Patriotic Treason

Chapter Twenty-Three

“She doesn’t look any different,” I said. I couldn’t keep the wonder out of my voice. “She looks as beautiful as ever.”

“She sure does,” the Pilot agreed. He was the same Pilot who had served on the Jacques Delors for my first cruise, but that wasn’t uncommon. Pilots needed to be very familiar with their starships and were rarely transferred unless there was a desperate need for their services elsewhere. Even so, a Pilot who was a rated expert with one starship might be no more than a more standard helmsman in another. “You really missed yourself with the engagement against the pirates at Robinson’s World.”

He grinned as the shuttle started to glide down towards the shuttlebay. “Now that was some fancy flying, sir,” he added. “The Captain was delighted with us all.”

I fought down a tinge of envy. It was much easier to hate pirates than innocents caught up in the midst of a ground war, when the UN had invaded their planet. Some pirates were raiders trying to take out as much of our shipping as possible. Others, the nastier kind, were complete sociopath-type people. They wanted to loot transports and kill or enslave as many people as possible. It seemed impossible that they would survive for long, but there was a thriving black market in starship components and there were certainly plenty of recruits. The people trying to flee the conscription program had every incentive to sign up with the pirates.

“Nice and easy,” the Pilot said, as the shuttle drifted neatly into the docking bay. There was a faint thud as the craft settled to the hard metal deck. An instant later, the doors started to slide closed as the crew started to pump in the atmosphere. The entire process had taken place in a vacuum. The Pilot saw my puzzlement and hastened to explain. “The Captain decided that we should practice operations in vacuum, so the bay force field was deactivated.”

“I see,” I said. Despite everything, I still felt eager to set foot back where I belonged. “When can I leave the shuttle?”

A green light flickered on over the airlock. “Now,” the Pilot said. “I’ll have a crewman take your bags to your quarters.”

Every starship smells different, but smelling the Jacques Delors was like returning home. There was a faint hint of oil and machinery, the aroma of two hundred men and women living far too close together…and I loved it. The shuttlebay, I was relieved to see, was still neat and tidy. Our second shuttle still sat on the other side of the bay, but now it was joined by a colourful Marine Landing Craft, its blocky shape covered with a painting of a shark’s jaw. I wondered, for a moment, why we had such a craft, before remembering what had happened on Terra Nova. The Captain had to be feeling a little paranoid. The Marines used to claim that they could be in their landing craft and on the surface within ten minutes of the call…and we might need them. The Quick Reaction Force on Heinlein hadn’t moved very quickly at all.

“Welcome back, sir,” a crewman said. He wasn’t familiar to me, but crewmen transferred frequently. A crewman generally served two-to-five year terms in the UNPF, with a guaranteed settlement right for a new colony as a reward. It was very rare for a crewman to make the jump to commissioned officer status, although it did happen on occasion. “The Senior Chief will be right with you.”

“Thank you,” I said, gravely. I caught myself straightening my uniform before remembering that the Senior Chief wouldn’t be impressed by my dress blues. The Captain, on the other hand, might understand when I presented myself in my finery. The Great God Tradition dictated, as always, how we should act. “I’ll wait for him here.”

The Senior Chief looked older than I remembered, but his face was still merry and he winked at me as soon as he saw me. I held out my hand and then found myself giving him a bear hug. He hugged me back, hard enough to hurt, and then insisted on taking my bag, passing it to the crewman.

“It’s good to see you again, son,” he said, seriously. “I told you that you’d go far.”

“You did,” I agreed. I didn’t want to have any serious conversations in front of a crewman I didn’t know. “What’s been happening on the ship?”

“Only a few patrols and some excitement when pirates decided to attack a colony world and its settlements,” the Senior Chief said. He steered me towards the corridor and I allowed him to lead me up towards Officer Country. “I hear that you’ve been making quite a name for yourself.”

I frowned. What was he referring to? “I like to think so,” I said, carefully. “Chief…what happened to Lieutenant Hatchet?”

“She was well over five years in grade,” the Senior Chief reminded me. I winced. I could pretty much fill in the rest myself. “Eventually the Captain and the Political Officer ran out of delaying tactics and the beauecrats reassigned her to a research station orbiting Titan or somewhere. One of the many places where they send their failures, son, so bear that in mind. I think she applied to serve on a freighter afterwards and was snapped up by one of their Captains.”

“Shit,” I said, with feeling. Part of me — the part that looked forward to being First Lieutenant — was glad she’d gone. The remainder wished her well. She had been a role model for me during my first cruise and I had missed her on the Devastator. “And the others?”

“Half of the Ensigns left, as you know,” the Senior Chief said. “The Pilot, Engineer, Doctor and Marine Sergeant are still the same. The Engineer has been getting crankier recently because he believes that we’ve been cheated on priority for new components. He might even be right. Treat him with some care.”

“I will,” I promised. “And the Captain?”

The Senior Chief caught my arm. “Holding on,” he said, softly. I remembered what he’d told me two years ago and winced. “Be careful with him and don’t try to stab him in the back. I won’t stand for it.”

“Me neither,” I promised him. We had reached Officer Country, passing the two Marines on guard. On some starships, their presence was a vital necessity, but on Captain Harriman’s ship, it was merely a waste of resources. The senior officers weren’t at war with the lower decks. We pushed the door buzzer and, after a moment, hatch hissed open. “I’ll chat to you later.”

Captain Harriman looked older, somehow, than he had when we’d first met. His face was as mature as ever — the regeneration therapies, only available to people with extremely good connections, had done a good job — but there were new lines embedded within his skin. Somehow, his hair gave the impression of turning grey, even though it seemed perfectly black. He looked up as I entered and I was shocked when I saw his eyes. They were old and very tired. The pressures of his role were bearing down on him.

“Lieutenant John Walker reporting for duty, sir,” I said. I had straightened to attention automatically. Lieutenant Hatchet had hammered that into my head during the first month on the vessel. Now I pulled a perfect salute, more out of respect for him personally than the rank. I would have died for him.

“Welcome onboard,” the Captain said. His voice, too, was tired. He sounded like a man on the verge of death somehow, even though there was some of the old strength there. I wished, suddenly, that I were Lieutenant Hatchet. She would have known what to do. I felt as if I were nothing, but a helpless observer. “I trust that you had a pleasant week at Luna City, John?”

I flushed, slightly. I’d spent the week making contacts with people I’d known and trying to sound them out about their feelings for the regime. It hadn’t been easy and I was grimly aware that if someone talked to the wrong person, or reported me to the security forces, I was dead. The planning hadn’t even reached the operational stages yet and wouldn’t realistically, for several years. The best we could do was plan and try to position ourselves for action in the future.

“Yes, sir,” I said. I had never lied to the Captain before, but there was little choice. “I spent most of it in the Video Lounge and then Madame Olga’s Place.”

The Captain smiled faintly. “The Video Lounge?” He asked, dryly. “Why there?”

“I like to play computer games,” I admitted. It was hard telling a lie to him, but I had used to visit back when I’d been in the Academy. There were aspects of Academy training that could be applied to computer games, although some of them were puzzles or strange adventures, rather than action and adventure. There was one featuring a small blue mutant hedgehog I’d used to love. “It’s not something you can do on a starship.”

“Against regulations,” the Captain agreed. He grinned suddenly, seeming years younger for a long heartbreaking moment. “And is Madame Olga the same as ever?”

“Ah…I wasn’t too concerned with her,” I said, frantically. Madame Olga ran one of the more upscale brothels in Luna City and had been around as long as anyone could remember. “I just wanted a girl and…”

I trailed off. The Captain seemed to recognise my embarrassment. “I used to know her when I was younger,” he admitted. “She was quite a beauty in her day.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. I had the vague feeling that I was being teased. The imagination couldn’t cope with the idea of the Captain as a young man. It seemed more likely that he had sprung into existence on the bridge. “Some of her girls were almost beauties…”

The Captain laughed at my discomfort. “They always were,” he said. “However” — he shook his head slowly — “we have other matters to talk about, even though it would be nicer to talk about girls. Do you understand that you will be First Lieutenant on this vessel?”

He paused. “At ease, by the way,” he added. “You’re a Lieutenant now. You’re allowed to relax slightly in the presence of your Captain.”

“I understood that to be the case,” I said. “I was sorry to hear that Lieutenant Hatchet had left this ship.”

“Command has seen fit to grace me with several green Ensigns and Lieutenants again,” the Captain said, tiredly. “I’m relieved to see you — I approved your transfer despite some pressure from other quarters — because you were already familiar with Lieutenant Hatchet’s methods for breaking in new Ensigns. That will be your job as well as the other duties that come with the position.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I had forgotten that detail — I remembered what we’d been like as Ensigns and shuddered — but there was no getting out of it now. “She taught me how to deal with them, sir.”

“And of course you will remember what it was like to be young and unformed yourself,” the Captain continued. He straightened up himself and looked into my eyes. It was almost like he had returned to his old personality. “You are not just to be another Lieutenant on this vessel, John. As First Lieutenant, you are expected to be my tactical alter ego, advising me and, if necessary, disagreeing with me. You won’t find it easy, so let me assure you from the start that you may speak freely to me at all times.”

“I never saw Lieutenant Hatchet disagreeing with you,” I said, puzzled. “I don’t recall that at all.”

“Lieutenant Hatchet spoke to me in private about any doubts or issues she had,” the Captain explained. “You were never meant to hear anything that could cast doubt on my authority, or wisdom. Jason” — it took me a moment to realise that he meant the Political Officer — “would do the same. You’ll have to learn, John, but I’m sure that you can do it.

“We spent the last cruise patrolling and watching for pirates and we will be doing the same on this cruise,” he continued. “We’re supposed to be escorting several freighters to Botany — they may be targeted by wreckers, but not by common pirates — and then onwards to New Paris, before heading out for a circuit through the Beyond. It may not work out as planned. The last cruise left us all exhausted.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. If nothing else, it would give us time to break in the new Ensigns. “How far are we going to go into the Beyond?”

“Maybe a hundred light years,” the Captain said. “It may be slightly further, but it depends on what we find. We may even have to return to Earth or another fleet base sooner than we expect.”

I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. The Beyond referred to the space beyond the advancing wavefront of official human colonisation. Anything could be out there, from hidden human colonies to pirate bases and shipyards. It almost made up for the run to Botany. We might even discover the first non-human civilisation, although I wasn’t sure I wanted the UN to encounter them. The UN’s reaction to primitive groups on Earth and some of the colonies was generally to keep them primitive, in the theory that primitive cultures shouldn’t be allowed to vanish from the universe. It probably explained a lot about Muna’s history.

“It’s not that exciting,” the Captain warned. “The last two sweeps through the Beyond found nothing of interest, beyond a pair of habitable planets. You’ll probably find it rather boring.”

“It couldn’t be boring,” I said, shaking my head. How could I explain the thought of seeing emptiness that no one had ever seen before? “Ah, sir…I…”

“Never mind,” the Captain said. He grinned at me, and then softened. “Now, I want a full briefing on Heinlein — and I want the truth, nothing, but the truth.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and started to talk.

It lasted nearly an hour. I’d started with the invasion and gone on to talk about how the war was progressing, although my information was at least a month out of date. I mentioned the strikes on civilians and how many innocents were being killed in the crossfire, but I didn’t mentioned anything about Ensign Gomez. I did mention that the reporters had been mostly killed in engagements in ‘safe’ areas, however.

“I have met a few reporters,” the Captain said, dryly. “You won’t have to worry about them on this vessel.” I let out a sigh of relief. “You will have to take care of the Infantry Company we’re shipping to Botany, but they won’t be as bad.”

“No, sir,” I said, and kept my thoughts to myself. The Infantry had picked up a bad reputation on Heinlein, at least as far as I was concerned. “Why…?”

“Apparently someone at UNPF headquarters doesn’t quite trust the assurances that the troop transports are perfectly safe,” the Captain said. I couldn’t disagree with that unnamed officer, even if he had just condemned us to a crowded ship for the first two weeks of the voyage. “Botany doesn’t rate a high priority, so they’re just being dumped on us for the trip. We can’t put them in the barges or there’ll be a mutiny. They’re a good unit, so be nice to them. An old friend of mine is in command.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

The Captain studied the starmap on his display for a long moment. “We’re scheduled to depart in two weeks,” he said. I nodded. That had been in the data pack that he’d forwarded to me, along with instructions on boarding. “You’ll have two days to adjust yourself to this ship — again — and then the Ensigns will arrive. You’ll have a proper First Ensign, at least, so that won’t be a problem. Stand watch tomorrow with me and we’ll run through a few drills.”

I wasn’t deceived by his tone. He intended to put me though my paces… and it wouldn’t be easy. Captain Harriman wasn’t known for sparing the rod when it came to drills; I’d be tested on everything, corrected firmly, and then tested again, and again. It had worked while I’d been an Ensign and would probably work again.

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying frantically to remember everything I would need to know. My mind seemed to have gone blank. I could barely even remember my name. “Tomorrow?”

“Get some rest,” the Captain ordered. He smiled suddenly, as if he had just thought of a joke. “Or catch up with old friends. I’ll see you on first watch.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and saluted, before leaving the Captain’s cabin. I wasn’t surprised to see that the Senior Chief had gone, leaving an Ensign in his place. He would have hundreds of things requiring his attention before we departed… but it took me a moment to realise that I recognised the Ensign. “Sally?”

“John… ah, Lieutenant,” First Ensign Sally Brenham said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. I’d served with her on the last cruise — how was she still an Ensign? She should have made Lieutenant by now. “Welcome onboard the Jacques Delors.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I had only been inside Lieutenant Hatchet’s cabin once, back when I’d been an Ensign. It had seem palatial to my young eyes, being almost large enough to swing a cat, with a large bunk and enough storage space for almost anything we could want. The Lieutenant in me wondered if there was enough space. I had picked up a few personal possessions along the way, as well as my dress uniform, ground-side uniform and various other items of clothing. I even had a bra that Kitty had given me as a joke, just before we parted and she went to her next posting. I missed her dreadfully already.

Sally hesitated on the outside of the cabin. “Come in,” I said, already feeling myself floundering. What did one say to a person who had once been your equal — and then First Ensign, making her my superior — and who was now a full rank-grade below? She clearly had the same problem. Technically, she should have saluted me, but I let it pass. There were no witnesses anyway. “Sally…why are you still here?”

The blunt question seemed to surprise her. I wasn’t too surprised. I’d seen a handful of officers who’d spent too long in their grades ever to be promoted again and most people had tiptoed around them, afraid that failure would rub off on them and they’d be damned by association. Three years as an Ensign suggested that someone didn’t have a hope of advancement, but why? Sally hadn’t been incompetent, or stupid; Lieutenant Hatchet would never have allowed her to get away with it. She’d have been working off demerits for the entire voyage.

Her eyes, when she finally looked up at me, were raw and painful. “Just after you left,” she said, slowly. “Just after you left, we made the run to Albion again, carrying a new governor and his staff. The old one had suffered some kind of accident.”

I nodded. I could guess what form that accident had taken. Albion might not seethe with resistance, like Heinlein, but it was still unstable. The men and women who had been trying to escape the UN’s conscription program had probably escaped with the help of an underground resistance organisation, which might have started a new campaign of violence. Another world for the United Nations to occupy… if they could find the Infantry, after Heinlein.

“One of his staff was a Political Officer, but we didn’t know that,” Sally continued. “She seemed friendly and often engaged us on conversation and I shot my mouth off. She wanted my opinion of a few programs and… I told her just what I thought. I’d been assisting the Lieutenant with the logistics after you left and I knew enough to make a fool of myself. I thought it had gone well until I discovered that she’d entered a notation in my file forbidding further advancement.”

I winced. A Political Officer’s notation could be damning to a career. Nothing that Captain Harriman or his Political Officer could do would remove the blight from the file; whatever it said, it would prevent any further advancement. The only good thing about it was that it hadn’t seen her consigned to a deep-space fuelling station somewhere on the edge of the Beyond. Instead, she’d been left on a starship. I wasn’t sure if that was kindness or an extra twist of the knife.

“And so, here I am,” Sally said. Her voice was bitter. “What’s the point of doing anything when there’s no hope of going any further?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I wanted to tell her about my plans, but I didn’t dare, not yet. This wasn’t the Sally I had once known, but a stranger consumed with bitterness and hatred, raging helplessly against the universe. Even if the notation were somehow removed from her file, she’d still be tainted by it…and her new attitude. On the other hand, I could use her. “Sally…we’ll find a way out, all right? I promise.”

“You can’t keep that promise,” Sally pointed out, angrily. “Part of me just wants to tell them to shove it and quit. The other part doesn’t want to give up the starship and service on her. John…why the fuck do I even care?”

A dozen possible answers ran through my mind, but I abandoned them all. They wouldn’t have made the situation any easier. “There are always possibilities,” I said. It sounded trite and I knew it, but I couldn’t tell her anything else just yet. “Listen. We will find a solution, one way or the other. Now, tell me about the ship and its new crew.”

“I shouldn’t even be socialising with you,” Sally pointed out, suddenly. I was surprised by her sudden grasp of regulations, and her willingness to heed them. “You’ll just have your career dragged down by mine.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, softly. “You should try serving on a monitor instead of this ship. That would give you a sense of perspective.”

I listened, carefully, as she talked about the other lieutenants, the ones I hadn’t met. They were all junior to me, having earned their promotions later, and had transferred in from other starships. The Captain had apparently decided that they all needed additional training and had run them through endless drills — I knew the procedure by now — until they improved. When Lieutenant Hatchet had left the ship, one of the new Lieutenants had served as First Lieutenant and succeeded in seriously annoying the Captain, enough for him to accept my transfer request. I hoped that that meant there wouldn’t be a second resentful officer onboard, but there was no way to know. If the Captain had been annoyed… it had to be bad.

“Oh, look at that,” I laughed suddenly. “She’s left me the horsewhip!”

Sally giggled, despite herself. Lieutenant Hatchet had decorated her cabin with a horsewhip she’d picked up from somewhere and she’d occasionally threatened to use it on us for a particularly disastrous failure, back when we’d been new and untrained Ensigns. No one had called her bluff and, as far as I knew, no one had ever been whipped. The Political Officer Sally had encountered sounded like an excellent choice for the first target.

“I think its her way of warning you not to fuck up her position,” Sally said. “Or perhaps its her way of telling you that she’ll be back. Take care of it, all right?”

I nodded. “I wouldn’t dare not take care of it,” I said. “She’d kill me.”

Sally finally left me to my cabin and I started to unpack my bags. I’d been impressed by the size of the cabin, but even so, my small number of possessions just seemed to rattle around in the compartment. Lieutenant Hatchet must have had hundreds of possessions, or — perhaps — she hadn’t been inclined to fill all her drawers. I wished, just for a moment, that she were still onboard. I knew so little about what I had to do. I didn’t even know how to console Sally. Lieutenant Hatchet would have known what to say, of course, but I didn’t. I just felt so helpless.

I spent the first night rattling around in the bunk, wishing that Kitty had transferred with me, even though that would have made her First Lieutenant. The bunk was tiny, compared to the beds in the hotels on Luna City, but I’d been used to sharing with someone else. Now it just felt tiny, and alone. I could still message Kitty — her starship hadn’t jumped out of the system yet — but it wasn’t the same. I entertained the absurd thought of leaving my new ship and going to find her, but… how could I do that? I needed the Jacques Delors for my plans.

The next morning was too long in coming. I breakfasted at the mess — as everyone, but the Captain was supposed to do — and ground my way through foodstuffs that had been reconstituted from waste, instead of having been sent up from Earth or one of the asteroid farms. The cook did the best he could, but it seemed that supplies got worse and worse every year. I didn’t understand what was going wrong with the farming back down on Earth, but it was clearly disastrous if they were starving starship crews. I would almost have preferred to starve. The food tasted like someone had fed it to a cow, which had vomited it up afterwards. There were probably laws against feeding dumb animals such crap.

“The Supply Department is having problems, or so I’m told,” the cook said, when I asked. “They’re warning us that supplies of anything, but Algae-grown foodstuffs might be limited over the next few years. It’s only temporary, or so we are assured.”

“I see,” I said, wondering if I should take it up with the Captain. He might know more about what was going on. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up for you.”

“There’s been a major accident in one of the main food producing areas on Earth,” the Captain said, when I asked him an hour later. We were alone on the bridge. Hardly anyone bothered to keep a proper watch in Earth orbit, even Captain Harriman. There was no point. Earth’s defences would provide plenty of warning if the system came under attack and the level of firepower surrounding the planet was utterly intimidating. I doubted that anyone would dare to launch an attack. “The UN Food Commission has had to reduce quotas for the year.”

I shuddered. I knew little about food producing systems — the farms and the vats where meat substitutes were grown — but if the UN had lost a major source of food, the entire population would have to tighten their belts, and probably starve anyway. The UN needed to feed us to keep us alive and working for them. What would they do with the population down on Earth? They might not bother to try to feed them at all?

They’d probably try to extort food from the colonies as well, but it would only be a drop in the ocean. Even if they assigned every jump-capable ship in existence to the task, they could only bring in a few million tons of food at most, barely a drop in the ocean compared to the requirement. It might also be disastrous. Some of the food we’d sourced from Heinlein had been contaminated in several different interesting ways. Food poisoning was not a pleasant way to go.

“Still,” the Captain said, “we can survive on what we get. Now…”

We went through an entire watch period, calling up simulations and responding to them. I don’t know if I impressed the Captain or not, but he wouldn’t have hesitated to chew me out if there had been a real problem. Eventually, he called up a set of tactical simulations and told me to keep practicing until told otherwise. I had manned tactical stations before, but this was different. The person commanding the ship had to keep everything in mind. I might not have had to fire the weapons personally, but I had to juggle our course, speed, interdiction field capabilities and weapons. There were some tactical simulations that simply didn’t have a solution. The more you progressed through the simulation, the worse the computer-generated opponents became…and, eventually, the ship was lost.

“You’re not meant to win,” the Captain said, when I complained. “The simulation is meant to force you to think quickly and survive as long as you can. There are people who turn it into a gambling game, but it’s really meant to push you right to the brink.”

He smiled, thinly. “And, of course, it’s cheaper than testing an entire starship to destruction,” he added. “How else could we find out what you’re made of?”

“There was no such test at the Academy,” I said, puzzled. “Why weren’t they included there?”

“Because the Academy is run by people who believe that failure stunts a child’s development,” the Captain explained, angrily. For a moment, I wondered if the Captain was a member of the Brotherhood. It was quite possible, apart from his family connections. “Instead of being taught how to deal with failure, in an environment where the worst thing that could happen was punishment duty, you were coddled and generally spared from experiences that would have taught you things you needed to know. Discipline was lax, almost non-existent, and accidents were common. Those accidents happened because you were not allowed to fail.”

His eyes darkened. “If you ask anyone what went wrong down on Earth, why we have to kidnap workers from Albion and a dozen other worlds, you’ll get a thousand answers,” he said. “I believe it happened because no one was allowed to fail. No child could be taught how to cope with failure, so they were never challenged or disciplined. It didn’t matter how well, or how badly, you did; you were always feted and rewarded for your accomplishments. You were never pushed to succeed, so you never really did — and you never understood that you were a failure.”

I nodded slowly. I would have liked to disagree with him, but he was right. I had been unprepared for the Academy and I’d been unprepared for life on a starship. It could have been worse — I’d seen children failing Remedial Sewing and Advanced Creative Writing — but even so, I’d been one of the lucky ones. There were people my age who’d never been taught to read, but spent most of their time mouthing slogans and trying to find a job that would pay them enough to buy enough drink to blot out the pain of their lives.

Two hours later, I met the Infantry Company as they boarded the starship. I hadn’t been impressed with the infantrymen I’d seen on Heinlein, but this company looked much neater, carrying their bags in a disciplined manner. They weren’t allowed to carry their weapons onboard ship — safety regulations again — but even so, they looked tough enough to take the ship off us with their bare hands. I wondered, briefly, how the Marines would get along with them. I just hoped there wouldn’t be blood on the bulkheads.

“Infantry Captain Andrew Nolte reporting, sir,” their leader said, as three Sergeants escorted the men off their transport boat. The sublight vessel was only capable of ferrying them between the Earth and the Moon. I’d already detailed several crewmen to escort them to their temporary barracks. The ship was going to be crammed to bursting when the Ensigns arrived. “Where do you want us?”

“Welcome onboard, Major,” I said. There could only ever be one Captain on the ship, so Andrew would receive a verbal promotion while he was onboard. “We’ve cleared out two of the crew wardrooms for you, along with one of the holds for your equipment. How many men do you have?”

“They didn’t tell you?” Andrew asked. I shook my head. They’d told me that it would be a Company, but I’d seen Infantry Companies that had everything from ten men to three hundred. “I’ve got seventy men and five sergeants. We should have more, but the Generals insisted that Botany was going to be a safe posting and I could spare a couple of platoons and two sergeants.”

“Typical,” I agreed. It had been clear from the start that Captain Harriman had too few officers and men. The Jacques Delors should have had more crew. As it was, if we ran into trouble, we might not be able to deal with it. The Engineer had been complaining about the shortage of crewmen trained to repair the ship for weeks, according to the reports the Captain had filed. “Are your men equipped for shipboard life?”

“Don’t worry,” Andrew assured me. He understood my meaning, all right. Infantrymen had a certain reputation on starships. It was why they were normally entrusted to troop transports and stasis pods. “We won’t cause trouble. You won’t even know we’re here.”

I laughed. “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “We’re supposed to be departing soon, but things being what they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were delayed.”

“Exactly,” Andrew said. I found myself liking him, despite his career. He would have made a good starship officer. “Hurry up and wait.”

I shrugged. “Why are they sending an infantry company to Botany anyway?” I asked. It seemed rather odd to me and the orders had no explanation attached. “It doesn’t strike me as the kind of place an infantry company would be needed.”

“Just rumours, apparently,” Andrew said. The final infantrymen passed our position and marched onwards into the ship. The crewmen would be able to help them unpack and run through basic safety procedures with them. Unlike the reporters on the Devastator, they would probably be smart enough to listen. “You know what the Generals are like. They hear a rumour and suddenly everything has to be dropped until the rumour has been checked out.”

“I know just what you mean,” I said, remembering adventures on Heinlein. We’d been deployed in support of rapidly-mounted operations before on the planet’s surface. We’d just been lucky that there hadn’t been a second atrocity — as far as I knew. “We’ll get you there as soon as we can.”

“Oh, there’s no hurry,” Andrew assured me. He laughed, dryly. “Like you said, nothing ever happens there. We’re probably just wasting our time.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I saw them coming through the cameras in the docking tube before they reached the Marines. There were five of them, wearing uniforms that were…slovenly, at best. I had a moment of Déjà vu — seeing them as Lieutenant Hatchet must have seen us, years ago — before they came up to the Marines and presented their papers. No wonder the Marines had smiled when they’d seen us. They’d known, and probably heard, the chewing out we’d received. We had deserved worse than we’d got.

The scene didn’t improve as they stepped through the airlock. They should have walked in one by one, in accordance with safety regulations. Instead, two of them pushed through, propelled by the other five. They stepped dead on seeing me and the others, who hadn’t seen me yet, pushed them forward. I almost expected them to fall flat on their faces — which would have been an embarrassing welcome to the starship — but they managed to keep their footing, barely. The other three saw me and stared. I’d worn my dress uniform — I’d shined it specially — and looked practically perfect in every way. They looked like they were wearing unearned uniforms, compared to me.

“Ah,” one of them said. “We’re reporting for…”

I cut him off, making a big show of reading my chronometer. “And what time,” I demanded, with another flash of Déjà vu, “do you call this?”

The spokesman stumbled, and started to recover. I didn’t give him a chance. “It is now 1307,” I said, coldly. It was my impression of Captain Shalenko and it worked. To them, it must have been thoroughly intimidating. “Your orders specifically ordered you to report onboard at 1300 precisely. Instead, you are seven minutes late. Do you have a good explanation for this?”

I allowed my eye to trail across nervous faces, some defiant, some twitching, and smiled inwardly. “Well?”

“We were…ah, admiring the ship from outside,” one of the female Ensigns said, finally. I mentally gave her points for truthfulness. We’d admired the ship too before we’d boarded, only to run right into Lieutenant Hatchet. “We didn’t mean to be late.”

“And yet you disobeyed orders,” I said, icily. I paused, as if I had just made a shocking realisation. “Why are you not at attention? Were you given leave to stand at ease?”

They straightened up. If anything, they were worse than we had been. The line wasn’t straight; they weren’t angling themselves on me and their uniforms…I didn’t want to think about what some of them had been doing to their uniforms. If they’d worn dress uniform, they would at least have been presentable, but really! No one in their right mind should report onboard a starship wearing standard ship-worn uniforms. They weren’t really capable of making a good impression.

“Good,” I said, grudgingly. It wasn’t anything like good enough and I knew it. I just hoped they knew it as well. “Sound off, by the numbers.”

There was a moment’s pause while they tried to remember who should go first. It was generally from left to right, but evidently they hadn’t bothered to practice that either. I listened as they finally gave their names and ranks, nervously eyeing me as if I were a tiger contemplating my dinner.

“Ensign Allan Barras, reporting for duty, sir!

“Ensign Yianni Gerasimos, reporting for duty, sir!”

“Ensign Evgenia Agathe, reporting for duty, sir!”

“Ensign Geoffrey Murchison, reporting for duty, sir!”

“Ensign Sandra Chang, reporting for duty, sir!”

“So you at least know how to do that,” I said, as if they had barely convinced me that they were their names. I had already read their files and matched names to faces, but I wanted them to go right back to the basics. “I am Lieutenant John Walker; First Lieutenant John Walker. I am the second-in-command of this vessel, which means that I am your supervisor during your time on this ship. If you have problems, you come to me with them. If you have questions, you ask me. I will be far less annoyed if you ask me stupid questions than if you fuck up because you didn’t understand something. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” they said, in unison.

“You may believe that you are now officers,” I continued. Lieutenant Hatchet had given us a similar lecture. “You may believe that you are qualified to issue orders to crewmen, regardless of their time in service. That belief is a function of your own ignorance. You are shockingly unprepared for the life of a starship crewmen and we will have to train you as hard as we can. You have two choices. You can suck up what we teach you, apply yourself and learn as quickly as possible, or you can be put off this vessel. If you want to leave, say so now and save us all a lot of trouble in the future.”

There was a pause. No one took me up on the offer. “Good,” I said. “I will expect you to work hard to learn what we have to teach you. It may interest you to know that a third of Ensigns die on their first voyage — because they didn’t know basic facts and their ignorance killed them. If you listen, you will stay alive. You might even be promoted. Fuck up and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get yourself killed. If you’re unlucky, you’ll get someone else killed with you. You start out as the lowest of the low. If you learn, you will rise.”

I allowed my eyes to linger on Ensign Allan Barras for a long moment. “Ensign,” I said, coldly. “Why are you not wearing your dress uniform?”

He stumbled under my gaze. “I was informed that wearing a dress uniform was not required,” he said, finally. “I was…”

“Nonsense,” I said, allowing my tone to drop even colder. “UNPF Regulations specifically state that all newcomers to a starship — particularly one that is their new posting — are to wear their dress uniforms. You should have checked the data download we gave you with your orders, instead of listening to advice from someone who either decided to set you up for a fall, or simply didn’t know. The only acceptable excuse for not wearing a dress uniform is coming directly from another starship on transfer. You came directly from the Academy.”

I stared at him until he lowered his eyes. “One demerit for not wearing a dress uniform,” I said. I looked from Ensign to Ensign. “That goes for all of you. One demerit each for not wearing dress uniforms. Now… Ensign, why are you not wearing your Academy pin?”

I took five minutes over his uniform and ended up handing out three additional demerits. He’d worn jewellery — not for a religious purpose, which was permitted if frowned upon — and hadn’t taken care of his shoes. I finally turned to Ensign Yianni Gerasimos and studied her carefully. I could tell, by her shuffling, that she knew what I was going to say before I said it.”

“Tell me,” I said, pointing a long finger. “What is that?”

She flushed bright red. “My… ah, breasts, sir,” she said. She’d opened the buttons of her uniform to show an impressive cleavage. I could hear two of her fellows snickering very quietly and glared them into silence. “I thought…”

I cut her off. “You are required to be demure on duty at all times,” I said, coldly. “This is not a brothel or a clubhouse for boys and girls. This is a starship and a modicum of professional appearance is required at all times.” I held her with my eyes. “Or did you think that you could flash your tits at us and we would carry you on our backs? We don’t have the time or manpower for dead weight, Ensign.”

“Hang on,” Ensign Geoffrey Murchison said, angrily. “You can’t talk to her like that?”

“And how should I talk to her?” I demanded, fixing him with a gaze that could have killed. “A crewwoman on a starship is expected to meet certain standards. A person who is unable or unwilling to meet those standards has no place on the ship and will probably get someone killed. Did you do her homework for her? Did you carry her on your back at the Academy? One demerit for speaking out of turn. A second demerit for being rude to a senior officer.”

I turned back to Yianni. What sort of name was that? “It may interest you to know, Ensign, that one of the Ensigns on my last ship was raped by a passenger,” I informed her. “I suggest that you comport yourself more demurely in the future. One demerit for being improperly dressed and a second for not taking care of your uniform.”

I went through the others, one by one. Ensign Geoffrey Murchison only earned one demerit for his appearance. He’d go far if he learned to keep his tongue under control. The Academy hadn’t been allowed to punish insolence or do anything more than issue mild rebukes, but I had other options. He was young and clearly bright, but very unformed. I saw, for a long moment, just why Lieutenant Hatchet had stayed at her post for so long. The chance to shape a young mind was intoxicating.

And, compared to them, I felt very old.

“Twenty-seven demerits between you,” I said, finally. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience for any of us. I’d had to inspect them all, carefully. They’d had to stand at attention long enough to give them cramps. “Five on average, right? That isn’t too impressive, is it? What are we going to do with you?”

I allowed my gaze to pass over them again. “You are going to develop into proper officers here,” I said, coldly. “You will work off each and every one of your demerits and the experience will teach you one thing you lack — discipline. There are ships where discipline is a joke, but this isn’t one of them. You will develop into fine officers, or we will kill you trying to turn you into fine officers. Do you understand me?”

Their expressions were oddly amusing. “Good,” I said. “Now, stand at ease.” They relaxed. “In a moment, the Captain will welcome you onboard his ship. Afterwards, we will introduce you to the First Ensign and allow you ten minutes to settle into the wardroom — I suggest that some of you use that time to change into cleaner uniforms — you’ll be washing the other uniforms yourselves, just to remind you of how much time it takes to wash them. After that…”

I allowed myself an unpleasant grin, the kind of grin that moves towards a swimmer with a fin on top. “After that, Ensigns, we will begin your proper introduction to the vessel.”

“Attention on deck,” the Senior Chief said, as he entered. “Captain on the deck!”

I stood to attention as well and saluted the Captain — perfectly — as he entered. It looked coincidental, but I knew that the Captain would have been watching through the airlock’s cameras. I saw him cast his eyes over the Ensigns — who, at least, had managed to stand to attention properly — and wince slightly at Yianni’s shirt. The way she looked, she would have had more hopes of a career as a fashion model, rather than an Ensign. I remembered Ensign Gomez and winced myself. On Earth, a girl walking about like that in one of the malls would have been an open invitation to rape. I wondered, absently, just where she’d come from originally. I’d have bet good money it wasn’t from Earth.

“At ease,” the Captain said, finally. I listened as he ran through the same speech he’d given us, years ago. He hadn’t changed it in the slightest. It was odd how comforting I found that, even though the Ensigns had probably found it as intimidating, and yet inspiring, as we’d found it. I rather hoped so. They could afford to hate me — just as some of us had disliked Lieutenant Hatchet — but they couldn’t afford to hate the Captain. He was the father of the entire vessel.

“Attention,” I ordered finally, as the Captain departed the airlock. “Senior Chief?”

“Please follow me,” the Senior Chief said. Please or no please, it was an order and I was relieved to see that the Ensigns followed it unquestioningly. The Senior Chief took them on the long way around to their wardroom, showing them something of the ship’s layout — seemingly by accident. The Ensigns should have studied the unclassified diagrams of the ship that we’d provided in the data pack, but if they hadn’t…well, we were offering them a chance to learn. They stared around as they moved, trying to drink it all in. They’d learn, I decided, even if the experience wasn’t comfortable for them. I just hoped that none of them would ever end up kidnapping people for the UN.

The Ensign’s wardroom was smaller than I remembered, or perhaps it was just that I’d been getting used to a Lieutenant’s cabin. There were still the original eight bunks, one of which was occupied by Sally, who gave me an unreadable look as the Ensigns filed into the wardroom. I hoped that none of them had expected to be First Ensign, even though they all had the same graduation date; Sally would outrank them until they were promoted, which would happen unless they screwed up by the numbers. I nodded to Sally and left them to get acquainted, with a final warning that I’d see them on Deck Three in ten minutes. I was deliberately pushing them as hard as I could. How quickly could they change, make themselves presentable, and then reach Deck Three? It was just possible to do it all in ten minutes…

“Interesting lot,” the Senior Chief commented, as we walked towards Deck Three. Deck Three was generally used for storage space and sickbay. I’d introduce them to the other sections of the ship one by one. “Did you notice how badly they were dressed?”

“I handled out demerits for it,” I remarked, crossly. We hadn’t looked much better, but at least we’d worn dress uniforms. “Is there a reason for that?”

“Standards are slipping everywhere,” the Senior Chief said. I wondered if he’d heard it through the Brotherhood grapevine, or simply by keeping his ear to the ground. We’d have to talk once we were inside the wormhole and well away from Earth. Until then, there wasn’t much I could tell him. “The Academy has been trying to rush more cadets through on an emergency program — they think they’re going to have to meet much higher requirements in the next couple of years. I’m actually surprised they didn’t send us the full eight Ensigns, but maybe they’re trying to spread the newcomers out a bit.”

I frowned. “They’re speeding up the program?” I asked. I’d been at the Academy for four years and I had missed plenty that I’d needed to know. “What the hell are they going to cut out of the program?”

“Fucked if I know,” the Senior Chief said. He lowered his voice for a moment. “I bet you anything you care to put forward that they won’t have cut any of the political indoctrination.”

“Shit,” I said. I’d been taught the rudiments of using a spacesuit, operating in zero-gravity, piloting a shuttle, basic maintenance — which was really replacing a broken component with another component — and much else besides. How much had the Ensigns been allowed to skip? “We’d better get ready to test them on everything, just in case.”

I scowled. System Command had played around with our departure date again and now we were scheduled to depart in two days. I had that long to break the Ensigns in and remove, if necessary, any Ensigns who simply couldn’t adjust to life on a starship. It was quite possible that one or more of them would be far more of a liability than an assert, someone who had no idea how inexperienced they were until it was far too late. I’d have to weed them out quickly…because if we entered the wormhole, we couldn’t turn back. System Command were already bitching to the Captain because we hadn’t left earlier.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Get the dummy spacesuits and the retch gas. We may as well start with the fun test first.”

Sally led the Ensigns in and stood to attention. I checked my chronometer openly and allowed myself a slight smile. They’d made it — barely. Hopefully, they’d have learned the unspoken lesson as well; they needed to listen to and learn from Sally. She could talk to them as an equal, while they couldn’t talk to me, or even the Senior Chief, as anything, but subordinate to superior.

“At ease,” I said, checking their appearances with a glance. They showed few signs of haste, probably thanks to Sally. “There are five spacesuits on that rack there. Put them on quickly and go right into the next room. Sally, remain here.”

The Ensigns struggled, I saw, without surprise. It wasn’t easy to put a spacesuit on without assistance, even though it was something that the Academy taught everyone. Normally, they’d have help from their superiors…and that wasn’t something they’d have if they were alone. They were treating it as a race, I realised. Yianni was struggling with hers, but Allan, instead of helping her, was trying to beat her to the punch. They hadn’t realised that they needed to cooperate.

A moment later, Adam was finished and moving right into the next room, through the pressure barrier. A more experienced officer might have wondered why the barrier was there. They ran into the room…and, a moment later, we heard the sound of retching. The suits hadn’t been fixed properly.

“First lesson,” I said, as they staggered back into the room. The interior of their suits was truly disgusting. “Check everything, even if someone tells you it’s safe. Trust no one when it comes to your personal equipment. Take no chances. It’s not a race, you know. Why did none of you check the telltales on the suits?”

I smiled at their expressions. This time, the experience had been humiliating, but harmless. The next time, it might be lethal…and I could see the realisation sinking in. Despite their inexperience, perhaps there was something that could be made of them.

“Clean yourselves up,” I added, more gently. “We’ll reconvene at Ninth Watch.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Stand by to open the wormhole,” the Captain ordered. “Helm?”

Ensign Yianni Gerasimos looked nervous — and considerably more demure than she had on her arrival — but somehow also confident. She would have practiced in simulations at the Academy, yet now she was doing it for real. “Wormhole coordinates set, Captain,” she said, carefully. “We are targeted on Botany.”

I checked my own console. I hadn’t realised, back when I’d been an Ensign, how many safety precautions the Captain had had in place. I’d believed that I was solely responsible and anything that went wrong would be my fault. The Captain had had the Pilot and a Lieutenant watching over my electronic shoulder, ready to intervene if I charted a course right into a planet’s atmosphere or somewhere else equally dangerous.

“Good,” the Captain said. “Engineering, this is the Captain. Status of the Jump Drive?”

“Jump Drive inline and ready for operation, Captain,” the Engineer said. I hadn’t realised how involved he’d been either. “You may open the wormhole at will.”

“Excellent,” the Captain said, gravely. “Helm, open the wormhole and take us in.”

My display altered as space warped in front of us, opening up into a wormhole. A person watching from the observation blister would have seen an event horizon forming in front of us, opening up into a funnel that sucked us down out of normal space and time, but my display merely showed the energy flux. It reminded me of what the Senior Chief had said about how few people really understood the Jump Drive, or even how it worked. We were dependent on a piece of technology we barely controlled.

“Wormhole entrance closed, sir,” I reported, as the wormhole sealed itself behind us. The display suggested that we were trapped in our own little universe. In theory, it was possible for another starship to inject itself into our wormhole, but as far as I knew, no one had ever tried. No one expected an attack inside a wormhole. It would require so much luck that no one could hope to pull it off. It was barely possible to track the wormhole vector to get a rough idea of where a starship was headed. Even that wasn’t perfect. A starship could emerge from one wormhole and promptly open a second one, altering heading as it did so. “We’re clear.”

“Good,” the Captain said. He looked down at Yianni. “Good work, Ensign.”

I saw her flush slightly with the praise. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

The Captain keyed his console. “All hands, this is the Captain,” he said. “We are now in wormhole space. Stand down from alert. I repeat, stand down from alert.” He looked over at me as he unkeyed his console. “Lieutenant, you may begin your exercise sequences now, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. It didn’t matter if I were ‘pleased’ or not. We’d discussed the exercises beforehand when we’d been planning the voyage. I keyed my own console and smiled thinly. “All Ensigns, report to the bridge. I repeat; all Ensigns report to the bridge.”

“You have command,” the Captain said. He stood up and headed towards the hatch. “Try not to crash into an asteroid.”

I blinked, before realising that I was being teased and chuckled. There was nothing in wormhole space to ram, but the old good-luck blessing still worked. The Captain left the bridge, pausing only to accept the salutes from the entering Ensigns — they knew better, now, than to allow anything to delay them from answering a summons to the bridge — as they entered. They’d had their status drummed into them by myself, Sally and the Senior Chief. They’d learnt that their ranks hadn’t yet been earned. It seemed hopeless, at times, until I remembered that we had probably seemed equally hopeless as well. Five of us had reached lieutenant; the sixth — Sally — had run afoul of the Promotion Board.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and keyed my console. By long tradition, only the Captain could sit in the Captain’s chair, so I logged the change of command and stood up. I could have sat in the watch chair, or at any one of the consoles, but I thought it looked more impressive if I stood up. I looked at the Ensigns and was gratified to see how quickly they stood to attention. I had just realised that Ensign Sandra Chang was missing when she ran in through the hatch, breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, quickly. “I was just caught up in my work…”

“Indeed?” I asked. “I believe that you were taught how to stand to attention?” I watched as she stumbled into position. “What exactly were you doing?”

“I was helping Lieutenant Kennedy with the inventory and we were in the midst of the medical supplies when you called me to the bridge,” she said. “She told me to go, but I had to put down the lists first before I left her.”

“Really,” I said. She held my eyes and I decided that she was probably telling the truth. If she were lying — and stupid enough to invoke the name of a Lieutenant in the lie — it would come out soon enough. “Why did you run onto the bridge?” I spoke again before she could answer. “Officers are expected to maintain a basic decorum at all times, as you know. What would have happened if a passenger had seen you running through the corridors?”

I smiled, slightly. It was odd, but passengers onboard starships were regarded as minor children at best, irritations at worst. On second thought, remembering the reporters, there might be a point to the concept. The reporters had nearly gotten themselves killed more than once. Part of me still wished that someone had arranged an accident for Frank Wong before he died on Heinlein.

“They would think that something was wrong and panic,” I said, coldly. “Passengers have no sense of what is right and wrong onboard a starship. Instead of waiting in their cabins for orders, they might run around the corridors screaming, spreading the panic still further. If they did that, how much of the starship’s corridors would they block up?”

I looked at her. “One demerit for running in the corridors,” I said. I saw the suppressed groan. Working off demerits involved hard and disgusting work, or hours upon hours of exercises in the gym. She already had too many to work off. We didn’t allow Ensigns to work them off while on duty. It would be the middle of next week by the time they had a chance to work them all off. “I trust that the lesson is taken?”

She nodded, slowly. “Good,” I said. “Evgenia, I believe that you had the highest scores on the tactical consoles at the Academy? Perhaps you would like to take the console?”

“Yes, sir,” Ensign Evgenia Agathe said. She was a slight girl, with an appearance that suggested that she was barely entering her teens, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Given enough time, she might even be mistaken for adult — as well as a competent officer. “Ah…is it set to exercise settings?”

I smiled. “Well spotted, Ensign,” I said. At the moment, the console was live, even though there was nothing to shoot at inside the wormhole. “If you’d used the console without checking, it would have earned you five demerits.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, tightly. It was a little cruel — five demerits would have pushed her over the line and earned her harsher punishment — but it had to be done. She started to look for the switch they would have shown her on the Academy, but she was wasting her time. They’d been removed from starships for over twenty years. I’d made the same mistake myself.

“It isn’t there,” I said, and keyed my console. “Engineering, this is Lieutenant Walker. Disengage the bridge controls. We’re going to be running simulations for the next hour.”

“Certainly,” the Engineer said. I guessed that he was just as happy that the Ensigns would be out of his hair. They couldn’t be trusted in Engineering until much later, and even then, they would be carefully supervised. “Authorisation code?”

“Alpha-Three-Walker,” I said, clearly. “Disengage the systems now.”

“Bridge controls disengaged,” the Engineer said. “Have fun.”

I smiled. It was true that we’d used the system for games — games with a very practical purpose — and gambling on Devastator, but we couldn’t do that here until the Ensigns could be trusted to wipe their own bottoms without supervision. I reached over Evgenia’s shoulder, noting the SIMULATION ACTIVE icon that had appeared in the display, and brought up the first simulation, a missile attack on the Jacques Delors from another starship.

“All right,” I said. I pushed as much drama into my voice as I could. “The defence of this vessel is in your hands. Your actions will determine if we survive to tell the tale or die in a ball of exploding plasma. And, if you last more than ten minutes, I’ll cancel half of your demerits.”

“Yes, sir,” Evgenia said. I was pleased to see that she had no illusions about my offer. I wouldn’t have given her something easy to do to work off even one demerit. “When do I begin?”

I touched the console. “Now.”

The tactical simulation, I was surprised to note, had been improved in the wake of the UN’s war with the Heinlein Resistance Fleet. Originally, it had consisted of a makeshift pirate vessel — a converted freighter — that somehow held and fired more missiles than was physically possible. Now, it featured a Heinlein starship flying the Skull and Crossbones and performing rapid and unpredictable manoeuvres to prevent its firing patterns becoming predicable. If it were real, we would have shot back with our own missiles, but now…all Evgenia had to do was keep us unhurt. By program fiat, the starship could survive no less than three hits, even with nukes. A fourth hit would be devastating.

I smiled. At first, the missiles had come in one by one and had been easy to knock down. As the simulation progressed, they had started to come in pairs, and then in entire salvos, each one packing enough power to take out the entire starship. Evgenia coped well at first — I’d have been surprised if she didn’t — but as the missile barrage grew stronger, I could see the tension as she bent over the console. It took upwards of five to ten seconds of continuous burn from the lasers to take out a missile and while a point defence laser was dealing with one missile, another could become a problem. Some of the missiles failed to find a targeting vector and slipped by into space harmlessly — the tactical program counted hitting one of them as a loss — but most of them angled in on the ship, looking for weaknesses.

“Shit,” Evgenia said, suddenly. I let it pass, even though that should have earned her a reprimand; the missiles had suddenly split apart into smaller missiles, each one racing towards her position. We’d seen that trick before on Heinlein, even though the smaller missiles couldn’t carry large warheads, and it never failed to irritate the point defence controllers. The UN kept promising that they’d find a way to identify such missiles before they separated, but I wasn’t holding my breath. If tactical experts like Captain Harriman and Captain Shalenko hadn’t been able to separate them I doubted that anyone else could, at least in a way we could use. “Sir, I…”

“Focus,” I snapped.

The screen flickered red suddenly; a missile had slipped through her point defence web and struck the ship. In real life, the entire ship would have heaved, power fluctuations would have torn through the ship and vital components would have burned out, causing havoc. In a simulator, we could fix all the damage with the touch of a button and study our mistakes endlessly. Evgenia swore again and redoubled her efforts, but now the swarms of missiles were coming in faster and faster. The simulators didn’t care about the drive field limitations that we — and Heinlein, among the other colonies — had to respect. We could test our Ensigns against missiles that didn’t — yet — exist in real life. The screen flickered red again…and this time the computer ruled that half of the point defence weapons had been knocked out of commission. I looked at the timer — seven minutes — and smiled. A moment later, the ship was destroyed…

“Pause simulation,” I ordered. “Not too badly done, Ensign.”

“I lost,” Evgenia said. She hesitated. “Why don’t we let the computer do it?”

“We use the computer to support your efforts,” I pointed out. It was true. Once Evgenia had marked a missile down for destruction, the computers had taken over and burned the missiles out of space. “We don’t let the computers do everything because they can be tricked, or spoofed, in ways that a human would see through. The best tactical officers learn an intuition about such matters that computers never develop.” I paused. “Any other questions?”

“Yes,” Evgenia said, slowly. “Why do we have imaginary missiles in the simulation?”

“You handled yourself well against missiles that moved faster than anything known in space,” I explained. “If you can cope with them, you can cope with the slower missiles we have to deal with in real life — without thinking that you know everything you could possibly face. Our enemies develop new weapons and tricks, Ensign, and they’ve used them to surprise us before. We put you through hell in hopes that it will keep you alive.”

I looked over at Ensign Geoffrey Murchison, he who had stood up for Yianni. “Well, Ensign?” I asked. “Would you like to try?”

Geoffrey gulped. “Do I get the demerit reduction as well?”

“Ten minutes,” I said, motioning Evgenia away from the tactical console. She looked vaguely surprised that the seat wasn’t covered in sweat. “Good luck.”

Geoffrey lasted eight minutes before he lost his ship as well. He hadn’t done badly at first — and he’d clearly been watching what had happened to Evgenia, learning from her experience — but he missed a scatter-missile before it scattered, right into his face. The point defence computers overrode at once, but it was too late to prevent the three fatal hits. He didn’t swear and listened carefully when I outlined what had gone wrong.

“There are no clues in the display as to what missile is what,” I said, “but if you watch carefully, you may notice slight hints. That one, however, drove in like a standard missile and you ignored it until it was too late.”

Geoffrey blinked. “But… no clues,” he said. It wasn’t entirely accurate, but picking up on the clues would require experience. “That’s not fair.”

I snorted. “Whoever told you that the universe was fair?” I asked. “Yianni — your turn. Try and last longer then Geoffrey.”

Yianni lasted five minutes. I replaced her with Sandra and she lasted seven minutes. Allan, who went last, had studied carefully and managed to last nine minutes, but only Sally — who’d been doing it for years — managed to cross the ten minute limit. It wasn’t so useful in her case. Because of her age and general experience, she hadn’t been given a demerit for years.

“That,” I said, pointing to Sally, “is what you have to match.” I smiled at their expressions. Sally had made it look easy. “You’ll be drilling time and time again on this console — and others, set up down below. You’ll be registered in the ship’s computers and anyone who survives longer than nine minutes will receive a merit point. Anyone who dies before passing the five minute mark will receive one demerit instead.”

“I don’t understand,” Evgenia said, slowly. “I’ve studied tactical records at the Academy and no ship ever had an engagement like that one.” She nodded towards the console. “Why do we have to practice like that?”

I smiled. “First, the engagement we created for you is theoretically possible,” I explained. “I admit that no ship has ever had to fight such an intensive battle, but it is possible. Furthermore, there are… issues in real battles that don’t arise in simulations, and if we programmed the simulation to let you only practice what we have experienced, you’d be at a disadvantage. The purpose of this training session is to teach you how to think and act quickly, not to practice real battles.

“Second, because we said so,” I added. “You need to learn. Once you learn, you will understand the basis for this training session — and others — far more thoroughly if I simply told you the answers. In time, you may find yourself teaching others.”

I grinned, nastily. “Now we’ve done the easy part,” I said, “we can turn to the harder part. How many of you have ever flown a starship before?”

The helm console, rigged to simulate actual flight operations, lit up at my touch. “It’s time to see if you can dock us with Orbit One — who wants to go first?”

Evgenia took the helm, and then Yianni, and finally Allen before we ran out of time and they had to go to their political briefing. If I’d been commanding a real starship, I would have probably had them strangled and then thrown out of the airlock; they crashed the ship into Orbit One twice and avoided disaster by the skin of their teeth seven times. A starship handles like a wallowing pig near an orbit station… and the slightest mistake could be disastrous.

“You’ll be doing that again and again too,” I said, at the end. “If you don’t learn that quickly, you’re going to get us all killed.”

Afterwards, I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. God help me, but I was growing to like them. How had Lieutenant Hatchet coped with it?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I hit the deck hard enough to hurt, even though the padding.

“Uncle?” Master Sergeant Erwin Herzog asked sweetly. “You’ve not been keeping up with your practice, have you?”

I rubbed my jaw slowly, knowing that it could have been a great deal worse. I was almost certain that he’d pulled that punch, and yet it felt as if someone had smashed the entire starship into me. The contest bout had been my idea, but I hadn’t had the time to keep up with training on the Devastator and I had slipped, badly. He’d knocked me down in just under a minute.

“Uncle,” I agreed, thoughtfully. I ached in several places and I hadn’t landed a single punch. I’d treated him as I’d treated Jase and his friends down on Earth…and that had been a mistake. When he’d dared me to challenge him, I had accepted…and realised, too late, that it was a trap. He’d knocked me down with ease. “That was sore.”

“Hard training, easy mission,” Erwin said. It was a Marine saying that had never made its way into the Infantry, or, for that matter, the Academy. “Easy training, hard mission.”

“Touché,” I agreed, sourly. “How are the new Ensigns coming along?”

“Three of them will make…adequate martial arts artists in a few months if they work at it,” Erwin said, helping me to my feet. “The other two won’t make anything other than journeymen at best, I’m afraid. Too much reluctance to try to land the killing blow, or perhaps too much fear of pain. We could beat that out of them if they went to Camp Currie, but here…well, there are limits to what we can teach them.” He shrugged. “I trust you’re not thinking of challenging one of them to regain your pride?”

I started to sputter before realising that I was being teased. It wasn’t as if I were short on possible sparring partners. There were the other Lieutenants, Sally herself — although that would have bent regulations almost to breaking point — and, of course, Andrew’s infantrymen. I could see several of them gathered around a Marine and an Infantryman, watching them pushing at each other. It looked more like a hazing rite than an actual bout, but Andrew and a pair of Marines were watching them carefully. We had already had one bloody fistfight and didn’t need a second one.

The relationship between the Marines and the Infantrymen was an interesting one, I’d decided. The Infantrymen were determined not to be outdone by a bunch of overpaid pretty boys — their words — while the Marines were equally determined to rub the Infantry’s collective nose in their own inferiority. I would have bet on Erwin’s twenty-one Marines against all of the Infantry Company if it were a normal under-trained Company, but Andrew was apparently a good officer. Their stats, according to Erwin, were better than anyone had a right to expect.

It had also led to an interesting series of encounters. Some had challenged others to grudge matches, while others had produced illegal decks of playing cards and engaged in cross-unit fraternisation. The joint training had broken down into several fistfights before their respective leaders restored order, but an hour later Andrew and Erwin had been arm-wrestling for superiority, or a point of order. Neither of them knew how to quit and they’d managed to sprain each other’s wrists. The Doctor had made a number of sarcastic comments about how many small injuries she was being called upon to treat, but after a few days, they seemed to come to a halt — mostly. The two leaders were also very inventive when it came to punishment duty.

I smiled, thinly. If nothing else, the starship was cleaner than it had been in years.

“No,” I assured him, as I staggered over to the dressing bench and pulled off the tunic I’d been wearing. Being naked in front of men and women had bothered me when I’d gone to the Academy, but I was used to it by now and wasn’t particularly surprised when Erwin joined me. I was glad I hadn’t seen him naked before I’d been volunteered for fight training. I would never have dared raise a hand to him. “They’re not ready for that, are they?”

“Be glad of it,” Erwin said, as we stepped into the showers. The warm water sluiced off the sweat and drained away down towards the recycler. Cleaning that was yet another punishment duty. “I’ve served on ships where the Captain used force to keep his people in line. It never ended well.”

I nodded as I washed away the dirt and stepped out of the shower. Water is always at a premium on a starship and while we could, in theory, mine an asteroid or a comet for water ice, it wasn’t something the Captain would want to do if it could be avoided. It was against regulations to remain in the showers for more than two minutes, unless you had special permission, but I wasn’t surprised when Erwin stepped out of the shower just after me. We’d all learned to time it properly, although the shower in the Ensigns’ Wardroom was configured to only give them two minutes and nothing more.

“So,” Erwin said, afterwards. We were alone in the changing room. “I understand that you have something to talk to me about?”

“Not here,” I said, quickly. I’d broached the issue with the Senior Chief and he had insisted on approaching Erwin personally. I hadn’t attempted to prevent him. They’d been friends for years. The Master Sergeant might not listen to me, but he’d listen to the Senior Chief. “Can we talk in your quarters?”

“I don’t have any fancy quarters,” the Master Sergeant said, dryly. I flushed, remembering that all of the Marines shared a single wardroom. The Infantry had had to be spread out, but the Marines practically lived in each other’s pockets. They shared a closeness that even the best Ensigns never achieved. “Your cabin, John?”

I nodded and led him through the corridors, before we turned and entered my cabin. I took a moment to wave him to a chair and turn on my music player, accessing a file of heavy metal music. Midgard Metal, the singer and songwriter, wasn’t entirely to my taste, but anyone trying to listen in to our conversation — I was almost sure that the cabins were probably bugged — would have some problems. It was one of the ideas I’d learned from the Heinlein files. They even included instructions on how to subvert and overthrow the government, something that had convinced me that the system worked better than Earth. I couldn’t have hoped to find information like that on Earth.

“All right,” I said, as the strains of Darkness Falls Upon Her Heart echoed through the cabin. “Listen carefully.”

I outlined everything that had happened at Heinlein, from the deaths of innocent civilians to Ensign Gomez’s rape and my determination to overthrow the system before it killed us all, or led the Earth to ruin. I knew I was taking a chance, but I trusted the Senior Chief…and we’d need the Marines to help us. Without them, it would be much harder to seize the fleet. Without the fleet, the entire plan was dead in the water.

“Interesting,” he said, when I’d finished. “What do you plan to do afterwards? Declare yourself ruler of the galaxy?”

“Hell, no,” I said, angrily. I didn’t want the job and I knew no one who could be trusted with it, even if the UN’s experience suggested that interstellar government couldn’t work. “We just end the war — without the Peace Force, the UN can’t fight the war — and declare peace. We pull the infantry off Terra Nova and prevent further invasions, from anyone.”

I didn’t bother with emotional appeals. Erwin would either go along with it or he would refuse. If the latter, we were in serious trouble. If something happened to me, now, the entire plan might be blown out of the water.

“It might work,” he agreed, finally. “You know, of course, that some form of interstellar trade will have to continue?”

“Yes,” I said, flatly. I suspected that Heinlein, Williamson’s World and maybe even Iceberg would corner the market on interstellar freighters, but that hardly mattered to me. Freighters couldn’t be used to wage war. If we prevented anyone else from building warships and didn’t launch any invasions ourselves, interstellar society wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the war.

“And there’ll be a bloodbath when the locals realise that the Infantry no longer has access to orbital weapons,” Erwin added. “What will you do about that?”

“Withdraw them as quickly as possible,” I repeated. “I don’t think we should be supporting them any longer than it takes to withdraw them. The local resistance fighters might even back off and allow us to pull them off the planet, along with any collaborators the UN created over the years. God knows, we can even try them for war crimes.”

“If I agree to help,” Erwin said, “that’s my price. I want genuine war crimes trials for the infantry. I don’t want my Marines contaminated by their…attitude to war.”

“I understand,” I agreed. Personally, I would take some delight in finally seeing General Hoover and the rest of his staff brought to book for war crimes against civilians. They’d probably use the following orders defence, but that meant little to me. They shouldn’t have followed the orders in the first place.

“Did they have any choice?” Erwin asked, when I said that out loud. “What would have happened to them if they had refused to follow orders?”

I scowled. “Point taken,” I said. The Generals would probably have been reduced in rank. The common Infantrymen would be court-martialled and shot. They hadn’t had much choice… but I still wanted to hurt them for what they’d done. “Will you help us?”

“I’ve been in the service for thirty years,” Erwin said. His voice darkened. “I’ve seen hundreds of my friends lost, their lives squandered, because some moron back on Earth screwed up and sent them to die. I know other Marines who feel the same way too, but really… what could we do about it? The Brotherhood couldn’t help us.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you trust the Brotherhood?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I trusted the Senior Chief, and yet… there was no way to know who was really on the far end of the computer network. The Brotherhood seemed to be composed of shadows and little else, although I was unsurprised to realise that Erwin was a member. His friend had probably invited him to join as well. “I think that I’d prefer to keep them out of it if possible.”

“A wise choice,” Erwin agreed, slowly. He looked down at his hands for a long moment. “I believe that most of the Marines would join without hesitation, if given an opportunity. Do you want me to speak with them?”

“Not now,” I said. “I want you to talk to them after we leave Botany. I don’t know where Andrew’s sympathies lie and I don’t want to risk opening communications with him yet.”

“I think he would have made an excellent Marine,” Erwin said. He grinned, suddenly. “If you tell him I told you that, I’ll have to kick your face in. You could probably convince him to join afterwards, but at the moment… well, he’s just got to worry about his men and Botany. It’s going to be a hardship posting.”

I made a mental note to review the files as soon as I could. “I understand,” I said. “Thank you.”

“One final point,” Erwin said. “What about the Captain?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t been allowing myself to think about that, but he was right. The Captain would be the ideal leader for our conspiracy, except his family tied him to the UN and the status quo. I would have followed him anyway, but how could I ask him to lead us against his family? His family had gotten him the command and ensured he kept it, despite his unconventional outlook and methods. He wouldn’t want to wage war on them, or even, as I intended to, prevent them from waging war against anyone else.

“Nothing,” I said, shivering inside. How could we remove the Captain from power? I knew that there was no choice, but to relieve him, somehow, yet…I couldn’t move against him. I’d have to cross that bridge sooner or later, and yet I hoped it would be later. Perhaps something else would intervene. “We can’t risk telling him anything.”

Erwin nodded and left.

I spoke to the Senior Chief that evening and compared notes. I hadn’t realised just how much the non-commissioned ranks saw of the ships, or how they worked. The Senior Chief knew hundreds of people who might be willing to help us, if approached properly. The Brotherhood might even be used to vouch for some of the recruits, without trusting them completely. He agreed with me that it would be a bad idea to approach the Captain, although he insisted that the Captain was not to be harmed.

“It may not come down to a mutiny now,” he said, “but if it does, you can remove the Captain without hurting him. Don’t even think about killing him.”

“I understand,” I said. I didn’t want to lose the Senior Chief and I understood. Captain Harriman wasn’t someone who could be killed without hesitation. “I won’t hurt him if it can be avoided.”

He scowled at me, but accepted the point. “Very well,” he agreed. “One final point, then. I think that you should speak to Sally. She needs something to keep herself going.”

“But…” I began, and then shook my head. I’d already decided that we wouldn’t approach any of the Ensigns, but I’d known Sally back when I’d been an Ensign myself and knew she could be trusted. More to the point, she was growing more and more withdrawn by the day and might even be considering jumping ship. I needed her and not just to supervise the Ensigns. It was at times like this when I missed Kitty. She would have known just what to say. “I understand, Chief.”

Sally almost laughed at it when I finally approached her. “You’re telling me that you intend to overthrow the government?” She asked, when I told her — in general — of what I was planning. I didn’t mention either the Marines or the Senior Chief. Her laugh would probably have earned her a demerit under other circumstances. It was high-pitched and hating. “John, it’s nice of you to care, but…”

I looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time in a while. She was sullen and withdrawn in many ways, her eyes dark and filled with shadows. She was teaching newcomers what they needed to suppress her career and go onwards, while she remained behind, a permanent Ensign and then a lowly officer on a fuelling station or a transport. I saw the rage boiling behind her eyes and the frustration that might turn to violence. Sally had nothing to live for — now.

“I do care,” I said, and took her arm. She stared at me. Touching a lower-ranked officer like that was illegal and could land me in deep shit — I had no powerful friends like Frank Wong had had. “Sally, we can change the world, if we plan it carefully and strike when the time is right…and I’m going to need you to do it. Will you help?”

“I want them dead,” she said, angrily. She looked up at me, her gaze tinged with suspicion. “There, I said it. Are you satisfied?”

I smiled, suddenly realising what she thought. “I wouldn’t be talking to you to the strains of Captain Ward and his Quest for Grim Reaper if I wanted to record this conversation,” I pointed out. “Sally, it’s no joke.”

“Prove it,” Sally hissed. “What kind of indiscretion are you trying to lure me into? Who’s jerking your cock anyway? Why would you, of all people, work for Intelligence, or Security?”

“I’m not working for either of them,” I said, patiently. I hadn’t expected outright disbelief. “Sally, just how badly have I just compromised myself?”

“Son of a fucking bitch,” Sally said. “You are serious!”

“Yes,” I said, flatly. “I can’t promise you revenge for everything you’ve suffered, but I can promise you that it won’t happen to anyone else, if we strike when the time is right! Do you think that you would remain an Ensign in a properly-run fleet? How would you like a chance to realise your ambitions and rise to your proper heights?”

I held her tightly. “You didn’t deserve any of what happened to you,” I said. “Do you remember the hopes and dreams we had at the Academy? We can make them real?”

“I wish,” Sally said. Her voice became doubtful, pleading, and my heart went out to her. “I’ll help, John, but how far can we get?”

I winked at her. “As far as we need to go,” I said, and kissed her. I was breaking regulations, but I didn’t care. Besides, it would help convince her that I was telling the truth. “We can go as far as we want.”

After a moment, she kissed me back.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Botany, I discovered one night in my cabin, was perhaps the only world where the files I obtained from Heinlein and the information available to me from the UNPF computer files largely agreed. Heinlein itself was a democracy with an earned franchise, or a military-run state, depending on whom you believed, but Botany…well, the files agreed on all of the major points and most of the minor issues. The only real difference lay in the politics, and that was no surprise.

“Emergence complete,” the Pilot said, as the wormhole closed behind us.

“Local space appears to be clear, sir,” I said, from the tactical console. I’d hoped that the Ensigns would be allowed to handle the emergence from the wormhole into normal space, but the Captain had discontinued that practice as raider attacks increased, even though statistically it was unlikely we would be attacked right out of the wormhole. It was regrettable. We could have used it as a prize for the most innovative Ensign. I’d had them solving puzzles all week. “No sign of any intruders.”

“Good,” the Captain said, from his command chair. “Pilot, take us towards the planet.”

“Aye, sir,” the Pilot said. The hum of the ship’s drive increased as the Pilot powered it up and took us towards the planet. “We will reach standard orbit in thirty minutes, sir.”

I smiled as the image of local space started to fill up. Botany simply wasn’t a very interesting system. It had three rocky planets, one gas giant and a handful of comets. The gas giant might be suitable for mining, later, but so far no one had bothered to invest in a cloud-scoop. In theory, one day Botany itself would develop a space industry that would need fuel from the gas giant, but I wasn’t holding my breath. The files from both Earth and Heinlein agreed that any civilisation forming on Botany would be a long time coming. The only other sign of space-based activity was the station orbiting the planet and a handful of satellites in high orbit. It seemed rather insecure, but then, Botany had had little to loot — until now.

The files had agreed that Botany had originally been rated as a seventy-percent planet, a planet that had been suitable for quick and easy terraforming into an Earth-like world. I’d been surprised that they had even considered it, but back then no one had known for sure how many planets there were out there to be colonised, or how many of them were like Earth. The settlement rights had been bought by an Australian-based investment group — it had taken me several days to work out what an Australian had been; Australia was now part of the Pan-Asian Zone — and they’d started terraforming the planet. They’d been well on the way to establishing a habitable world when disaster had stuck.

At this point, the files diverged. The UNPF files referred only to mild sabotage by socially misguided rebels with a cause, a description that could have fitted the Heinlein Resistance, along with all the other resistance groups. The Heinlein files waxed lyrical about environmentally-friendly terrorists who had seen the terraforming effort as an assault on nature itself and had somehow managed to sabotage the program. Two years later, the planet was barely habitable, but swept with massive dust storms and other problems that made building a sustaining civilisation very difficult. The Australians had tried to fix the problem, breeding up newer forms of plant life in the hope it would stabilise the planet, but nothing seemed to work. The UN eventually took over the planet and most of the Australian settlers moved to Oz, which at least had the benefit of not being a dusty hellhole.

“Lieutenant Walker,” the Captain ordered, “confirm with the Infantry that they are ready to head down to the planet.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I turned the console over to Lieutenant Hafiz and left the bridge. The infantry weren’t looking forward to their new posting, from their Captain to the lowest soldier. Andrew himself had been sleeping with two female crewmen, according to rumour, just to try to forgot the hellhole waiting for his men. They’d done their jobs too well and had been exiled from Earth. I wished — now — that I’d dared discuss revolution with him. The risk hadn’t been worth taking.

The UN had rapidly decided that Botany was a useless world. Although the atmosphere was breathable — and some of the more optimistic projections suggested that it might even settle down and become habitable in a few hundred years — no one in their right mind would want to live there. It had experimented with moving some of the remaining human tribes from the desert regions of Earth there, but it had been pointless. No one knew what had happened to them.

And then someone had had a brainwave. The UN had been taking over law and order on Earth for years, but it was causing them problems, because the UN’s ideology made it bad at handling law and order. Back then, back when it had had to care what people thought, it had a bad reputation for coddling criminals and not executing them, no matter how bad they were. The unnamed beauecrats — only a group of beauecrats could come up with something so stupid — had suggested exiling them to Botany instead. If they lived or died there — and both were possible as the planet couldn’t support large settlements — they wouldn’t be the UN’s problem any longer. The idea was taken up at once and several thousand criminals were dumped on the planet, the very dregs of society. Serial killers, mass murderers, paedophiles, religious fanatics and — inevitably — a growing percentage of people who had offended the UN in some way. There was no shortage of them.

I stepped into the shuttlebay and looked at the infantrymen as they formed up into ranks. They were wearing desert uniforms, specially adapted to Botany, and looked very professional, except for their faces. They looked, male and female alike, looked as if they were being sent to their own execution after a show trial. Andrew was inspecting them, one by one, and making reassuring comments, but his heart wasn’t in it. He knew, as well as they did, that most of them would not survive to be picked up in five years — if the UN bothered to send a transport to pick them up.

“I understand that you’ll be coming with us to pay your respects to the governor,” he said, once he’d finished the inspection and allowed the Sergeants to take over. “Are you going to be flying the shuttles personally?”

“I think that’s going to be done by their pilots,” I said, regretfully. I would have loved to fly myself, or given the task to some of the Ensigns as a reward for good behaviour, but Botany’s weather made flying dangerous. I understood that the UN’s engineers had tried to set up a space cable several times and discovered that the cable broke under heavy winds. “Are your men ready?”

“We’re going to be going armed, with loaded weapons,” Andrew said. He was probably expecting me to object — loaded weapons onboard shuttles into anything, but a war zone, were strictly prohibited — but I didn’t bother. I knew enough about Botany to be grateful for the precaution. “We have to load, but then we’ll be ready.”

“Good,” I said, checking the time. In five minutes, we would be orbiting the planet and the Captain didn’t want to stay very long. I couldn’t blame him. Under normal circumstances, he would have gone to pay his respects, but Botany was hardly a normal posting. “Shall we proceed?”

The first cargo of convicts had either killed each other or had been killed by the environment, as very few of them had survived to see the second group arrive, but the UN hadn’t been concerned. They’d just kept pouring more prisoners onto the planet, sometimes near the first group of prisoners, sometimes at the other side of the world, just to see what would happen. The convicts hadn’t been given much in the way of medical equipment, or even survival tools, but they’d discovered through experimentation that they could eat some — not all — of the planet’s vegetation. There were even oasis-like places where they could dig down for water. The smart and brutal ones had formed tribes, snatched as many female convicts as they could — the UN had ruled that convicts had to be dropped in equal numbers of males and females — and set up a social system that worked, barely. The tribes moved from oasis to oasis, hiding from the storms under woven tents and trying to eke out an existence under horrific circumstances. The truly horrifying part was that the UN hadn’t even bothered to sterilise the prisoners, which meant that children were being born on that hellhole, knowing nothing else. The tribes hadn’t forgotten their origins, but as time wore on, they grew better at wiping out the newer arrivals, or breaking them into the tribe. It was a thoroughly hellish existence.

The UN hadn’t cared. They set up a small garrison on the planet’s surface, which was staffed by officers and men who had offended someone in some way, but they hadn’t attempted to help the locals. It was questionable how many of the locals even knew of its existence. There might have been a handful of tribes orbiting the garrison, but there was little interaction between them, apart from a tiny amount of trade. The garrison staff were quite happy to trade food and supplies for women and as for the women, living in the garrison, even as a slave or a whore, was preferable to living out in the endless desert.

And then everything had changed. For reasons best known to itself, the UN had ordered a re-examination of every piece of survey data from barely habitable worlds, insisting that they be studied through new eyes. One bright-eyed researcher had spotted that Botany not only had vast amounts of silicon — something that could be found on hundreds of worlds, including Earth — but hints of something else, rare elements that were normally found in the asteroids. The UN had leapt at the chance to obtain a new source of supply and promptly sent in a mining team to extract as much as they could. One thing the UN had right — the amount they ruled on, I had to like those odds — was that planet-size mining was inefficient. The miners could only produce small amounts of ore, but it didn’t matter. The UN needed as much as it could get. The locals had objected to this despoiling of their home and low-level war broke out. The UN had finally realised that this might be a problem and dispatched Andrew and his Company to Botany to suppress the enemy. It wasn’t going to be an easy task.

“Ready,” Andrew’s sergeant reported. “All present and correct, sir!”

Andrew raised his voice, pointing to the first shuttle. “Platoons A to D, load up,” he barked. He switched to the second shuttle. “Platoons E to G, load up!”

I’d seen Infantrymen on Heinlein moving as a disorganised mob. This unit moved with an easy grace and confidence that belied their destination, or what their superiors generally thought of them. They carried their assault rifles slung over their shoulders in a ready position, where they could grasp them at once if they were required. If the shuttle crashed somewhere on the planet, they should have enough firepower to cut through the tribesmen and escape, unless the tribesmen had similar weapons. The UN had apparently refused to give them anything beyond a handful of knives, but the files had been vague on just what they had. Andrew had assumed the worst and armed his men to the teeth.

I keyed my terminal. “Captain, this is Lieutenant Walker,” I said. “The shuttles are fully loaded and we’re ready to depart.”

“Understood,” the Captain said. I could hear the Pilot’s weather report in the background and rather wished I couldn’t. It didn’t sound good. “You may depart when ready.”

I boarded the shuttle, Andrew right behind me, and made a quick check of the men. They were all buckled in and waiting impatiently to depart, much to my quiet amusement. The Infantrymen on Heinlein had often neglected the simplest precaution and had to be babied through everything. I took the seat next to the pilot and watched him running through the pre-flight checks, taking special care with our transponder equipment. There was no one here to listen in on our conversation and, if something happened, we’d need the signal to arrange rescue. The Captain would find a way to rescue us, I was sure.

The shuttle’s drive spun up and we started to glide towards space. “Departing now,” the shuttle pilot said. “All systems functioning normally.”

I stared as we dropped into open space. All of the worlds I’d seen, from Earth to Heinlein and Terra Nova, had been a mixture of blue-green. Botany was a dull reddish-orange colour, like a desert seen from space. There was no sign of any surface water as far as I could see, although apparently there were times when it bubbled to the surface in places. The Australians had introduced water into the planet by dropping a pair of comets into the atmosphere, but most of it had apparently drained into massive underground caverns, rather than remaining on the surface. The garrison drilled a line deep underground to obtain fresh water for itself, but apparently the tribes lacked the ability to do that. It kept them permanently nomadic. The miners probably tapped into the same underground reservoir.

“Ghastly looking place,” Andrew commented. “Do you know that there are people who believe that Earth will end up looking like this one day?”

I stared at him. “No,” I said, in surprise. It seemed impossible. “Why do they think that?”

He smiled, darkly. “The atmosphere is growing more and more polluted,” he said. “This kills the vegetable life, which makes it harder to replenish the oxygen and even causes humans to develop illnesses. The icecaps are melting which pushes salt water further inland, killing more farmland. Worst of all, the corporations that have paid the UN vast bribes to avoid the environmental regulations have been having disasters as their overworked equipment starts to break down. The entire planet is dying and we killed it.”

I said nothing. I’d heard that there were problems, but nothing on such a scale. I wasn’t even sure if anything could be done about it. The regulations already existed, but if they were being avoided on such a scale… how could anything be done about it? I wondered, vaguely, if the Captain’s family knew, if they were trying to do something about it, but there was no way to know. It was taboo even to suggest that something might be wrong on Earth.

The shuttle buckled slightly as it fell into the atmosphere, streams of superheated air surrounding it as it raced down towards the ground. I could see the mighty storms making their way across the desert, giant darker patches of moving sand that overwhelmed anything puny humans could do to counter them. The files had suggested, from the reports of a handful of anthropologists who’d gone among the tribesmen, that they’d started to worship their planet. It was no wonder. A sandstorm on the wrong place would be utterly lethal.

“I’ve got the garrison’s beacon now,” the pilot said, from his position. “We should be landing at the landing pad in thirty minutes,”

I leaned forward as the shuttle shook under the impact of a gust of wind. If I’d been out there without any protection at all, it would have sent me flying through the air, perhaps even killed me. A moment later, we broke through into clear air again and we could see the mining camp below us. It was an ugly mixture of glinting buildings and dust, flying into the air from the open mine. I suspected that the locals would regard it as blasphemy. What else could it be on a living planet?

“There’s the garrison,” the pilot added. “We’ve coming into land now.”

“It doesn’t look very secure,” I commented, as the buildings came into view. “Andrew?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Andrew agreed, slowly. “They told me that they used weather-control equipment to try to keep the dust storms away from the mines, but it only worked half the time, if that.”

I looked at him. That hadn’t been in my files, either of them. “It’s not commonly advertised,” Andrew added, seeing my look. “They used to use it on Earth to get better weather for farming. After a few years, they discovered that it only caused more havoc later on and banned it — too late. Botany, on the other hand, doesn’t have an environment to fuck up any further.”

A moment later, the shuttles came down to land and I saw the Governor and his men.

I took one look and knew that we weren’t going to get on.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Welcomes to Camp Sand,” the Governor said. He had a voice that reminded me of a gang-member, a mixture of overwhelming power and confidence, underlain by the awareness that he didn’t control everything. I disliked him on sight. “I am Governor Rollins.”

“Lieutenant Walker,” I said, shaking his hand. It was soft and flabby. The man himself was grossly overweight. I didn’t understand how he managed it on a place where foodstuffs were always rare, but it was possible that some supply transport had dropped off thousands of MREs for the Garrison. “We’ve brought the…”

“Yes, yes, I can see that,” the Governor cut me off, impatiently. “Captain, I trust that your sergeants can allow Captain Ridley to lead your men to the barracks?”

“Of course,” Andrew said, a tight note of anger barely concealed in his voice. I understood exactly what he was thinking. This overweight governor held his men in contempt? “Sergeant Pascell; please see to it.”

We shared a glance as Captain Ridley led the soldiers away towards the barracks, which we could see in the distance. The entire garrison wasn’t even fenced in, or encircled by walls, and even to my untrained eyes, it looked like a recipe for disaster. The Captain had looked surprisingly well-dressed; in fact, he’d looked too well-dressed. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d been chasing tribesmen away from the mining equipment. I heard a noise in the distance and caught sight of a sandy-coloured beast, being led by the nose towards a watering plant. I couldn’t help myself. I stared. I’d never seen anything like it before.

“It’s called a Camel,” Rollins explained. I caught a glimpse of the man he’d once been underneath and smiled to myself. His enthusiasm was almost touching. “They were originally used by desert nomad tribes on Earth as they travelled the deserts, mainly because they didn’t need to drink as much water and could eat things that no human could eat. Back when they landed the garrison here, the first Governor ordered a few hundred of them shipped in and handled most of them out to the nearest tribes. They bred them and there are now thousands of the beasts wandering the planet.”

He paused. “Anyway, if you’ll accompany me…”

I didn’t see anything to change my first opinion of the garrison. It was little more than a collection of prefabricated buildings that had been dropped onto the planet from orbit and then carefully embedded in the soil. Most planets would have broken them up as they built new homes and offices from local materials, but Botany’s governors hadn’t bothered. It wasn’t as if there was much to build from on Botany, apart from sand or stone. If there were other raw minerals on the planet, it would require too much effort to get at them.

He led us through a small office, staffed by a handful of girls who looked nervously at Andrew when they saw his uniform. There was no way to be sure, but I would have guessed that they’d been recruited from the planet’s tribes and taught typing and other skills, along with…ah, servicing the needs of the UN staff and soldiers. They would probably never be allowed to return to their tribes, even if they were wanted back. It was quite possible that the Governor had traded the tribes useful supplies in exchange for their services. God alone knew what would have become of them otherwise.

“Of course,” the Governor said, when I asked. “I only take in girls born on this planet and doomed, otherwise, to be little more than mothers, daughters and wives.” I remembered Muna and grimaced. Had that been something of the same? “They’re taught useful skills here, but even so, most of them never go home. We tried to teach medicine to a handful in hopes they would serve as a goodwill gesture to the tribes, but they were rejected when they were returned. We don’t know why.”

I frowned. “Surely you could set up a home for them elsewhere,” I said. “Couldn’t you even send them off-planet?”

“The only people allowed to leave the planet are people who came here, to the garrison,” Rollins said. He shrugged. “The convicts are not permitted to leave, nor are any of the tribes. The sociologists say that their tribal culture is a civilisation that must not be contaminated by us and…hell, I think that if they didn’t sometimes sell their girls to us, they’d still die anyway. The largest tribe we’ve encountered has been only around one hundred strong.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he added. “They’re barbarians.”

“You never tried to recruit them for the mines?” I asked. “Can’t they be taught how to mine?”

“They don’t want to learn,” Rollins said. He seemed to be becoming irritated, so I decided not to press him any further. “They believe that staying in one place too long is bad luck and so they stay away from the miners. The miners have their own brothel of girls taken from the tribes, but they haven’t had any other contact, as far as we know. The tribesmen do steal some items from us, mainly metals and other items they can’t get for themselves, but otherwise…little contact”

Andrew frowned as we entered a massive dining room. “If that’s the case,” he said, “why did you request a reinforcing unit for the garrison?”

“We do have some contact,” Rollins admitted. “The tribes…well, they don’t take some things very calmly. If someone commits an offence against the tribe, they boot him out and leave him to live or die as the planet pleases. They worship the planet, you see, and if the man survives more than a year, they take him back — if he wants to go back. The sociologists sometimes pick up an outcast — male or female — and ask them questions. One of them said that his tribe had been invited to join others in an attack on the garrison itself.”

“I see,” Andrew said, doubtfully. “And has such an attack materialised?”

The Governor shook his head. “We sometimes get light raids,” he said. “They’re never a serious problem and we can drive them away with ease. The tribes don’t have a formal government so sometimes we have to kick them a little to teach them not to mess with us. There’s never been an all-out attack. Even if they won, the tribe that took the Garrison would be brutally wounded.”

Andrew nodded. “Do they fight amongst themselves?”

“Sometimes,” Rollins said. “It’s really challenges and counter-challenges than actual warfare. Their society argues against it. The winner would still be badly weakened.”

He waved for us to sit down as the remainder of his staff came in. I couldn’t believe the dining room. It was on a primitive planet, yet it was as luxurious as an Admirals-only reception bar back on Earth. His staff didn’t look very impressive either and they all blurred into one after I’d been introduced to a few faces. Some were little more than people who’d annoyed the wrong person and been sent to Botany, others were proper engineers, or sociologists. Their chatter was meaningless to me. Some talks about their miners and their complaints, others talked about their researchers into the tribal society developing just outside their door. I was starting to see why the Captain had volunteered me for the job. The thought of being fawned over by the Governor and his lackeys was nauseating.

The first course was served by tribal girls in scanty outfits, barely practical for anywhere outside Luna City. I took a moment to study them, trying to place their original origins, but their parents had clearly been born to a mixed partnership. They had dark skin — the sunlight beating down on the planet had seen to that — and soft brown eyes. They also looked thoroughly terrified and one looked as if she had been beaten. I felt a flicker of anger that I was quick to subdue. How dare the Governor abuse his position like that? I watched helplessly as the girls served, sometimes being groped or fondled by the staff, and wondered how long it would be before the Governor was poisoned. There had to be a plant that could serve as a source of poison somewhere on the planet.

“Eat,” Rollins said. I didn’t want to eat anything, but there was little choice. The meat tasted strange to my tongue, but it was surprisingly good. “This is the one meat that we’ve been able to raise on this damned planet.”

Camel, I realised. The beast I’d seen hadn’t looked very appetizing, but perhaps it tasted better than it had looked. I’d never ridden a horse before, let alone a camel, but I could see the attractions for the tribesmen. They probably regarded them as wonderful creatures.

“Tell me something,” I said, as I finished the plate. “Are you going to be introducing other animals to Botany?”

“Perhaps,” Rollins said. He grinned at one of his people, a sour-faced woman who looked like she’d been slapped too often as a child. “Debbie there is doing an Impact Analysis Report on introducing other forms of desert life, but there’s just so much paperwork to do. In fact, I don’t know why…”

He broke off as an explosion and a series of shots echoed out in the distance. “What the hell was that?”

Andrew’s terminal pinged. “Sir, we’ve got multiple hostiles coming in from the north,” one of his sergeants said. “Captain Ridley is dead, I repeat, dead. They’ve somehow hit the first barracks and most of the on-planet soldiers are dead.”

“The hell?” Rollins asked. “Captain, I demand that you see to the defences…”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said, tightly. He jumped to his feet. A moment later, I was on my feet and with him, drawing the pistol I’d worn at my belt. The laser pistol might not have looked as impressive as the Infantry rifles, but it could kill. “You’re staying here.”

“No, I’m coming,” I said, firmly. “Governor, I suggest you get your people under cover.”

A wave of hot air hit us in the face as we ran out of the building, towards the sound of shooting. A towering wall of fire had enveloped one of the buildings and the disgusting scent of burning flesh was in the air. I winced, remembering it from Terra Nova, and followed Andrew. A moment later, he threw himself to the ground and I followed, just as bullets crackled over our heads.

“Stay down,” Andrew hissed. I saw a man wearing some kind of tunic pointing a very obvious weapon at us. We fired at the same time and the man staggered backwards and collapsed, half of his head blown off. “Take his weapon, now!”

The sound of shooting from the barracks only grew louder as I crawled over to the dead tribesman. He had the same skin colour as the serving girls, but he was almost completely covered in hair, with more muscles than I’d seen on anyone else, even a Marine. I wouldn’t have wanted to trade punches with him. I recovered the weapon — it looked like a simple rifle, but well outside their capability to build — his ammunition pouch and his knife, before searching his tunic roughly. He had nothing apart from his weapons and clothing.

“Come on,” Andrew hissed, and I followed him towards the defences. As we reached the corner, he held up a hand to stop me and whistled a tune into the air, twice. It was a moment before it came echoing back and he turned the corner. A second passed and then he waved me onwards as well. “Sergeant, report!”

“A major attack from the north, sir,” the Sergeant said. Here, the sound of shooting was growing louder. I could see the Infantrymen spread out on the ground, lying flat and shooting with short precise bursts, or taking up firing positions in the second barracks. The first was now a burned-out shell. Whatever they’d built it of hadn’t been fireproof, which still raised the obvious question. How did they get a bomb inside the barracks? I remembered the serving girls and had my answer.

“Got it,” Andrew said. He fired a burst himself at a dark figure, which toppled over backwards, howling in pain. “Why the hell are they attacking now?”

The answer flashed into my brain. “The shuttles,” I said, grimly. I keyed my terminal. “Shuttles, come in — now!”

“Pilot Van Diamond here, sir,” the lead pilot said. “What’s all the shooting?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Seal up the shuttles completely; no one to get onboard without either mine or the Captain’s permission.” I thought about ordering them back to orbit and thought better of it. If we needed to evacuate the Garrison, we’d need the shuttles. The tribesmen’s bomb had made sure that we had a lot of empty seats. “Andrew…”

He was way ahead of me. “Sergeant, take D and E and get them to the shuttles,” he ordered. “I want the ground around the shuttles swept and then secured.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, and started to run. The infantry were reorganising on the fly and, once again, I was impressed by their professionalism. I’d seen attacks on Heinlein that had broken down as one unit tried to advance through ground controlled by another unit, or even fired on their own side, quite by accident.

“We’ll cut them off from the shuttles, and then drive them back from the garrison,” Andrew grated. I saw him smile and realised that he was enjoying himself. “Contact the ship and see if they can move into position to support us.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and keyed my radio again. “Captain, we’ve got a bit of a situation here.”

“I understand,” the Captain said, when I had finished explaining. “We’ll move into low orbit and prepare to unleash KEW strikes if required, but our sensors can barely pick up the tribesmen.”

Andrew overheard. “Anyone outside the compound is an enemy,” he said. “We really need a helicopter flight or two.”

I nodded. Botany’s atmosphere was too much for helicopters though, or even any other kind of aircraft. The Garrison had experimented with an airship, but the idea had never really worked in high winds. The shuttles might be able to lay down fire for us, but the cost in fuel would be prohibitive. Of course, we were probably past being able to care about it.

“Understood,” the Captain said. “We can use our lasers to target the ground.”

“Do so,” Andrew said. “I want a wide-beam sweep around the compound.”

I covered my eyes as the laser beams swept through the air. Normally, a laser beam is invisible until it hits its target, but the weird atmosphere made the beam show up as a flickering ray of light. The results were unmistakable. Sand overheated and became glass, while any tribesmen caught in the beam died instantly. I hoped — prayed — that it would be enough. After that, the tribes were probably going to be out for blood.

“Sir, this is Sergeant Price,” Andrew’s radio said. “There was an attempt to rush the shuttles, but we beat it back and they faded into the desert. The little shits can hide right under our noses.”

“Well done,” Andrew said. He looked at me. “With their goal now impossible to reach, what do you think they’ll do?”

I heard a sound, rather like a thin trombone, in the air. A moment later, the tribesmen stopped shooting and vanished into the desert. Our shooting stopped a moment later as we realised that there was nothing left to shoot at. The brief attack — it didn’t seem that it really had only been ten minutes — was over.

“Sergeant King, take A Platoon and sweep around the compound,” Andrew ordered. “All others, sound off.”

I listened absently as the infantry ran through their names. “Get the injured to the medical clinic,” Andrew ordered. He frowned down at one of the dead tribesmen. “Check the tribesmen and find out if any of them are alive. I want to know where they got those weapons.”

It was an hour before we found out the truth. The captured tribesman had sworn that he wouldn’t talk, no matter how much we hurt him, but an injection of truth serum loosened his mouth. He’d explained how the tribes had been contacted by someone from the stars who had offered them weapons and supplies, inviting them to take their revenge on the garrison and its people. One of the tribe, a convict who had survived the harsh welcome, had even suggested taking the shuttles and the starship in orbit. With a little luck, the plan might even have worked. Would the Captain have realised the danger in time to fire on his own shuttles?

And the observation network surrounding the planet was primitive. Anyone could have landed without being observed. They might have been resistance fighters from a dozen worlds, or they might have been pirates. It didn’t matter in the end, did it?

“Good luck,” I said to Andrew, afterwards. “You’re going to need it.”

A day later, we opened a wormhole and headed onwards to the Beyond.

Chapter Thirty

It was the best of times.

We spent nine months cruising in the Beyond, moving from star to star. Some of them were completely empty, as far as we could tell, although the Captain insisted on treating them as potentially-hostile systems anyway, just in case. It would have been easy to hide an entire population right under our noses with the right level of technology and not all of the human settlements needed Earth-like worlds to survive. Others had isolated human populations, known to the UN and generally ignored, few of whom were pleased to see us. They’d come out so far to get away from the UN and enjoy their blessed isolation.

It surprised me just how diplomatic the Captain could be, as we moved from isolated settlement to isolated settlement. It helped that there was no one looking over his shoulder, apart from Jason Montgomerie, and even he understood that there was little point in bullying the tiny grey colonies. We called in, asked if they needed any help and if they’d had any contact with resistance forces, but otherwise left them largely alone. A couple of religious colonies invited us to send over people for shore leave — in hopes, perhaps, of converting crewmen to their religions — but other than they, they didn’t seek to harm us, nor did we seek to harm them. They had nothing that the UN wanted or needed.

I stood on the icy surface of Planet Eskimo and wondered at the settlers who had somehow managed to set up a functional settlement on the planet. It was further away from its sun than Earth and was completely covered in ice, inhabited only by deep-water fish that swam in the warmer water under the ice. Humans couldn’t eat the native animals — not without getting very ill, at least — but Earth stocks had taken well to the alien sea and the Eskimos lived off them, and the products they grew in their underground farms. They were even more isolated than some of the odder settlements, even Botany, and I suspected that they might even consider Earth a legend as they dug deeper under the ice. Some of their foodstuffs might become delicacies in the years to come — if the UN survived its current crisis, or something else arose in its place — but for the moment, everyone was content to leave them alone. What did they have their pirates might want? Fish?

The Amish Colony was very similar in outlook, although they had inhabited a much more welcoming world. I wasn’t sure what to make of a sect that had largely abandoned technology in favour of a simpler life, but after a week’s shore leave on the planet — a dreadfully boring experience for spacers used to Luna City — I had decided that they were completely insane. The vast majority of their population worked from day to day on back-breaking labour, trying to pull enough crops from the soil to feed themselves for another year. They spoke of happiness in simplicity, but I saw little of it. I only saw people who didn’t know what they were missing. They could have replaced their horses and carts with cars easily, or even built aircraft or airships, but they seemed content with what they had. It was a deeply boring planet. They, too, had nothing the UN or anyone else wanted.

“Captain,” I asked, one day, “why are we checking in on all these places?”

The Captain shrugged. He’d been happier, if anything, than I was. This far from the Human Sphere, his word was law. “They might become a threat later, or someone with more hostile intentions might use them as a base,” he said. “The Amish won’t have mentioned it to anyone, but fifty years ago a pirate tried to extort food and supplies from them, before a UNPF cruiser chased him away. It’s worthwhile just to keep an eye on him.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. I wanted it to last forever, even though I knew better. Back home, the conspiracy I had created would be burrowing into the UNPF’s structure, trying to reach as many starships as possible and prepare to seize control. I had to go back to trigger the takeover, but…I didn’t want to go back. I understood, now, why so many starships had gone renegade over the past hundred years. They couldn’t bear to return to the tarnished world they’d left, where honour was a joke and they were compliant in atrocity after atrocity.

The Wonderland Asteroid Federation was easily the oddest colony — set of colonies — I’d seen. They had moved out to their asteroids — thousands of asteroids circling a dull red star — nearly a hundred years ago and burrowed into the rocks using technology that had been outdated even before humanity had taken the first steps into space. Their technology could keep them alive, but it couldn’t do much else, let alone challenge a starship. If they had crashed on a planet’s surface, they would have been utterly unable to escape, even assuming they survived. They’d lived years under lower gravity than Earth, or almost any other world, apart from the moon. Their bodies had adapted to the low gravity. We took shore leave on one of their resort asteroids and watched a sexual ballet between girls who seemed to fly through air on wings. It was profoundly moving and yet, somehow, very sad. I slipped away early.

It was there that I saw my first Transhuman. The process was officially banned everywhere the UN held sway — and, oddly, Heinlein and most of the other colonies were in full agreement. The process had created a human spliced with animal DNA in hopes of creating a superior form of life. The UN’s files were scarce, but reading between the lines, I suspected that the process didn’t always work perfectly. The Chimps — as they were called in impolite company — might not be fertile, or might grow into immensely retarded adults. The whole process made me sick and I complained to the Captain, who told me to ignore it. The asteroid federation could go to hell in its own way.

It chilled me and the next time I went to the flying ballet, I allowed myself to wonder if the wings were actually part of the girls’ bodies. I even asked one of the girls afterwards and she laughed at me, before removing the wing and offering to allow me to examine her in private. She was so slight that I was terrified that I would break her in half — I was only average on Earth standards, but I was a lot stronger than her — and I was no longer sure that I liked the colony. They did have something the UN wanted — asteroid ore — but with all the stresses being placed on the freighters and transport networks, it would probably be centuries before someone attempted to set up trade links. If the UN was still around, I wondered, what would they make of the colony? Would they all be Chimps by that time?

We also spent months inside the wormholes and I spent the time, apart from training the Ensigns, studying the UN carefully. It wasn’t an easy task. There were so many lies and half-truths in the files that I found it hard to work out what was true and what wasn’t, and the Heinlein files weren’t much of an improvement. They were sound, historically speaking, but there was a ideological bias against the UN running through them. It was hard to know just what was truth…and what was nothing, but a lie.

No one had intended to create the UN, I worked out slowly. I wished I could have discussed it with the Captain, but I didn’t dare. The system had originally been nothing more than a place where humans from different nations could meet and talk in relative safety, although the most powerful nations had always been able to go their own way. As technology advanced and the world grew smaller, the UN had ended up assuming more and more of an oversight role, over everything. I was vastly amused to discover that there had been an environmentalist movement even that far back. They hadn’t known how lucky they had been! The development of the Jump Drive had allowed those who hated the thought of a world government to escape, while leaving Earth in a desperate state. Terrorism and wrecker attacks had the entire population scared to death and willing to support anything to eliminate the terrorists.

The nations could have vetoed laws, but no one had thought to prevent the UN from creating regulations, until it was far too late. The UN hadn’t intended to create a massive bureaucracy itself, but as it was forced to create regulation after regulation, it ended up with a massive support base, demanding pay. It had ended up taking over the power of taxation and securing its position as the master of Earth. It imposed harsh new laws intended to curb pollution, but the bigger corporations had simply paid massive bribes and carried on polluting. The smaller ones had been unable to either pay the bribes or meet the regulations and, eventually, most of them had either collapsed and thrown the employees onto welfare, or emigrated to other stars. I wondered, absently, if that had been deliberate. The UN had known from the start that there was a population problem.

I couldn’t understand that, at first, until I did the maths. If a child costs money to raise, parents will have fewer children, but if the costs are met by someone else — the UN’s welfare department, for example — there is actually an incentive to have more children. This put more pressure on the system, but repelling the legislation would have been politically impossible, forcing them to try to extract more taxes and resources from the colonies. There, in short, was the tragedy of the United Nations. It could neither cure itself nor allow anyone to break free of its grasp. The people who really ran the UN, the beauecrats, were resistant to any change. The colonies were resistant to being robbed to pay for the UN’s mistakes. The civilians…had no control over their lives at all.

“You’re not doing badly with the Ensigns,” the Captain said, one afternoon over tea. I hadn’t realised that he drank tea with his First Lieutenant and Political Officer on a regular basis, but it made sense. The Captain had to be aloof to the remainder of the crew, particularly the Ensigns. “Allen and Geoffrey will make quite competent tactical officers, apparently, and Yianni would make a good engineering officer in the future.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. The Captain had invited me to relax, but how could I call him anything else? Yianni had expressed a keen interest in the engineering compartments and the Engineer had reluctantly agreed to give her additional training. She had a keen mind that all the public schooling down on Earth had failed to ruin completely. It was a minor miracle. “She was talking about applying for a transfer to Engineering School, out in the belt.”

The Captain smiled. “Jason, what do you think of that?”

“She’s always a productive person in the group discussions,” the Political Officer said, sipping his own tea. I had caught a whiff of it and realised that his tea included a large dose of whiskey. It was still a mystery how he managed to bring so much alcohol onto the ship. “Very intelligent, very understanding…I see no reason why she shouldn’t apply for the transfer. I’ll even put in a good word for her myself if you wish.”

I smiled. The group discussions were attempts to reason out how the United Nations worked and how it was superior to all other systems, past and present. I had realised years ago that it really worked on the Garbage In, Garbage Our principle. If a person accepted political doctrine as fact, the entire system worked, provided that one didn’t take a careful look at the foundations. It was hard to believe that the system worked perfectly when people seemed to be happier on Heinlein, or even among the Amish.

But a good word from the Political Officer would take Yianni far.

“Please do,” the Captain said. He smiled, rather dryly. “There is a considerable shortage of engineers, as you well know. If Yianni was to become a proper engineer, I’m sure some Captain would be pleased to see her.”

“It would take her out of command track,” I said, slowly. “I think that that’s why she’s reluctant to ask for the transfer now.”

The Captain nodded. Ensigns on the command track, like I had been, were expected to be generalists, not specialists. I might have qualified as a Tactical Officer, or a Helm Officer, but I didn’t have the skills of the Pilot, or even the tactical staff in their compartment. My task was to set policy; theirs was to carry it out. If Yianni did transfer to Engineering and go to Engineering School, she would never have a chance to become a Captain in her own right. Engineers weren’t in the chain of command.

“Don’t push her,” he advised, with a glance at the Political Officer to suggest that he shouldn’t push her either. “If she decides to become an Engineer of her own free will, she’ll be a better Engineer than if we pushed her into volunteering for the transfer.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I was still wondering why Yianni hadn’t transferred back at the Academy, back when it would have been easier, but I thought I understood. The Academy hadn’t given any of us a real chance to understand what Engineering was all about, merely tested us when all of us were keen to become Captains ourselves. Yianni would never have had the chance to realise that she wanted to become an Engineer. “I’ll allow her to make up her mind.”

“See that you do,” the Captain said. “It wouldn’t do for her to think that we were taking an interest in her development, would it?”

I smiled. It was something else I hadn’t realised back when I’d been an Ensign, but the senior staff had kept a close eye on me than I’d understood. I’d thought that they’d been watching for mistakes that could have imperilled the ship, but they’d also been watching for signs of promise, signs that they could push me forward for promotion, or maybe change my career path into one of the non-commissioned departments. I hadn’t even suspected that the Captain knew or cared who I was…

But then, there had been his order to train with the Marines, after Terra Nova.

“No, sir,” I agreed. “I’ll wait and see what happens.”

Day followed day as we sailed on through the Beyond. We entered an unexplored star system and discovered two Earth-like planets orbiting around each other, with a smaller planetoid in the barycentre between them. I took a shuttle down to the surface with two of the Ensigns, and three Marines for security, and we walked on a beach under an alien sky. I looked up and saw the other planet hanging in the sky, seemingly far closer than the Moon on Earth, and shivered. It was irrational, but I felt that the planet was going to come crashing down on me. Settlers on Jupiter’s moons had felt the same — they’d also seen the Great Red Spot as an eye glaring at them — and some of them had gone insane. I wondered who would come willingly to settle this planet, if they knew the truth. Perhaps people from the mountainous areas of Earth, I decided; both planets were covered in mountains.

The Captain formally named the two planets Romulus and Remus, after the legendary founders of Rome, but I doubted the name would stick. The UN would go looking for some nice inoffensive name for the twin worlds before they started settlement — even assuming that there were enough colonist-carriers left to settle the colony — and the first city would probably end up being called Landing City, again. The Captain shrugged when I asked him if they’d change the name, merely noting that whatever happened, he’d named the planets. We left a satellite in orbit to mark our visit and headed back onwards to our final destination, Bellefonte.

I had wondered if we would get any finders reward for locating the new planet — planets — but the regulations suggested that any discoveries made by UNPF personnel automatically belonged to the UNPF. It was quite possible that the planet was the location of a black colony and they wouldn’t be happy at being disturbed, but they wouldn’t get any reward either. If they were lucky, they’d be integrated into the settlement population. It had happened before. The unlucky ones would get a harsh lesson in how the UN treated deviant populations and probably wind up enslaved, or dumped on somewhere like Botany. I mulled on that as we sped onwards to our final destination.

“Captain,” Yianni said, as we emerged from the wormhole, “I’m picking up a distress signal.”

“Put it through,” the Captain ordered. Bellefonte might not be a UN system, but all starships were obliged to offer aid if required.

“This is… station alpha… under attack…”

The signal broke off in a wash of static. “Signal lost, sir,” Yianni said.

The Captain nodded. “Sound battle stations,” he ordered. “Helm, take us in.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Power up weapons units,” I ordered, as I brought the tactical console on line. One hand moved down a line of switches, unlocking the starship’s weapons. “Load torpedo tubes. Load missile racks. Power up laser cannons and activate the point defence systems.”

“Number One, launch a probe towards the enemy ship,” the Captain ordered. I complied and launched the fast-boost probe towards the pirate vessel. “Ensign Gerasimos, transmit a stand-down and prepare to be boarded signal to the enemy ship.”

“Aye, sir,” Yianni said. She worked her console. “No reply, sir.”

The Captain leaned back in his chair. “Put the feed from the probe on the main display,” he ordered. “Stand by to engage.”

The probe’s signal vanished suddenly — the enemy point defence would have picked it off, given time — but it had lasted long enough to give us an image of our enemy. I almost came to my feet when I saw the enemy ship, feeling a mixture of astonishment…and shame. There was no mistaking the design. It was a starship of the same class as the Jacques Delors.

The Captain muttered a curse, barely loud enough to be heard. “Number One,” he ordered, “prepare to fire a warning shot.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I had heard of renegade starships before, of course — a case could probably be made that I was a renegade myself, or worse — but this was the first time I’d ever seen one. There was no mistaking it for a Heinlein Resistance starship, or a more mundane pirate vessel. This was a UNPF starship, armed and ready to press matters. “What did they want with Bellefonte anyway?”

“Unknown,” the Captain said. There was a dark tone in his voice. “We’ll find out when we ask them, afterwards. Open communications.”

“Channel open, sir,” Yianni said.

“This is Captain Percival Harriman of the UNS Jacques Delors,” the Captain said, coldly. “You are ordered to stand down your attack and prepare to be boarded. If you do not stand down, we will be forced to open fire.”

I scowled, watching the power fluctuations around the enemy starship carefully. If they were renegades, they wouldn’t surrender, not knowing that the UN would either send them to Botany or simply throw them out the nearest airlock without bothering with a trial. I wondered, absently, what their story had been. Had a Captain led a mutiny against the UNPF, or had his officers overthrown him and turned pirate? The latter seemed much more likely. Bellefonte was a small colony, yet it produced a considerable amount of starship components and other high technology. If it hadn’t been for the distance factor, the UN would probably have occupied it decades ago.

“They must be having problems maintaining their ship,” I muttered, skimming through the records of lost starships and eliminating all that had been destroyed by the Heinlein Resistance or other resistance forces. The database wasn’t exact, but the UN had produced sixty cruisers like the Jacques Delors and five had vanished in deep space, without any known cause. “They won’t have any source of components.”

“Perhaps,” the Captain agreed. I flushed. I hadn’t realised that I was speaking aloud. “That does leave the other question. Why haven’t they run?”

I understood. No pirate in his right mind would want to tangle with a cruiser. They should have opened a wormhole and escaped, but instead, they were just finishing their bombardment of the Bellefonte Station. They’d be in missile range in less than a minute, unless they intended to escape by the skin of their teeth. They wouldn’t have time to move anything from the station before we were on them.

“Weapons locked, sir,” I reported. “All missile tubes are ready to fire.”

The Captain nodded. “Fire a warning shot,” he ordered. “Fire!”

“Missile away, sir,” I said. The starship shuddered as it launched the first missile. “Tracking now.”

I’d programmed the missile to detonate just short of their drive field, enough to scorch them, but unlikely to cause any real damage unless their drive field was completely wrecked. It was possible, I conceded, but there was nothing wrong with their point defence network. The missile telemetry terminated suddenly as they burned it out of space. A moment later, they began to move away.

“Helm, take us after them,” the Captain ordered. “Tactical, fire at will.”

I keyed the firing sequence into the console and, a moment later, launched a full spread of missiles towards the pirate ship. They turned away again, presenting their broadsides, and returned fire. Their missiles, I noted with a flicker of relief, were definitely older designs. That suggested that someone out along the Beyond had been building missiles for them; the UN had abandoned that particular design years ago. At least they weren’t the damned missiles Heinlein had created. They would have made the engagement too unpredictable.

“Point defence network up and running,” I confirmed, as the missiles entered the point defence network. They had the advantage of being targeted on a starship that was closing the gap between them itself, but they were too old and slow to be a major problem. The pirates would have to fire hundreds of them to be sure of scoring a hit, let alone the numbers required to destroy us.

I turned my attention back to our own missiles. Four of the seven missiles we’d fired had been taken out by the point defences and a fifth had misfired, but the final two detonated against the enemy’s drive field. I hoped — prayed — that that had been enough, but a moment later I saw the enemy starship emerge from the blasts, open up a wormhole and vanish.

“Track the wormhole,” the Captain ordered, sharply. I realised what he had in mind with a thrill of excitement. “Engineering, bring the Jump Drive online, now!”

“Unable to track the wormhole,” the Pilot reported, grimly. “The disruption from the nuclear blasts confused the sensors for too long.”

“Nuts,” the Captain said, mildly. “Damage report?”

“No damage,” I reported. “There are mild fluctuations in the drive field, but nothing significant. The Engineer would like to spend several hours examining the generators before we jump out, but he reports that we can jump out now, if necessary.”

“There’s little point,” the Captain said, coldly. I felt guilty, even though it hadn’t been my fault. “Helm, take us back to Bellefonte. Number One, stand down from battle stations, but I want ready watches in all of the compartments, including the bridge. If they decide to come back while we’re here, I want to be ready to greet them.”

“Aye, sir,” I said. I didn’t disagree with the sentiments, although double watches would make it harder to send anyone over for shore leave, or even go through the engagement with the Ensigns. They’d have to study it and identify mistakes, even though it would be a brave Ensign that accursed the Captain of making a mistake.

“Yianni, open communications with Bellefonte,” the Captain continued. “We may as well carry out our actual mission while they might be grateful.”

It was a day before I was sent, as the Captain’s representative, to Bellefonte. Bellefonte’s government, for reasons of its own, had insisted on holding the discussions on one of their orbiting asteroids and the Captain, for reasons of his own, had agreed without demur. I’d been on asteroids before, but Bellefonte’s asteroids hadn’t been spun up to generate gravity, leaving everyone floating in zero-gravity. I’d grown used to it at the Academy, but even so, it had been a long time and I felt a little unwell as I floated through the airlock to meet their representative.

“We wanted to experiment a little with his asteroid once we’d mined it of all useful materials,” the representative explained. Her name was Jade, or so she claimed; a vaguely-Chinese looking girl, barely older than I was. She was pretty, in a way, but reminded me too much of the girls from Luna City. “We thought about creating a gravity field through proper generators, but then the government decided to send the elderly into orbit to make their final years a little easier.”

I blinked. “You can’t cure them?”

Her voice hardened. “The regeneration therapies are very expensive,” she said, coldly. “We cannot produce them for ourselves and we cannot purchase them from you or anyone else. They have to grow old naturally.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Earth’s regeneration treatments were normally saved for the very wealthy or the very well politically-connected. It was true that elderly people were entitled to a dose for a reason that no one had ever explained to me, but most of them received nothing. At least one person I had known as a child had died shortly after receiving her treatment, which suggested that the treatment hadn’t been produced properly, or had been nothing more than boiled water. Earth’s companies were set production quotas and…well, they had to struggle to meet them. A planet like Bellefonte, without even the resources of Heinlein or another world, wouldn’t be able to produce it for itself. “Why were the pirates attacking you?”

“They came four months ago and demanded that we hand over vital components for their ship, or else,” Jade explained. I realised that she was glad of the change in subject. “The Government realised that it had no choice, but to comply, so it handled over everything the pirates wanted. Three months later, they returned and demanded more components and — this time — women as well. A month later…”

“They returned again?” I guessed. “Why didn’t you produce defences?”

“We did,” Jade explained. “We opened fire when the pirates arrived and tried to drive them off. It didn’t work and they were on the verge of destroying one of our stations when you arrived and chased them away. Why didn’t you destroy them?”

“They just opened a wormhole and escaped,” I explained. I felt as if I had failed personally, even though I knew that there had been no chance of catching the pirates. They hadn’t chosen to fight for long — hell, it was still a mystery why they had even fought at all. Perhaps they had wanted to make the point that they couldn’t be scared off so easily. It wasn’t as if the Jacques Delors could remain at Bellefonte forever. “They’re going to be back.”

“I know,” Jade said. Her voice softened slightly. “I was going to be one of the women going to them this time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I seemed to be apologising a lot while talking to her. “We saved you from that…”

“For a while,” Jade said. She grinned suddenly, a grin with no humour in it. “I’ve been infected with a particularly nasty sexually-transmitted disease. If we lost the fight, I’d have gone willingly and fucked as many of them as I could, just to see them rot away within the year. I’m immune to it myself, of course.”

I shook my head in awe. I couldn’t understand how someone could think of such a plan, and how someone else could tamely accept her fate as part of a desperate operation. It was the work of a desperate mindset, one that saw no other choice, but to sacrifice some of the young women of his planet to make the plan work. It was beyond my comprehension. Not even Heinlein had gone so far, although there had been whores who had killed and mutilated their customers.

“This is the Cabinet,” Jade explained, as we entered a larger cavern. “I believe they want to thank you personally.”

The discussion didn’t take very long. I think they were a little surprised that the Captain himself hadn’t come, although I explained that the Captain was busy supervising the repairs to the ship. The Engineer had decided that several components needed replacing and had decided to do it while we were at rest. The Captain had agreed and also decided that it would be a good exercise for the Ensigns, although for once I wasn’t going to be supervising them. Lieutenant Carolyn Lauderdale would do that almost as well as I could. She had a good touch with the Ensigns as well — and, even though it pained me to admit it, she might even have been better than me.

“I believe that the Captain will visit as soon as possible,” I said, at the end. “However, with a pirate ship in the area, he wishes to make sure that his starship is ready for battle before he leaves her.”

“Quite understandable,” the President agreed. There were undercurrents I didn’t understand. The Cabinet might even be considering seeking a closer relationship with the UN and I didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to explain to them that that might be a dreadful mistake. The pirates were limited by what they could carry away, but the UN would reshape their society and absorb it into their system. Even if that weren’t the case, the UN would have real problems stationing a task force out here permanently. If Bellefonte had rated as a serious concern, the planet would have been brought into the UN’s system of garrisons and governors a long time ago. “Your crew will, of course, be welcome for shore leave at any time. We have some quite fantastic sights for you to see, if you would like.”

That, as I had expected, turned out to be largely impossible, although Carolyn agreed to escort the Ensigns on a pair of brief excursions into the asteroid and down to the planet. I was tempted to go, but there was too much work for a First Lieutenant to do, not least writing my share of the report on the engagement. I was tempted just to write ‘we won’ or some thing along the same lines, but the Admirals in the UNPF High Command would demand at least seven pages, in triplicate. I hadn’t realised how much paperwork had to be completed for each missile we had fired, let alone everything else. It was a mystery how we were supposed to get anything done.

“You can just copy the paperwork from one missile and use it for the others,” the Captain pointed out, when I finally took it to him. I’d made a private resolution that if our plan succeeded I was going to cut all of the paperwork down as much as possible. I could see the value in accounting to each missile, but surely I didn’t have to do so much paperwork for each of them. “No one ever looks at it anyway.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, seriously. That made it a lot easier. Even the vast UNPF bureaucracy would have had problems trying to absorb all of the paperwork. Yianni might well discover that Engineering had tons of paperwork of its own. I wondered about giving the Ensigns a taste of my paperwork, and then decided that horsewhipping them would be kinder. “I’ll see to it at once.”

We spent another five days in the system. The Engineer’s determination to have everything checked out before another encounter with the pirate ship, or even to use some of his copious selection of spare parts, meant that we had to go through everything. The Captain didn’t discourage him; indeed, I rather think that he encouraged him. I couldn’t fault him for that. If I’d learnt one thing in my career, it was that components rarely lasted half as long as they were guaranteed to last. The Engineer even dismantled the shuttles and carefully replaced all of their components as well. It was an insane level of attention to detail.

“I’ll have to pay Bellefonte a visit before we depart,” the Captain said, finally. It had been a week of watching and waiting for the pirates, but they hadn’t shown themselves. It was possible that they had emerged from the wormhole somewhere in the outer system and were waiting for us to leave, but there was no way to find them. A powered-down ship was impossible to differentiate from a harmless asteroid, unless we carried out a visual inspection, and they could hide indefinitely. “If they do show themselves, get after them at once. Don’t wait for orders.”

“Aye, sir,” I said.

I returned to the bridge to take command as the Captain’s shuttle departed. It was easy enough to have the Ensigns run basic tracking exercises on the shuttle, checking and rechecking the shuttle’s course to ensure that it docked safely at the asteroid. We’d tried to teach them the skill without having something real to practice on, but the Captain had firmly believed that the best experience came by doing. I couldn’t disagree with his logic…after all, look where it had gotten me.

”Lieutenant,” Yianni said, suddenly, “I’m picking up a power fluctuation from the Captain’s shuttle!”

I came to my feet quickly. “Report,” I ordered. The icon representing the Captain’s shuttle was beginning to flash alarmingly. I brought up the visual feed and saw it spin out of control. There was no way that that was a standard manoeuvre, or even a pilot showing off. It was bad enough to threaten the internal compensator. “What’s happening…?”

Before my eyes, the shuttle came apart and exploded in a ball of plasma.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Scan for life signs,” I snapped, against all logic. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be dead. “What happened?”

“No life signs detected,” Yianni said. She sounded as shaken as I was. “The shuttle has been completely destroyed.”

I keyed my console. “Engineer, Pilot, I want you to find out what happened to the shuttle,” I ordered. The Captain was dead and that made me Captain, but I couldn’t assume command just yet. I should declare myself Captain at once, according to regulations, yet it would have felt like a betrayal. How could I usurp Captain Harriman? “Yianni, did the station open fire?”

“Negative,” Yianni said, firmly. I checked my console and she was correct. There was no trace of a missile or a laser cannon being fired. “They’re asking us what happened!”

“Tell them that there was an accident on the shuttle and that we’ll talk to them as soon as possible,” I ordered, rising from my chair. “Launch the second shuttle…no, belay that order. Have the Engineer check out a work party and send them EVA to recover anything they can.”

“Aye, sir,” Yianni said.

The hatch opened and Jason Montgomerie came onto the bridge. “I just heard,” he said. “Can we talk in your cabin?”

He tried to lead me into the Captain’s cabin, but I refused. The Captain’s cabin was mine now, but I couldn’t go inside. It felt as if I would be violating his privacy. I couldn’t bear to do that. It would have been cutting the last link with the man I had admired and sought to emulate.

“You have to assume command,” he said, as soon as the hatch hissed closed. “You’re the First Lieutenant and you have to declare yourself Captain, now, to continue the line of authority. The ship needs a Captain.”

“I can’t,” I protested, grimly. It dawned on me that he, or the Senior Chief, might think that I had sabotaged the shuttle personally, just to get rid of the Captain. I hadn’t, but how were they to know that? “Sir, I…”

“You’re the Captain,” he said. There was no give in his tone at all. “You get to call me Jason.”

He held up a hand before I could continue. “Captain Harriman accepted your transfer request knowing that you would be First Lieutenant and his direct successor if anything happened to him,” he continued. “I approved your transfer with the same understanding. You are the senior officer of this ship and therefore command devolves upon you.”

I wanted to argue, but how could I? “The Captain won’t think any less of you for acting according to regulations and declaring yourself Captain,” he concluded. “You don’t have any real choice and you know it. Please, John, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

“I understand,” I said. I hadn’t realised that Jason, sot that he was, had cared deeply for the Captain. They’d been friends, despite their different positions, something that would have horrified their superiors back home if they’d realised the truth. He might have seemed a drunkard, but I suspected that that hadn’t hampered his position. “Please give me some time…”

“There isn’t much time,” Jason said, standing up. “You know the regulations as well as I do.”

“Yes,” I said. The UNPF had so many regulations that no one could memorise them all, but that particular section was studied thoroughly at the Academy. In the event of the Captain being killed in the line of duty, or being relived of duty according to regulations, command will devolve upon the senior officer in the chain of command. That officer will assume the rank of Captain and return the starship to the nearest fleet base, where a full inquiry will be held. “I understand.”

The hatch hissed closed behind him and I swore, inwardly. There would have to be an inquiry when we returned to Earth and that might expose my own plans. I didn’t even know what had happened back on Earth. It was quite possible that the security forces had uncovered one of my friends and were working to round up everyone involved with my conspiracy. I could take the ship renegade, but what would that gain me, but a lifetime on the run? It would just turn me into another pirate. I say there for an hour before the hatch chimed again.

“Come,” I called. The hatch hissed open, revealing the Engineer and the Senior Chief. The Engineer was holding a blackened component in his hand. I stared at it, puzzled. It might have been something at one time, but now it was just a melted mass. “What’s that?”

“The thing that killed the Captain,” the Engineer said, grimly. His voice was very bitter. “This is a standard-issue fuel injector system for the shuttle. I studied the telemetry from the shuttle just before it exploded and deduced that one of these components must have failed.”

He put it down on my table and I examined it. It meant nothing to me. “I see,” I said, remembering the extensive checks that the Captain had ordered. “Why wasn’t the damaged component located before we installed it onto the shuttle?”

“They’re sealed components,” the Engineer explained. He nodded towards the burned-out unit. “I opened two other components and inspected them carefully. They were both flawed — I suspect that someone designed it that way deliberately — and when the shuttle ramped up to full power…well, there was an overload reaction and the fuel tank eventually exploded.”

“Shit,” I said, bitterly. “Are they all flawed?”

“The case of components came to us from Ceres, sealed,” the Engineer said. I didn’t miss the implications. Ceres had a bad reputation even among the UNPF. It was the home of hundreds of conscripted workers, among other things, and produced far too many vital components. Something that would damage a starship might well destroy a shuttle, if it were loaded onboard and used in innocence. “The ones I checked are badly flawed.”

He pointed a stubby finger at the unit he’d brought. “I took that one down to the machine shop and simulated a shuttle drive being activated,” he added. “The result was what you see before you. I have no doubt that that would destroy an active shuttle.”

I swore. “What about the other shuttle?” I asked. “Can we be sure that it’s safe?”

“We can’t,” the Senior Chief said. He scowled. “I’ve ordered the components pulled out and replaced by our final components from the previous shipping, but we’d still be taking a chance. What happens if there are other sabotaged components?”

“It would depend on where they are,” the Engineer said, slowly. “The worst that could happen to the starship itself would be a runaway fusion reaction, which would burn out one of the fusion reactors, but if we lost even two of them.”

“We’d lose our ability to go FTL,” I concluded. There were three fusion reactors on the Jacques Delors and we needed at least two of them to power up the Jump Drive and open a wormhole. Even having main power to the remainder of the ship wouldn’t help us if we had to crawl back to Earth at STL speeds.

“There is no reason to believe that anything is wrong with the components installed on the ship,” the Engineer said, “but with your permission, I’ll check everything as thoroughly as I can. Earth will insist on studying everything, of course, but my report will clearly state that the sabotaged component was responsible for the death of Captain Harriman and the pilot.”

“Ceres,” I repeated. Someone had aimed a random shot into the UNPF and scored a direct hit. They’d killed the Captain himself. It was easy to believe that I had been the target, in revenge for my actions above Albion, but cold logic told me otherwise. “Thank you, Ivan. Please let me know when we can wormhole out and head back to Earth.”

He left the cabin and the hatch hissed closed behind him. “It wasn’t your fault,” the Senior Chief said. I’d been half-expecting him to scream at me for losing the Captain. “You don’t need to blame yourself.”

“I can’t help it,” I admitted. “It should have been me on that shuttle.”

“Bullock manure,” the Senior Chief snapped. “The Captain had to go pay his respects to the Government. He had to go. You didn’t know that the shuttle would explode and neither did he. Now, stop whining and assume command. You cannot afford to have people wondering why you didn’t assume command at once.”

I took his meaning. UNPF investigators would be crawling all over the ship. They might find something linked to my own plans, or place additional listening devices on the ship, or God alone knew what else. I couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion, not now that I had a chance to convert my vague plan into something workable.

“Yes,” I said, slowly. I stood up and walked towards the hatch. “I’ll take command from the bridge.”

The crew on the bridge stood to attention as I entered and, after a moment’s reluctance, sat down in the Captain’s chair. No bolt of lightning vaporised me. No one raced onto the bridge to declare me an impostor and throw me out of the nearest airlock. It felt…as if I was betraying him by sitting in his chair, yet the Senior Chief was right. If he were alive now, he’d be giving me a lecture on dereliction of duty instead of understanding.

“All hands, this is Lieutenant Walker,” I said, keying the intercom. My voice would be heard over the entire ship. “I must confirm the death of Captain Harriman and Pilot Garry Patterson in a shuttle accident at 1345. In accordance with regulations, I am assuming the position of Captain of this vessel. A brief funeral service will be held in the main shuttlebay at 1800. Anyone who wishes to attend will be welcome.”

An hour passed slowly. I found that I couldn’t remain in his chair and went to his cabin instead, inspecting it carefully. Jason joined me — as per regulations — and we carefully packed up everything he’d possessed, before transferring it all to a sealed hold. He’d had a collection of old books, including some that were in restricted circulation, and a small photo album. I looked through it and saw pictures of his family, his friends and his crew. There was even a picture of Roger, Muna and myself, taken on the day we’d been promoted to Lieutenant. I couldn’t stop the tears from forming in my eyes and wiped them away bitterly. The Captain had deserved better than that.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Jason repeated. He passed me a Captain’s rank badge and I pinned it on, cursing the price that came with it. “Never forget that. It wasn’t your fault.”

That evening, most of the crew assembled in the main shuttlebay. I had to order one of the Lieutenants and two of the Ensigns to remain on watch — the pirate ship might return at any moment — but everyone wanted to attend. I knew that the crewmen on duty in Engineering or Tactical would be watching through the internal communications system. I couldn’t blame them. It wouldn’t be the first shipboard funeral I’d attended, but it was the first of someone who meant something to me. The Captain had made a man of me.

I looked at the pair of sealed caskets — they were empty; the bodies had been vaporised — and felt a lump in my throat. “We stand together to bid farewell to two of our number,” I began, reading the standard UNPF funeral service. I had never felt that it lacked a certain something before, but now…now, I wondered what was missing. “They served well beside us and led us onwards towards the ultimate destination of the human race. We remember them fondly in our thoughts and memories and bid them farewell.

“They lived in space and so we return them to space to drift forever,” I continued. At my command, the burial party started to carry the two caskets towards the airlock. “Trusting in space to preserve them forever, we cast them adrift on their voyage towards the undiscovered country. We bid them farewell.”

It was customary to share stories of the diseased, afterwards, but I didn’t feel like saying much. “I remember the moment when I first met Captain Harriman,” I said. I was breaking regulations by referring to him by rank, but I couldn’t call him Percival. It was so hard to think of what I could say. How could I tell the truth when it might lead to me being investigated? “He taught me how to be a man and welcomed me onboard his ship. He taught me how to grow into a young officer. His presence is sorely missed.”

Afterwards, we bid farewell to the locals, opened up a wormhole, and raced towards Earth.

The Engineer’s report didn’t make comfortable reading. I had always known that components never lasted as long as the manufactures claimed, but I was starting to wonder if we were the victims of subtle sabotage. Several other components had been identified as failing suspiciously quickly, including one that was linked right into the tactical console. I read the report carefully and then insisted on the entire system being stripped down and replaced with completely new — and checked — components. It didn’t help that some components had to be locked in place and, when checked, were ruined anyway. There was nothing on the ship that could be used to destroy us completely, apart from the missile warheads, but if we suffered a series of failures, it would have the same effect. The missiles, at least, didn’t come from a place that used conscript workers.

I also realised just how the Captain must have felt when I was training the Ensigns. As First Lieutenant, I was responsible for their training, but as Captain, I had to remain aloof. Lieutenant Jerry Robertson — the new First Lieutenant — was a capable officer, but he wasn’t me! He knew what he was doing — hell, he’d been almost as involved as I had been — but it wasn’t the same. I started to insist on regular reports, which he accepted calmly, until I realised that the Captain had trusted me to do it properly and left it alone. I couldn’t understand how he had tolerated it. I felt the urge to check up on them every day.

The Captain’s private computer files made interesting reading. I hadn’t realised that the Captain kept copies of everything in his own files, but he had, including reports on us. I’d never read my own file before and was surprised to discover that both of my Captains had rated me highly. I had half-suspected that Shalenko’s willingness to agree to my transfer had been because I had been reluctant to fire on ground targets and accept the deaths of innocent civilians. Captain Harriman had praised me to the skies, along with several other officers, including Sally. If she hadn’t shot her mouth off…she would probably have risen high with his reports.

I worked with the Senior Chief and the Master Sergeant every day, using the time and privacy of the Captain’s position, working out the plan. It would be simple enough, I hoped, to bring most of the Marines onside. The Marines knew as well as everyone else that the war was beyond being won and, sooner or later, someone would unleash weapons of mass destruction. The UN was terrified of WMD and after the loss of two cities to terrorists it was hard to blame them. On the other hand, would they fear losing the war more? I allowed myself to start feeling optimistic. If we played our cards right, we might even be able to move within the year.

“The Marine Platoons won’t have been penetrated by intelligence,” the Master Sergeant assured me. “Everyone who goes into a platoon has been passed through the training camp and the Crucible. No spy could last the course.”

I hoped — prayed — that he was right. My own people were being trained by the Marines as well and, even though they couldn’t become Marines, they would be well-prepared for their future tasks. Sally, in particular, learned everything she could. She was turning into quite the bloodthirsty bitch. I knew who she saw when she smashed through the dummies and almost felt pity for her. Almost.

The ship seemed different, now that I was the commanding officer. I haunted the decks, moving from section to section and inspecting it all, keeping the ship as tidy as I could. Captain Harriman had always seemed to know what to do at all times, but I wasn’t like him. I was sure that they could see that I was faking it. They might even be pretending to do as I said and plotting against me. The ship felt lonely. The Captain’s cabin was so large that I felt completely isolated.

I made myself unpopular by running drill after drill. I wanted to practice counter-boarding operations in case the UN managed to drive us away from Earth and board our ships. A boarding action occurs once in a blue moon, but if I knew the UN, they would be vindictive in victory. They would want to arrest me and my people so that they could hang us in front of the entire world. Anyone in the lower levels would probably be sent to Botany. The tension just kept rising and rising…

It was almost a relief to return to Earth.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“The Admiral will see you now, Captain,” the secretary said. “If you will please follow me?”

I followed. She was worth following. Her uniform was tailored to show off her assets to their greatest advantage and it didn’t take much imagination to see how she could use those assets, or how she’d gotten the position. Her long blonde hair reached all the way down to her ass and I wanted to stroke it. I controlled the urge as she showed me into Grand Admiral Rutherford’s office. It was neither the time or the place.

“Walker,” Rutherford said, gravely. He was a tall man, inhumanly handsome, the sure mark of heavy plastic surgery matched with regeneration therapies. His file suggested that he had only commanded one starship in his career, but apparently it hadn’t prevented him from rising to the highest rank in the UNPF. “Have a seat.”

“I prefer to stand, sir,” I said, carefully. No one, not even the Senior Chief, had been able to brief me on what Rutherford would say or do to me. I was flying completely blind.

“Sit,” Rutherford repeated. “That’s an order.”

I sat down and placed my hands in my lap. I’d used to fidget a lot, but the Academy had broken me of that nasty habit. The Admiral had taken his time calling for me. We’d returned to Earth two weeks ago, but after we’d made our report we’d been told to remain in orbit — under quarantine — while the investigators made their report. It hadn’t been an easy fortnight. I knew that some of the crew had been looking forward to shore leave at Luna City and I… well, I’d had my own plans. The summons to EarthStar One couldn’t have come any later.

“So,” Rutherford said, once I’d sat down. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

I looked back at him and frowned inwardly. “Nothing, sir,” I said, finally. “I acted according to regulations at all times.”

“Indeed,” Rutherford agreed. He seemed to relax slightly. “You’ll be interested to know that your own… experience wasn’t the only one. Intelligence has been reporting that there were several batches of… sabotaged components being sent out from Ceres, although you were particularly unlucky that you actually lost your Captain. Most of the other incidents were minor and cost us nothing, but time and effort repairing the damage. A handful of other people were killed, but yours was the worst.”

I didn’t relax. “The Board of Inquiry has already sat on the issue and decided that the staff at Ceres were to blame,” Rutherford continued. “Neither you nor any of your crew have been held accountable for the death of your commanding officer. The shuttle’s telemetry was inspected carefully — along with the reports of your own personnel — and they confirm your story. Captain Harriman’s death was an accident and there is nothing to fault in your own behaviour after his death.”

He leaned forward. “You should have declared yourself Captain at once,” he added, “but under the circumstances I think we can overlook that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. It was a relief. A full investigation would have destroyed morale under any circumstances, but it would have been particularly disastrous in my case. I had dodged a bullet. “I wanted to know what had happened before I declared myself Captain.”

“Quite right,” Rutherford agreed. He looked at me for a long moment and then stood up and started to pace. “How old are you, son?”

“Twenty-four, sir,” I said. It was certainly true, although wormholes did have a slight time dilation effect. I might actually be twenty-three and a half. There was no way to be sure. “My birthday’s in March.”

He nodded. “The Board of Inquiry did raise the issue of allowing you to continue to command the Jacques Delors,” Rutherford said. I felt my heart twist inside me, sharply. I’d grown to love being the Captain. “Some felt that you were too young for a cruiser command, others felt that you had succeeded to command according to regulations and couldn’t be removed from command without weakening the regulations. A load of bull, in my opinion, but Boards of Inquiry get terribly hair-splitting at the best of times. However…

“It seems that you have some powerful friends,” he continued. I blinked in surprise. As far as I knew, I had no powerful friends, with the possible exception of Captain Shalenko. “Captain Harriman spoke highly of you in his letters to his family and his family have apparently decided that approving you as commanding officer of the Jacques Delors would be a suitable legacy for him. You may not be aware of this, but his family have considerable influence in high places and have succeeded in pushing most of the objections out of your way. These are politics well beyond my level, but… the short version is that you have been confirmed as Captain of your ship.”

I felt cold. Favours like that tended to come with strings attached. I would have liked to discuss the issue with Roger, who might have known what was going on, but I had no idea where he was now. With his connections, he might even have made Captain himself by now, maybe even of a cruiser himself. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t trust him enough to talk about my own plans.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, finally. I had my own ship. It was almost enough to leave me well-disposed towards the system.

“I may not have done you any favours,” Rutherford said, shortly. He sat down again and peered at me over his fingers. “Your Political Officer was due for retirement some time ago. It’s not policy to pair up a Political Officer and a Captain for as long as Captain Harriman and Jason Montgomerie were paired up, but no one was too concerned. You’re going to have to learn to tolerate a new Political Officer, I’m afraid.”

I nodded. I had expected as much. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Jason was talking about retiring to Mars or even Luna City.”

“He’ll be extensively debriefed first,” Rutherford said, coldly. I nodded. I hadn’t dared take the Political Officer into my confidence. “However, we’ll assign a new Political Officer to your ship later today. Two of your Lieutenants, I understand, have already put in for transfers. We’re going to be approving those and appointing two new officers in their places. I hope that that meets with your approval?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. The two officers requesting transfer had done so at my suggestion. They’d be going to two different starships to build their own cells. Given enough time, I’d have every starship in the system riddled with my people, ready to take over in one blow. “I understood, however, that Captains had to approve transfers to their own ships.”

“Under normal circumstances, yes,” Rutherford agreed. “However, we have a pair of Lieutenants who require billets and you’re the only ship with open places on the crew roster.”

In other words, don’t argue, I thought, coldly.

“Which brings us neatly to the final matter,” Rutherford concluded. “You seem to have a First Ensign who will not be rising any higher.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, masking my surprise. The Grand Admiral couldn’t be concerned about Sally, could he? The political enemy she’d made must be very well connected. “She’s a good officer and I found her useful in the wardroom while I was training Ensigns.”

“Indeed,” Rutherford said. His voice darkened. “Captain Harriman recommended that she be promoted, but that was unfortunately impossible. Do you still wish to keep her on your vessel?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, firmly. “The Captain would want me to keep her.”

“He probably would,” Rutherford agreed, and dismissed the issue. “I believe that there were actually no plans for your ship’s next cruise as you weren’t expected home for another two months. I suspect that you will either end up being assigned to Captain Shalenko’s escorting force or Admiral Tao’s invasion fleet.”

I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice. “Invasion fleet, sir?”

“We’re going after Williamson’s World,” Rutherford said, coldly. I kept my face blank with an effort. Heinlein had been bad enough. Williamson’s World had to be going all-out to build up their own defences. “We believe that they have been providing covert support to the Heinlein Resistance Fleet as well as building up a defence force of their own.”

I had to admire his honesty. He wasn’t providing any of the bogus reasons the Political Officers had used to justify the invasion of Heinlein. Intelligence might even be right. God knew that the locals would have to be insane not to think that they weren’t on the target list.

“But that will take time to organise,” Rutherford added. He stood up and extended a hand. “Return to your ship. You may dispatch parties for shore leave if you wish, as well as the transferring officers. And congratulations, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

I hadn’t seen much of EarthStar One as I entered, but on the way out my guide showed me the interior of the asteroid. It had been mined out and then spun up to provide gravity, while the interior had been given a biosphere and a breathable atmosphere. The buildings in the main habitation section were luxurious beyond belief. They were the homes of the Admirals who commanded the UNPF and many of the rich or well-connected of Earth. They didn’t want to live down on the surface. It was easy to understand why. EarthStar One was not only the hub of System Command, but the safest place in the solar system. I mulled on that as I boarded the shuttle and flew back to my command. We’d have to take it out or capture it in our opening moves.

Earth looked, if anything, worse than the last time I’d set eyes on the planet. There was a dark cloud of some kind hanging over the ocean, almost like a giant dark eye peering into the vastness of space. I checked the newscasts, but there was no mention of anything like the cloud. The news focused on sporting events and reports of the war on Heinlein, which was on the verge of victory. I couldn’t help, but notice that it had been on the verge of victory for a long time. The accompanying data was sickening. There were videos and recordings from the battlefield, but someone had been at them and the only dead were locals. Some of the videos freely available on Earth’s network were truly disgusting. I couldn’t understand why the UN allowed them to be shown freely, unless they were just a distraction for the civilians down below.

“Congratulations, sir,” the Senior Chief said, when I boarded. I hadn’t sent word ahead, but wearing the Captain’s insignia was proof enough. “What are we going to do now?

“Send the crew on shore leave as we planned,” I ordered. There was no point in deferring that any longer. “Keep a minimum watch on duty, but rotate the others through so everyone gets a few days on the ground, if they want it.”

“Yes, sir,” the Senior Chief said.

“And send Lieutenant Robertson and Lieutenant Hafiz to me before they leave,” I added. “I want to chat with them before they head to their new postings.”

The next two hours passed slowly. I spent them in the Captain’s cabin — my cabin — working on the paperwork. I’d done my best to keep up with the paperwork, but I’d had to leave some things for my successor, if the Admiral had chosen to relieve me. My remaining in command meant that I had to do them myself. I almost regretted it. I signed off on crew evaluations, approved a handful of promotions and pay bonuses for crewmen and read through the Engineer’s final report carefully. If nothing else, the fortnight we’d spent in orbit had allowed us to check every little component in the ship. The report made slightly better reading than the last one.

I was still engrossed in it when the hatch chimed. “Come,” I called. The Captain’s cabin had a security system that required a voiceprint analysis. “Door open.”

The hatch hissed open, revealing a dark figure wearing dress blues. I looked up and felt a smile spreading across my face as I recognised her. “Lieutenant Muna Mohammad reporting for duty, sir,” she said. Her voice was more confident than it had been before, I realised. “Congratulations on your new appointment.”

“Welcome aboard,” I said, with genuine pleasure. I hadn’t heard from her since she’d been promoted alongside me and sent off to a secret project. “It’s good to see you again, Muna. Stand at ease.”

She relaxed and then fell into the chair when I indicated it. I took her proffered datachip and scanned the contents carefully on my terminal. There was nothing on her previous position, excepting only that she’d served with distinction and her commanding officer thoroughly approved her transfer. That, I decided, could be either good or bad, but if he’d hated her, she wouldn’t have been posted to my ship. There were plenty of less prestigious postings.

“It’s good to see you again too, sir,” she said. She held up a hand before I could speak. “I have to warn you that I’m not allowed to discuss anything relating to my prior posting with you or anyone else, even though you’re my superior officer.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said. I was burning with curiosity — not least because it could prove an unpleasant surprise when I finally made my move — but there was no point in trying to wheedle it out of her. She’d keep her word. I checked her time and grade and nodded again. “You know that you’ll be First Lieutenant?”

“I was told that,” Muna said, seriously. “Do you wish someone else to take the position?”

I shook my head. “My First Lieutenant is leaving the ship, along with four of my Ensigns,” I explained. “You’ll be starting afresh really, so unless you don’t want to be in that position…?”

“I can handle it, sir,” Muna assured me. I trusted her judgement. Indeed, I wondered if I should bring her into the conspiracy, but dismissed the thought for the moment. There would be time enough to bring her in later, if I decided she needed to know ahead of time. The Heinlein files had been very clear on who should — and who shouldn’t — know in advance. We already had too many people in on the secret. “I did wonder about Sally, though…”

“Political problems,” I said, coldly. “Be kind to her, understand?”

Muna nodded. I shouldn’t have worried — she wasn’t the kind of person to use superior rank to bully someone — but I wanted to make the warning clear. The last thing I needed was Sally becoming so embittered that she lashed out before the time was right. I could use her for my plan…if she remained alive that long. I was more worried about her than I could admit to anyone, even Muna.

“I will,” she promised. “Do we have orders yet?”

I shook my head. “Nothing apart from take a week’s shore leave,” I explained. “I’m not going to go down to the surface myself, or even Luna City, for a few days, but if you want to take some leave yourself…?”

“I had plenty of time at Luna Base for leave,” Muna said. “I’d sooner get to work.”

I nodded, pleased. “Good,” I said. The intercom chimed and interrupted me. “Yes?”

“Captain, this is Crewman Stanley down at the main airlock,” a voice said. “The Political Officer has arrived.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t been looking forward to this. “Please show her up at once.”

It was nearly ten minutes before the hatch opened and the Political Officer strode in. I took one look at her and I just knew that we weren’t going to get along. She was tall, with bushy red hair, but her face looked as if she were permanently sucking a sour lemon, perhaps with extra iodine. I decided her nickname would probably be Iodine by the day’s end and hoped that none of the crew used it in her hearing.

“I am Political Officer Deborah Tyler,” she announced, in a voice that was too high and sharp for my tastes. She reminded me a little of a teacher I’d once had before she’d been fired for excessive competence. “Why were you not waiting at the airlock to greet me?”

I refused to scowl at her, or show anything other than a bland smile. “You didn’t give me any notice of your arrival,” I pointed out, calmly. It would probably do no good pointing out command regulations to her. The Captain did not come to meet someone unless they were of superior rank. “Had you done so, I would have been there to greet you.”

“Doubtless,” Deborah sneered. She cast a glance over Muna, with a flicker of her eyes that suggested she didn’t care for people with black skin, and then looked back at me. “I trust that you have all the files in order?”

“Of course,” I said, seriously. She’d go through all the personnel files with a fine-toothed comb. I wished her well of them. It should take her hours to even read the summaries. “Do you wish to begin inspecting them now?”

The next few days didn’t improve her. She insisted on interrogating some of the crew about Captain Harriman’s death and his previous career, before turning the questions around and focusing on me. Muna reported that she was already intensely disliked by almost everyone onboard. I was pretty sure that that was a record. She sent two crewmen for punishment duties after catching them with a stash of porn, and a third for Captain’s Mast after discovering his still.

All in all, it was a relief when Captain Shalenko, my former commanding officer, summoned us to Devastator.

From: The Never-Ending War. Stirling, SM. Underground Press, Earth.

Back on Old Earth, long before the UN evolved from a transnational talking shop to become the oppressive government of Earth, a new system for governing international relationships arose. It was referred to, not without reason, as MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction. Put simply, it stated that if the United Soviet Socialist Republic (a prisoner state now held up as an example of an proto-UN state) launched a massive nuclear strike against the United States of America, the Americans could detect the launch and launch their own nuclear weapons in response. No side could launch a nuclear assault without guaranteeing their own destruction.

As the USSR collapsed, this taboo lost its power, with the eventual use of nuclear weapons in a war zone — India against Pakistan — and two terrorist nukes, Marseilles and Stalingrad. The UN, therefore, was keen to remove the remaining nuclear stockpiles from Earth as quickly as possible and, as national governments collapsed into the overreaching transnational authority, this became possible. It also led to the creation of a security state that, intended to prevent a third nuclear terrorist attack, was used to create the modern-day UN. The threat of terrorists (now including patriots and independence-seeking factions) was, as always, a useful excuse for clamping down on freedom and personal liberties.

The MAD dynamic continued to hold power when the UN went to war against the colonies, some of which had their own nukes, or the ability to produce them. It rapidly became clear that nukes could be used against UN forces on the ground, but that it would provoke immediate retaliation against the civilian population of the colony world. This was not particularly welcome in some sections of the UN — they needed the colonies and their population to mend their economy — but it was accepted, on the grounds that nukes would make it impossible to hold down the colonies. The moral issues surrounding the use of nuclear weapons were ignored.

This assumed a degree of willingness on the part of the colonists to abide by the UN’s rule. In the later stages of the war, this willingness was severely tested. The UN itself was considering the use of WMD.