Command Decision (34 page)

“Vattas aren’t his people. Just an ordinary—well, ordinary for rich—family he chose to be friends with. For all we know, as cover.” Though, now that he came to think of it, why
had
Lew Parmina chosen to get close to the Vatta family? And how close?

Unfortunately, he couldn’t call Stella and ask her. That would raise an even bigger stink.

“So—did Enforcement send a message on this latest repair thing?”

“Of course. They stripped the beacon off the ship involved—
Bassoon,
with Bissonet registry. In fact, it’s listed as part of the Bissonet Free Militia, which is—or was, until the recent unfortunate events—what Bissonet calls their privateers.”

“And the captain is Kylara Vatta?”

“No, no.
Bassoon
’s captain is Daniel Pettygrew. Vatta’s ship is the
Vanguard,
Moscoe Confederation registry. Anyway, Enforcement told Pettygrew that they didn’t recognize the organization as a legal entity, and that they’d stripped his beacon and filed a complaint against him in every available jurisdiction.”

“Who’s in charge down there this shift? Oh, right, Jessie Squires. Get her for me, will you?”

“You’re not going to rescind it, are you?”

“Not personally, no. The more I can do through established channels, the better. I will convince Jessie it’s in our best interest to rescind it. Bissonet’s fallen to the pirates and their allies; Pettygrew’s a refugee. Yes, he probably knows our rules, but he’s actually done us a service. And if Pettygrew is with Ky Vatta, they’re hunting pirates—which is exactly what someone needs to do before they’re walking into this office and blowing our heads off.”

“You don’t really think that could happen, do you, sir? We have our own space forces.”

“Emil, you have never been in real danger in your life, have you? Ever been on a space station when someone blew a ship, or a hole in the station? Ever been in a ship someone else was trying to blow? Ever had even one weapon fired at you in your whole life?”

“No…sir.” Emil looked confused.

“I have. More times than I care to remember, someone has tried to kill me personally, or me along with a lot of other people they didn’t care about. I know we have, on the books, more armed spacecraft than anyone else we know about, and we have a lot of people assigned to Enforcement Division. And I know exactly what the reality is: this planet is as vulnerable as any other, this office is as vulnerable as any other, and
you
are as vulnerable as any other.”

“And you, sir?”

Rafe had two of his weapons out before Emil finished speaking. “I, Emil, am one degree less vulnerable because I believe I can be killed.” Emil, he was glad to see, had turned an unpleasantly pale shade of his normal coloring. “Don’t panic, boy; I’m not going to kill you. But anything as big, as rich, as powerful, and as centralized as ISC has
TARGET
written on it in large glowing letters.” Rafe slid the needler back into its holster and the blade back up his sleeve.

“But we’ve never been attacked—” Emil stopped as he saw Rafe’s expression. “Have we?”

“The short answer is yes, but not for a long time. Aside from things like abduction, like my father, and attempts at assassination.” Rafe reached for one of the folders on his desk. “Let me read you something. Remember I asked for an update on Enforcement’s resources?”

“Yes…”

“ISC maintains an armed fleet—everyone knows that. The thing about armed fleets is that they cost a lot. Then you have to crew them: ships without crews don’t do you any good. And that costs a lot. Then you have to train the crews and keep them in practice: crews that never go on maneuvers are easy meat for those that do. And that costs a lot, not only for the munitions and fuel and other supplies to go on maneuvers, but also refitting and repair…because anything you use deteriorates, and rough use wears it out faster. Are you following this?”

“Yes…”

“So…” Rafe opened the file and started reading. “Average age of ISC armed vessels: sixty-eight years. Average age of ISC group commanders: sixty-four years. Average time from last weapons upgrade: thirty-seven years. Average interval since last maneuvers with live fire: six years. Percent of armed vessels deemed battle-ready—are you ready for this?—eleven.”

Emil stared back at him, a mix of confusion and fright on his face. “That’s…not good, is it?”

“That’s
pathetic,
” Rafe said. “We might be able to scare a backward colony planet into thinking we’re all-powerful, but any competent military force that knew what I now know wouldn’t hesitate to take us on. What’s protecting us right now is our reputation. Enforcement doesn’t understand that; they haven’t actually done much in a long time, so they think having thousands of ships on the books is the same as having thousands of ships that can actually fight. The back of this report is one long self-serving explanation of why the damning figures up front—that I insisted on seeing—don’t matter. But they do matter.”

“Your father—”

“Apparently accepted Enforcement’s view of our military might.”

“Were you…uh…in another military while you were…uh…gone? Is that how you know so much?”

Rafe laughed. “No, I’m not soldier material. But despite folk mythology that you have to do it to understand it, even the sterile can understand how babies get made, and even a pacifist can understand supply, tactics, and the chain of command.” Emil looked shocked this time; Rafe sighed and excised the irony from his tone. “I had a friend who was a soldier,” he said instead. “I learned a lot by listening.”

“Oh. All right. But if ISC is so vulnerable, what are you going to do about it?”

That was the sticker. “I’m not sure,” Rafe said. “It will probably involve, like most things military, a lot of misdirection and the expenditure of enough money to make Accounting blench. Hopefully no one will find out how feeble our resources are until we’ve had time to strengthen them, but we can’t count on that. Parmina may have taken the reports at face value, like my father, or he may have known how weak we are—and if he knew, he might have told his pirate allies, or he might have kept it to himself, something he could use later on. We have to assume, worst case, that the pirates do know. At the moment, I’m sending you down to Enforcement to hand-carry a note to Squires that she’s to come up here. You will not—repeat after me,
not
—tell her what I’ve been telling you.”

Emil nodded and left. Rafe felt like sneaking out and disappearing into the snow, which had now thickened to blizzard proportions. The task was too big, the difficulties too many and too complex. He was fit for the little jobs, not this one.

But here he was, mired in an expensive suit in a vast office where most people seemed to think the purpose of their job was to feed him comfortable lies. He looked at the notes Emil had put on his schedule. Meetings with a cabinet official at 1100, with another government department head at 1300, with the senior representative of Crown & Spears at 1500. They all wanted to meet him, get to know him, tell him how much they respected his father and how sorry they were and if they had only known…or so yesterday’s meetings had gone.

And all because of ISC’s reputation as a powerful, necessary monopoly, which was now—though they didn’t know it yet—shattered and gone: that incredible wealth, that reputation for toughness and strength. When they found out how hollow the gold statue really was, he knew who would get the blame. The old man’s son, the bad boy who wasn’t, after all, up to the job.

He knew what to do—unpopular as it would be with the Board, the bankers, the government. If he called Stella himself, he could probably get her to deal with him, maybe even put out the shipboard ansibles under ISC’s label, which would give them an immediate market advantage. But—could he do it? Would the Board back him? Would his father?

Cascadia Station

Stella Vatta listened to the lawyer’s recitation of ISC’s delaying tactics with mounting anger. “I thought it was illegal now to register patents in obscure jurisdictions—”

“It’s supposed to be, certainly, though it was common practice before the Commercial Code was approved. And Nexus is a signatory to the code, so it should apply to ISC for all patents issued within the past hundred-and-seventy-odd years. I’ve searched all the relevant databases; no patents relating to shipboard ansibles are in any of the five systems where patents are supposed to be registered. But ISC’s legal department claims that some of the technology could have been patented before adoption of the code, or could have been registered remotely, as their research labs are widely scattered—but they won’t tell me where, for reasons of security, they say.”

“I’ll bet they don’t even have patents,” Stella said.

“I find that hard to credit,” the lawyer said. Like all Cascadian attorneys, he was studiously courteous.

“If they had patents, they’d be eagerly telling us what they were,” Stella said. “I don’t think they’ve lost them; I think they never had them. Rafe said they were practically paranoid about secrecy, and were convinced that the technology involved would endanger their monopoly. They’d know about patent searches; they’d be worried someone could figure out how to pirate the tech, produce it remotely somewhere—”

“Then, if you’re convinced of that, let’s go on and apply for patents here,” the lawyer said. “From the little you’ve told me, this is revolutionary stuff.”

“It will blow the top off communications,” Stella said. “And it’s time you knew all about it.” She took a data cube out of the pocket of her suit. “Here. Look at this on my machine, right here.” She handed it to him, then sat back and watched as he read from the screen.

“Oh…my…trees and leaves and roots and branches,” he said. “This really works?”

“The pirates have the old form,” Stella said. “The stuff that someone stole from ISC’s research lab—don’t know who, or when, or how. We’ve improved it considerably, as you see.”

“It makes system ansibles obsolete,” the lawyer said. “Or almost.”

“Not really,” Stella said. “All regular communications nets tie into them—planetary and station communications, for instance. What this does is give ships the ability to go ship-to-ship even when a system ansible doesn’t exist, and ship-to-ansible at distances where lightspeed communication to and from a system ansible is slow and difficult. System ansibles will still carry most traffic.”

“But if they can be mounted on ships, they can be mounted anywhere—on stations, even in offices and homes.”

“True. But I still think the existing communications networks will keep system ansibles in business.”

“You need to apply for patents right away,” the attorney said. “Today. Is this the only complete dataset?”

“No. But it’s the only one that’s out of secure storage.”

“I assume you’d rather I didn’t take it with me?”

“Correct.”

“Then I’ll contact my office, download the appropriate forms, and—may I see one of these in operation?”

“Yes, of course. We do in fact have one here.” Stella took back the data cube and led him into the back office, which now connected to the “research lab” where Toby worked. She had finally gotten all the parts out of their apartment living room. Toby looked up from his workbench; Rascal, at his feet, looked up, then lay his nose back on Toby’s foot.

“Toby, we need a demonstration. What’s the time in Aunt Grace’s office?”

“I’ll look it up,” Toby said.

“Conventionally, I’d use a regular long-distance service, call the system ansible, and set up a call to Slotter Key’s ansible. That ansible would route my call through local call centers to the code number I specified. There would be delay at both ends, attenuated by something ISC refers to as a ‘system booster’ to near-natural conversational pauses. From the effect, we’re guessing these are smaller, less powerful ansibles placed in orbiting satellites, but we don’t actually know.”

“Nine in the morning,” Toby said. “We’re back in sync for the next few days.”

“Slotter Key’s rotation isn’t the same as the standard day length here,” Stella explained. “But we’re lucky, because I can call Aunt Grace right now. In fact, we’ll place two calls—one by conventional, and one using our own ansible—and you can observe the difference. Toby, you start the connection on my mark. I’ll be calling on the ordinary one.”

Stella picked up the desk phone, said “Now” to Toby, and entered the origination codes for an ansible call to Slotter Key. She handed the headset to the attorney so he could hear for himself the familiar clicks and buzzes that went with an ansible call. The status lights went from red to green, and there was a brief display of Slotter Key’s logo.

“She says what do you want, she’s busy,” Toby reported, from his side of the room.

“I’ll take that,” Stella said as she heard a voice on the attorney’s headset.

To that one, she said, “I’m Stella Vatta, calling for Grace Vatta. I know she’s on another line, but ask her to confirm that the other line is an ansible call from Vatta Transport headquarters.”

The attorney listened in as a male voice came back on. “Yes, she is on such a call. What’s going on?”

“Just a test of our equipment,” Stella said. “Tell her Stella sends her love and things are looking up.”

She walked across the room and gestured Toby aside; he was pink to the ears. Aunt Grace, who had turned on her video pickup, glared out of the screen.

“Stella! What are you playing at? Why two calls on two lines from your office?”

“Good news,” Stella said. “But I can’t give you details yet.”

“Young lady—”

“There are a few legal threads to tie down,” Stella said. “And that’s all I can say.”

“You were born a tease,” Grace said, still scowling. “So—how’s the business?”

“Growing,” Stella said. “No more ships lost, and the ones we have are moving at ninety-seven percent capacity. And how are things on Slotter Key?”

“Calm,” Grace said. “Except of course where I’ve been stirring the pot. Your mother and Jo’s children are fine—growing like weeds and showing every sign of being Vattas to the core. Anything else? I do have a full day, and I’m already running behind.”