Excelsior

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Acceleration dropping to two Gs,” Davorian reported.

  Alexander felt the weight on his chest ease, and he took a deep breath. Now he weighed about 300 pounds.

  “Sir!” Hayes called out from the comm station. “Admiral Flores is ordering us to relay her transmission to the Confederates.”

  “Are we cleared to watch?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put them on the secondary holo displays then, Hayes.”

  The ship’s right and left holo displays faded from space to their respective video transmissions. Admiral Flores appeared on the right. Behind her, Alexander once again recognized the hectic bustle of Orbital One’s command center.

  On the left, an unfamiliar man appeared. He was strapped into an acceleration couch. Above the holo display a bar of text identified him as Admiral Chiangul. He looked to be of Chinese descent, but there was no way of knowing with Confederates, who were all geners from birth. Chiangul’s tangerine eyes were a dead giveaway that he was not natural-born.

  The wonders of socialism, Alexander thought—everyone gets to live forever and pick exotic eye colors for their children. Perfect equality. It was a tried-and-failed system made to work by tampering with human nature itself.

  “Admiral Flores,” Chiangul said. “The Confederacy is not on speaking terms with the Alliance, so I trust that you will make this brief.” The Confederate Admiral spoke to them in English rather than Chinese—a not-so-subtle way of proving his superiority. He’d learned his enemy’s tongue, but the same could not be said for the majority of Alliance officers.

  Admiral Flores smiled and inclined her head to him. “Nín hǎo, Admiral,” she replied. “I’ll keep it very brief, don’t worry. We couldn’t help but notice that your fleet’s current heading will ultimately bring it into restricted Alliance space.”

  Chiangul’s tangerine eyes narrowed to paper-thin slits. “We are investigating a spacial anomaly. There are no known Alliance stations along our flight path—unless you’re trying to tell me that you have an unregistered territorial claim somewhere in deep space?”

  “That is exactly what I am saying, Mr. Chiangul. In about one hundred million kilometers you will stumble straight into Lewis Station. It’s a deep-space research post.”

  “Ah, research. That is interesting. Then you must be studying the wormhole phenomenon?”

  Alexander heard a few of his crew gasp, and he noticed Commander Korbin glance his way. A wormhole? she mouthed to him.

  He gave no reply. She wasn’t authorized to know about the Looking Glass yet, although something told him operational security was about to be blown wide open.

  There was a distinct several-second pause on Admiral Flores’ end of the comm. It looked as though her transmission had frozen, but Alexander suspected the delay was deliberate. Flores had to be conferring with someone, and she didn’t want the Confederates to see or overhear.

  “Admiral Flores?” Chiangul asked, looking impatient. “If you are having technical difficulties, please do not waste our time.”

  The video transmission unfroze a moment later, with Flores standing a few inches to the left of where she had been before. She shook her head. “My apologies, Mr. Chiangul, we were indeed having technical difficulties. As for the wormhole phenomenon you mentioned, we created it, and that is in fact the nature of our research at Lewis Station.”

  More gasps rose from the Lincoln’s crew. This was all highly classified information, but the part about creating the wormhole was a lie.

  “You have created a stable wormhole?”

  “Yes, though it is not yet traversable.”

  “I do not believe you,” Chiangul replied. “Your technology is not sufficiently advanced to create such a thing. We know what the Alliance can and cannot do. This is one of the cannots.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you have been misled. Regardless, the Alliance is filing a retroactive territorial claim as we speak. That claim will be effective long before you arrive, and as per the terms of the Space and ExtraTerrestrial Colonies Treaty, section four, sub-section D, the Alliance is formally requesting that you turn your fleet around, or at least alter its trajectory to avoid passing through registered Alliance space. We will happily send you the coordinates of our claim prior to its official registry in order to facilitate your course corrections.”

  It was Admiral Chiangul’s turn for technical difficulties, and fully thirty seconds passed before his image unfroze. When it did, he was gone. The man who took his place was none other than the Confederacy’s head of state, Chancellor Wang Ping himself. Alexander recognized the control room where the Chancellor was standing as being aboard Tianlong (Heavenly Dragon) Station, which was the Confederate equivalent of Orbital One.

  “Admiral Flores,” Wang Ping began.

  “Your Excellency,” she replied.

  “If your government has access to a wormhole, then we regret to inform you that the Space and ExtraTerrestrial Colonies Treaty, which you cited for the Alliance’s territorial claim, will need to be renegotiated. The Confederacy sees wormhole technology as a threat to our sovereignty, and if your government has developed such technology, then they would do well to resolve this threat by sharing their discoveries with us.”

  “In exchange for what, Your Excellency?” Admiral Flores looked furious, but Alexander could see she was trying hard to keep a lid on it.

  Wang ping offered a smug smile. “We would be more than happy to share our advances in anti-gravity in exchange for your understanding of wormhole technology.”

  Alexander smirked. One fictitious technology for another.

  “One moment please, Chancellor. It would be better if you were to discuss this directly with my government.”

  “I think so too, yes.”

  Flores’ transmission froze once more, but this time it was replaced by a waiting screen with the Alliance flag. Soon after that, the Confederate transmission also went to a waiting screen with their flag. Minutes passed. Alexander distracted himself by studying the two flags—the Alliance’s was essentially a map of their half of the Earth, with their member states shown in white on a dark blue backdrop. The Americas and Europe were marked, along with a few dozen islands at larger-than-life scale. Each member state had a gold star in its center, for a total of sixty-seven stars.

  The Confederate flag, on the other hand, was solid red with a yellow dragon in the top-left corner, which signified Tianlong Station and the Confederacy’s claim to having built the world’s first space elevator. The rest of the flag was made up of yellow stars. Just like the Alliance flag, there was one for each member state, but their stars were laid out in a hammer-and-sickle pattern.

  The waiting screens remained in place. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? Maybe they weren’t allowed to see the negotiations going forward.

  But then, to his surprise, the waiting screens disappeared, and rather than Admiral Flores on the right, this time they saw President Ryan Baker of the Alliance.

  “Chancellor Wang Ping,” Baker said, nodding. The chancellor’s transmission returned a few seconds later, and President Baker smiled. “It’s a pleasure to speak with you again, Your Excellency.”

  “Yes,” Wang Ping agreed after a slight transmission delay.

  President Baker went on, “Our intelligence suggests that your government has not achieved any more understanding of the technology you are offering us than what we have of the same. Therefore, you have nothing to trade us for our wormhole technology.”

  “Ah, yes, just as our intelligence suggests that the Alliance does not have the technology to create stable wormholes.”

  “And we haven’t. Not a traversable one, anyway.”

  “Do not lie to me, Baker. We have watched you send your probes.”

  If he was surprised the Confederates knew about that, to his credit, President Baker didn’t show it. “None of those probes returned,” he explained.

  “Yet they transmitted data from the othe
r side,” Wang Ping replied.

  Alexander frowned. He was about to order his comm officer to cut off the transmission. There was no way they had the clearance to watch this. There had to be some mistake. Then again—Flores had given them permission.

  Baker appeared to confer with someone off-screen. They didn’t hear the conversation, but a moment later he turned back to face the camera. He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Chancellor. I’ve just confirmed that we received no such data. I’m not sure what you are talking about.”

  Wang Ping’s unsmiling face disappeared, and a few seconds later a slow parade of star maps, sensor scans, and other data replaced his hologram. Alexander recognized fully half of those images from his briefing with Admiral Flores. The jig was up. Operation Alice had been blown wide open.

  The Chancellor’s face reappeared, and this time he was smiling. “Did you recognize any of that, President Baker?”

  “Where did you get those images?”

  “Do you think we are blind?”

  The president’s lips formed a grim line. “If you want to begin a peaceful exchange of information, then you need to start by telling us how you have access to our classified documents.”

  “We are enemies, President Baker, and enemies do not disclose their secrets lightly.”

  “Then you will understand when I say we cannot share our knowledge of wormholes with you.”

  Wang Ping shrugged. “You do not have such knowledge, so it does not matter.”

  “We do have it,” the president insisted, “and that wormhole is Alliance property, in Alliance space. If you continue on your present course, you will be in direct violation of our sovereignty, and that will be a declaration of war. Is that what you are threatening, Ping?”

  “We leave that up to you, Baker. Our fleet merely goes to emphasize our equal rights to a unique and naturally occurring part of the cosmos. What you do about that is for you to decide.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself, that wormhole is not a naturally occurring—”

  “Save your lies for someone who believes them, Baker. We are no fools.”

  President Baker looked ready to say something else, but he stopped himself. “Then you will not recall your fleet?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Earth won’t survive this war,” the president warned.

  “War requires violence. We will not fire the first shot. If you are wise, then neither will you. Good day, Mr. Baker.”

  With that, the transmission ended on the Confederacy’s end. President Baker scowled, and his face disappeared a split second later. Silence fell on the bridge. The implications of what they’d witnessed were staggering.

  “Admiral Flores is on the comm, Captain!”

  Alexander blinked. “Put her through.”

  The admiral appeared back on screen looking even more furious than before. “Damn those red ants!” she spat. “Operation Alice is compromised.”

  Alexander nodded. “It would seem so, ma’am,” he croaked, his tongue rasping like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth.

  “Look alive, Captain! We are at DEFCON One, and I need all my captains in this with their eyes wide open! The Confederacy is threatening to take control of the Looking Glass. We can’t allow that to happen. The President sent you the recording of his negotiations with the Confederate Chancellor because you and your crew are the only ones who can beat them to Lewis Station, and you need to know the score.”

  Alexander blinked. So it hadn’t been a mistake. That also explained the long delay with the Alliance and Confederate waiting screens. The transmissions had been sent to them after the fact, not during.

  Admiral Flores went on. “Captain, you are to get to Lewis Station with all possible speed and join their defensive screen. The reds planned their launch at just the right moment. Our fleet is still half an orbit away, and it’s going to take a while before we can catch up.”

  “I understand. We’ll be ready, ma’am.”

  “I doubt that, Captain. Odds are forty-seven to one against you being ready.”

  Alexander set his jaw. “Then we’ll slow them down.”

  “Fleet Command thinks you can do better than that. We’re going to fire a warning shot across their bows. You are to fly ahead of the Confederates along their trajectory and dead drop as much ordnance as you can in their way.”

  Alexander’s eyes widened. Dead-dropping meant firing missiles with zero thrust from rail launchers to avoid enemy detection. They wouldn’t see the missiles coming until it was too late.

  “If all goes according to plan, we’ll take out half a dozen Confederate ships before they even know what hit them.”

  Such an attack was sure to provoke World War III. It was really happening. Alexander couldn’t believe it.

  Caty…

  “Captain, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he managed.

  “I’ll be in touch. Good luck. Flores out.”

  Alexander nodded stiffly, and the holo display faded back to the black of space.

  World War III was about to start. He watched the stars twinkle, like so many eyes watching him—judging him. His mouth was bone dry. Between the Alliance and the Confederacy, there were millions of megatons in orbit, not to mention what they had on the ground. Admiral Flores was asking him to start a war that could kill billions of people—including his wife.

  “Captain…? Captain!”

  Alexander turned to see his XO staring at him. He had a vague feeling that she’d been talking to him for a while. “I’m sorry, Commander, what was that?”

  “I said if someone doesn’t do something about this fast, then we’re all going to hell in a hurry.”

  Alexander’s lips twitched into a grim smile. “It’s too late for that, Commander. The Second Cold War is over, and this next war is going to get hot enough to make hell look balmy.”

  Chapter 3

  “Ordnance is ready, Captain. Standing by,” Commander Korbin said.

  Alexander hesitated. Six days had passed since they’d received their orders to start World War III. During that time President Baker had done his best to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict, but the Confederates insisted that they had a right to have access to the wormhole, and the Alliance insisted that they didn’t. Negotiations were at an impasse, and Alexander had just received clearance from Orbital One to open fire. In this case, that meant dead-dropping every nuke they had and letting the Confederates barrel straight into them.

  It wasn’t his place to question orders, but he couldn’t help it. The fate of humanity hung in the balance, and there would be no going back from this. Alexander’s thoughts went to his wife, Catalina, back on Earth, and he grimaced.

  This was it.

  “Sir?”

  Alexander took a deep breath and let it out again. “Gunnery—” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” Lieutenant Cardinal replied.

  “Commence dead-dropping.”

  “Affirmative… The first dozen are away.”

  “Williams, what’s the Confederate reaction?”

  “Nothing so far,” Lieutenant Williams reported from the sensor station.

  “Good. Let’s hope they don’t see it coming. Gunnery, please proceed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They dropped another nine waves of warheads, staggered enough to prevent simultaneous detonations.

  Once all one hundred and twenty nukes were drifting away behind them, and the Lincoln’s rail-launchers were empty, Alexander felt a shortness of breath that had nothing to do with the ship’s current rate of deceleration. Under the guise of slowing down to join Lewis Station’s orbit around the sun, they had bled off more momentum than they needed to in order to allow the drifting warheads to reach their targets before the Confederates could reach Lewis Station.

  That left the Confederates much closer now than they should have been, putting the Lincoln in danger of a retaliatory barrage.

  “Davorian,
decrease deceleration to point five Gs. Let’s try not to have the Confederates breathing down our necks by the time those nukes hit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Silence fell on the bridge. Beside him, Commander Korbin shook her head. “How long do we have?”

  Alexander mentally summoned a tactical map from the holo projector between him and his XO. The Lincoln and her trajectory appeared on the map as a green icon with a line and an arrow pointing toward Lewis Station. Then came one hundred and twenty green dots with hair-thin vectors pointing in the opposite direction, each dot and vector corresponding to one of the nukes they’d dead-dropped. Finally, behind all of that, were the red icons of the Confederate fleet and the arrows of their trajectories.