The Unincorporated Future (24 page)

All eyes turned to Admiral Sinclair.

“Truth is, if we avoid the orbats, Trang would have to come to us. Rabbi’s got a valid point. Trang has more ships now, but away from the orbat field, he’ll have to depend on his crews, and there’s a lot of green in those spacers.”

“Let’s say he does come out, even with the green crews,” asked Eleanor, “do you believe J.D. could take him?”

“She won’t get better odds than she’d have now; I can tell you that.”

Sandra looked first at Eleanor and then at her new Secretary of Technology, Ayon Nesor. Both of them had different pieces of a puzzle that only Sandra saw in completion. Eleanor knew that with Hektor’s failed assassination attempt, Sandra would be desperate to try something else—and soon. Ayon, however, knew—because she was now overseeing it—the last trick in the Alliance’s bag. And Sandra had seen in the Technology Secretary’s eyes that consequences concerned her greatly.

“In that case, Admiral,” said Sandra, “I propose that we send J.D. and the fleet to Mars.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Madam President,” said Sinclair, “with what orders?”

“Not at all, Admiral. With orders to do as much damage as possible to any outlying military targets. It’s a win–win for us. As Padamir said, it will certainly aid the war effort and, as you said, should Trang show up, we won’t get better odds.”

Sinclair did not argue with her logic. On his silence, she continued. “I will, of course, accept the vote of the Cabinet as binding on this matter, as we’d be sending in the only military force we have left. Further, I believe my judgment should be tempered by the wisdom and experience of those here.”

Sandra watched as the room nodded in agreement.

“Secretary Singh,” asked Sandra, “how do you vote?”

“Madam President, I vote aye.”

“One for the measure. Secretary Nesor, how do you vote?”

“I…” She paused momentarily. “I ask for you to come back to me, Madam President.”

You’re hoping the vote will tilt one way or another and you won’t have to choose,
thought Sandra.
I can’t blame you.
“Secretary Ayon passes. Secretary Wildman, how do you vote?”

“Madam President, I vote yes.”

“The vote is two for the motion. Admiral Sinclair, how do you vote?”

“Madam President, it’s our last stone. I must vote no.”

Sandra looked at him, surprised. She’d counted on his support, not through collusion but rather through logic. If she lost the motion now, it would be at least a week before she could realistically repropose it.

“Two for and one against.”

“Treasury Secretary McKenzie, how do you vote?”

“We have too much to do here. Let them come here and die again, if they must. I see no reason to go there and try to kill them far from our homes. I vote no.”

“The vote is two for and two against. Intelligence Secretary McKenzie, how do you vote?”

“Madam President, I respectfully vote no.”

Padamir Singh could be heard muttering under his breath about Shareholders but with a withering look from Sandra curtailed his diatribe.

“The vote is three against and two for. I vote for the measure.” Sandra then looked over to Ayon. “That makes it three to three.”

All eyes now turned toward Ayon. Though her face remained staid, it was obvious from her pressed-together lips and intensely focused eyes that she was struggling over her answer.

The rest of the Cabinet, with the possible exception of Eleanor, in all likelihood had attributed Ayon’s reticence to the fact that this, her first-ever decision, might end up getting some people killed, but Sandra knew differently. Ayon knew what a yes meant, knew what even Sinclair had not been told about.

“I vote … I vote yes.” The tight line on her face dissipated, replaced by a slight grimace.

“By order of the President of the Outer Alliance,” said Sandra, “Fleet Admiral J. D. Black will take all available resources at her disposal and attack the UHF capital of Mars and inflict the maximum damage possible that will aid our war effort. May our actions find favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

AWS
Otter
Main battle fleet of the Outer Alliance
Orbit of Ceres

J.D. made her way to the shuttle bay of the frigate and saw that Suchitra was there as ordered, with the twenty surviving captains of her flotilla. They all stared at Omad’s once second-in-command with a veneration J.D. found comforting. Suchitra Gorakhpur’s actions at the Long Battle and Omad’s Last Raid had shown her to have that rarest of all gifts; leadership in battle. The Alliance didn’t wait when it found something like that; it pounced. The hypocrisy of valuing that veneration when it was directed at Suchitra but disdaining it when it was directed at her never crossed J.D.’s mind.

The salutes were sloppy by fleet standards, but Omad’s flotilla had always worked by a slightly looser set of rules. J.D. was hoping she could tighten up the discipline now that Omad was gone, but part of her was hoping she would fail.

“Commodore Gorakhpur,” J.D. began, her voice effortlessly carrying throughout the shuttle bay and to every ship in the fleet. “Your assumption of command took place under the most trying circumstances. In doing so, you showed daring, courage, and a ruthless dedication to the destruction of the enemy. Admiral Hassan could not have done better. He chose well when he made you flotilla senior captain.”

The shuttle bay exploded in a storm of cheering. “That being said, Fleet HQ has reviewed the circumstances of your field promotion and has decided it is not appropriate for you keep the rank of commodore you received under battlefield conditions.”

Suchitra was able to restore order with just one glance amid a few howls of protest.

“Therefore by order of President Sandra O’Toole and with the full concurrence of both myself and Grand Admiral Sinclair”—J.D. could not hide the grin now—“Suchitra Kumari Gorakhpur, you are hereby promoted to full admiral of the Outer Alliance, with all the privileges and responsibilities that your new rank—”

J.D. words were drowned out by the continued cheering that reverberated through the hull. She gave up trying to finish the official ceremony and instead stood there smiling next to one of the few people left who she felt could help her win the war.

AWS
Warprize II

Suchitra was sitting on the floor, playing with Katy and enjoying herself immensely. The child was curious about everything that had to do with the fleet. She was intent on learning all the ships, battles, officers, and even logistics. She also appeared to know more about fleet nutrition supplements than even Suchitra. But it was the toy ships that Katy seemed to love the most. Apparently, the engineering department of the
Warprize
had been willing to use ship time and materials to make to scale gold models of many of the ships in the fleet. Or to be more precise, gold for the Alliance ships and lead for those of the UHF. Katy did not have all the ships because Tawfik brought her a new one only when he came for a visit. The result was the young girl demanded that Fatima bring the chief engineer to J.D.’s quarters whenever possible, something that Fatima hadn’t minded doing at all. But Suchitra was annoyed that none of the ships of Omad’s flot—she corrected her thought—
her
flotilla were represented. She scanned the ships to get the proper scale and determined to have her engineering department make the additional models.

But right now, Katy was trying to re-create the Battle of the Needle’s Eye. Suchitra was amused because even though it was a relatively small early battle of the war, Katy did not have nearly enough ships to represent all the players. But that hadn’t stopped the imaginative six-year-old. She was intent on making the rest of the formations, and so styli, poker chips, and her mother’s copious medals filled in when called for. Dinner rolls and balled-up socks made up the asteroids. The only real problem—besides the visual discord strewn across the fleet admiral’s usually tidy quarters—was that during that battle, Suchitra had been an ensign, and Katy insisted on asking her questions as if she’d been J. D. Black herself. But the child seemed forgiving in the excitement of playing with a grown-up who she very much considered one of her friends. The newly minted admiral had gotten so caught up in the imaginary world of the child that she hadn’t even noticed when the old one entered the room.

“That dinner roll on the end should be three centimeters to the right,” Suchitra heard from over her shoulder.

Without thinking, Suchitra was on her feet. “Admiral, I was just, uh—”

“Playing with my ward, I see.” Out of the corner of her eye, Suchitra watched as Katy moved the roll three centimeters and then tried to look at it eye level by lying on the floor of the cabin.

“She gets me doing it all the time,” said J.D. with a knowing grin.

“You know if you turned off the grav—”

“I have something I must discuss with you in private,” J.D. interrupted harshly. Then she looked over to her daughter. “Little one, you can continue playing after you’ve worked on the algorithms I gave you.”

Given the concentration with which the child was studying her battle simulation, Suchitra had been expecting her to yell or protest, but the little girl simply looked up, intrigued. “I finished those already, Mama Bo.”

“I know, little one, and you did a marvelous job.” The child beamed at the praise. “So I gave you more challenging ones. They’re on your personal terminal in your room. You’ll have to figure out the encryption lock to get at them.”

Katy looked positively overjoyed and leapt up from the mess on the floor and ran into what had been J.D.’s little-used conference room, now transformed by the engineering section of the
Warprize II
into a child’s bedroom suite.

“Algorithms at her age?” Suchitra asked, the surprise obvious in her voice.

“I loved algorithms at her age,” J.D. said. “And just so you know, normally I’d make her clean up that mess, but I wanted her out of the room a little more quickly this time.”

“Sir, I apologize for being distracted. I’ve wasted your valuable time.”

“You don’t have to, because you didn’t.”

“When you cut me off, I just assumed—”

J.D. laughed. “Oh, that. I just didn’t want you mentioning my ability to manipulate the room’s gravity.”

Suchitra’s eyebrow raised slightly. “But wouldn’t that make your daughter’s battles that much more realistic?”

“Absolutely. But these are
my
quarters. I don’t mind leaving the battles on the floor till she’s learned all she can, however if she starts fighting them in 3-D, I won’t have a normal environment in here for days at a time.”

“It takes her that long to play at a battle?”

“That’s just it. She’s not playing,” J.D. said with pride. “She’s learning. And she doesn’t end the battle till she’s learned everything she can.” J.D. cleared some stuffed toy animals from her desk without thinking about it and took a seat, offering the opposite one to Suchitra. “So you can see why I’m not eager to introduce three-D into the equation. Katy will insist on fighting all the old battles all over again. It’s why I’ve gone so far as to encrypt the grav controls beyond anything she—or most anyone else, for that matter—can decipher.”

Suchitra laughed. “Yeah, but what’ll you do once she figures out that there
are
grav controls?”

J.D. laughed again—an image at odds with Suchitra’s previous visualization of the fleet admiral.

“Well, Suchitra, I’ll surrender. Give up completely and let her have her way in this. My quarters will be filled with floating models, styli, bread rolls, and whatnot. But I will hold off on that as long as I can. So please, let’s keep this little secret to ourselves.”

“A sensible battle plan, Fleet Admiral,” answered Suchitra revealing a bright alabaster smile that stood out in contrast to her dark skin.

“You’re an admiral now, Suchitra. That means in private we call each other by our first names.”

Suchitra laughed out loud again, though there was a bit of nervousness in it this time. “How does one go from Emissary of Shiva to J.D.?”

“Emissary of what?” J.D. asked in astonishment.

“It’s purely a Hindu thing.”

“Your religion, I take it?”

Suchitra nodded.

“Well, it’s certainly a name
I
haven’t heard yet.”

“I’ll suppose it’s on par with Blessed One in terms of according respect, but the comparisons would stop there. Like Shiva, you destroy, but in your destruction you allow for the creation of the new and the needed.”

J.D. nodded respectfully. “Well, Suchitra, Emissary of Shiva is a bit wordy for chats and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with an EOS acronym either. Can you see me opening up the gates of heaven for Apollo’s chariots?”