It was obvious
that Captain Astrid was angry. Charles
MacHaley knew her since their Academy
years, and she tested
with him as her second in command.
He had proven his loyalty to
her, and he had also gotten to
know her rather well. That was why
he could almost read her mind as
she stormed through the
corridors of Earth’s End Spaceport,
most likely headed for an
Admiral’s office. She wasn’t
just angry this time, she was
seething, and MacHaley reasoned
that she’d be much better off not
hollering down at an Admiral.
He took off after her, but her
strides were longer, and motivated
by the emotions she felt. He
had to stop her before she got
herself into trouble.
“Charles, I don’t
want your help,” Astrid said as she looked
back at him. She had just
found out he was following her.
“You may not
want what you need most,” MacHaley said, “You
look angry, and you might get yourself
into trouble for it,
Captain.”
“When I get angry
I have good reasons for it,” Astrid replied, “I
can handle myself.”
“I wish that
were true, Captain. But I’m the one Admiral Pon
raked over the coals the last time,
remember?”
“He did what?”
Astrid growled.
“After you broke
in on one of his meetings, he reprimanded me
for not keeping you calm,” MacHaley
said.
“That isn’t right.”
“It’s not right,
but it is the way things are done. As I can still
clearly recall, Admiral Pon gave
me precise details of what my
future career would be should I
fail to keep you calm and out of
trouble.”
“Admiral Pon’s
the one who’s in trouble. Do you know what he
and his cronies are up to now?”
“I’m not sure
that I’d call them ‘cronies,’ sir. But no, I don’t
know what they are doing.”
Astrid rushed ahead to catch a lift.
MacHaley had to break into a brisk
trot to catch up with her. He
squeezed between the doors just
before they slid shut.
“They want to
send us out on a shakedown.”
“A shakedown?
You mean our ship is finished?”
“That’s just
the thing,” Astrid said, “It’s not finished, and he’s
calling for a test flight.”
“Is she spaceworthy?”
MacHaley asked. Just then, the lift
started upward. One side
of its tube was transparent, allowing the
riders to see the interior of the
spaceport, with all sort of ships
flitting about. Many of the
ships under construction were sleek
and had smooth shiny hulls, but
one was an ugly duckling. She
was layered on the outside with
matte-finished gray hexagonal
plates. Between the plates,
one could see the intermittent flashes
of light as laser arc welders sealed
up segments of the hull. That
ship was being towed to another
facility as work continued on her
hull. MacHaley took a second
look at the ship, because he thought
it had bent in the middle as it
was being towed.
“If you’re wondering,
yes, she is our ship, and yes, she did bend
in the middle,” Astrid said.
“The thing looks
like it’s overweight. Look, there’s ten tugs
hauling that ship.”
“It is overweight.
And it’s going to be several thousand tons
heavier once its complete.
Each of those hexagons is a ‘pinion’
that’s designed to hold a fanned
arrangement of honeycombed
neutronium plates. The honeycomb
neutronium is laminated
between a layer of plasteel and
plastitanium.”
“Will she even
fly under her own power?” MacHaley wondered
aloud.
“You should see
the schematic. It includes a neutronium plate
system as wings. Honestly,
I have no idea if she’ll even make it to
the gate to the port on the way
out. But Admiral Pon wants us to
fly her. And he wants us
to do it without an ansible.”
MacHaley sounded
exasperated the next time he spoke:
“He wants us
to fly without an ansible?”
“Not to mention
only half of the decks are fixed, which means
that many areas are still sealed
off because there’s no place to go.
And we’re supposed to test that
ship with only a skeleton crew.
It’s not the way I’d have tried
to run a ship.”
“I can understand
where you’re coming from about the ansible
being missing, and the sections
that have no decks, but we have to
present Admiral Pon with an argument
that is rational, not just:
‘I’m angry ‘cause you want me to
test a bad ship.’ Otherwise
we’ll just make him angry with
us.”
“If he wouldn’t
be such an idiot--”
“Captain, he
may be acting under pressure from higher ranking
admirals.”
“Yeah, he might.
But he doesn’t have to actually give in to the
pressure.”
“It depends on
just how much pressure, Captain. Do you recall
Formal Protocol seven nineteen?”
“I remember that
the course was a prerequisite for Command
Training one eleven,” Astrid answered.
“Good.
Because that’s where they taught us how to answer to
our superiors. And what we
could do to them if we were under
pressure.”
“Yes, it takes
three Captains who have each served three years
to make an official change in the
orders given by a fleet Admiral.”
“It also takes
five Admirals to give a direct order to another
Admiral contrary to what they normally
would do. And in the
Admiralty, it’s not that tough
to find five Admirals who agree on
something well enough to sign their
signature on it.”
“But the shipbuilding
is not under Admiralty control.”
“Not under direct
Admiralty control. But Spacer Union is the
one that built that ship down there.
That’s how come they can do
what they’re doing to Pon.”
“Are you sure
he’s being rushed to get our ship operational?”
Captain Astrid asked.
“Can we be sure
that he isn’t?”
“Not really,
Charles. So how do we convince him not to rush
the ship and push us into a mission
early?”
“I can think
of one way. But I don’t think it would go over too
well with the Admiral, and he could
still overturn it.”
“What is it?”
“We could give
him a refusal,” MacHaley said. Astrid looked
at him as if he had just sprouted
green hair.
“You’ve got it
darn straight that it won’t go over well with
Admiral Pon,” she said, “He’d practically
explode.”
“But it’d take
him two weeks to override a formal request to
refuse the mission.”
“He’d have our
heads for that kind of request.”
“But he has to
listen, Captain. Formal protocols demand that he
accept that kind of document...”
MacHaley left the end of his
sentence open, because he knew
there was more than what he said.
“But, it has
to be on approved grounds,” Astrid finished the
statement, “Like wanting to gather
more information. And how do
you gather information about a
shakedown cruise. All you do is
test the ship and make sure she
works.”
“Then what do
we do to make that work?” MacHaley asked.
“I’m not entirely
sure,” Astrid said.
“Perhaps we ought
to forego our meeting with him for a bit
while we come up with a good reason.”
“What do you
mean, you want to simulate the ship to see if she
runs?” Admiral Pon’s face
was turning a menacing shade of red,
and veins were beginning to bulge
from his neck. It hadn’t even
looked like he stood up, even though
he always stood up when he
was angry. To MacHaley and
Astrid, it looked like he had just
grown a few sizes bigger all over.
As he leaned out over his desk,
that menacing face got a lot closer
than either officer would have
liked to be. “She’s already
been simulated, by seven engineers, to
the point that there’s no point
resimulating her.”
“Well, we’d also
like to simulate her--”
“I don’t care
what else you’d like to simulate. I’m not going to
let you do it. For all I
care,” Pon said, “You could simulate
dropping the ship into a jovian
planet, or dumping it into the
nearest sun, or shrunk down to
the size of a pinhead. I’m not
letting you delay the test run.”
Pon stopped to breathe, which he
hardly ever did when he was on
an angry tirade.
“Excuse me Admiral,”
MacHaley cut in, “we could also
simulate getting the ship blown
to bits by KobalThi when she gets
sent out too early to handle anything.”
Cutting in had not been a
good idea, but MacHaley believed
he had an arguable point.
“She’s not going
to get attacked by KobalThi, she’ll have most
of her armor before I let you leave
the dock.”
“It still doesn’t
matter, sir. I’m not willing to command a ship
that hasn’t got a full complement.
That means personnel as well
as equipment.”
“She’ll leave
in a few days.”
“Not with either
of us aboard,” Astrid retorted, “He’s on my
side, sir. And I’m not taking
a crew, not even a skeleton crew,
aboard a half-built ship.”
“After the shakedown,”
Pon insisted, “After the shakedown, all
of this can be sorted out.”
“Sir, it cannot
be,” Astrid argued, “because after the shakedown
is too late to repair a destroyed
ship. We’re ordered to test the ship
to the limits to see if she’s spaceworthy,
and she’ll hardly get out
of dock with so much neutronium
on her. What makes you think
the KobalThi can’t catch up with
something so sluggish?”
“She will have
stringwarp capability. Soon,” Pon said.
“Sooner than
when we depart for the test run?” MacHaley
insisted. “And that still
doesn’t mean that we’ll survive the chase
through hyperspace, where the KobalThi
can follow us.”
“Your ship will
have weapons and shields.”
“That still doesn’t
guarantee us anything.”
“Commander MacHaley,”
Pon said, “I do not have to guarantee
you anything.”
“Then perhaps
we ought not guarantee that we will follow your
orders,” Astrid said.
“Then I can find
someone else to fly that ship,” Pon said.
Perhaps he should not have, because
it left him exposed to
MacHaley’s line of reasoning.
“If that were
true, then you’d be saying that you value the lives
of other officers, but not us,”
he said, gesturing toward Astrid.
“I never said
that.”
“By the time
you find the replacements, the ship will be
finished. To say that you
can take that line of thought is to say
that you value others above us.”
“Maybe so,” Pon
said, “Because the two of you have been the
most argumentative subordinates
I’ve ever seen.” It clearly was a
deadpan remark. Pon may have
been angered at first, but the
reasoning behind Astrid and MacHaley’s
arguments was enough
to turn his thinking around.
“I will explain why I’ve been
pressured to move the launch to
an earlier date, if you will agree to
help me, even if that means flying
the ship out of dock
incomplete.”
“We’re willing
to hear you out, Admiral,” Astrid said.
“It’s such a
comfort that I don’t have to order you to listen,” Pon
replied. And then he began
to explain that NeoTerra was trying to
secede from the Union of Planetary
Republics, and that the ship
could not be completed unless a
specific pair of components were
recovered from NeoTerra.
“So you were
trying to beat the possible secession of
NeoTerra?” Astrid summed up Pon’s
explanation.
“It might have
convinced them that the Union was indeed
prepared for the Belts. But
NeoTerra is less than a month away
from making its declaration, and
our Union operatives have been
silenced. We know that they
are safe in the ansible construction
facility, located somewhere in
the asteroid belts of the NeoTerran
solar system. But that doesn’t
mean that we can get them to
safety. I was to notify you
upon launch that Koronis’ Berkeshire
was to be taken to the NeoTerran
system to pick up the ansible,
and the ansible observatory, which
are both under construction in
the NeoTerran asteroid belts.”
“We might’ve
been able to help sooner,” Astrid said.
“We didn’t know
for sure until just a couple weeks ago, when
the NeoTerran congress convened,”
Pon said. “So I wrote up the
orders for launch, assuming that
the ship had to be given as much
equipment as possible before launch,
and also assuming that the
launch might be before the secession
became official.”
“Did somebody
in the NeoTerran congress push the secession to
a higher priority?” Astrid asked.
“They must have,”
Pon said. “The whole idea behind the Union
operatives was to get the secession
information and destroy it. But
NeoTerra caught on. They
didn’t silence the operatives by killing
them; they silenced them by making
their reports insignificant.
Now that we know they’re pushing
for secession, it’s useless to
know it if there’s nothing we can
do.”
“Did we send
any ambassadors to try to negotiate something
different?” MacHaley asked.
“We did,” Pon
answered patiently. Sending ambassadors was
the very first thing the Union
had tried. NeoTerra did not allow
them to land or dock their ship
anywhere in the system, and
jammed their radio so they couldn’t
ask to negotiate or clear to
land or dock anywhere. We
sent the ambassadors, but NeoTerra
did not receive them.”
“Like talking
to a wall,” MacHaley said.
“Very much so,”
Pon added. “The Admiralty only has so much
power, and the Union’s government
only has a little power also.
Even though secession isn’t granted
as a right to any member of
the Union, we don’t exactly have
any way to prevent it.”
“So, we promised
to listen,” Astrid said, “if we would also try to
help.” Pon nodded.
“You don’t have
to help me,” Pon said.
“I’d rather see
the Union face the Belts undivided. If we let
ourselves fall apart because of
the Belts, what happens when a real
enemy comes along, one unlike the
KobalThi? A sentient one that
really wants to conquer us?”
“That’s quite
possible, MacHaley,” Pon said, “And we do need
to be prepared to face that possibility.
I had hopes that the
completion of a new flagship would
boost Union morale and help
to keep everyone together.
But it doesn’t look like it’s possible.”
“How can we help?”
Astrid asked.
“I’ve been glad
to just talk with you,” Pon said. “Honestly, you
aren’t obligated to help.”
“Now that I know
what’s going on, I feel obligated,” Astrid
said, “The Spacer Creed is more
than just a list of good ideas, I
think it applies now.”
“How is that?”
Pon asked.
“The Spacer Creed
is the standard of values a Spacefarer ought
to have, ‘to trade with honesty,
to serve others with love, and to
live as a light for civilization;
protecting the innocent, promoting
justice, adhering to the law, following
God, protecting those who
are in trouble on the high spaces,
and rendering assistance to those in
need.’ I believe that as
the Union faces the Belts, it may be one
‘in trouble on the high spaces,’
and so the Spacer Creed calls me
to help however I can.”
“That’s an interesting
interpretation of the Creed,” Pon said.
“It may be, but
I feel obligated to help out, not only as a Union
Captain, but also as Captain of
the flagship, and as a Spacer. I’m
not about to abandon any chance
to help the Union. I may have
argued with you earlier, but that
was before I knew anything else
about this situation.”
“Captain,” Pon
said, “This is not a matter which I was at a
liberty to discuss with you.
It should never have passed from
myself to you, and now that you
know, your knowledge should not
leave this room unless you have
to disclose it in order to give a
command to another person.”
“It won’t be
secret for long,” MacHaley said. “But we’ll honor
your secret until NeoTerra trumpets
the news out on every radio
and ansible channel in the Union.
Which I think will happen soon.
“Since I feel
the same way as Astrid, I’ll also follow her
decision to provide you with any
assistance. However, Admiral,
I’d like to speak freely.”
“You already
have been speaking freely,” Pon said, “don’t stop
now.”
“Sir, I’ve the
fear that what I say might offend you.”
“I promise to
be open-minded.”
“I’ll help you,
so long as I feel that my actions are helping the
Union and not causing more harm
than help. I promise to help
you, unless you order myself or
Captain Astrid to war against the
NeoTerrans.”
“It all seems
rational,” Pon said.
“I was afraid
that I might come across as implicating that you
were going to give me those orders.”
“Far from it,”
Pon reassured MacHaley, “I would not be the only
one who would want to prevent a
civil war, and I can see that you
are interested in doing as much
help as possible and undoing as
much harm as possible. But
you are right to say these things,
MacHaley. Even though I would
not give you those orders, you
did clarify this here to all present
that war and hurt to the
NeoTerrans is intolerable.
If the Union is to survive, it must not
be at the cost of any of the liberties
to any of its members.
“That matter
being set aside, though it is still of the utmost
importance, I believe it is time
to explain to you what goals must
be accomplished. And, it
will require me to call in a lot of favors
so that your ship can be as complete
as possible as soon as can be
feasibly done. Let us plan
our course of action.” |