Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  Qiu blinked. “An offer?”

  “I have also been ordered to be honest with you,” Cindy said. “We have established a small shipyard out in the Belt, intended to be a complete secret unless it was needed, as it is now. That base has been churning out warships, such as the ones you saw in the battle, but we had to make an alliance with the Rockrats to man those ships.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Qiu said. He seemed to understand the basic principles as well as anyone else. “You would have bottlenecks in manpower, if nothing else.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cindy agreed, bowing her head. “We have one hundred and fifty warships in all, which we intended to launch against Earth in a month, by which time we would have many more ships. Now, however, the aliens know that you’re here and they will have some information on how our new ships perform, which means that the timetable will have to be moved up sharply. We would like to launch the attack within two weeks at the most.”

  Ellsworth drew in a breath. He had known that the timetable would have to be modified, but the crews hadn’t had enough training…even if they had trained far more crews than anyone had thought they would need. The Rockrats had been trained, but they would require experience on their ships; they’d also have to be told the truth about where the ships actually had actually come from. They would not be happy…

  Cindy continued, unaware of his personal thoughts. “My commander would like your ships to join the offensive,” she continued. “It may be your only chance to liberate China from the grasp of the six-hands of the aliens.”

  Qiu looked at her for a long moment. “You…Americans established a shipyard in the belt,” he said. “Technically, that’s a treaty violation.”

  “So is establishing a secret squadron to keep your own people in line,” Cindy countered him. “Look, Commodore; without that fleet, your nation and every other nation would be completely at the mercy of the aliens. The world is breaking apart under their pressure; a few more months and perhaps every nation will have surrendered to them…except we won’t have months. They know we’re out here now, Commodore; they will come for us with the remainder of their force, and they will crush us. Our only hope is to take the offensive now.”

  Qiu kept his face carefully blank. “What guarantees do I have that your force will not use mine as…cannon fodder?”

  A diplomat might have been more tactful; Cindy wasn't a diplomat. “None,” she said, flatly. “Commodore, we could spend weeks arguing about the terms and conditions, but it will take too long and the aliens will be at our throats. I will tell you, now, that your participation in the fleet action might be the only chance you will have to shape the future of China after the aliens are defeated…or you might end up discovering that America ends up as ruler of the world.”

  Qiu tilted his head. “The Chinese people will not accept your…dictatorship,” he said. “Are you sure you can afford to refuse to discuss guarantees?”

  “If half the rumours we have picked up are accurate, the Chinese people would be quite happy to accept anyone who could feed them,” Cindy said grimly. “Once the aliens advance into the chaos, they’ll probably be welcomed as saints and saviours.”

  There was a long pregnant pause. “I can’t offer you anything,” Cindy concluded. “All I can say, now, is that it’s time to make a choice.”

  Qiu held her gaze long enough to worry Ellsworth. “Very well,” he said, finally. “We will be honoured to become part of the international…”

  “Interplanetary,” Short injected sharply.

  “Interplanetary fleet,” Qiu said, without missing a beat. “Please ask your commanding officer to get in touch with me and we will sort out the details.”

  * * *

  “You had me sweating for a minute,” Ellsworth said, as they sat together in a quiet corner of the asteroid. The private rooms were normally used for deals between Rockrats, speculators and mining reps; he had often thought that it was a very good thing indeed that the Rockrat culture was very intolerant of lawyers. Perhaps they were useful on Earth, but out in the belt they just wasted perfectly good oxygen. Reasonable people could come to their own agreements. “I thought for a moment he was going to tell you to go to hell.”

  Cindy shrugged, watching as the stars flickered past outside. There was too much wreckage floating past from the battle, small chunks of debris that would be a major navigation hazard until the Rockrats had located all of it and shoved it into one of the advancing mining stations, which would sort and refine the materials. An unidentifiable but large chunk of metal drifted past; her eyes seemed to follow it absently.

  “I knew he had little choice and he knew it too,” Cindy said. “What might have happened if China had no seat at the peace conference?”

  Ellsworth shrugged. “They’re a Great Power – were a Great Power,” he said. “There are few people in the Belt who would mourn China losing its power, or, for that matter, America itself. They might have been shocked at the devastation the aliens inflicted on your world, but it won’t be long before everyone starts remembering the embargo and other issues that remain unsettled between Earth and the Belt.”

  “Politics,” Cindy said. She looked up at him for a moment, her blonde hair glistening in the light, before looking back out at the stars. “Even with aliens out there breathing down our necks, there are still people playing politics. Commodore Qiu will take what he can get from the situation; he knows that his thirty ships no longer compose a force that can affect the balance of power on their own. As for the future…I don’t think it will be the same.”

  Ellsworth stepped closer to her, wondering at his own daring. “The future is always changing,” he said. The Rockrats knew better than to try to shape the future; the time and tide of economic storms saw to that. “Where do you want to be in the future?”

  “Ambassador to the Rockrats, perhaps,” Cindy said. “I don’t think that the USSF would be interested in promoting me further; I’ve put too many noses out of joint, sometimes literally, to earn the rank I have so far, let alone get further. The balance of power has been shattered now, Jake; the Moon has asserted its own independence and the aliens are always going to be out there, and…”

  She broke off. “No one knows what will happen in the future.”

  Ellsworth thought he understood. “The Rockrats have no interest in becoming a Great Power,” he said, seriously. He wondered if that was what was bothering the young servicewoman…and friend…and perhaps more than a friend. “We don’t have the capability to form a powerful government.”

  “You will have, soon,” Cindy said. There was a very serious tone in her voice; for a brief moment it crossed his mind to wonder how she might look sucking on a pencil. “I wonder if you’ll be able to resist the temptation when it comes kicking down your door.”

  She stood up and faced him. “You know what could happen,” she said. “There’s Mars, and Titan, and Venus…and if we gain control over the space elevators, the gateway to space will finally be knocked open for all time. The balance of power will start to shift, completely…”

  Ellsworth took a step forward, and another, and then she reached for him. He had no time to react before she pulled him towards her and kissed him, hard. He returned the kiss with as much passion as he could muster, feeling his body responding to her touch, to the pressure of her hands as they ran over his backside. His arms enfolded her, stroking the curves that revealed themselves in her shipsuit, before wandering towards the tabs that held the suit together. Her rear was as perfect to the touch as it had been to the eye; his probing hands became more desperate as her body started to respond to his touch.

  “I don’t know what will happen in the future,” Cindy whispered, her lips close to his ears, her voice somehow husky enough to get his blood flowing rapidly. He didn’t want to think about anything, but her, and the body he had lived with ever since he had realised that he was falling in love with her. He wanted her with him, now and forever; she was perfect for him. “Th
is could be a mistake, but it’s one I want to make, and the future can worry about itself, later.”

  Her hands were on his belt buckle; there was a moment, and then the shipsuit fell away, just as his hands finally found the release tab for her shipsuit, allowing it to fall off her body, revealing a fit young body that was somehow both mannish…and sexy as hell. There was little finesse in their joining; she pulled him forward and impaled herself on him, her eyes looking away from him as she moved rapidly on him, forcing him to move with her, pushing deeper and deeper inside her. It rose up out of him, beyond his ability to control; he felt her gasps at a very basic level as he came deep inside her, making deep mewling noises…

  She pushed him down onto the floor, demanding worship, demanding him, demanding his unconditional love for one night only…because tomorrow they might die.

  Chapter Fifty-One: One Last Chance, Take One

  Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

  There had been no way to exclude the non-military personnel from the meeting, much to Dataka-War Commander-Fleet’s private regret; almost every subgroup within the group that made up the fleet had a legitimate right to take part in the Fleet Council. Not all of them were normally interested – anyone who didn’t vote didn’t deserve to vote – but the scale of the defeat in the asteroid belt had shocked them. Dataka knew that much of the panic was unjustified, but it was hard to explain that when everyone was arguing away like mad.

  Oghaldzon meetings had never been dignified affairs. Certainly, it was unknown for two parties on opposite sides of the dispute to actually come to blows with their opponents, but the standard rules of the meetings seemed almost to be swept aside. It was a wonderful opportunity for any social scientist…and a nightmare for those who had to shape order out of chaos. The panic was having an effect, spreading rapidly through the fleet; how could the non-military personnel grasp the fact that the main body of the fleet was in no immediate danger? So the humans had deployed around – no one knew for sure – forty warships, some of which were of a new and dangerous design? They couldn’t use them to defeat the Oghaldzon; even if they set out at once, it would take them two weeks to even reach Earth, let alone engage his force.

  The clicking sound of sonar and conversation was becoming unbearable, even for an Oghaldzon; a human, who wouldn’t have been able to hear half of the discussion, let alone understand it, would still have felt the pressure of the conversation. Questions were shouted, answers were proffered, everyone was talking at once…they could all separate the different conversations out in their heads, but the sheer chaos of the discussion was defeating them. Three-quarters of the fleet was civilian; how could they determine what might happen – realistically – in the future?

  Finally, he could take it no more. He sent a mental command into one of the processors to generate a suppression sound, beaming out a wave of noise that would overwhelm conversation, leaving all of the participants unable to hear each other. If it were used too long, it would cause a headache, but Dataka knew that there would be no permanent damage; there were places back on their homeworld where neither conversation nor sonar was even possible.

  “This behaviour is unlike us,” he said, as the sound faded away. The massed ranks of the Fleet Council glared at him with every undertone of mass rebellion. He wasn’t sure that he blamed them, but he had earned his position as War Commander…and he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t a human who had been appointed because he was a drinking buddy of the current ruler, or because he knew how to play the political game. “We have not suffered a major defeat.”

  There was a long pause. “Yes, we have lost twenty-one ships, including the transport,” he said. It was worse than it seemed, but hardly disastrous. “Yes, the humans in the Belt – the Rockrats – continue to thumb their noses” – a human expression he had come to like – “at us. Yes, this is dangerous, but it is far from fatal.”

  He looked around the room, doing his best to project a calming meme at all of them. “If the worst case has indeed occurred, and the humans do decide to advance on Earth, we would still possess sufficient firepower to hold the planet against their forces,” he continued. “By now, our advances have brought much of the human land around our landing sites under our control; are we going to simply lift up our hind legs and run?”

  “We can’t stay in this system,” someone shouted from the rear, clicking their sonar just enough to ensure that their identity remained unknown. “They somehow ambushed us in deep space!”

  “They tried to get clever and, unfortunately, succeeded. Once, once,” Dataka said, reassuringly. It had to have been a coincidence; no one in their right mind would plan space warfare in such a strange way. Oghaldzon tactical doctrine – and there was no sign that the humans disagreed – called for keeping operations as simple as possible…and that wasn’t possible if one wanted to carry out three- or four-pronged thrusts. The humans in the Belt would have been wiser to concentrate their fire; they would have known for weeks the rough course his force was taking. “They are not likely to succeed in such a way again.”

  He pulled up a near-Earth display. “This is Earth orbit,” he said. “We have passive and active sensors stretching out for nearly a light-lesser-cycle around the planet, with every last piece of debris and human artefacts studied and either recycled or pushed into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. We know everything that exists within that sphere…and we control it, absolutely. We have established industrial stations at the balance points between the Earth and the moon; now that we are trading with the humans on the moon, we have time to start producing additional components, even warships, of our own. Simple logic tells us that there is no way the humans in the belt can out-produce us.”

  He clicked a smile into the air. “They cannot dislodge us from this position,” he said. “We can build up ourselves and launch a second attack, a force more intent on destroying the Rockrat population, rather than trying to convince them to submit, while we keep our own population safe. A sneak attack will not get within range to do any damage to the motherships, while the warships will continue to patrol space in order to prevent any more overt attack.”

  “The question of human mentality has exercised our curiosity for the last few cycles,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said, before Dataka could continue. “We are forced to conclude that the humans will seek either to destroy us, or attempt to flee into deeper space until they find safety from us. If they cannot do the former, they will certainly try the latter; we must continue to control Earth and use it as the base for expanding our authority over the remainder of the solar system.”

  “I disagree,” Reata-Soldier-Command said. She tilted her crest slightly as she spoke. “The human population on the ground has been fighting us all the way; we advance into new areas only to discover them littered with hidden traps and unpleasant surprises. We dominate where we can see, but we are constantly surprised by their sudden changes in tactics, or sneak assaults conducted against our flanks. While some human groups have come to us, they are groups that couldn’t endure the fighting any longer, or had historical reasons to oppose their local governments. Some of their support is questionable, at the least; our units in the human continent of Africa have reported meeting humans who have offered to carry out the most vile attacks in our name.”

  The Wreckers, Dataka remembered. The briefings had confused him, but anyone who could destroy an entire city of innocents for ideological purposes was clearly a danger to everyone. Humans with ThrillKill…

  “We must leave this system,” Chars-Operative-Seeker snapped. His clicking rose loud enough to suppress the others. “This is a nightmarish place for us.”

  “We cannot,” Dataka said. “If we leave now, we will be leaving a human population behind us which will seek to take revenge at some later date.”

  “Then perhaps we should be looking for a way of coming to terms with the humans,” Chars proclaimed. “Can we win this war? If we cannot, then we have to find a way of ending it b
efore the cost becomes too high to bear. There are two billion of us on the ships” – not counting the twenty thousand who have died on Earth and those lost on the dead mothership, Dataka thought coldly – “and they need some clear reason to hope that we can win.”

  “We have a purpose,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker declared. The Speaker was a formidable personality at the best of times. “We have learned that small reverses do not lead inevitably to the defeat of the whole, unless we chose to allow them to do so. We still have our ships, we still have our position over Earth, and three of the main human governments are talking to us! Others are considering their positions! We may even succeed in making contact with dissident Rockrats; if half of what the Researchers have found about their culture is accurate, they can hardly be described as homogenous.”

  He paused. “We are winning,” he continued, slightly less loudly. His personality seemed to fill the room. “It may take Earth-years to achieve complete control, let alone start the long process of re-educating humans to fit in with civilised society, but it can be done!”

  “Maybe,” Yehaka-Researcher-Earth said. She spent her time between the humans on one of the motherships and the camps on Earth, selecting humans who might be considered breeding pairs for the future. She had also found a few hundred human orphans – far too many of them were around, something that had confused the researchers before they had been able to deduce what an orphan actually was – and brought them to the motherships as well. “We may not have complete success for Grand Cycles.” Decades.

  Dataka clicked a question at her. “Why not?”

  “Humans form social bonds very easily, particularly when under pressure,” Yehaka said. “The groups which have formed up in the camps down on the planet are directed, at least partly, against their oppressors; us. The social groups on the mothership have a slightly more tolerant view, but it remains an odd one, which could be directed against us. The fact remains that we have torn them away from where they thought they belonged and placed them in an alien environment, one that they find profoundly disturbing in some ways. The natural lighting of our world, of our ships, is eerie to human eyes.”