Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

Bobby stood
and shook Toni’s hand again.  “Thank you very much,” he said.

“Thank you,”
said Toni.  “If there’s anything you need, either of you, just get in
touch.  Your father is a wonderful man.  I’m so sorry for both of
you.”

Earlier in
the week Toni Philips had visited Jack Karjalainen at the hospital.  He
had been very specific.  “Anthony gets
Hjälp
Teknik
.  The board will have to ratify, but they will,
if they know what’s good for them.  He knows it already, we’ve been
through it a thousand times.  I need you to write it all up and make it proper. 
Tie it all up legally, and don’t leave any holes.  Make sure Anthony’s
tied in.  Lock his shares down for two years.  Have letters written
up to the board informing them of my decision.  I’ll sign them.”

As an
afterthought he added, “I’ve got an apartment in Dog Sur.  It’s Bobby’s.”

Toni had
hesitated.  “Nothing for Bobby but the apartment?”  It was a nice
apartment, to be sure, but in light of Karjalainen’s accumulated wealth it was
as nothing compared the share of the empire left to Anthony.

“My first
born son has been a grave disappointment.  I came here to get away from
the bullshit and the squalor and the fighting.  We were looking to the
future.  He always wanted to spite me.  Even when he was a kid. 
And the first chance he got he went back there.  To fight in their wars,
to kill people.  He made me ashamed to be his father.  He deserves a
place to live.  Nothing more.”

He had waved
her away after that.

Toni felt
that at this point, at the end of his life, Jack Karjalainen should be thinking
about forgiveness.

Jack
disagreed.

Leaving the
room Bobby heard Toni calling after him.  He paused as she caught
up.  “Bobby, I’m sorry your father feels this way.  I tried to talk
with him,
but .
 . .”

“It’s
okay.  I know what my dad’s like.  Stubborn as a mule.  I don’t
need the money, anyways.”

They walked
together.

“It’s so sad
when families fight,” Toni said.  “No good ever comes of it.”

“Hey,” said
Bobby, “my dad is my dad.  He achieved everything he did by being a
stubborn asshole.  Why would he stop now?  Admitting he was wrong
about anything would kill him as surely as any cancer.”

“I’ll speak
to him again.”

They walked
on.

“I’ve been to
see him,” said Bobby.

“You have?”

“He was okay
with it.”

“That’s
great.”

Audrey
Andrews read Colleen Acevedo’s report in bed the night she received it. 
There was a case there, and everyone had overlooked it.  The crux of it
was this: Mars was a long, long way away.  It had been assumed, to the
degree that no one had ever considered otherwise, that the colony on Mars was
wholly dependent on Earth.  Why wouldn’t it be?  It was so small and
so distant that it seemed it had to be constantly looking back to the bountiful
mother for support and reassurance.  For these reasons, no one had ever
considered Mars as a separate entity.  For many years the Martians had
held the same view from the reverse perspective.  Like an old habit, they
had routinely assumed that Mars was second best, out on a limb, dangerous and
desolate.

It had been a
slow realisation that once the Martian colony had developed beyond a certain
point the relationship ceased to make sense.  Venkdt Corp made huge
profits on Martian deuterium and other minerals that went to its shareholders
on Earth.  What did Venkdt Mars get in return?  It didn’t need the
protection of an army; it had no enemies.  It didn’t need any other
services from Earth; it was too costly in time and money to go back there for
anything.  In short, it got nothing in return that it couldn’t, with some
minor development, provide for itself.  Why wasn’t Venkdt Mars trading
with
Earth rather than mining
for
it?

Once this
idea had been grasped it was impossible to see things the old way.  Mars
needed Earth solely as a trading partner.  But Earth absolutely relied on
Mars as a source of increasingly scarce minerals, and would have to trade for
them come what may.  In this new paradigm Mars held the upper hand.

Despite not
having or needing a military Mars held a strategic advantage, too.  It was
just too far away to threaten with a big stick.  If they wanted to pull
away, who was going to stop them?

Laying down
to sleep Audrey mulled these ideas through her mind.  As she sunk into
progressively lower levels of consciousness something occurred to her.  It
was bold and radical, but it just might work.  She slept like a baby.

Peter Brennan
disliked having his routine disturbed.

“This better
be about something.  I’ve cancelled two meetings and a
teleconference.  The president can’t make it, but he wants me to report
back to him directly.  We’ve got twenty minutes.  What is it?”

Andrews
spoke.  “We have reliable intelligence coming out of Mars that Charles
Venkdt is going to run a plebiscite asking the entire population of Mars
whether Venkdt Mars should break away from the parent company.  Since more
than eighty-five percent of the Martian population work for Venkdt this
would be tantamount to Mars declaring independence from Earth.”

Brennan
grunted, and noted something down.

“Should this
come to pass it would present us with a number of problems.  First, it
would be a criminal act on a huge scale.  Venkdt Mars is worth vast sums
and would be, in effect, ‘stolen’ from its rightful owners.  And that
would be happening on the other side of the solar system, where we cannot
police it.

“Secondly, it
would damage us strategically and economically.  Our whole society is
underpinned by the power provided by nuclear fusion reactors and they run on
deuterium which comes, in large part, from Mars.  An independent Mars
would mean the USAN were no longer energy independent.  We would be
hostage to the prices Mars could set for deuterium as well as other minerals
which, at present, are more cost-efficiently gathered and transported
from Mars than they are gathered here on Earth.  We could see energy
prices double, triple, quadruple; who knows?

“Thirdly, we
would look weak politically.  A major source of our energy and a major
technical and social achievement in its own right - a source of
national pride, no less - would be seen to walk away from us
with utter impunity.

“And
fourthly, we would lose our frontier outpost.  Mars is our forward base,
right out near the asteroid belt, which is ripe for exploitation.  Ten,
twenty years down the line we want to be out there mining those asteroids and
looking out to the further reaches of the solar system.  If we lose Mars,
we’re pushed a hundred and forty million miles backward, and that can’t
happen.”

Brennan
turned to Farrell.  “What do you say?”

“Our analysis
is largely the same, senator,” said Farrell.

“What do we
do?” said Brennan.

“Well,”
started Farrell, “certain actions are being prepared already.  We can’t
move yet because Venkdt hasn’t made a formal announcement, but we’re expecting
that soon.  When he does, we’ll be ready.  We have a statement ready
for the president, condemning the action in the strongest terms, and we have a
team working now on all diplomatic avenues that we might want to pursue.”

“Which are?”

Farrell
shuffled his notes.  “We can assure the Venkdt Mars hierarchy that we will
pursue all legal means to prevent this from happening.  We can pressure
them into seeing the folly of taking this path.  We can co-opt the
Venkdt shareholders on Earth, and other stakeholders, to bring pressure on them
to see sense.  And we’re looking at the practicalities of freezing their
assets, should it come to it.”

“Would any of
that have any effect?”

Farrell
seemed momentarily startled.  “I would hope so, senator.”

Brennan
turned back to Andrews.  “What have you got?  There’s a garrison up
there, isn’t there?”

“There is
senator, but its role is very limited.  Venkdt have their own security
service and mostly police themselves.  In terms of physical force they
outnumber us ten to one.  We couldn’t jump to that at this stage, anyway.”

“So we have
an inadequate and outnumbered force that we can’t afford to use, and
persuasion?  That’s it?”

“At the
present time that’s it, sir,” said Farrell.  “I have a team working on
this right now, and we hope to have something much firmer in the next few
days.  We have until Venkdt announces, too.”

“What would
we do if this was, say, Sri Lanka?” Brennan said to Andrews.  It was what
she had been waiting for.

“We’d do just
what we’re doing now, sir.  Monitor communications, pursue diplomatic
channels, play the media.  But if it was Sri Lanka, sir, we’d park a
carrier group off-shore, just for emphasis.”

Brennan
raised an eyebrow.  “Ms Andrews, I take it we don’t have any carriers in
the vicinity of Mars?”

“No, sir, we
don’t.”

“Nor do we
have any such vessels in space at all, do we?”

Andrews
didn’t hesitate.  “That’s not quite true, sir.  We do have the two
LEO carriers.  They’re the most expensive ships ever commissioned by the
USAN, and they’re brand new and ready for service.”

“LEO. 
That’s Low Earth Orbit, isn’t it, Ms Andrews?”

“Yes, sir, it
is.”

“So that’s
not going to help with Mars, is it?”

“Well, sir,
if we could get them to Mars they would be exactly the thing to show we mean
business.  Their strike capability is enormous and highly
configurable.  They were made for policing the world.  They could
just as easily police another world.”

Brennan
thought.  “Could we get them to Mars?”

“I don’t
know.  The hard work was getting them built in the first place.  If
we could refit them in some way for interplanetary flight we could police our
frontier.”

“Is that even
feasible?”

“I’ll talk to
Helios.”

“Financially
feasible?”

“I’ll talk to
Helios.  Time is the issue.  Even if it can be done it will take
time, then we have to wait for a launch window.  It’ll take two years at a
bare minimum.”

Brennan shook
his head.  “It’ll all be over by then.  Too late.”

“It’s all we
have.  And it won’t be over, legally.  And they’ll know we’re coming
from the minute we make the announcement.”

Farrell
called ahead from his car and had his people waiting for him on his
return.  He entered the room at pace, walking to his desk and planting his
briefcase down on it as he said, “What have we got, people?”  A handful of
his top advisers were seated on plastic chairs in front of his desk.  As
he took his seat he looked at them expectantly.

“A special
envoy is out,” one of them offered.  “The next launch window
is’nt
for eighteen months.”

“Who do we
have on the ground?”

“No one,”
another adviser answered.

“Who’s senior
at the garrison?”

“That would
be Colonel Katrina Shaw,” another said.  “I’m squaring it with defence
that she can assume diplomatic responsibility for us.”

“That’s
good.  As soon as that’s cleared I want her fully briefed on the situation
and ready to meet with Venkdt the moment he announces.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about
legal?”

“Without the
specifics of the plan we’re guessing against certain likely scenarios. 
For each scenario we’re working through the legal issues; which laws are being
broken, who by, potential remedies etcetera,” said an adviser.

“That’s
good,” said Farrell.  “As soon as Venkdt goes public I want to know what
laws he’s breaking and what laws he’s proposing to break.  And I want a
warrant for his arrest in Colonel Shaw’s hands five minutes after that.”

“You want to
arrest him?”

Farrell shook
his head, “No, we can’t arrest him.  But I want him to know there’s a
warrant.”

Audrey
Andrews had already scheduled a call to Lewis J Rawls before the meeting with
Brennan had begun.  As her car pulled away she barked instructions to
it.  “Get me Rawls, put it on the wall.”

Presently,
the chest and head of Lewis Rawls appeared opposite Andrews.  The image
was slightly distorted initially, as it fell over the opposing cream white
seats.  The projector quickly recalibrated the image to allow for the
uneven surface so what Andrews saw resembled the man in the flesh.  A
subtle but definite 3D effect helped, too.

“Make him
smaller,” said Andrews.

“Make him
what?” came
muffledly
over Andrews’ speakers. 
The image shrank a little.

“That’s
good,” said Andrews.  “I was just resizing you, Lewis.  You were
bearing down on me like some huge ape.”

Rawls
laughed.
 
“That’s just how I like
it.  What can I do for you Audrey?”

Audrey looked
at the image of Rawls.  Approximately life-sized now it felt
disconcertingly like he was sat there in the car with her.  She looked
into his eyes as she spoke.  “You’ve done a lot of work for us over the
years, Lewis.  Right now we need you to really pull something special out
of the bag.”

Rawls leaned
into the camera.  “I’m intrigued.  And I’m excited, on behalf of
billing.”

“We’re in the
process of taking delivery of the second carrier.  As you know, they’re
arriving too late for the war.  We may have another use for them, but they
would need some modifications.  Is this all sounding plausible?”

“It sounds
great so far, but you haven’t got to the modifications yet.”

“Well, it’s
this Lewis.  We need the carriers to do exactly what they’re designed to
do, but we need them to do it someplace else.”

Rawls didn’t
have a comeback for that.  “Go on,” he said.

“We need to
get them to Mars,” said Andrews.  “Can that be done?”

Rawls sat
back in his chair and was silent for a moment.  “It,” he paused for a long
time, “. . . could be done, yes.”

Audrey waited
for more but there was none.  “Talk to me Rawls.  How could we do
it?”

Rawls pushed
the tips of his fingers together, with his elbows rested on the arms of his
chair, and looked at them in concentration as he spoke.

“The carriers
have ion drives for manoeuvrability.  Their main engines are standard
chemical rocket engines.  They’re for pushing them quickly around the
world.  There’s not enough power in those for interplanetary flight, and
there’s not enough space for the necessary fuel.”

Andrews
pursed her lips.

“But. 
If we could replace the main chemical engines with nuclear fusion jet engines
that would give us the necessary thrust, within the limited space available, to
kick off into the void.  So theoretically, yes, it could be done.”

“How fast?”

“You’re
really talking seriously about doing this?”

“How fast
could you do it, how much would it cost?”