The Unincorporated Future (4 page)

But all thoughts of chronological computer viruses fled instantly as one of the dots in the upper right of her field of vision flashed yellow and then red and then was simply gone. She called up the data instantly. It was the AWS
Pickax
—a ship with a rotten nickname and a hell of a good record. It was a heavy battle cruiser just like the
Warprize.
And it was gone. Whatever had hit it had practically disintegrated the ship, which had been only two places away from the flagship. Eighty-three hours and fifty-six minutes to go.

UHFS
Liddel
Battle of Ceres
Hour 16

“So is she on her way or what?” asked Zenobia.

Even though they were little more than a thousand kilometers apart, the reception from Trang’s ship to Zenobia’s was some of the worst he’d ever seen. Her holo-image was jerky and constantly fading in and out. He was almost tempted to use computer matching to smooth out the image with the computers’ best guesses, but chose not to. You never knew when the matching program got some tiniest detail wrong. And Trang could not risk losing a battle over even the smallest anomaly. He would rather have annoyingly incomplete communications than communications that were possibly inaccurate. He took no comfort in the fact that he probably looked the same to Zenobia. But what could he expect, operating this close to the Alliance capital? They were doing their best to jam everything.

“If she is coming, it’s after having destroyed a fleet every bit as large as this one. For the thousandth time, we must not underestimate her in the slightest.”

“Admiral, I am not underestimating her. But I am not underestimating you either. We have a real chance of beating her, and if we do, the war is over.” Zenobia’s obvious relish at the coming battle was typical of her new and growing confidence.

Of course,
thought Trang,
if we lose, the war could easily be over, but not in a way we’d like
. “What do we have out of Jupiter?”

“If our spy satellites are correct, and interference is a factor, J.D. broke orbit earlier today.”

“What did they detect?”

“Hundreds of large objects shooting on what may be an intercept course to Ceres,” answered Trang.

“So she is coming!”

“Don’t be so hasty, Zenobia. For all we know, she fired three hundred hunks of frozen hydrogen in this general direction just to fix our attention here while her fleet is heading for Mars.”

A look of alarm briefly crossed over Zenobia’s face. “Do you think that’s possible, sir?”

“Of course it’s possible, but I would have to say not very likely. Mars is well defended and has been thoroughly debugging its orbat field. And the truth is, we’d detect them heading to Mars in enough time for us to break off our attack and intercept.”

“Isn’t that what they’d want us to do? I mean break off the attack and come to Mars’s rescue.”

“Yes, except that I wouldn’t break off the attack.”

“You’d leave our capital exposed?”

“I’d leave our capital open for destruction if it would win us this war,” Trang said with conviction. “But in this case, I don’t think we have to worry about that particular threat.”

“Why not?

“Because J.D. knows what I know: At this moment, the Outer Alliance cannot win the war at Mars, but it can lose it at Ceres.”

A moment later, Trang received some more fleet intelligence, which he quickly passed on to his subordinate.

“Three fleets?” she asked, confusion evident in her voice. Zenobia was referring to the fact that UHF observatories and satellites had detected two more fleets of roughly three hundred ships leaving Jupiter’s orbit an hour apart from one another and going significantly slower than the first. Fleet intelligence had directions for the unidentified blobs as well. The first appeared to be going to Saturn while the other two were going directly to Ceres and Mars respectively.

“What on Earth are they up to?” asked Zenobia.

“Three-card monte.”

Zenobia looked at Trang vacantly.

“The object is to find the one truth among three potential falsehoods. You put a small pea, a seed about the size of an intermarked ball bearing, in one of three half walnut shells. A walnut is a—”

“Admiral, for the love of Damsah, I know what a walnut shell and a pea look like.”

“You never know with the current generation,” he chided gently. “Very well, you hide the pea under one of three shells and move the shells rapidly. When the shells stop moving, you have to guess where the pea is really hiding.”

“Until we get a clear vid of those fleets, we won’t know where the threat is.”

“I’m afraid, Zenobia, that even if we get three-dimensional images of a field of ice, we cannot fully trust them. The same goes for vids of a fleet of angry Alliance warships. How could we really tell which is fake and which is real? The Alliance has fooled us before.”

“Easy sir,” Zenobia said brightly, “it will be the one that is blowing the crap out of something.”

Trang laughed at that simple answer. “Yes, it will be the one blowing the crap out of something. I think we need a screen of light frigates around Ceres. If a gnat farts within ten million clicks of this place, I want to know about it.”

New Executive Headquarters (NEHQ)
Ceres
Hour 19

The Cabinet members were all in a black mood as the news was being delivered.

“We have a day and a half, maybe two at most, until the orbats are gone,” said Sinclair.

Kirk was looking a little more jumpy and a little less confident. “Has anyone made plans to evacuate the government?”

“Unless your plans call for being destroyed or captured.”

Kirk looked at Sinclair inquisitively.

“Trang has an effective screen out to ten million clicks,” finished Sinclair.

“Kenji informs me that he has … an idea,” said Sandra.

“He always has an idea, Madam President,” said Mosh. “Question is, is it one we can use?”

Kenji stood up from the guest area as half the Cabinet turned their heads to listen.

“Uh,” he began rather inauspiciously, “it occurred to me that—that there may be a way to weaponize the Via Cereana to our advantage.” He called up a host of technical details, which floated above the conference table completely ignored by the Cabinet members.

“It won’t be simple, but Hildegard and I think it can be done.”

“What can be done, Kenji?” asked Sandra.

“What you suggested, Madam President,” he answered, completely forgetting that Sandra had not wanted to be associated with the idea. “The old Via Cereana weapons system was designed to fire one way and to use huge projectiles. But if we can alter the programming, we’ll be able to fire out of both ends of the Via. We’ll of course need to—”

“Do it,” said Kirk Olmstead and Joshua Sinclair in one voice.

Kenji looked a little uncertain until Hildegard and Sandra both nodded. Then his look changed to one of avarice as he realized that he’d just become the most powerful man in Ceres, at least until he succeeded or they all died. Without another word, he left the Cabinet room, practically at a run.

“Fellow secretaries,” said Mosh, “as much as I’d like to believe that J.D. will arrive in the nick of time to save us or that Kenji’s genius will once more allow him to jury-rig another miracle, we must face the fact that it is a near certainty we’ll all soon be dead.”

“Talk about a buzz kill,” sniped Sandra.

“The truth is often not pleasant, but nonetheless it’s the truth all the same,” responded Mosh.

“I assume,” said Padamir, “you had some reason for reminding us of what we already know.”

“Yes. We must see to the succession of political power in case the President dies. We should have done this long ago, but now we must have a Vice President.”

There was a moment of silence as the truth of Mosh’s words reverberated with the group.

“And whom would you possibly suggest for this?” asked Kirk. The tenor of his voice indicated the lack of seriousness with which he was taking Mosh’s suggestion.

“I’d recommend Karen Cho, governor of the Saturn system.” There were looks of surprise and some nods of agreement from the table.

“How did you arrive at Karen?” asked Sandra.

“It was easy, actually. First of all, she’s not here. If all of Ceres is destroyed, she’s at Saturn. Secondly, she’s the governor of the largest settlement we have left. A settlement soon to get far larger as the refugees from the asteroid belt and Jupiter arrive. Thirdly, she was a congressional delegate serving right here on Ceres until her election as governor, so she’s known and knows the people of the Outer Alliance as a whole and is not simply a Saturnian parochial.”

Sandra folded her arms together and looked appreciatively at the Treasury Secretary. “I find your idea has much merit to it, Mosh, and I agree with you concerning the need for me to have a Vice President. But if we choose someone from far away, it will be telling the solar system that we’re convinced Ceres is doomed.”

“Ceres
is
most likely doomed,” countered Mosh.

“Which is why we must be heroic until the bitter end,” she countered. “There must not be a single action that will cast doubt on our courage or hope. Which is why I agree we will appoint a Vice President, but it must be someone in Ceres this very moment.”

“As this will need Congressional approval, Madam President, I must ask whom you have in mind,” said the normally taciturn Tyler Sadma.

Sandra smiled provocatively.

Observation port for the Gedretar Shipyards
Via Cereana

Kirk Olmstead was pacing in nervous agitation. He liked thinking one step ahead of everyone he dealt with, but Sandra O’Toole kept on doing the inexplicable. Was she a genius or simply erratic? He couldn’t be sure, and he hated being unsure.

His pacing was interrupted by the appearance of Sergeant Holke, who quickly scanned the room, scowled at Kirk, and then nodded to someone in the corridor. Then in swept Sandra O’Toole, who purposely closed the blast door, leaving her guard of TDCs outside. Unlike Kirk, she seemed to be blissfully unconcerned.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Vice President?”

“I have not been approved yet, Madam President. And seeing my standing in the Congress and with Tyler Sadma in particular, I do not think I will be.”

“Your nomination will be approved in the next hour, or so I have been assured by the Speaker of Congress himself.”

“How did you—?”

“Let’s say that between what I’ve learned about our dear Congressman Sadma in the past seven months and the fact that he’s convinced you’ll be dead in a very short period of time, he decided his future reputation was worth more than your temporary promotion.”

“Whatcha got on him?” Kirk asked in genuine admiration.

Sandra shook her head.

“Fine, but this you must answer: Why did you want me? I understand why it had to be someone on Ceres, but other than Mosh, I must have been the hardest choice to get approved.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Kirk. You are the worst choice as far as almost everyone is concerned, but you’re the best choice as far as I’m concerned, because you have always known what it would take to win this war. You never shied away from it. As much as Justin inspired, he never saw the truth of our situation like you did. If anything happens to me, the leader of the Alliance will need total clarity for the decisions that need to be made. That leader will have to make choices harder than any of us could have imagined. Frankly, I can’t see anyone else willing to make the hard calls as capably as you.”

“Other than you, Madam President,” Kirk said graciously and, he realized to his surprise, truthfully.

“Oh, I’m not sure, Kirk. You may be the best of us for seeing what needs to be done.” She smiled and brought out two bottles of beer from her bag. Kirk was delighted and perturbed to see that she’d brought his favorite brand as opposed to the ones he often pretended to like. She opened them both and handed him one. “To seeing things as they are,” she said, raising her bottle, “and those who are able to do so.”

There was the sound of glass hitting glass as Kirk touched his bottle to hers. He smiled, genuinely happy. He realized that he liked this woman and got the feeling she really understood his strengths. That instead of despising him for those strengths as so many others did, she admired them. This woman was the person he’d always wanted to work for: intelligent, ruthless, and understanding in just the right proportions. It was a shame he’d have to kill her in the next forty-eight hours.

AWS
Warprize II
En route to Saturn
Hour 25