by Dani Kollin
“What are you suggesting, sir?”
“I’m saying, Michael, that no matter how much we try, we can’t escape the decision that stands before us. We must face this issue without hesitation or prevarication. We must deal with the issue of incorporation itself.”
Michael started to get an uneasy feeling. His initial fears about the nature of the interview now seemed to be coming to fruition, and Justin was about to open Pandora’s box.
“Incorporation,” continued Justin, “is so ingrained into the very fabric of action, memory, and even unconscious thought that its absence cannot be comprehended. ‘Look at all the good it’s done,’ I’ve heard said. Or more important, ‘How can we live without it?’ But for all the good incorporation has done for the human race the price has been too high. James Madison, fourth President of the United States, once said, ‘I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.’ Hektor’s recent proclamation should be glaring evidence to the wisdom of those words and reveals the price man has paid for this encroachment. Now don’t get me wrong,” Justin said, pointing a finger toward one of the mediabots. “I’m not calling for the end of incorporation. And I’ll support no mea sure that will interfere with incorporation agreements that are already in place. Indeed, I’ll even oppose any mea sures that call for the involuntary confiscation of shares. I’ll only be proactive in continuing to support the voluntary mea sures taken to allow individuals to end their own incorporation, but I will not and cannot support any coercive action taken against Alliance Shareholders by this government while I am its executive.”
“So then what exactly is it you’re proposing, Mr. President?”
“A bill, Mr. Veritas. A bill to the Congress with a recommendation for its inclusion into the Constitution—as soon as,” he added, smiling, “we get around to having a constitutional convention.”
“The nature of which will be?”
Justin paused and stiffened his back. His eyes once again narrowed and his face grew taut. “To make incorporation unenforceable in any legal context for any person born after January first of the coming year. And with this, my dear friends, the distinction becomes clear. We will no longer be fighting only for our rights in an incorporated system, but for our children’s freedom from it.
“We’ll be fighting for the generations that will come after us, generations that will not have to deal with this insidious dictatorship of the content, because they’ll have never been incorporated to begin with. I, Justin Cord, President of the Outer Alliance, say let Hektor Sambianco offer his drops of freedom. In place of his drops I offer an ocean of liberty, and on its endless waves our children sailing freely into their future. A future, I might add, that each and every one of us will have earned for them.”
PART TWO
11 A Sad Affair
Year five of the war
Christina Sadma looked down the central tube of Altamont. She was both proud and sad of the changes that had taken place in the years since her arrival. Sometimes she still saw Altamont the way it used to be, as a shadow out of the corner of her eye. But gone were the gardens of color and beauty, replaced by fields of high-protein soy and high-carbohydrate potatoes. Both food groups were very useful for creating rations, but so very bland as well. All the structures that had been used for worship and study were now storage areas or workshops. The hospital had expanded and expanded until it seemed to be half the settlement and still they were often short of beds and doctors. And saddest of all to Christina, the monks who used to stroll the gardens in quiet dignity seemed to have disappeared. She knew they were still around, but the brown robes were gone. Any monks left were to be found in battle armor or in the hospital, as likely to be tended as tending.
Christina knew that if she survived the war, she’d devote as much time as it took to restore Altamont to its former magnificence. She’d believed then and still believed now that it was right to turn the sanctuary of peace into the central fortress of the war, but in her heart it still felt wrong. There were so few wondrous places in the universe, and she couldn’t help but think she’d played a major role in the corruption of one of them. Brother Sampson would have told her that she was actually doing God’s will and would have made her actually believe it for a time, but he was no longer here. J.D. had made him her chaplain.
But before she could mull anymore, her DijAssist’s dulcet tone reminded her that there were a thousand and one details that required attention. It came with the territory of commanding an entire battlefront in space. She was on her way to the docking port when the call came in that thirty ships from Ceres had just arrived. They were pretty banged up, with obvious signs of battle damage. She didn’t need to ask who was in charge. The condition of the fleet proclaimed it. One of the brothers came up to her in battle armor with a red cross emblazoned across the chest plate. “Admiral, I have wonderful news to report. God has seen fit to deliver a fleet safely to our haven after it caused the enemy embarrassment and great loss. It is commanded by—”
“—the great and mighty Omad, admiral of the Alliance and shooter of the core,” she finished with a sigh.
“He does the Lord’s work very well, Admiral.”
“I’m sure he does, Brother Michael, but why be so flamboyant about it? We’re fighting a war here where people are suffering and dying and he seems to think it is a grand opportunity for piracy, aggrandizement, and adventure.”
“He’s a very skilled warrior and has led more successful and destructive raids into enemy territory then any two other fleet commanders.”
Christina scoffed. “I’m not challenging his ability, Brother Michael, only his,” she thought for a moment, “propriety.”
“We’re not all from Eris, Admiral,” he answered, referring to the dwarf planet’s penchant for conservatism.
“Brother Michael, I thought you of all people would appreciate a more modest demeanor.”
“We’re all children of the Lord, Admiral. We all have our purpose and I cannot help but think that the Lord made Admiral Hassan exactly the way he needed to be.”
Christina sighed. “Now that’s a depressing thought.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure he says the same about you.”
Christina gave her aide a rueful smile and began to mentally prepare for Omad’s fleet. It would need repairs, medical exams, and a proper rearming. But the good news was that Omad always brought desperately needed supplies as well. To date he’d never taken more then he’d brought. She hoped he had more miners. Her lines were getting dangerously thin, but, she thought, what else could you expect when you went to war against an enemy ten times your size that didn’t know the meaning of the word “quit”?
She arrived at the port. It was filled with the energy and noise of thousands of people going about their business, most of them in a hurry to get it done. Amid the cacophony she heard a familiar growl.
“Where the hell is that infernal woman?”
She turned and saw Omad. He was in weathered battle armor. He’d grown a close-cut beard since she’d seen him last. It was a look that was becoming popular with the men in the Alliance fleet. She personally didn’t like it, as she had the nagging feeling it got in the way of efficiency and safety, but as long as the beards weren’t too long she couldn’t actually forbid them. Christina had to admit that it did give Omad a certain roguish charm.
She put her thumbprint on and then signed a requisition order an assistant had unceremoniously shoved in front of her and then headed for Omad, who was in conversation with her chief of maintenance and repair. Omad was pushing a bottle in the man’s face.
“Why are you trying to give my repair chief a bottle of,” Christina snatched the bottle from Omad’s hand and read the label, “Glenmorangie?”
Omad’s smile seemed to sour a little at Christina’s appearance. “Trying is right. The man won’t accept it.
O’Malley—now there was a man who appreciated a good single malt.”
“Chief O’Malley died when a rail gun went out of alignment during a hurried repair,” said Christina.
“P.d.’d?”
Christina nodded.
“Damn. I’m sorry, Christina; he was a good man. But that’s no reason to let your Erisian ways of denial and deprivation keep this man from accepting a token of my respect for the fine work his crews do on my ships.”
“You don’t need to bribe my people to do their jobs, Omad. It’s downright insulting.”
“Only an Erisian would consider a gift an insult.” Omad looked at the repair chief. “You Erisian?”
The man smiled. “No, Admiral, I do not have that honor, but, as I’ve been trying to explain, I’ve recently become a Muslim.”
Omad hit his head theatrically with his hand. “Well, why didn’t you say so, man?” He snapped his fingers and one of the men he came with took the bottle out of his hand and replaced it with a small jar. “Allow me to give you this jar of some very fine hashish. May it give you and your work crews that small bit of plea sure that is the right of all people who toil in the ser vice of others.”
The repair chief’s eyes lit up happily and he had started to reach for the jar when he stopped and looked at Christina hopefully.
“Oh, let him, Christina; you never denied O’Malley a bottle. Besides, I liberated all my ‘gifts’ from the UHF. It seems the least they could do for us.” This brought a round of applause and cheers from those on the dock in earshot. Realizing she would only be saying no to annoy Omad, and not wanting to deny her crews what ever small pleasures they could get, she waved her hand in acquiescence. Omad smiled broadly as the repair chief gladly took the gift and the docking port erupted in applause.
A couple of hours later Omad found himself pounding on Christina’s door. “Sadma, open up. I know you’re in there. We need to talk about my shuttles!” Christina allowed the door to open. Omad stormed in and the door closed behind him.
“What, no gift?” she inquired sweetly.
“Whaddaya think you’re doing with my shuttles, woman?”
“Taking them.”
“Well, you can’t have them ’cause … well, ’cause they’re mine and I need them!”
“First of all,” she said very calmly, “on this base I outrank you and I damn well can take them. Second of all, you may need them, but if you actually just head home and try not to get into a pissing match with every UHF ship, squadron, and outpost between here and Ceres you probably won’t. Third of all, you may need them, but we do need them, each and every one, all the time. Tell me I’m wrong, Omad.”
Omad went from fuming, to merely upset, to an impudent grin. “Well, the least you could’ve done was say ‘please.’”
Christina smiled coolly. “May I please take each and every one of your fleet’s shuttles?”
Omad pretended to think about it. Going so far as to rub his chin and stare at the ceiling for a moment. “Well, since you asked so nicely.” He then made an outlandish, if not somewhat awkward, bow toward Christina. She couldn’t help but allow a laugh to escape her lips. Omad straightened up and moved toward her. “It’s good to hear you laugh, my beloved,” he said as they took each other’s hands. “I don’t get to hear it enough.”
She put her head on his shoulder, and whispered softly into his ear, “It must be my dour Erisian demeanor.”
The corners of Omad’s mouth curved up.
“When this war is over I swear I’ll get one laugh out of you a day … and three smiles.”
She led him to her small bed. “I sometimes think this war will never end.”
They lay down together, neither one of them taking off their uniform. “It will end, my Erisian flower,” Omad said softly, “and when it does we’ll get married, have a passel of kids, and move to Ceres.”
“Eris,” Christina said sleepily.
“We’ll discuss it later.”
“And …,” Christina said, knowing what he would promise, having heard it many times before, but wanting to hear it again.
“And …,” continued Omad, “we will never, ever put on one of these godforsaken uniforms again as long as we both shall live. We will never hear a shot fired in anger. We will never order anyone to battle, and we will know peace all the days of our lives.” When he heard no response he peeked down at her and saw that she was asleep. He smiled wearily and soon was asleep contentedly beside her, snuggled up on a bed made for one.
Ceres
The shuttle drifted off the Gedretar shipyard moorings, powered up, moved to the center of the Via Cereana, and then accelerated to the maximum allowable speed. It was in all ways an unremarkable vessel like thousands that could be seen in operation around the main Alliance fleet. But unlike those thousands of others this one, once free of its moorings, was immediately surrounded by four tactical fighters that proceeded to escort it to the War Prize II, flagship of the Alliance fleet.
The War Prize II was a substantially larger ship than her namesake, being part of a new design that had been rushed into production and practically thrown off the assembly line at the Jovian Shipyards. Like many ships, she had been fitted out as she flew to the battlefronts. This form of hyperefficient construction had been the brainchild of Omad and Kenji. The way it worked was once the hull had been completed and the heavy elements added—including propulsion, weapons, and fusion reactors—the ship was sent to the battlefronts trailed by ships, called flying gantries, ingeniously created to be mobile shipyards. These ships would then provide work crews who would spend the time in transit getting many of the vital but ancillary systems installed, aligned, and programmed; systems that didn’t really need for the ship to be immobile. The only drawback was that from time to time a ship could arrive at the front lacking certain amenities. In one of the more infamous incidents the AWS Pickax actually arrived from Gedretar at the Battle of Jupiter’s Eye without functioning toilets, the lack of which saddled an otherwise honorable and worthy ship with a rather unfortunate nickname. Within the gantry systems the same “buildup” ships could then escort damaged ships back to either the Gedretar shipworks or the Jovian Shipyards and begin repairs en route. It had taken most of a year to get the kinks worked out and get enough flying gantries to make the system effective, but the rise in ship production and repair had been off the charts.
The lone shuttle approached the new flagship, the first of a line of “supercruisers,” then slowly drifted into the main shuttle bay. The four escorts waited patiently for the shuttle to be swallowed up by the cruiser, then broke off and made their way over to a large spacecraft carrier, yet another naval innovation.
Inside the cavernous bay of the War Prize II over four hundred officers and crew were assembled in dress uniform. The shuttle came to a stop in front of a lone woman of average height also garbed in the dress uniform of the Alliance fleet. Her lapels showed the insignia indicating the rank of lieutenant. As the shuttle door opened, all those assembled came to immediate and stiff attention.
J. D. Black looked over her new shuttle’s interior and had to admit she wasn’t too displeased. She’d been saddened by the destruction of War Prize I, a result, she felt, of her poor leadership. Her only solace had been that she’d been able to ram the listing vessel into the enemy’s flagship. The tactic had worked, though, in that it broke the enemy line and gave the rest of her fleet a chance to unleash enough unreturned main gun fire to force surrender. Her personal shuttle was one of the few things left from War Prize I’s brash assault, and she’d used it while moving her flag temporarily from one ship to the other. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been up-to-date enough to warrant a retrofit and inclusion within her new supercruiser. And so she now found herself eyeing the interior of her new one.
She thought back to her last encounter, now called the Battle of Jupiter’s Eye.
Admiral Tully had somehow managed to convince UHF fleet command to give him another chance. He must�
��ve had some amazing connections with the corporate world to still have that much pull after his first resounding defeat. But he’d sold them on what he’d promised would be his brilliant war-winning move. J.D. couldn’t fault the UHF for wanting to try something different. The war was bleeding them dry. They hadn’t been able to defeat the Alliance in any major battle for over a year and a half. What they had managed to do was fight to a draw. And that draw had been purposely and expertly managed by the Alliance. Rather than meet the UHF head-on in any open ship-to-ship fighting, the Alliance had seen fit to engage their enemy on more familiar territory. So the pitched battles were often in and around any asteroid the Alliance had decided to mount their assaults from. At this point the advantage had belonged to the side fighting for its survival within the familiar crevices, caves, and grottoes of their own territory. That series of battles over the year and half they’d so far waged had collectively come to be know as the Battles of the Dodge. But, thought J.D., the tide was beginning to turn as the UHF was slowly beginning to push out of Eros and edge its way ever nearer to Altamont. The fighting at the 180 had become the most constant and bloodiest of the war. Trang, to J.D.’s chagrin, had kept on attacking a vast area of the belt, taking and securing it one blasted settlement and rock at a time. It was slow and the UHF was paying a heavy price, but given the distance from the main centers of Alliance industry it was only a matter of months before that now-fabled settlement fell, and with it the heart of the Alliance. For with Altamont in the UHF’s hands the belt would effectively be cut in two.
Given the huge amount of losses the UHF had been suffering—the war had already cost over four million p.d.’s, and it was increasing almost exponentially month by month—it had been easy for Tully to portray Trang as “the butcher of the belt” and proffer an alternative plan. J.D. also knew that Tully could not let his hated former subordinate get the attention and fame that he felt was due to him. So Tully had cajoled and sold his great stratagem and Fleet Command had bought in.
