Through Struggle, the Stars

by John Lumpkin

  Tanaka looked at Neil for the first time and frowned. “Yes, I was told by my communications officer that you had complained those ships were colonial transports. Such a notion! Your intelligence is clearly out of date.” Tanaka leaned in to read Neil’s name badge, then straightened. “I’ll make you an offer, Ensign Mercer. Before you leave us, one of my aides will provide you with our files on that class of transport, if you promise to show them to your superiors.”

  My superiors? Captain Thorne is right over there. What does he mean?

  “Why, certainly, sir,” Neil tried not to stammer. “Thank you.”

  Tanaka smiled blandly and nodded. “I hope everyone enjoys our hospitality,” he said to the group, and moved to another circle of Americans.

  Mendoza whispered to Neil, “What was that all about?”

  “Beats me.”

  A senior steward entered and announced dinner. The food was excellent, and the meal progressed quickly. Tanaka and Thorne did most of the talking, in formal, measured exchanges.

  During a silence, Mendoza asked Captain Hara whether Mogami’s first officer was absent due to his duties on the bridge.

  Hara looked uncomfortable. “No, I’m afraid Commander Abe simply isn’t feeling well this evening.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Mendoza said. “I hope there isn’t an illness aboard.”

  “Nothing like that,” Admiral Tanaka cut in. But he said no more.

  As the meal wound up, another Japanese officer approached from behind Neil’s chair. He leaned over, and placed a data chip next to Neil’s plate.

  “From Admiral Tanaka, sir,” the officer said softly. Neil, who had a mouthful of shrimp tempura, turned to thank him. His hand struck his wine glass, spilling its contents onto the table. Stewards immediately rushed forward to clean it up.

  Smooth, Mercer. Way to keep it covert. Neil slid the datachip into his pocket.

  Later, after the Jacintos had returned home and Mogami had thrust away, Neil went to the intel department’s small office to look at the datachip’s contents. He wondered if this was some fabricated report suggesting the Hans were using colony ships as troop transports. Something to pass on to Stahl, regardless.

  He plugged in the chip and waited for the system to scan it for security threats. When the file popped up, Neil wondered if he’d been given the wrong chip by mistake.

  It was Chinese text, translated into Japanese and English. He read a section title.

  Employment of nanological weapons.

  His eyes widened. Nanoweapons – microscopic robots that could disassemble molecules to make copies of themselves – were feared as potentially planet-wrecking devices. Research into them was outlawed by international treaty. They were classed with nuclear, biological, antimatter and asteroid bombardment weapons as beyond the bounds of acceptable warfare.

  Nanological weapons were also entirely theoretical, as far as anyone knew. It was rumored nations researched nanological defenses to circumvent the ban, but if this document was legit, China would become a pariah.

  Obviously, the Japanese passed this to try to influence the United States to join them in war. But is it real or disinformation?

  Above my pay grade. This definitely isn’t for Stahl; it’s political intelligence, not military. He went to find Donovan.

  When the operative read it, he snorted in derision. “No way. The Hans just aren’t that stupid. We’re pretty plugged in with their research efforts, and we’d know if they had developed something like this. It’s some clever disinformation, though it’s a bit odd they passed it to you. Think they picked you out as the intel officer?”

  “I can’t see how they would have,” Neil said. “I spoke maybe two sentences to their admiral, and he had the report passed to me later.”

  “All very strange. Thank you for passing this to me. I’ll send a report up the chain and check if we’re seeing a widespread disinformation campaign like this. Better keep this between you and me, though; we don’t want anyone overreacting to its contents.”

  “Understood.” Neil, who had no idea how to tell a faked document from a real one, wondered if Donovan was correct to so casually dismiss the information it contained.

  “Now, what were your impressions of the Japanese officers?” the elder spy asked.

  “It was a mixed bag. Their admiral kept selling the story that they killed Chinese troop transports, but none of the others discussed the battle at all. A few looked pretty angry at us, I guess for calling them on it, but the rest just looked unhappy. Their XO was absent, too, which everybody thought was strange. Maybe he protested and was relieved.”

  “Interesting. Sounds like this admiral is something of a glory hound, but his crew doesn’t share his sentiments,” Donovan said. “I wonder if he is representative of the state of mind of the fleet’s upper management.”

  The next morning, Stahl asked him for the chip.

  “I don’t have it, sir. I gave it to Mister Donovan, at his request,” Neil said.

  “You did what? Admiral Tanaka gave that to us, the Space Force, not to that civilian. Your action is not acceptable, Ensign.”

  Other people were in the intel office with them. Neil’s ears burned.

  “Sir, my orders were to assist Mister Donovan in whatever he requested.”

  “I’ll speak to the captain about this. It’s not acceptable,” Stahl repeated. “Well, then, at least tell me what was on it.”

  “Sir, I … Mister Donovan requested that I not discuss its contents,” Neil said.

  Stahl scowled at him. “Mercer, I think you need to recall just who you work for. The goddamn U.S. Space Force. Dismissed.”

  “Dismissed, sir?” Neil was supposed to be in the office working on reports for another few hours.

  “Just go to lunch and leave me alone. And try to think about who you should be loyal to.”

  That’s an easy one, you jackass, Neil thought, but said nothing. He could feel the anger rising and left before he was tempted to snap at his superior.

  He had a trick in CIC when the San Jacinto linked with the fuel station orbiting Marble a few hours later.

  The station manager, a harried Belarusian spacer named Sidorsky, called as soon as the ship started taking on hydrogen, asking to speak with the captain. He explained that in the colony ships’ rush to flee from Mogami, four Chinese colonists had been left behind on the station. Sidorsky requested the San Jacinto carry them on to Entente, their original destination.

  The captain struggled with it. These people were survivors and refugees. But the idea of citizens of a potentially hostile nation on board her ship discomfited her. Still, she was as angry as anyone about the mandated silence regarding the massacre of the Chinese colonists, and carrying these people to Entente was the decent thing to do. Their story about the Japanese attack could even go public once they arrived, a means, in her view, of circumventing Donovan’s odious orders for her silence.

  They came on board an hour later. They were an elderly couple, and a woman in her forties and a younger man who were traveling together. The four said they had been left behind when the last colony ship broke away to flee from the Japanese warship. All seemed stunned by the turn of events.

  After the ship pulled away from the refueling terminal, Thorne asked if Donovan and Neil would interview them. Rafe Sato sat in, as well.

  The elderly couple was immigrating to join their children’s families on Entente. The other two were representatives of a Shanghai alcohol company, assigned to open a brewery in Entente’s largest city, Graypen, an ocean away from Chinese territory on the planet.

  “May I ask,” said the woman, whose name was Cai Jinming, “whether you have been in touch with the Chinese government? My company will want to know what has happened to me.”

  “I can check on that,” Donovan said blandly.

  Her assistant, Li Xiao, who had remained sullen throughout the interview, suddenly spoke up. “And make sure you tell them how the Japanese murder
ed so many of our people,” he said. “They are barbarians.”

  Cai looked at him for just a moment, and he said nothing more.

  Some days later, as the ship traversed another red dwarf system on the way to Entente, four uncomfortable men sat around Stahl’s handheld, attached to a projector that created an image large enough that they could view significant detail. Stahl resented the others’ presence, but the captain had ordered him to include them. Donovan spoke far better Mandarin than either Stahl or the translation program, both of which could miss certain idioms, slang and so on. So a truce of sorts, the armistice of Wolf 498, Neil thought bitterly, had to be reached. Stahl was too prickly to message Donovan directly, so he sent Neil to personally request that the NSS officers join him in the briefing room. Now, seven hours later, here they were, with Neil wondering how much he’d have to intervene – and how much he would anger Stahl in the process.

  The lieutenant nodded at Neil, who pressed a key on the handheld. Stahl said, “When the Chinese refugees came on board, I set the security program to monitor them at maximum sensitivity. Here’s a playback of a few things that the software flagged.”

  The first video segment, taken from a side and somewhat elevated angle, showed the four Chinese survivors at a table in the mess, with Li Xiao and Cai Jinming facing the elderly couple, Peng Zhu and Peng Shu. Cai and the Pengs sat precisely and silently, suctioning some soup from a bulb and then collecting the little balls of liquid with chopsticks.

  Li Xiao, however, looked bored. He glanced around the room, yawned and flicked an errant soup ball away with his finger.

  “His attitude is really disrespectful to the elders,” Donovan commented. “He must think he’s something special.”

  Cai Jinming turned her head slightly toward Li Xiao, but said nothing, and the young man smirked but straightened up.

  The Pengs concentrated on their food.

  “The elders defer to these two, and this guy defers to her,” Donovan said. “That means something’s off – the Pengs should be accepting deference, but they sense some authority across the table. Did they converse at all?”

  “The microphone didn’t pick up anything beyond ‘pass the ginger,’” Stahl said. “Next index, please, Mister Mercer.”

  The video cut to a shot of the Pengs, now from above, in their borrowed stateroom. A translation appeared at the bottom of the screen, with speakers denoted using the Westernized form of their names, with the family name after the given name.

  ZHU PENG: “Do you think they know who we are?”

  SHU PENG: “How could they? They are not everywhere.”

  ZHU PENG: “It is distressing to be this close to them.”

  SHU PENG: “Once we reach the planet we will be away from them for good.”

  Rafe Sato shook his head. “I had the home office check all four of them out, and as far as we can tell, they are who they say they are. That’s a pretty interesting thing for the old man to say, though. Like the lady says, we’re not everywhere.”

  Donovan nodded. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Mister Stahl. We’ll certainly scrutinize them a bit more.”

  “Would you share with me the background information you’ve obtained on our passengers?” Stahl asked.

  Donovan’s eyes narrowed. Neil sensed tension in the question. Given the state of relations between Donovan and the ship’s crew, the NSS officer might refuse. Time to play diplomat.

  He said, “That sort of information isn’t anything Space Force typically has access to. The Intel shop is charged with protecting the classified information and hardware on board, so it could help us to know a little more about them, just in case.”

  Donovan grunted. “Sure. I’ll have Rafe send it along.”

  “Thank you,” Stahl said, beaming at Neil. “There’s one more. Next index.”

  Here were the tops of the heads of Cai Jinming and Li Xiao, in Cai’s loaned stateroom. Li, reading something on his handheld, had his back to Cai.

  JINMING CAI: “You should be kinder to the Pengs.”

  XIAO LI: (unintelligible)

  JINMING CAI: “You should also be kinder to me.”

  At that, she reached for him and stroked his back. He turned, and they embraced. It didn’t stop there. Neil saw the eagerness in Li’s eyes, and felt dirty for watching, and tried to cover the sentiment.

  “Guess we didn’t need to give each of them their own stateroom,” he said. Rafe, at least, chuckled.

  Donovan, annoyed, turned to Stahl. “What do we need to see here, Lieutenant?”

  Stahl smirked. “I thought you might like to know about their little relationship.”

  “A message would have sufficed,” Donovan said. He rose from his seat. “I’m leaving.”

  What’s going on here? Neil wondered, shutting down the video. Does Stahl think showing Donovan some porn is some kind of olive branch? Or … it’s a message. Stahl’s asserting his authority. He’s claiming the ship – letting Donovan know he can watch him whenever he wants … except the MMP is off-limits to the internal security systems so the passengers can handle compartmentalized information.

  Donovan left, with Rafe right behind, laughing and shaking his head. Stahl looked smug.

  “You made up some ground with me today, Ensign, so take the lesson: That’s how you handle NSS people,” he said.

  Lieutenant Rodgers keyed his mike.

  “Okay, everybody, get locked in. Drop commences in five. Trigger your handheld when you are secure. If my screen ain’t green, we miss the drop window, and we all get to sit on our asses for two hours until the next one.”

  The last month had been a steady routine of work, sleep and exercise. San Jacinto raced through Wolf 498 and DG Canum Venaticorum before arriving in orbit above Entente.

  The Chinese refugees didn’t have any more conversations the security program flagged as suspicious. They ingratiated themselves with the crew; the Pengs cooked, and Cai Jinming provided language lessons. Only Li Xiao remained aloof, angrily rebuffing any attempts at conversation, once shouting at Rafe Sato that he was a “halfbreed riben guizi.”

  Rafe laughed it off. He’d been called far worse than a “Japanese devil” in his career.

  The four refugees were by no means allowed free run of the ship, but they stayed out of restricted areas and didn’t try to send any classified information in their communications. Stahl reviewed their messages before allowing them to be transmitted; he told Captain Thorne they all described the destruction of the Chinese colony ships. Thorne let the messages go through.

  “Sick kits are in the pouches beneath your seat,” Rodgers said. “Use them or you get to clean up.”

  The war was not going well for Japan. The Chinese were blockading the Japanese wormhole to Barnard’s Star. The Japanese fleet still held their other wormhole, to Proxima Centauri, so any Japanese warships trying to reach Earth had to take a longer route from most of their colonies.

  In Earth orbit, the main Japanese and Chinese fleets had finally engaged and were chewing each other to pieces in a brutal battle of attrition.

  “Sierra, this is Little Sister. Secure for drop. Beginning separation maneuver … now, now, now.”

  The Sabre pushed itself free and rolled a quarter-turn. The San Jacinto slowly receded.

  “Have a good drop, Buck,” San Jacinto sent.

  In messages, Neil’s parents spoke of the frequent shooting stars at night, the remains of warships burning up in the atmosphere. They also described bizarre auroras, the product of the fusion drives hitting Earth’s magnetosphere. By convention, ships did not fire up fusion candles within Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, but that practice was abandoned as soon as the fighting started.

  The war had also started to hit home in other ways. One of the battles had left several GPS satellites disabled or destroyed. In Florida, some violent criminals under house arrest figured out their tracking tags no longer worked, and went berserk. The National Guard had to quell riots in Miam
i and Fort Lauderdale.

  Energy prices were going up as insurance companies jacked up premiums for solar power satellite operators. Several powersats had been destroyed, and the South Asian grid was facing rolling brownouts. Prices on consumer goods were going up, as well.

  Entente, blue and white and brown and green, hung below them. Rodgers had been generous; Neil sat in the jump seat in the cockpit to observe the drop. The dropship, an SV-119 “Starhawk,” one of two carried by San Jacinto, was near capacity with 38 souls aboard; the captain had decided to allow some shore leave.

  “Ready for deorbit burn?” Rodgers asked the co-pilot.

  “We’re a go from my end, chief.”

  “Initiate deorbit burn, now, now, now.”

  The engine fired, and an invisible fist pushed Neil back in his chair. The Sabre, named for the combination ramjet/scramjet/rocket engine it employed, roared through Entente’s upper atmosphere, banking to bleed off excess speed.

  “Altitude shows 140 klicks. Entry interface. Blue sky. We can breathe, Buck.” Rodgers nodded and cut in the jet.

  “Graypen control, this is Yankee 990. We’re showing thirty minutes out, copy.”

  “Confirm, Yankee 990. You should be clear for landing.”

  When humanity put a real effort into looking outward for Earthlike worlds, they found them in numbers exceeding their wildest hopes. The telltale signatures kept appearing. Wormholes were opened; scout vessels went through and found some of these worlds were indeed suitable for human life. It seemed that for a planet with liquid water, a stable orbit and a few billion years, basic life was pretty easy to come by.

  And on many worlds, that’s what the scouts found: basic life. These were barren worlds of rock, water and inhabitants no more complex than microbes. Many had worked out the same energy cycle as Earth cyanobacteria and plants: carbon dioxide plus water plus sunlight equals sugar plus some waste products, one of which was an oxygen molecule.