access to the highest level information, but what I can access is close enough for some rough calculations—I’ve spent enough time doing rotations as an Intel officer to know how to turn the raw data into estimates. The Krag have a roughly 15 to 18 percent industrial advantage and somewhere between a 50 and 100 percent population growth advantage. Remember, they don’t just look like rats, they breed like rats too. Our best intel from prisoners is that they give birth to litters of six after a fifty-two day gestation period. Having the Pfelung on our side will—in maybe a year or so—make up almost a quarter of the difference in industrial capacity. The only way we can win, absent some miracle, is to acquire some more allies.”
“But if they have had such a decided advantage from the beginning, why have they not been able to win the war in more than thirty years?”
“Time and distance. When they attacked, the border between the Krag and the Union was seventeen hundred light years from the Core Systems. Now, it’s just over a thousand. You can’t just go zipping through space any which way you feel like. You need to take and hold star systems—star systems with jump points. And you can’t just jump into a defended system with a jump point because—since a jump point is a fixed point in space—it can be defended with heavy pulse cannon batteries and massive missile emplacements, all zeroed in on the jump point and ready to fire on thirty seconds notice. You jump into a defended system, you’re dead.
“So, if you want to take that system, you have to take months to send heavy ships, using compression drive across interstellar space at low c multiples to take the jump point. And very often, you are detected a good way out, and a task force is sent to intercept you in deep space. That’s where those famous battles out in interstellar space come from.
“Say you win. Once you’ve taken the system, it takes more months to get the infrastructure jumped into that system and set up to get those ships fueled and repaired and reinforced and provisioned so they can cross to the next system, and more months to cross space to get to the next system, and so on. Step by step. Even when the enemy is kicking your ass, it takes a year, maybe two, for him to advance twenty parsecs.
“We’ve held him to far less than that. We do have some advantages: mainly, they didn’t have as much success as they expected early in the war because the War of the Fenestrian Succes
sion left us better prepared than they expected. That invalidated a considerable portion of their war plan, and the Krag are not good at improvising. We are; it’s one of our strengths. So, we have been playing for time, trying to stave off defeat until we can convince enough other powers to declare war against the Krag to turn the tide. If nothing changes, my estimate is that we have another four to six years before the disparity of forces becomes so overwhelming that our defense will collapse.”
“And then?”
“We won’t have enough forces to defend all the necessary jump points, and the Krag will find a direct route to the Core Systems. Once that happens, they will be exterminating all life on Earth and Alphacen and Bravo and Nouvelle Acadiana and all the rest in a matter of days. I’ve heard rumors of a contingency plan involving sending a small core of survivors in fast ships to plant a new human civilization beyond the reach of the Krag somewhere in another part of the galaxy, but I don’t hold out much hope of that working. I’ve been hunted by them, you know. The Krag are relentless. These people would be found and killed like all the rest. The human race would die.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said: Not if I can help it. I won’t let it happen.”
Max was amused. “You? You won’t let it happen? And just what do you think you are going to do about it?”
“I am a diplomat—I have a Masters degree in Interstellar Relations, you know. I have connections on dozens of independent human worlds and even on a few alien ones. I know people. I will make the necessary alliances. I am a very determined man. I have always accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I will accomplish this as well.”
Unconvinced, Max nevertheless decided that it would be a futile enterprise to try to explain to Dr. Sahin the difficulties involved in a twenty-six-year-old acting ambassador concluding interstellar alliances with somewhere between six and fifteen discrete foreign powers. So, he turned the discussion to other matters.
“Yes, you are a diplomat. For at least the next several weeks, you will be the Union’s acting ambassador to the Pfelung Association. There are several other agreements to negotiate—I have just forwarded to your pending file a memo from the admiral’s legal staff outlining what they think is needed. Also, I see that the Pfelung have several ceremonies for you to attend, including a dedication of some new facility at one of their hatcheries to which they invited not just you but also me and as many of the ship’s company as are available at the time. It is rather a strongly worded invitation, so I plan to turn out about 130 men. I wonder what is so important about a hatchery.”
“I have no idea, but it is fortunate indeed that the admiral saw fit to provide you with that appointment for you to ‘fish’ out of your safe at the opportune moment. ‘Fish.’ What a wit I am!” Max rolled his eyes. “I am astonished at the admiral’s foresight. It is beyond amazing to me that he foresaw that things would unfold as they did and require the appointment of an ambassador to the Pfelung. He is truly an amazing gentleman. I hope to make his better acquaintance someday.”
“He certainly is a man of considerable ability,” Max replied. “Don’t expect that you will ever get chummy with him, though. You should be aware, my friend, that he may not be quite what you think he is.”
He rose from his chair, walked over to the safe, entered the combination, removed two envelopes, and returned to his seat. He held in his hand the same two envelopes he had pulled from the safe back at Navbuoy JAH 1939 three weeks before.
He opened the cream-colored one and pulled out several sheets of paper covered with dense, flowing script. “This is a handwritten, confidential note from Admiral Hornmeyer. I don’t think he’d mind if I shared with you this paragraph: ‘I have personally assigned as your chief medical officer one Ibrahim Sahin. When you meet the gentleman, you may think I am doing you no favor, but I expect by the end of this commission you will be very thankful to have him on board. He is not officer-like to even the slightest degree, I’m afraid, and does not know a parsec from a parsnip. But he has unusual gifts in several other areas, including, I strongly suspect, an underdeveloped talent for diplomacy. Should you discover you have need of an accredited diplomat and cannot wait for one to be furnished from the Core Systems, I have made rather liberal use of my authority under the Articles of War to issue appointments of him as ambassador to each and every independent power in the Free Corridor and vicinity. I need to appoint someone, and God knows I’m not making you ambassador to anyone or anything. I am trusting you to pull out only the appointment(s) necessary to the occasion and to keep the others locked in your safe. Kindly destroy the remaining ones or return them to me at the conclusion of your mission.’
“So, in this envelope,” Max said, indicating the larger envelope, the one that had contained his orders, “are to be found your appointment as Union Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary to the governments of…”—he pulled them out and sorted through the documents, reading the names one by one—“the Vaaach, the Ghiftee, Romanova, New Zarahemla, the Unified Kingdom of Rashid, Allied Emirates, and Protected Islamic Worlds, and four or five others. There are also two that are signed in blank that I have permission to fill in as needed. Rather clever, in my book, and quite the vote of confidence in you.”
“I’m quite sure I have no idea what to say.”
“From my point of view, the only thing to say is that the admiral was right about you, and then move on. I rather like that part about not knowing a parsec from a parsnip. Sometimes the old bastard comes up with a very clever turn of phrase. He seems to be right about the talent for diplomacy part. Speaking of which, I wish you would clear up one mystery for me. After meeting with the Pfelung, we have learned how important their art and their artistic heritage is to them, but however did you know that fact during the battle? It was not in the briefing materials, which—by the way—I know you did not even read. Shame, shame.”
“It was obvious. No people who could fashion a work of art like the one in my quarters could be anything but fanatic about the creation and preservation of things of beauty. The dealer who gave it to me sent along a data file about the art form. It isn’t made of glass, you know, but a material carefully refined from molten quartz and given a higher index of refraction by including traces of silver and lead and several exotic rare earths and metals. It’s known in Standard as vitreum. The colors come not from mineral pigments or organic stains, but from microscopic particles of ground gemstones suspended in the vitreum in such number and so uniformly that it looks as though the material itself has been stained. That is why the colors are so vivid, catch the light the way they do, and never fade. The different colors come from streams of these gemstones that are swirled into the vitreum while it is still molten, layer by tiny layer.
“Some colors are the colors of one type of gemstone, and others are made by mixing as many as seven different shades of gemstone. Birth of the Waters consists of some seventeen thousand differently colored vitreum layers, each blown meticulously by hand, one inside the other, some only a few microns thick. It took more than a year to make. I found it impossible to imagine that any people who would go to those staggering lengths to create an object of that kind of beauty could bear to be a part of destroying it absent the most compelling necessity. And even then, they would strive greatly to find a way to preserve it. That’s what I was betting on, at any rate. Have you seen it?”
“Not in person.”
“Then you simply must. Immediately.” They set down their coffee and went through the short series of corridors and access ladders that led to the doctor’s cabin. They stood quietly in the day cabin, where the sculpture was displayed.
Max regarded the ethereal yet seductive assemblage of curves and swirling radiances and was speechless for nearly a minute, until he finally whispered, “Regardez donc.”
“Je concours.”
* * *
CHAPTER 25
* * *
02:27Z Hours
, 21 February 2315
When the Task Force, or that portion of it sent to help cement the new agreement with the Pfelung, began to arrive, everyone on the Cumberland expected the first ships through the jump point to be scouts and escorts, followed only at great length by the more powerful vessels. It was to Max’s surprise and consternation that the first vessel to appear was the Halsey, Admiral Hornmeyer’s immense flagship.
Within minutes of coming through the jump point, the carrier had launched two fighter elements as combat area patrol and established a digital laser com-link with the Cumberland to enable rapid and secure exchange of data between the two ships. In only a few seconds, the Cumberland was able to update all of her tactical and other databases to conform with the most recent information available to the flagship, while transferring to the flag all of her logs and status reports. Personal electronic mail was also exchanged, allowing many of the Cumberland’s crew to receive messages from distant relatives as well as wives or sweethearts. And in some cases, wives and sweethearts.
Also received by the Cumberland was a one line message. CDR AND CMO REPORT TO FLAG. The “immediately” part was understood. Max and the doctor, having both been wakened from deep slumber, fortified with coffee, and attired in Working Uniforms with Arms (the everyday uniform jumpsuit plus sidearms, determined by Comms to be the Uniform of the Day on board the flagship) were in the Cumberland’s five-man launch, crossing the few thousand meters that separated the destroyer from the carrier. Max’s stomach was in knots. This was going to be a skinning. You rousted a destroyer captain out of bed between two and three in the morning because you wanted to rip him a new one, not because you wanted to sip coffee with him and hand him a medal.
To Honor You Call Us (Man of War Book 1) Page 37
