Marshall smiled, then said, “I’ve missed you too.”
Shaking his head, he continued, “Damn it, you’ve had the mission of a decade. Either you’ve made your career or you’ve smashed it to bits. I’m surprised you ended up coming out this way, not taking the safe way home. Let me guess, Zebrova tried to talk you out of it.”
“And failed. Turns out I’m hard to argue with.”
“I know that much.”
“Are you planning on giving me another version of the lecture you gave me back on the Wright that time?”
“When we were both a hell of a lot younger than we are now? No. After all, this time you could throw me in the brig for insubordination.” He smiled, and said, “I know you’ve been giving it to yourself anyway. Let me ask you a question.”
“Go on.”
“What the hell are you going to do here? I know what I’d have done if I’d been stuck with the Buchanan – as little as possible.”
“Would you believe that I have essentially the same idea in mind? Of course, that’s going to have to include doing something about our missing crewmen, as well as securing this system as a potential way station for the task force I need to convince to relieve a station which by now could be under siege by a Cabal fleet.”
“We have rather different definitions of little. I can’t wait to see the look on Tramiel’s face when you tell him what you need him to do. Still less when you tell him about Hercules.” He looked down at the table, then said, “I’m sorry about your father, by the way.”
“He died in battle, saving his people. There are worse ways to go.” Shaking his head, he said, “I only had him back for a few months. It’s beginning to seem unreal, like a dream.”
“That dream is going to have some very real repercussions for a lot of years. I think you just outlined Triplanetary policy regarding the Cabal for the next decade, one way or another. Particularly with the guest you have locked up below.”
“He’s going to stay that way. I don’t trust him.”
“But do you trust the message he’s carrying? Like it or not, Danny, your voice is going to be one of the big deciders over the next few years. You’re the man who led his ship into the Cabal, who went toe to toe with their fleet. There are a lot of Senators who’d put you in command of everything we’ve got that can fly in space and tell you not to stop until you’ve wiped out every last one of them.”
“Things are getting that bad?”
“I’m beginning to hear things about Manifest Destiny. That it is our mission, our duty, to bring freedom and democracy to the universe. I don’t think any of them realize just how damn expensive its going to be, still less the risk that we might actually lose.”
“What about the others?”
“Next year’s Senate’s going to be very different to the one we’ve got now, that’s for sure. The moderates are on the way out; it’s going to be Progressive versus Technocrats, and the Freedom Party will be lucky to hang in the middle.”
“One side wants to raise our flag over the ruins of UN headquarters in Geneva, and the other side thinking that the military is just great, but that it doesn’t really need guns. Brilliant.”
Shaking his head, Cunningham said, “I don’t have the first idea what’ll happen when you take this one back to the Senate. Best guess is not very much until after the election. The situation here can wait for a while, but I’m not sure it can wait that long.”
“You think I should present them with a fait accompli?”
“I think you need to come up with another way out of the problem, preferably one that doesn’t require anyone to make any hard choices. As for the task force, your guess is as good as mine. Logan and I both took steps to try and get them moving, but I reckon it depends whether the President is trying to get the Progressive or the Technocrat vote.”
“Damn it,” Marshall replied, “this is a strategic decision, not a political one. We shouldn’t have to drag the politicians into this. We’ve got people out there who need help, and that should be the beginning and the end of the discussion.”
“And if it leads to a war we can’t win? Hell, you’ve been out there, you’re the best qualified to know. Could we win a war with the Cabal if one starts today?”
Marshall paused for a second, then said, “My gut says yes. We’ve got better people, better trained, more combat experience, and right now an edge on space-based industrial capability.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. Next question. What would the cost be?”
“Heavy. They’d get in some serious blows. Jefferson, certainly. Possibly Ragnarok, Spitfire, Hydra. I don’t think they’d get far in Sol, though even then...it’d be a bad one, John. At least as bad as the Interplanetary War.”
“So we’d win, and suffer enough damage that we might as well turn over command to Admiral Pyrrhus. No chance of the fast knockout blow to bring them down, the easy victory that everyone will be pushing for.”
“No. They’ve got lots of room, space to maneuver, more than we do. No fixed battles, lots of hit and run raids, for years, before we found a way to really hit them hard.”
“Then is it worth it?”
He looked up at Cunningham, then said, “You’re asking what I would do if I was in charge?”
“You need to think up the answer now, because someone’s going to ask, and that person might be in a position to make your dreams come true.”
“We need a peace, and we have a chance of securing it, but we need to make sure that we have the strategic depth we’re lacking right now. We’ve got to push as hard as we can, as long as the Cabal doesn’t break. Which means reinforcing Hydra Station, damn it, and making that the front line. Rather than having them sitting on our damn doorstep ready to pounce whenever they think the timing is right for them.”
“Good answer. I hope you can persuade Tramiel about it. Or whoever you end up meeting at Spitfire Station.”
The desk communicator chirped, and Marshall tapped the button, “Go ahead.”
“Steele, sir. We’re getting a message, from, I guess, the Enemy.”
“Find another name for them. What does it say.”
“Video, sir. For you.”
“Me?” He looked at Cunningham, then said, “Put them on.”
On the screen, the image of a woman appeared, and Marshall shook his head. He recognized her, one of the Hercules crewmen who had traveled on the Dumont. She was sporting a black eye, and looked like she hadn’t slept properly in weeks.
“This is Senior Corporal Clara Ballard to Lieutenant-Captain Marshall. I and six other members of my crew have been captured. We will be released to the care of the smaller ship, as soon as Alamo leaves this system, on the condition that no treaties or agreements be negotiated by the Triplanetary Confederation with the people of Haven. My captors do not demand an alliance, or anything other than to be left alone.”
She looked to the left, then said, “Tell Maggie I’m sorry, and that this wasn’t her fault.”
“Yeah it was,” Orlova said, standing unnoticed in the door. “Sorry, Clara. I’m the one who sent you out there.”
“Maggie?” Marshall began, but she turned and walked away down the corridor. Looking back at Cunningham, he said, “You were saying something about not having to make any hard decisions, John?”
Chapter 10
“Let’s get this straight,” Orlova said, looking around the cabin of the borrowed shuttle. “As far as I am concerned, this flight is to plan for a rescue mission.”
“That’s why I was dragooned in, then,” Cooper replied. “I was wondering what engineering expertise you thought I had.”
“Maggie, we don’t even know where they are being held,” Quinn said. “It’s a very big system.”
“They must be close, if they are willing to hand them over to the Buchanan,” Harper said. “
Which means one of the moons. Not necessarily a ship.” Glancing around at the unfamiliar cabin, she continued, “We’re having enough trouble trying to figure out Haven’s technology, without trying to master an alien environment as well.”
“We’ve never fought aliens,” Cooper said. “Looks like Alamo’s going to notch up one more first on its way home.”
“I hate to suggest it,” Carpenter said, looking away from the window, “but have you thought about just acceding to their demands? From what the Captain said, he’s considering leaving things alone anyway, waiting for the Senate to make the decision.”
“You do not give into kidnappers,” Cooper said. “Even I know that much.”
“Which commits us to a battle,” Quinn replied.
“All of this is the Captain’s decision,” Orlova said. “And I’ve never known him to leave someone behind under any circumstances. He’ll get them back. It might take a battle, it might take diplomacy, but we’ll get them back.”
Turning away from the group, she looked through the viewport at the approaching ship. She’d taken a quick look at the controls, and immediately ruled out any thought of flying the shuttle herself. The surfaces were built into specially-shaped hand-prints, reacting at the slightest touch of pressure, and other systems were either voice-activated or controlled by the feet. Far too much was totally automated for her liking, but for a simple orbital flight, it made an element of sense.
She concentrate her attention on the vessel ahead, a perfect sphere, interrupted only by an oddly-shaped antenna and a trio of engines at the rear; even the missile tubes were embedded inside. It was a tough design, obviously built for war with tough, heavy armor. There were no viewports at all, the whole impression of a rugged vessel.
The shuttle soared over it to give her a good view, and then down to the other side, where the perfect shape was interrupted once more with an airlock adapter, one that had obviously seen extensive use. The pilot obviously knew his stuff; with no hesitancy the shuttle cruised down to gently lock alongside, and the airlock opened.
Inside, a smiling, jowled figure floated, his brown hair forming a loose, wispy halo around his head. He gestured for them to come in, passing each of them a silver disc, one of which was already clipped to his jumpsuit.
Welcome to our prize,” he said. “My name is Vorzan, and I am very pleased to meet with you.” His smile grew, and he continued, “It’s a great pleasure to actually converse with people who speak English as a native. Tell me, do any of you speak German?” They looked at each other, and he shrugged, bobbing up and down in the low gravity. “A pity. Not many of us learned two of your languages. I was hoping to get more practice in.”
“English is the usual language of the Confederation, though Russian and Swahili are also pretty common,” Quinn volunteered.
“Swahili? I don’t think anyone here speaks that one. Many of us speak Russian, though.”
“We can probably arrange to give you some language courses before we leave,” Orlova said. “I doubt that would count as a technology exchange.”
Vorzan’s eyes widened, and he said, “That would be wonderful. If you would come this way, I’d be happy to give you the tour.”
“We want to see the whole ship,” Orlova stressed. “This isn’t just for fun. We need to get all the information we can if we’re going to make proper tactical assessments of the Enemy. Getting to look inside a ship we might soon be fighting is a luxury that we need to take full advantage of.”
He looked up, nodded, and replied, “My apologies. Primarily, my job is to entertain people who come on board to look at what we are up against, as well as to see our guest.” He looked between them, and said, “Do you want to see her?”
“Her? The ship?”
“No, our captive!”
“Let me get this straight,” Cooper said. “You have one of the aliens on board this ship?”
“That’s right. It always seemed to make more sense to keep her here, rather than take the risk of transporting her down to the surface. Not that the conditions would be inimical, you understand, but I venture that our people would not show her much kindness if she were to be taken out among them.”
“Make that the first part of the tour,” Orlova said. “And make sure that we have all the physiological and psychological data you’ve gathered.”
Drifting up beside her, Cooper whispered, “Why the hell didn’t they tell us about this sooner? They’d have known that we’d find out as soon as we got on board.”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Ensign. Eyes and ears open.”
Vorzan led them down a corridor, then twisted them up a vertical rise. The interior layout seemed to lack any sort of formal deck structure, instead consisting of a series of tangled passageways connecting key areas. There were some odd similarities; clips along the wall held what had to be sleeping bags, and the handrail design looked comfortingly familiar.
“Something odd,” Quinn said. “Look around. No status monitors, life support stations, anything. Alamo’s got them every few meters. Why haven’t they got anything like that here?”
“Maybe we can’t recognize them,” Carpenter said. “Alien means alien, after all.”
“How do you fail to recognize a viewscreen?” Quinn replied.
“It could be anything,” Harper said. “Maybe holograms are projected when the ship powers up, maybe they are designed to blend into the wall. Hell, maybe they trust their systems enough that they don’t think they need it.”
“Alien or no, ship design always involves a healthy dose of paranoia,” Quinn said. “I find it hard to believe that they’d depend totally on systems they had no control over.”
They pushed on, coming to a door festooned in burn marks from the manner of its original breaching; some temporary repairs had been made at some point in the past, then abandoned as pointless.
“This is the control and engine room. We decided to keep the alien in the Captain’s quarters. Figured it might as well have reasonable luxury, and it has its own food fabricator in there.”
Quinn pushed ahead, looking around the room, then back in surprise. Aside from a few restraints in seemingly random positions, the walls were blank, bare. There was an empty locker at the back of the room by another blasted door, racks for what might have been spacesuits long stripped bare, but no sign of anything else.
“Are you sure this is the control room?”
“Oh,” Vorzan said, “Absolutely. You’re going to need these, though.” He tugged a pair of outsize glasses from a pocket, and carefully tossed them towards her. As soon as she put them on, the walls of the room erupted in color, each section a different display, though she couldn’t read them. Dials and gauges, streaming text from all angles, and illuminated positions by each of the restraints. Pushing up to one of them, she looked down to see a condensed version of the wider picture, focused on a few areas.
Taking the glasses off and passing them to Quinn, she said, “They all wore glasses like this? That seems pretty cumbersome.”
“No, that’s just our version of it. They did it with implants, jacked directly into the optic nerve and the rest of the brain.”
“Ships that can be operated with thought?” Orlova said. “Then they were communication and translators? That’s clever. Means that the whole ship can be one huge control station. I’m surprised they bothered with an individual control room.”
“I’ve seen designs of a ship that used holographic controls and datapads, but no-one ever really tried to make it work,” Quinn said. “There was a lot of talk about it before the war, I believe, but it was thought to be far too fragile for combat.
Looking at the glasses, Carpenter asked, “How did you duplicate the implants? I’m surprised you haven’t thought about upgrading your own ships in this way.”
“We didn’t. We just worked a way of hooking them up without
implanting them. A few volunteers tried them out, but I’m afraid they died quite quickly, and never had any luck at operating the ships.”
“That’s a bit damn cold,” Harper said, reaching for the glasses.
“We are at war, and they died for their people in the same way as one who fell in battle.”
Shaking her head, Orlova asked, “What do you think, Harper?”
“Brain implants isn’t something that’s exactly been pushed as research. Not much chance we’d be able to duplicate this, but I guess it might give someone a head-start.” Looking over at Vorzan, she asked, “Can we keep this?”
He reached out for it, and replied, “I’d have to clear that with my superiors. We only have so many of them. The Enemy doesn’t usually allow their bodies to be captured; they have a tendency to blow up their ships first.”
“Involuntary brain surgery probably makes them a bit less likely to want to be taken alive,” Carpenter said. “What about the prisoners they’ve taken from you?”
“Killed instantly, we presume. Certainly they have never been heard from again. This is total war, and the price of defeat is extinction. What do you expect us to do?”
“But you kept this one alive?” Orlova said.
“It’s rare enough that we get one back in...good condition,” he said. “She’s been here for a year or two. Some of our biologists decided that we might learn something about their requirements for life support over extended periods.” Shaking his head, he continued, “Odds are I’ll get ordered to throw her out of an airlock sooner or later.”
“We’d better take a look before it’s too late, then,” Orlova said.
“I’ll hang back,” Harper said. “I want to take another look around the bridge. Can I borrow the glasses for a moment? I think I might be able to figure out the displays.”
“Some of our best people have spent years trying,” Vorzan replied, passing her the glasses, “but you are more than welcome to try. A new pair of eyes on the problem could be just what we’ve been looking for.”
Battlecruiser Alamo: Ghost Ship Page 10
