Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) (26 page)

“Why Bolivia?” Howie asked, curious.

“The Chinese have a big mission there, but the current Bolivian government is friendly with the US.  He’ll lose a great deal of face.  At the airport you can tell him he can stay if he shuts up and behaves.”

The President and Prime Minister exchanged glances.  “Not this man,” the President said finally.  “They’ll shoot him.  We don’t want that.”

Stephanie sighed exasperatedly.  “Like I said before, I think this is important.  I assume it’s important to you.”  She paused and looked at them, her face sad.

“Okay, you don’t want him hurt.  I don’t think that’s a significant consideration, but you have information I don’t.

“You have to make a choice about who is going to get hurt and how bad.  Get someone in one of your special ops units and have him get close and toss a glass of red vinegar in the man’s face as he’s being hauled off to the airport... bound for China, not Bolivia.  It has to be red vinegar, do you understand?  It has to leave a visible stain on the man’s white shirt.  If he’s wearing a coat, it has to be taken from him, or carried on his arm.

“The Chinese will write off the loss of face as having been balanced by the attack by a heathen Westerner.  But the ‘acid tosser’ is going to have to be busted and tried.  He’d better be very clean, because you can’t afford to have him publicly tracked back to you.  The Chinese won’t care if they find out privately, but the news media will be all over it.”

The Australian PM looked at the President.  “It would be easier if it was one of mine.”

“And would look bad if it was one of mine.”  The President looked at Stephanie.  “It’s tough, isn’t it, when the pedal hits the metal?”

“I understand; I wish you two understood better.”

Bob sighed.  “We’ve both sent men into combat.  There’s nothing you can do.  Either you accept that men, and sometimes women, are going to get killed, but the mission is more important — or you go back to the farm.”

“Steph, once upon a time I was a pilot in the Air Force.  I was a lawyer in civilian life, but a fighter pilot in the reserve,” the President said.  “In the First Gulf War, I was a squadron commander.  We received mission tasking from on high, but down at the squadron level we dealt the cards to our pilots.  I’ve dropped live bombs on ‘targets.’”  He made air quotes.

“I knew those targets were living, breathing people.  I knew there was always a risk the bombs would go astray or we’d muffed the targeting.  I flew every mission I could, because I couldn’t bear the thought of my men being up there without me.  I had a share in what happened, win, lose or draw.  It sucks rocks; let me tell you.

“Twice I relieved pilots who laughed and made fun of the people we were bombing.  For some reason that’s never been made public and I’m glad of it, for them and me.  But it’s just the simple facts of life: we kill our targets, but we don’t laugh about it.”

“I’m not laughing,” Stephanie said.

“No, I doubt you are.  Leave Bob and me alone again.”

“I hope you aren’t trying to keep my skirts clean,” she told them.

Bob laughed.  “Are you wearing a skirt?”

“Well... no.”

“Then, please.  It’s one of those things that comes with executive authority.  We just love plausible deniability.  Leave this to us, please.”

Later Stephanie was sitting with her bare feet on a table, sipping from a glass of ice tea, with Charlie Rampling a few feet away, talking to a young man not much older than her son.

Charlie saw Stephanie wasn’t very cheerful and brought the young man over.  “Steph, this is Mark Kinnion, an astronomer here in Australia.  He’s scheduled on the first Australian interstellar expedition that’s to go in three months.”

Stephanie held out her hand and the fellow, about two years older than she was, shook her hand.  “Are you a biologist like Dr. Rampling?” the astronomer asked.

“Actually, I’m more a jack of all trades,” Stephanie told him.

“I don’t recognize your uniform,” he told her.

Stephanie glanced at Charlie, who nodded.  Ah!  Carte blanche!

“Well, the American Space Service believes in splendiferous uniforms.  I was the person in charge of the coffee service on the
Ad Astra
expedition.”

He glowed!  He simply glowed!  “You were on the
Ad Astra
?”

“Yep!  Made coffee on the bridge for all of them, even General-what’s-his-name, before he screwed up and got himself killed.  I also did environmental readings.”

“I was telling Dr. Rampling that Australia is going to need some good biologists for our flight.  That maybe she should apply.”

Steph laughed.  “What, Charlie?  You don’t want to go to Procyon?”

“The Aussies are talking about an expedition out towards Orion.  That would be interesting.”

“Orion is four, five hundred light years away, Charlie.  Five or six hundred years from now, someone will go there.  And it won’t be a big expedition, because that’s a star nursery.  Stars that young will be a little too sporty for humanity for a couple of billion years.”

“We’ll be going to two F’s and a G,” the astronomer said defensively.

“Procyon is an F,” Stephanie mused.  “Another star a little younger than the sun.”

One of the Australian aides came up to them.  “Admiral Kinsella, the PM was wondering if you could spare him a few moments?”

“Certainly.”  Stephanie was up and away, without really thinking about the chaos she’d left behind.

“Admiral Kinsella?  That was Stephanie Kinsella?” the astronomer said, awestruck.

“Two things you don’t want ever want to say to her face: ‘I thought you’d be taller’ or ‘I thought you’d be older,’” Charlie observed.

“And you were there, too, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I feel like an ass.”

“Well, it was fun to be recruited — Steph used pretty much the same approach on me: ‘Want to see the Promised Land?’”

“Dr. Rampling, could I ask you a personal question?”

“No, I’m not married, but I do have a son your age.”

The young astronomer blushed.  “Were you scared?”

“There are no windows on
Ad Astra
.  None, zero, zip, nada.  When we lifted, I watched the Earth fall away on a TV screen and I could feel it in the pit of my stomach — and it wasn’t just the acceleration.

“Walking on the surface of Mars was a big, big rush, even if there is little or nothing for a biologist to do there.  I was surprised that Steph didn’t get out and walk around.  When I asked her about it, she looked me right in the eye.  ‘Charlie, the spacesuit you wear was made by the lowest bidder from specs a group of engineers drew up, none of whom has ever been in space.  It’s dangerous out there.  I’m going to get off at Tau Ceti and look around, but I’m not going to linger.’”

“Is that a yes?” he asked with a grin.

“I was nervous when we lifted off Earth, but exhilarated at the same time.  Mars was a thrill, no doubt about it, and no one’s suit failed; not even the guys who took falls.

“The first time we went faster than light... that was scary, because it’s a little like being mildly sea-sick all the time.”

She laughed.  “Steph is something else.  The docs were debating if the effect was physical or psychological.  She really laid into them.  A hundred people wouldn’t experience the same physical symptoms at once without a common cause.  I think that’s why she’s here.  She gets through BS like no one else I’ve ever met.”

“And on Tau Ceti?” he asked.

“Walking out of the ship, there were a thousand things I wanted to look at.  The plants, the animals... the more we learned the more we wanted to know.  But when the call came that someone was down, and I found out the general was dead... yeah, I was scared.  I think Steph was too, a little.  The docs wanted to autopsy the body and she simply refused, telling them to freeze it and do the autopsy back on Earth.”

She smiled at him.  “No, I was never so scared I couldn’t function.”

“I hope I do as well.”

“That you are concerned is a good sign.”

Stephanie, on the other hand, found the President pacing and the Prime Minister standing, looking out a window over Sydney harbor.

“Something’s come up,” Bob told her.

“Damned French,” Howie muttered under his breath.

“They want to break the Federation military into two parts.  A ground support force and the ships,” Bob told her.  “They’ve suggested a French commander for the ground support force.”

Stephanie thought for a moment, and nodded.  “It’s not entirely a bad idea... except about a French commander.”

“The idea was to have a single, integrated military.  A space fleet.”

“I can’t help thinking of the Marines, Coast Guard and the like.  Why are they separate?  It’s because their missions are unique and they need their own unique approaches to the problems they face.

“Speaking of that reminds me we never made allowance for a ground component.”

“You really think it’s a good idea?” Howie asked.

“Sure.  It’s all in a name.  Our Space Fleet or whatever it is, will have branches, just like the military of most countries have.  A ground support organization taking care of the port facilities, administration and all of that, a ground combat component and the ships and crews themselves.  Right now the US picks someone from one of the various branches to be the Joint Chief of Staff.  That’s not a problem.

“The other is a problem I told you about earlier, and it’s one you have to step on hard.  A Frenchman might be in our Fleet or an American or Australian or whoever, and they may be nominated to command this or that.  But they don’t serve in their national uniform and transfers have to be the equivalent of an enlistment, with all the bits and pieces enlistments entail.  A contract for a period of time.  Once they’ve enlisted, they’re in the Fleet, they are not Australians, Americans or French... just Fleet.”

She looked at them and sighed.  “I suspect you’re thinking ‘if they’re not loyal to us, then they’re out of our control.’”

“Pretty much,” Howie said dryly.

“Well, that’s the whole point.  They have to be independent and everyone has to see them as independent or it won’t work.”

She looked at the President for a long moment.  “I’ve said the words a dozen times.  I made no bones about it, but you never understood...” she whispered.

“Understood what?” Howie asked.

“Spaceships armed commensurate with the responsibility of their duty.”

“I assumed you mean nuclear weapons,” the President told her.

“Of course.  Did you think you were going to retain control over those weapons?”

“Yes.  Turning them over to someone else’s control is — unthinkable.  I’d be impeached and rightly so.”

“Howie, do you remember your phone call during the Fore Trojan rescue?  Where you wanted to talk to John Malcolm?”

He nodded.  “I’d forgotten the time lag.”

“Howie, a ship out at Tau Ceti is twelve and a half days from Earth.  If someone is trying to drop a rock the size of Pittsburgh on someone else’s colony out there, they’d have to, under your scenario, return to Earth, get permission and go back.  That’s three and a half weeks.  Bzzzzt!  The colony has been vaporized for three of those weeks.”

“And that’s a simple example.  We currently do not have full coverage of the area around Earth, where we know what’s going on.  That’s one of the first tasks of this Fleet we’re proposing.  Howie, a Gulfstream, like those I modified, out at the moon, could, if fully fueled, accelerate towards the Earth and arrive moving at about 40 kilometers a second.

“Would you care to hazard a guess at how long it would take to hit the Earth?”

“A day or two.”

“A couple of hours.  In order to stop it, we have to find it early on, order a ship to intercept and have them do so and hit the target.  I’d like to think we’ll be able to accomplish that at some point of time, but it’s not going to be easy.  And if you blow up that ship with conventional explosives close to Earth?  You’d reduce the damage that would occur on the ground, but it would still be horrific.  Howie, Bob, that ship has to be vaporized as far from the planet as possible.  There is no other option.

“Which means you would have very few minutes to make your decision.  It would mean that even if it was the middle of the night, you’d have to wake, become alert, make a judgment and order it within minutes.

“Sure, in earth orbit we can afford passive restraint systems like what you’re used to, Howie.  But you’re going to have to go back to living with a man with weapons codes at your shoulder for the rest of your time in office.  And so would every American President who follows you.  And I’m sure the proposed Federation wouldn’t be helped knowing they can’t shoot without permission from you.  That doesn’t sound very much like independence to me.

“No, the only way this works is if the Federation makes those decisions on its own.”

“I can’t cede that much sovereignty to some other government.  True, I can’t be reelected, but my party would like a shot at winning an election in the next hundred years.  If I went with this, we’d be forever remembered as traitors.”