“Well, Commander? Shall we go in and retake the module?”
There were only six Guardians aboard ship including Shocho, but ten more of the crew had trained for support operations under Shocho’s direction, giving her up to fifteen people to handle security. There were also enough nonlethal weapons aboard to equip all of them.
Chaa’s proposal would mean going in with weapons and full protective gear and forcibly restoring access to the module. The use of force was, in his opinion, the easiest thing for the Terrans to understand.
“What if this is provocation?” asked Shocho.
Although Chaa seemed to understand instantly what Shocho meant, she was shocked that he hadn’t already thought of something so obvious. Normally Chaa would have considered such a possibility immediately. Shocho’s closest associate was losing his objectivity. This was a far greater problem than trying to decide whether to storm the Terrans’ barricade.
“Remember, Chaa, we don’t know exactly why there’s a blackout. We have no evidence that there’s a war on. The Terrans have holed up in their quarters, that’s all. If we respond with force, they can notify Earth with their own gear. All that does is give Earth an excuse to strike back at AADD. And anyway, what would we do with them after we turfed them out of there? The only place we could confine them would be in their quarters.”
Chaa’s proposal hadn’t been well-considered. Although he had already sent a message to the others telling them to prepare for an assault, Shocho downgraded that order to a standby alert. Chaa seemed dissatisfied but didn’t argue. He merely said, “Shocho, whose side are you on, really?”
For the moment, Shocho had averted the hard-line push to assault the Terran quarters. The next step, again at her initiative, was to communicate with the Terrans.
Luckily or not, Shocho was a senior Guardian, and the Terrans were under the impression that her security responsibilities effectively put her in command of the ship. This was a misinterpretation of AADD’s organizational structure, but apparently the Terrans were incapable, given their obsession with rank and hierarchy, of seeing things differently. Shocho hadn’t been completely comfortable leaving this misinterpretation in place, but if it would help solve the crisis now, she was willing to use it to maximum advantage.
The Terrans seemed slightly mollified to be approached by the ship’s “captain” herself. Apparently the moderate faction was still intact, though it had been temporarily overruled by the hard-liners. It was Dr. Whitley, not Maria Teranishi, who responded to Shocho’s invitation to talk.
Although physical modification was taboo on Earth, people still needed personal data devices. Thus each Terran was equipped with a PDA. Given her need to communicate frequently with the Terrans, Shocho had one too. She could easily have used her web to interface with the Terrans’ PDAs, but they disliked that—in fact, they seemed insulted by it—so Shocho used the PDA when not speaking directly to them.
Dr. Whitley’s face filled the tiny screen. He seemed to be in the west module’s mess area. Meetings usually ended up taking place in these areas; it looked to Shocho as if she had interrupted one in progress.
“Dr. Whitley, I think you know why I’ve contacted you.”
“We’re willing to concede that the barricade was going too far. But we have no intention of apologizing.”
“We’re not interested in an apology.”
Shocho was an experienced Guardian and certainly no stranger to Terran customs, but this obsession with apologies was something she’d never quite been able to grasp. Apologizing for creating a problem—that made sense, but there was no guarantee that an apology would help get to the root of the problem, much less solve it.
“Not interested in an apology! Well, fine, then. We’ll go along with your customs in this case. We will remove the safety net immediately.”
“On whose authority?”
At the word “authority,” Whitley’s face darkened, though he understood the need for confirmation on this particular point. It was clear even from the PDA’s tiny screen that he was speaking under the watchful eyes of his team. Shocho’s agent had already filtered the audio to confirm the presence of ten distinct breathing patterns in the room.
“On my authority, of course,” said Whitley at length. “As senior representative of Earth.”
“Not on the authority of Colonel Maria Teranishi?”
A murmur of astonishment rose around Whitley. The agent confirmed the presence of Teranishi’s voice print in the audio. It wasn’t possible to make out what she was saying, but the frequencies pointed to profanity with a high level of certainty.
“Not her authority. Mine.” Whitley’s voice print showed marked indications of stress. Likely the moderate faction was barely holding the hard-liners at bay. Some generous concessions seemed called for, as the hard-liners were likely to regain the upper hand. Still, Shocho wasn’t going to mince words. Terran culture seemed to place far more emphasis on the way things were said rather than on the content. But Shantak II was ninety AUs from Earth, and such niceties were a waste of time.
“Remove the barricade and we’re willing to recognize your exclusive control over the west module, but only for the duration of the blackout. We should avoid any unnecessary trouble that might interfere with observation work.”
Whitley seemed surprised. Evidently so were the others standing outside the PDA’s field of view. Teranishi could be heard exclaiming with surprise.
“You guarantee those terms on your authority, Commander Kanda?”
“Of course. It’s my job.”
The Terrans couldn’t conceal their astonishment. This was obvious from the PDA’s audio even without an analysis from the agent.
“All right, understood. We will remove the barricade, and you will recognize our exclusive occupation rights to the west module.”
“Only until the blackout ends. And we’ll need unrestricted access to the south module.”
“Agreed. We thank you for a wise decision.”
The screen went black; almost simultaneously Shocho’s agent showed her mailbox filling with comments from her team. The agent selected the first message—from Chaa—and Shocho forwarded it to everyone before reading it.
What do you mean by allowing them to occupy the west module?
“The Terrans are split into moderate and hard-line factions—just as we are, in fact. We can support their moderates by making concessions now. That’s the surest way to avoid further trouble. Is there a problem with that?”
You’ve given up too much ground. Moderate or not, they’re still Terrans. Who knows what they might do? They’ll probably push for more concessions. Today the west wing, tomorrow the south wing. The next thing we know they’ll have the whole ship.
“You’re not thinking, Chaa. Aside from the fact that we outnumber them five to one, there’s no reason we have to give them the whole ship.”
You’re letting them off too easily, Commander. Everyone knows the Terrans are trying to take over our accretion disk. This whole incident could be part of a plot. There’s no limit to their greed.
Control over the artificial accretion disk had recently become a point of contention with Earth. The Terrans argued that AADD’s sole control of Kali was illegal and that representatives from Earth should take part in the operation and management of the disk on an equal basis with AADD. Naturally AADD had no intention of agreeing to that.
“Chaa, the one has nothing to do with the other. I’m not going easy on the Terrans—you’ve just lost your objectivity.”
But Shocho knew the situation didn’t allow for much optimism. Her web agent had already informed her that a bare majority of her fifteen-person team agreed with her—and some were wavering. Among the six actual Guardians, there was only one other moderate. Chaa was sitting on the fence but was against further concessions. Shocho’s biggest problem was the fact that he’d let his emotions get the better of him.
Such things did happen, of course. Before AADD was
created, the challenges faced by the first Martian settlers had seemed insurmountable and Earth had had no scruples when it came to exporting its social problems to the red planet. In that sense Chaa’s resentment was natural. It didn’t take a leap of imagination to conclude that Earth might be secretly planning to dismember AADD and take over the accretion disk, and it would be hard to view the Terran action aboard Shantak II with anything but similar apprehension.
But for Shocho, these were additional reasons for preventing emotions from taking over. Passion would just make it harder to see what was in front of them. From a crisis management standpoint, that would be extremely dangerous.
“I think the Terrans would be happy to see us arguing like this,” said Shocho. Chaa was generally not one to let his emotions get the better of him, and he knew that nothing was achieved by letting the rest of the team see him arguing with Shocho over fundamental matters like this.
All right, I’ll trust in your command and see how things develop. But if you continue to make concessions to the Terrans and I determine it’s putting the rest of us in danger, I’ll proceed on my own authority. Do you agree?
“Of course. That is our way.”
Shocho’s agent signaled that the rest of the team was now behind Chaa.
3
THE BARRICADE blocking the entrance to the south and west modules was immediately removed, just as Whitley had promised. For the time being, observation of Eingana progressed. Data continued to accumulate. But as the days passed there were still no transmissions from within the solar system, with the exception of data coming from Discovery, one light-day away.
“Discovery continues to ignore our requests for information, Commander.” Shocho heard this on a daily basis. The only thing coming from Discovery was numerical data. As a Terran ship, they must have had some information from Earth on the general situation, but if they did they weren’t disclosing it. Discovery might as well have been an unmanned satellite as far as Shantak II was concerned.
“I wonder what’s going on with their crew,” ventured Chaa.
“Well, whatever they’re doing, there aren’t any AADD crew aboard to witness it. At least they don’t have to worry about the kind of friction we’re having. Still, it’s a bit worrying.”
“What is?”
“Why haven’t they asked us what’s going on? At least they should’ve sent some information to Dr. Whitley, don’t you think?”
In fact, Shocho knew that Whitley had received confidential transmissions from Discovery but apparently hadn’t learned much from them. Of course, Whitley had kept the content of the messages to himself. But he had sent repeated queries to Discovery and received little by way of reply.
Shantak II continued to wait, starved for information. Perhaps AADD and Earth were at war this very moment. No one could say.
OTHER THAN during their observation work, the Terrans and the AADD crew had no contact. Almost mysteriously, there was no friction, but the situation couldn’t be called peaceful. It was as though a tremendous load of energy were accumulating ahead of a huge explosion. The slightest disturbance might release it.
Shocho, who was responsible for crisis management, soon grew isolated from the other Guardians. She had begun to lose the support of her team.
Who could replace her? It was a decision that conferred responsibility on the people making it. Supporting Chaa would entail the same responsibility as supporting Shocho; Shocho herself had no intention of making a fuss about losing her team’s support. Her stoicism was part of their culture.
It would be unusual for a team leader in one of the cities of Mars or Uranus to lose the support of her team over a disagreement, since diversity of opinion was the norm. But there were only five other Guardians on Shantak II. Shocho was truly isolated.
In point of fact, Chaa was under even more pressure. If the other Guardians adopted his outlook, it would mean using force. This would expose the squad to physical danger. Chaa knew this, and it made him slightly more cautious than before. Shocho reciprocated by steering clear of Chaa, partly from a desire to allow him to grow through figuring things out on his own, partly because she wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.
Still, further problems would have to present themselves for a process of education or punishment—whichever it ultimately was—to be effective. Sure enough, soon after the barricade came down, the next problem came up.
“Hastur? In this quadrant? You’ve got to be joking.”
Chaa had taken Shocho into an empty meeting room to give her the news out of earshot of the rest of the crew.
“I’m just guessing it’s Hastur. I assumed that war would mean a lot of ship traffic, so I carried out some observations.”
Both Guardians knew the significance of Chaa’s taking such a step without consulting Shocho, but both pretended not to notice it. This was not the time to test the limits of Shocho’s weakened position.
“How did you find her?”
“With the spare optical telescope. No one’s on it these days. I wrote a program to scan for signs of traffic.”
“And what makes you think this is Hastur?”
“Process of elimination. Very few spacecraft—even for us—have the legs to do a round-trip all the way out here. Luckily she was decelerating when I saw her. The plasma spectrum was a match.”
Hastur’s antiproton propulsion system could kick the ship up to five percent light speed for voyages to the Kuiper belt and the Oort Cloud—prospecting missions to the swarms of comets in those regions. Its mission had nothing to do with servicing Shantak II. Normally the ship wouldn’t even be in this part of the solar system.
“Did you hail her?”
“Not yet. I wanted to clear it with you.”
“All right.” Shocho quickly drafted a short message outlining their situation and webbed it to Chaa. He signed off on it and they sent the message using the optical telescope’s laser sighting system to ensure that it wouldn’t be detected by others on the ship. The sighting laser wasn’t designed for communication, so the message had to be sent using Morse code.
“When can we expect an answer?”
“With no change in course, about three hours.” Chaa was a hard-liner, but he was as anxious as Shocho for the news from Hastur to be favorable—that war had not broken out.
They spent the next three hours huddled with the rest of the security team, weighing options. Should they try to determine how all communication from the rest of the solar system could possibly be blocked if a state of war did not exist? And if war had been declared—what then?
“Receiving transmission!” The response came slightly later than expected. Maybe Hastur’s crew had guessed the situation on Shantak II; in any case, the reply was also in Morse code.
A-A-D-D t-h-i-s i-s D-e-e-p S-p-a-c-e C-r-u-i-s-e-r H-a-s-t-u-r—
The message appeared character by character. The transmission speed seemed unaccountably slow, even allowing for the use of Morse. Perhaps whoever was sending the message wanted it read off directly by the receiver.
“I was right,” said Chaa. “It’s Hastur.”
“Come on, tell us why you’re here,” Shocho muttered to herself.
The six Guardians assembled in the tiny room peered intently at their webs, but there was nothing further. Then, unbelievably, Hastur disappeared from the display. The coordinates were correct, but the display was empty, the airwaves silent.
“Something hit them! It’s war after all!” shouted Chaa.
“Calm down,” snapped Shocho. “Why would anyone attack Hastur? Is she strategically important? Are we?”
“Well… of course not. Then what do you think it was?”
“Maybe something harder to deal with than news of war.”
“How could anything be harder than that?”
“Because the transmission was inconclusive. Hastur is gone. For some reason it’s disappeared. If we tell the rest of the crew—and the Terrans—all we’ll do is make everyone ab
oard even more paranoid. If we conceal what we’ve just seen, the Terrans are likely to find out anyway. Then there’ll be hell to pay because we didn’t tell them.”
“But what else can we do?”
“We can’t let the Terrans know we sent Hastur a message. I want everyone in this room to consider themselves under a gag order. The existence of the gag order is under gag order too.”
Shocho’s agent transmitted a summary to each team member’s web for confirmation. Not even Atwood was to know what had just happened. It looked like things were going to get much worse before they got better.
IN FACT, it wasn’t long before Atwood contacted Shocho, asking for a meeting. Since Atwood was the project leader, Shocho assumed that he wanted to discuss the comm blackout and the tension between the two crews. As it turned out, she wasn’t wrong, but Atwood clearly saw things in an optimistic light.
“I can’t imagine there’ll be a war. Even if there was, the Terrans don’t have a hope of winning. We’ve got the energy, the technology, and the economic power. If they’re not fools, they won’t use force. But say there’s a war—what’s the impact on this station? We’re ninety AUs out. The Terrans can’t just reach out and grab us. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
Shocho and Atwood were in one of the east module lounges. The AADD crew module was the largest on Shantak II, and in addition to the large mess area there were three smaller meeting lounges. When the ship was accelerating, there was enough space in the compartment to set up a small table.
In freefall the table was stored and handholds extended from the four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The handholds were coded in six colors so the astronauts could orient themselves with respect to the rest of the ship.
Atwood lightly grasped a handhold to stabilize himself. Shocho floated facing him, in the posture that signaled a desire to talk.
Atwood’s generation—he was about ten years younger than Shocho—had no doubt that AADD’s society had surpassed that of Earth. They had never known AADD as anything other than a far-flung, relatively wealthy society. Occasionally, they might feel that the Terrans deserved pity, but they would never regard them as a threat.
The Ouroboros Wave Page 19
