Later Captain Carlson and Commander Warner met with the admiral again. “It boils down to what the aliens learned at Gandalf,” Commander Warner explained. “Did they understand what was happening with Nihon? Did they understand about lasers?
“It is easy to say, probably not. The aliens showed then, and have displayed since then, no signs of any coherent radiation. No masers, no lasers, no lidar, no nothing. On the other hand Nihon blew out those ships. One has to grant our enemy simple curiosity -- if they didn’t have it, how could they build ships with Benko-Chang engines?”
There was no answer to that and Commander Warner continued. “At Shackelton some of Nihon’s crew were unhappy when we did not engage. I admit to having had a few doubts of my own; it seemed obvious that we could have picked off half a dozen of the alien ships. They were well outside the fan well; a quick series of jumps...” She sighed and shook her head.
“Admiral Saito reminded us that our duty was to inform Earth, not destroy enemy ships. At the time, I thought that to be a good and sufficient reason to do what he did, but I was not entirely convinced, nor were others.
“Now, sirs; now I think I understand. We don’t know what the enemy took away from Gandalf. It was sudden and terrible for everyone. Both sides lost incredible tonnages in minutes. Did they notice the difference between how their carrier died and what happened to their flagship? One has to assume so, but, at the same time, it is not unreasonable to plan for the eventuality that they did not.
“Which is what Admiral Saito did at Shackelton. Yes, we could have killed a few enemy ships. But not all of them and we were alone. We would have had their full attention.
“Nihon is currently the only ship in the Fleet with the new lasers. Even if the enemy noticed something at Gandalf, they will not have seen the like repeated. Lasers, yes. But not the power and range of Nihon. There is, I feel, a very real possibility that Nihon could surprise them again.”
Commander Warner went on to detail a plan, the other two officers listening in rapt attention.
“Very well done, Commander,” Admiral Gull told Evelyn Warner. “Very well done!” He laughed, then. “It is the hallmark of an officer of superior quality that when you put him or her in a particular job, they then exceed expectations. It is comforting, Commander, to know that there are officers in your grade with insight and intelligence enough to perform at a far higher level.”
He flicked Captain Carlson’s empty sleeve. “Evan has a perfectly adequate prosthetic; it’s almost as good as the real thing.”
“Better than adequate,” the captain said, “although now my wife complains that I have cold fingers where, before, I used to accuse her of the same thing.”
The admiral nodded. “Yet, on duty he does not wear it. He does that to remind everyone just who he is and that not having an arm has zero effect on his ability to perform his duty. I wear Levis, a western shirt, boots and a Stetson to do the same thing. While whimsical, they too do not impinge on my ability to do my job. Port Admiral Travis would dearly like to court-martial me; Ernie Fletcher told me he’s going to let him do it right after the aliens surrender.”
He paused, looking at her. “Admiral Saito told me that when he intimated that you all would be court-martialed and your navigator gave her justly famous reply, you were the first to laugh.
“And just now, when I gave the lift order, you giggled.”
“I did no such thing!” Evelyn said, outraged.
“You did! And you find it amusing that we are making a high speed run to Snow Dance. You giggled then, too.”
“No, sir, I don’t find it amusing.”
Charlie Gull grinned and shook his finger at her. “Never lie to yourself!”
Evelyn looked at him, not sure what he meant. “Just adapt, Commander. You’re a danger junkie. So, for that matter, am I. Ask anyone who has served with me -- even Evan. They all think I take too many risks, without need.” She saw the slightly frozen expression on her captain’s face, and said nothing herself.
“I brought home my ships, Commander, and I brought home my crews. Always. No matter what anyone might think, that was always uppermost in my mind. That same goal is, I have no doubt, what is uppermost in Evan’s mind.” He waved at the captain. “Evan made a mistake; it was after he served with me. But it was a mistake anyone would make, a mistake so simple, so basic; no one could have predicted it was a mistake.
“He walked from a ground vehicle to the entrance of a President’s Day Ball or some such on Rheims. Someone wanted the local head of state dead, and took a shot just as Evan was about to shake his hand. Evan put himself in front of the bullet and lost his arm. The planetary president kept his job and the coup planners lost their lives. The paper shuffling BuPers pukes told Evan that he had acted in the ‘highest tradition of the Fleet.’ Then they forcibly retired him in the next paragraph.”
The admiral smiled slightly. “I affect to be a cowboy; Evan pretends he’s lost nothing of importance. You laugh. These are devices senior officers use to control the stress involved with our jobs, at the same time reassuring those under us that we are human beings, just like they are. One of these days, in not so very long, Commander, you’ll be a flag officer yourself and mystifying the hell out of your subordinates at how easily you laugh at serious danger. As Evan mystifies them how a one-armed man can make decisions, as they wonder how a nut-case wearing a red-checked shirt, boots, Levis and a cowboy hat can command a fleet of ships.”
Captain Carlson added, “It keeps people’s minds off the larger questions -- questions for which there are no good answers.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Admiral Gull opined.
Snow Dance
I
The sky was low and dark; dirty-looking clouds scudded overhead, whipping past too fast to make out anything but vague shapes. The waves of the bay were flecked with white-tops; the wind that lashed them was laced with hard pellets of ice and snow.
It certainly didn’t much look like a rational vision of high noon, but it was. A steel sphere a hundred meters across bobbed amid the foam-flecked waves -- a fast courier from home, a home so many light years away it was hard to see, even on a clear night; clear nights that were a rarity on Snow Dance.
A small boat drew close to the entry hatch on the side of the courier and one of the courier’s crew standing in the airlock threw the man at the front of the boat a line to be passed to the ship's lock. It took a few more minutes for them to maneuver the boat close enough to the side of the courier so that the courier’s passenger could disembark. Once the boat was made fast, one of the men in the courier’s lock passed the word for the passenger, and the passenger appeared, carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder and a briefcase in his other hand.
He handed the duffel bag down to the man in the boat who carried it towards the small enclosed cabin amidships, as the newcomer took a quick look around. A slate gray sea, dirty gray sky. Stinging sleet beating his face. Visibility was only a few hundred meters.
The man visible on the deck of the boat made an impatient hand gesture. Come along, no woolgathering or rubbernecking! The passenger nodded to the lock commander, resisted the urge to salute and climbed down carefully to the tossing deck.
A moment later the line was undone and the boat bounced twice against the side of the courier before they were far enough away so that the waves didn’t push them back. The boat picked up speed as the man from on deck pointed to a chair. “Strap in, sir. Wind’s kicking up; it’s going to be a little rough here shortly.”
As small as the courier was, its bulk had provided a breakwater against wind and current. When the harbor boat came out of the shadow of the vessel, the boat began to dip and heave much more vigorously from the larger waves. Behind them, even over the sound of the wind and the boat’s engine, they could hear the courier’s engines spool up.
“Bastard could have given us a few more minutes,” the second of the two men in the small cabin said sourly. He was standing at the
wheel peering ahead into the sleet and mist.
“She’s picking up ice,” their passenger said quietly, and added silently to himself, “Not to mention she’s in a tearing hurry.”
“Like we’re not?” the other man muttered bitterly. “Damn Company ships don’t give a frig about the likes of us.”
The passenger thought about mentioning that the courier had had a five meter tall blazon next to the lock, Fleet Aloft’s yellow comet, but decided that the other was merely making noise.
For twenty minutes the sea pounded them, and then they went between two arms of land jutting into the larger bay, one strip of land barely visible to their right and the sea quieted. They made another turn, and then another and the sea flattened down to merely choppy.
“How many of these boats do you all have?” the passenger asked in a southern drawl, curious.
“Couple dozen.” The man at the helm grinned. “We have a few hydrofoils for days when it is calm and there are passengers. They can haul twenty, thirty people at a time and a fair amount of cargo. There is also bunch of heavy haulers, maybe fifty, any weather. Not as nice as the hydrofoils.”
“More practical,” growled the deck hand standing wedged into a corner. “You actually can use them more than once or twice a year.”
They pulled up at a dock and for the first time the passenger got a glimpse of the hand of man on Snow Dance. It was... uninspiring.
Ragged crags of ice and rock tumbled down from high overhead, and above all it was under the gray skies and gray seas. There was a long concrete dock with a huddle of half a dozen long, low warehouses, all made from dressed gray native stone, beyond the shoreline.
Two men appeared on the dock and helped secure the boat long enough to unload their passenger and his bags. Another man emerged from a vehicle, a Sno-Cat, parked on the dock.
They called the colony Snow Dance; there was never any need to wonder why, once you had your first look around.
II
Sam Murchison watched the man climb up from the Port Authority boat and mentally winced. Those damn cowboys on the boats! Around the Bay you could work in a heavy coat and gloves and just a hood for your head. Even so, it was criminal to leave a newcomer on the dock wearing what looked like jeans, a light nylon windbreaker and a Stetson. Especially someone the courier had told them was very important.
The newcomer looked maybe in his late forties, a little on the thin side. Tall, nearly six foot, dark brown hair in what looked like a short business cut. Tanned, rather rough hewn features. An outdoorsman? Ex-military? Maybe he’d manage, if that was the case. Someone had really pooched his briefing!
“Mr. Gull?” Sam asked, bowing slightly, not sticking out his hand. “I’m Sam Murchison, from the Company.” Shaking hands in this environment meant either with gloves on or if not, skin burns if you were lucky -- losing bits and pieces if you weren’t.
“Charlie Gull, howdy,” the visitor nodded informally, seemingly oblivious to the lack of handshake, his Texas twang cuttable with a knife.
“Let’s get in the cat. Without a cold suit, you’re going to be an icicle here in about two minutes,” Sam told him, not using the local euphemism for someone out in the weather too long: corpsicle. As he led the man towards the ‘cat. “We have some spare cold gear aboard the vehicle; you can borrow a set until we can get you properly outfitted.”
Charlie Gull shrugged. “I’ll just keep using mine, thank you.”
Sam stopped and looked again. “You’re not uncomfortable?”
Charlie Gull shook his head and Sam persevered. “We’re still by the ocean. It’s perhaps twenty degrees colder at the top of the ridge, five or ten degrees colder still by the time we get to the Snow Dance colony. Today is relatively a moderate day here at the bay. About -5 C.”
Sam stopped talking and made a stabbing gesture at the newcomer’s bare hands. “You at least need gloves!” Gloves were... well, without gloves you were not only likely dead, but helpless first.
The off-worlder wiggled his fingers. “I have gloves.” He laughed. “These will be out for general use soon enough. Right now they are Fleet special issue. Six molecular film layers of buckyballs, two filled with silica gel, one with air and two with vacuum. Acts like a wet suit does in cold water. Good to about 150 degrees below zero centigrade. As flexible as skin. Much tougher, though.”
Sam thought about that for a second. “Well, you’re going to have to be careful anyway. Anyone within sight is going to try and rescue you.”
“Whatever.” Charlie motioned impatiently towards the road. “I need to talk with the Works Director at once. Can we get the show on the road?”
Sam nodded. “I’m the Operations Manager. The Director is expecting you.” No he wasn’t, Sam thought, but no need to be impolite. The Works Director had been expecting someone from home about the missed resupply schedule. Sam was pretty sure that this man wasn’t here about a missed supply schedule. Charlie was going to ruin everyone’s sunny disposition -- Sam was absolutely sure of it.
The Sno-Cat ground into motion, and Murchison saw the other trying to rubberneck through the front windshield. “There's damn all little to see down here by the bay,” he told the newcomer. “We’re on the tail end of a storm now; probably tomorrow it will be as clear as it gets here -- still, you never know. It could be another week before the weather improves appreciably.” Or, more likely, it would go into the toilet again.
The other nodded, but kept trying to see anyway. Just one of those things a careful man always checks: the lay of the land. The road was about twenty meters wide, switching back and forth up the cliff. Finally the Sno-Cat topped out, and Charlie Gull could see for himself what the other meant. The top of the cliff was mostly flat, with a few hummocks. Hard pack frozen snow and ice; it was difficult to tell which was which.
“We’re having a problem with the Bay,” Sam told the newcomer, seeing his interest. “We’re heating it to keep it ice-free, so we can land ships at any time. While the increase in evaporation is relatively small, it works out to about a foot or so of extra precipitation a year, close to the sea. Stuff’s crappy ice and we can’t use it at all -- so we’ve just been dozing it over the edge here on top. In a couple of more years, though, and the stuff further away is going to start flowing and we’ll have to think of something else.”
It took an hour of overland travel, which Sam could see the other had not expected. “An hour is a nuisance, but the Sno-cats can only do three, four kilometers an hour. Any faster, if you hit an icy spot and zip -- you’re in a snow bank if you are lucky or over an edge if your luck’s run out. In a snow bank you either need a tow or you spend an hour or two outside shoveling. Down a crevasse -- well, we lose a lot of newbies. The less time you spend outside, the more likely you’ll live.”
The other nodded as they hit the outskirts of town. Again, Sam could tell other was surprised when he realized how most of the buildings were constructed. What Charlie had taken to be native stone turned out to be native ice.
Sam confirmed it. “Ice is the primary building material for about 90% of the buildings. The research stations in Antarctica taught us a lot about this sort of thing. It’s not as bad as you might think.” Particularly if you understood that you’d only get out of your cold suit once or twice a week, for a quick shower.
They pulled up in front of a building practically indistinguishable from the rest. “This is the Company headquarters, Mr. Gull.” He led him inside, and the cat purred off into the growing darkness.
“Works Director Thomas Foley, this is Charles Gull, up from Earth,” Sam said, introducing the two men a minute later in an interior office that was noticeably warm. “Works Director Foley is also the Company’s chief executive officer for Snow Dance.” The other stood and bowed slightly to his unexpected visitor.
“Pleased to make you acquaintance, Mr. Gull. I hope you had a pleasant trip? Is there anything we can help you with? Get you?”
III
Charlie G
ull watched the Works Director carefully. The Director was obviously nervous; that and he’d twitched his arm forward like he’d wanted to shake hands. A new chum, then. The briefing had been a little sparse and very hurried. But at least the man had been here long enough to learn some caution.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Charlie replied. There was no point in exchanging platitudes, so he cut to the quick.
“I assume that you have played the message from the Company that we down-linked to you.”
They two company men both nodded. The message had been terse and emphatic: Charles Gull was a direct representative from the Company, and that they were to do whatever he requested them to do. Charlie hoisted his briefcase and placed it on the table.
Charlie said quietly. “You have no doubt noticed that the regular Company ship is a week late.” And they had been left to believe he was a company person come to explain the situation.
The two men did not glance at each other, and after a moment the Director shrugged, trying to be elaborately casual. “I’m sure there is a perfectly understandable reason for the delay. We have emergency food stocks for at least two years.” He grinned wanly. “They will want to pick up product long before that.”
Product: an innocuous term. Charlie hadn’t seen it yet, but there was a volcano about 80 kilometers away. It was veined with gold, platinum, iridium and loads of other heavy metals and rare earths. The Snow Dance colony was perhaps the most successful of all of the off Earth colonies, financially. Of course, there was the weather.
“It’s not coming; perhaps not for several months. There has been a change in arrangements,” Charlie said quietly. “That is the best of the news. Gentleman, there is no easy way to say this: We’re at war.”
Tales From the War (Kinsella Universe Book 5) Page 5
