Vanguard

Chapter 5

“Lieutenant?”

Rob Geary woke at the call, blinking up at the pipes and ducts and conduits overhead, which weren’t that far over his head. The grandly named captain’s stateroom on the newly rechristened Squall was smaller than the cabin he had shared with another lieutenant aboard one of Alfar’s destroyers. That didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that the council’s continuing failure to agree on an official status for him meant that technically he wasn’t captain of the Squall despite being the ship’s commander. “What’s up?”

The watch-stander visible on the comm pad next to Rob’s bunk had the look of someone suddenly jarred to alertness in the midst of what had been another uneventful watch in the middle of the ship’s night. “We’ve spotted two ships that arrived at the same jump point as the Bucket, I mean, this ship, came in from.”

“The jump point from Scatha? What are they?” Rob demanded, his pulse racing as he worried about Scatha’s destroyers. It had been over a month since the Squall had been captured, which was time enough for Scatha to have heard and sent off a retaliatory attack.

“Freighters. They’re broadcasting civilian identification, Scatha registry.” The watch-stander paused, frowning. “They were broadcasting that, anyway. They both just went silent.”

Rob shoved himself up from his bunk, trying to relax and wishing the report had led with that most important bit of information. “Can we see any weapons on them?” he asked, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

“Um… sensors can’t identify any weapon modifications. Both freighters do have a couple of heavy-lift shuttles strapped to them, though.”

“Shuttles? Also unarmed?”

“Yes, sir.” The watch-stander peered at his display. “Looks like they steadied out on an intercept with this planet in its orbit.”

Two freighters. Unarmed, but coming here. What was Scatha up to?

Rob called up his own display, waiting impatiently while the old systems flickered before steadying. The freighters were moving at merchant-ship velocity, substantially less than that of warships. At point zero two light speed, they would take nearly two weeks to reach the planet.

The Wingate had long since departed. There was one other ship still in the star system, heading outward toward the jump point for Jatayu, back up toward stars like Kosatka and Taniwha. That ship had left the orbit of this planet only two days ago after off-loading a new batch of equipment and a large new group of men and women and children eager to get a new start on a new world.

Rob straightened himself up, trying to look serious and professional, then touched the comm control. He derived some small satisfaction in knowing that since the ship’s day on the Squall was matched to the night and day hours at Glenlyon’s still-only city, he would be waking up council members with his message. “This is Lieutenant Geary on the Squall. Two freighters showing registry from Scatha have arrived in this star system and are heading toward this world. As far as we can tell, the freighters are unarmed. They are projected to reach this planet in thirteen days at their current velocity. I request instructions for dealing with the ships. My recommendation is that the Squall be sent to intercept them and conduct searches to ensure this isn’t another hostile act.”

Council President Chisholm called back a quarter of an hour later. She looked half-worried and half-rumpled from being woken. “Why do you think this might be another attack, Lieutenant?”

“Because the last time Scatha sent a ship here, it was an attack,” Rob explained. “And because these ships broadcast their identities once after arriving, then went silent. That’s not normal. Maybe the Squall wasn’t just going to extort money from us but would have also hung around this star system to provide escort for those two freighters.”

“Why would the freighters need an escort? What can they do?”

“I don’t know,” Rob said. “That’s why I recommended intercepting them and searching them.”

Chisholm paused, thinking. “How long will it take you to intercept them?”

“About three days if we don’t push it. That’s after we get under way, which will probably take another day to get necessary people and supplies back aboard.”

“Four days will be fine,” Chisholm said. “Go intercept them, leaving as soon as you feel your ship is ready. While you’re on the way there, the council will deliberate and decide on a course of action.”

“We need to search them,” Rob said.

“The council will decide on a course of action,” Chisholm told him, her tone reassuring even though her words didn’t actually promise much.

“May I make one more suggestion?” Rob asked, trying his best to sound diplomatic. “We can get Lyn Meltzer on contract again to check out the freighters for whatever she can find out. It’s possible she could break into their systems enough to find out what they are doing.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” Chisholm said. “The council will handle the contract, though.”

“That’s fine,” Rob said, meaning it. Maybe the council thought it was ensuring that Ninja was answering to them and not Rob, but such an arrangement meant that he wouldn’t once again be Ninja’s boss. And he was increasingly feeling like he wanted to avoid that.

As soon as the call ended, Rob started double-checking the status of the ship. What needed to be done to leave orbit and head for an intercept with those freighters? The council had continued to make only short-term purchases of necessary supplies like food and water, so he only had about six days’ worth of food on hand. He would have to get the council to cough up enough money for the ship to be out for weeks, though since most of what they were getting were emergency rations siphoned from disaster-readiness supplies, no one would be happy with the quality of the food. Rob double-checked to ensure that there was enough coffee on hand. Ships ran on fuel cells, but crews ran on coffee. At least in the matter of fuel, he could still make use of the supplies the Squall had carried when captured from Scatha. There were enough fuel cells aboard to handle power for more than a month of routine operations.

Danielle Martel had pretty much stayed on the Squall since the ship’s and her own change of allegiance. She had confessed to feeling unwelcome on the planet, and Rob had to admit she had good cause for that. He felt guilty because that social isolation meant that Danielle, the only other trained sailor, was always available to help him handle matters on the ship. There were several members of the volunteer crew down on the planet who would have to be brought up, though, and one contractor who would have to be sent down if he wouldn’t volunteer to help out. Rob didn’t have a lot of hope on that account.

After getting a shuttle on the ground alerted to the need for a lift in the morning, sending the council a list of the supplies needed, and having word passed to the crew members who were being recalled, Rob went in search of the contractor.

It was still an hour before ship’s dawn when Rob roused Corbin Torres from sleep. “We’re going to be leaving orbit on orders from the council. I’d like to have you along, but I can’t insist on it. It’s up to you.”

Torres scowled at him. “I did my time. I’m not going on any missions. When can I hop a shuttle?”

“One will be here in five hours, so you have time to wrap up what you were working on and pass on any more essential information. Are you confident that the people you trained can safely operate the power core?”

He got a shrug from Torres in reply.

“Are you comfortable knowing you’re sending them out with what little you’ve been able to teach them so far?” Rob asked, letting his voice grow cold this time.

Torres glared at him. “I’m not the one giving the orders for this ship to go somewhere. Save your self-righteousness for the people in charge, which happens to include you! You’re making the decision to send them out, not me!”

“Nothing is your responsibility, huh?” Rob said. “Just get off my ship.” He turned to leave.

“Do you think they’ll be grateful?” Torres yelled after him. “Do you think they’ll really care about what happens to you? You’re an idiot! A young, idealistic idiot who thinks sucking up to the people in charge will earn him rewards!”

Rob paused long enough to look back and shake his head at Torres. “I’m not doing anything for other people. I’m doing this for myself because I think these things need to be done. And, no, I don’t expect any rewards. That doesn’t matter.”

He walked away, knowing that it really did matter even if he told himself otherwise. Lack of recognition did hurt. That was a big part of why he had left Alfar’s fleet with its small, clubby officer corps and the exclusive set of men and women who knew all the right people, got all the right assignments, and got medals and promotions like clockwork regardless of how well or how little they had actually done. But it also really didn’t matter since he would do what needed doing, anyway. That much was true, that he had to do what he thought was needed because he would have a hard time living with himself if he didn’t. The last thing he wanted was to become as bitter and burnt-out as Corbin Torres. Avoiding that fate was, in the end, why he had left Alfar. And, for that matter, why he was in command of the Squall when anyone with common sense would have already told the council to pound sand.

Twelve hours later, his current “full” crew of fourteen men and women aboard, along with enough additional food, water, and coffee to keep everyone alive if not fulfilled, Rob took his seat on the bridge and studied the projected tracks on his display. The path of the two freighters from Scatha formed a broad arc of about four light hours’ distance, which came to over four hundred billion kilometers. If things worked out, the freighters would never finish that journey, instead being forced to turn back, because Rob fully expected to find something on those spacecraft that Glenlyon wouldn’t want in its star system.

Squall would leave her orbit about this planet, already being called Glenlyon after the new name of its star. Swooping along another arc that intersected that of the freighters, Squall would meet them nearly two light hours from the planet, more than four days before the freighters would reach Glenlyon. That would allow plenty of time to search the other ships and take whatever other steps the council would authorize.

The great majority of Squall’s crew were excited and worried. With only two exceptions, the crew had no experience with naval missions. For them, this was something new, thrilling, and daunting.

One of the exceptions was Rob, who wasn’t feeling any thrill but plenty of daunt. The other exception was seated at the operations watch station.

Danielle Martel had occupied that same station for Scatha when the Squall had belonged to that star. Getting the council to agree to letting her be part of the crew, working for Glenlyon now, had been almost impossible, but Rob had stuck to it because she knew the ship better than anyone else, because she was apparently what she claimed to be, someone trapped into a contract with Scatha who was grateful to be working for Glenlyon now, and, just as importantly, because she was a former junior officer in Earth Fleet. But she had no rank, no official status, and Rob knew from personal experience how that must rankle. “Anything?” Rob asked her.

“No. I’ve gone through all the records again from when Scatha owned this ship,” Danielle said. “Including all the things I wasn’t allowed to see. There’s nothing about any plan involving those two freighters.”

“Do you think the former captain knew anything?”

“I doubt his bosses shared anything with Screamin’ Pete that they didn’t have to,” Danielle said. “As far as I could learn when working for Scatha, everything is organized into stovepipes to keep anyone from finding out what anyone else is doing. Except for Central Security, which looks into every stovepipe. All I can do is guess, and my guess is that if Scatha sent those freighters here, it’s to do something that Glenlyon won’t like.”

Drake Porter, one of the Glenlyon volunteers who had helped capture the Squall and stayed on to help crew her, shook his head from his post at the comm station. “Nobody’s going to listen to you, though. Except us.”

“I know,” Danielle said with a sigh. “You’d think I was the first person to ever be tricked by a bogus recruiting pitch.”

Drake nodded sympathetically. Rob had noticed that he liked Danielle Martel. Maybe more than liked, but so far, Danielle had just been friendly in response.

A soft tone brought Drake Porter’s attention back to his display. “You’ve got a call, Lieutenant.”

Rob checked his own display, seeing the link that Drake had already posted. He tapped the accept command and saw Ninja’s face appear before him. “Good afternoon, or evening.”

“Is it?” She grimaced at him. “You got me another job, huh?”

“Working for the council,” Rob pointed out. “Not me.”

“I noticed that. Which means?”

“Um, that no options are closed off.”

“No options are closed off?” Ninja gave him an irritated look. “Don’t take anything for granted. You’re going out to meet those guys, aren’t you?”

“That’s what I’ve been told to do,” Rob said. “They appear to be unarmed.”

“Sure. Is Danielle Martel all calm and relaxed about that? I didn’t think so. I’ll find out what they’re doing since that seems to be the only way I’ll be able to keep you from flinging yourself into space to force entry on those freighters,” Ninja said.

She ended the call, leaving him wondering what he’d done wrong.

“Let’s go,” Rob told the bridge crew. On a larger ship, or a ship with a full crew, he would give helm commands to a watch-stander, which would be repeated back and checked against the commands recommended by the maneuvering systems. But the Squall didn’t have enough people aboard for that kind of redundancy to ensure that the right commands were entered. Instead, Rob took a final look at the commands, repeating them out loud to himself to ensure they matched what he wanted the ship to do. “Turn port zero six zero degrees, up zero three degrees, accelerate to point zero five light speed.”

He felt an odd sense of history, looking around the bridge at everyone who was looking at him. “Here we go on the first operational mission for the Squall, the first operational warship of the Glenlyon Star System.”

Rob tapped the execute command, and the automated maneuvering systems took care of the rest.

Squall would never be the nimblest warship in space, but Rob still felt himself smiling as she swung about smoothly under the push of her thrusters, the main drive lighting off to push her away from orbit about the planet and onto the vector needed to intercept the incoming freighters.

A small round of applause sounded on the bridge. “You should have given a speech,” Drake Porter said.

Danielle Martel laughed for the first time since Rob had known her. “I’m part of something new! The first time for something! Do you have any idea how strange that is for someone from Earth?”

“I guess we should have brought along something to toast the event,” Rob said, grinning.

“I could get some coffee,” Drake Porter offered.

“That’s probably the most appropriate beverage we could have,” Rob agreed. As Drake left the bridge, Rob glanced at Danielle. “Do you know how long we’ve used that system for maneuvering in space? The whole port and starboard thing?”

She paused to think. “I learned that once in a navigation course. When was it? Mid-twenty-first century, I think. Maybe late in that century. We didn’t need it until we had enough ships maneuvering independently between planets. Ships at sea had used port and starboard, and the one fixed reference in a star system is the star, so they decided to use starboard for turning toward the star and port for turning away from it. And then up and down based on the plane the planets orbit in.”

“That’s not a new something, then.”

She laughed again. “Not even close.”

There were so few crew aboard the Squall that Rob had to stand watches on the bridge along with the others he thought capable enough for the task. It made for a short night’s sleep, but everyone else aboard was doing the same thing. He had just come off four hours on the bridge, which included the start of the next ship’s day, when Rob finally heard from Ninja again. The time lag between Squall and the planet had grown to nearly half an hour, making a real conversation impossible.

Ninja looked frustrated and stubborn. “Bad news. Those two ships sent out a single transmission with their registry information when they arrived in this star system, then apparently shut down every transmitter and receiver. I can get in past locked doors. I can’t get in if there aren’t any doors! Before you ask, I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell the council. The freighters aren’t running any links between themselves. No active transmissions of any kind. No receivers active that I can tell. Scatha must have heard how we took the Squall, and since they couldn’t trust their firewalls against me, they pretty much isolated those freighters from any signal traffic. Obviously, with how far away those freighters still are, I’ve only had time to bounce one set of signals off them, looking for ways in and getting the results back. But if they stay locked down like that, I won’t be able to get into their systems no matter how weak their firewalls are. I’ll keep trying, but don’t hold your breath. Sorry.”

Rob rubbed his lower face, worried. He had expected Ninja to work her usual magic, but Scatha had figured out a way around that.

He touched the reply command. “Thanks, Ninja. If you can’t get in, nobody can. Is there any way we could plant some kind of physical tap on them when we get close enough, something stuck on their hulls that you could use to break into their systems from outside? It would have to be something we could improvise from components on this ship, which I imagine means the answer is no, but let me know if I’m wrong. Thanks again.” Should he say anything else? This was an official transmission, after all. “Geary, out.”

The excitement among the crew when they had started out had slowly subsided into the dull routine of traveling millions of kilometers through space lacking much in the way of variety. Rob and Danielle Martel had both experienced this sort of “adventure” drudgery, but the others in the crew were new to it. And people who were tired and bored, and not used to handling that, made for leadership challenges.

“Back off, both of you!” Rob ordered, glaring at the two volunteers who were about to come to blows. “Vlad, if you come within a meter of Teri again I will put you in a survival suit and duct-tape you to the outside of this ship.”

Vlad turned a sullen glower on Rob. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

“Yes, you do. If you want to quit when we get back to Glenlyon, that’s fine with me. But as long as you’re on this ship, you will listen to orders and treat your shipmates with courtesy and respect!”

Rob waited until Vlad, grumbling under his breath, had left. “You okay?” he asked Teri.

“I’m okay,” she said, face still hard with anger. “I could have taken him.”

“That’s not the point. You’re not supposed to take him. That makes it personal. This is about discipline on the ship. If he violates discipline, then I take him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rob turned to see Danielle Martel watching. She walked with Rob as he headed back toward his stateroom. “Nice command voice,” Danielle remarked.

“I have a command voice?” Rob asked, giving her a skeptical look.

“Yeah. Your voice gets lower in pitch and a bit louder in volume.”

“Huh,” Rob said, surprised to realize that he had been doing that. “Is that how Earth Fleet would have handled that?”

“Why do you care how Earth Fleet would have done it?” Danielle Martel asked.

“Because they’re the model,” Rob said. “The oldest and the best.”

She laughed though it carried a sharp edge that didn’t sound like amusement. “If only Earth Fleet lived up to its rep! Yeah, that’s what I would’ve done. You were a lieutenant for Alfar, right? What do you care about a former ensign’s opinion?”

“You’re a pro,” Rob said. “Whether you realize it or not. That’s why I care. I’m still learning this stuff.”

“You’ll never make admiral with that attitude,” Danielle Martel said.

The Squall had traveled for almost a day and a half, to one and a half light hours from the planet, when the council’s guidance finally came in, delivered by Council President Chisholm herself. Chisholm had sent the message from her new office, a room mostly devoid of decoration, the walls apparently left nearly bare in the expectation of many future plaques and pictures and displays in the centuries to come. “Your instructions, Lieutenant Geary, are to intercept the freighters from Scatha as previously directed. You are to insist on the right to inspect the freighters and ensure they are carefully examined by whoever you send over for that task. Do not send Danielle Martel.”

Rob slapped his forehead at that last, grateful that the message wasn’t anything like real-time and his reaction couldn’t be seen.

“If the freighters refuse to allow inspection,” Chisholm continued, “you are to instruct them to reverse course and leave this star system.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, having feared that the council would balk at such a necessary step.

“It must be clearly understood,” Chisholm said, “that you are not to fire upon the freighters under any circumstances. No weapons are to be employed, either aimed at the freighters or near them. They are civilian spacecraft, they are unarmed, and therefore cannot be attacked by warships under interstellar space law.”

Rob’s feeling of relief vanished.

“Keep the council apprised of your actions, and if you need to do anything not already covered by your instructions, ensure you request and receive approval before acting. Chisholm, out.”

Rob played the message again, hoping that he had missed something.

He hadn’t.

Needing somebody to vent to about the message, he called Danielle Martel into his stateroom. He doubted the council would approve of that, but they hadn’t told him not to share his “instructions” with anyone else.

She watched it in silence, not reacting except for a wince when Chisholm mentioned her name. “Why did they think they needed to tell you not to send me?” Danielle asked when the message was over. “If you were that dumb, you shouldn’t be commanding this ship.”

“In all fairness,” Rob said sarcastically, “they haven’t made up their minds yet about my commanding this ship.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s sort of disappointing that they think I’m dumb enough to want to put myself back into the hands of Scatha. But you can’t shoot. What if the freighters ignore your orders to go back to the jump point?”

“I guess I’m supposed to use harsh language,” Rob said.

“Not without requesting and receiving clearance from the council,” Danielle Martel admonished him. “Do you think they realize that by the time we intercept those freighters it will be a multihour process just in terms of the time for light to carry the messages back and forth?”

“What do you think the freighters will do?”

“It depends on their orders. They’ll do whatever they were told,” Danielle said. “When I was working for Scatha, I was given a very clear impression that it is a very bad idea to not follow orders. Central Security takes a great deal of interest in that sort of thing.”

Rob shook his head, gazing at the spot over his desk where Chisholm’s message had been visible. “Why did you leave Old Earth’s fleet to come out here and deal with this kind of thing? We must look like idiots playing the amateur hour.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No. In Earth Fleet, we’d have a checklist for every possible circumstance, a checklist that itself contained multiple subchecklists, and regulations required following those checklists and subchecklists and subsubchecklists to the letter. Earth Fleet has been doing this stuff far longer than anyone else, and every time anyone made a mistake, it got added to the checklists to make sure no one else did it.”

“In Alfar’s fleet, we looked up to Earth Fleet,” Rob said, leaning back as he looked at her. “I’ve told you that. You guys are the old pros, the men and women who could outfight anyone and anything.”

Danielle shook her head again, suddenly looking older. “If you want the truth, Earth Fleet is a zombie. It’s already dead. It’s been dead for a while. But it keeps going because it doesn’t know it’s dead yet. Tradition and denial are keeping the pieces moving and the ships cruising. But not much longer.” She grew somber. “Earth is tired of war, Rob. You may not think humans could ever tire of their favorite destructive pastime, but Earth has seen too much and endured too much. They’re getting out of the game.”

“So it wasn’t just wanting to do something new? You left because Earth Fleet is on its last legs?” He found the idea that Earth Fleet could someday be gone hard to grasp.

“Yes.” Danielle Martel’s eyes became haunted with memories. “Everyone followed procedures and carried out their patrols and pretended it wasn’t all coming to an end, but it was. No one was even supposed to talk about everything winding down because that would signal a negative attitude and adversely impact morale. We were all on a death watch but supposed to smile and act like everything was fine. I couldn’t handle that.”

She sighed, then her gaze on him grew demanding. “I won’t be the only remnant of Earth Fleet heading down. You’re going to meet others. Let me tell you, Rob, when you encounter other Earth Fleet–trained officers, they will be fiends for following procedures and regulations. They’ll be sharp and look sharp and know how to drive their ships, and they’re likely to be brave and fight as well as they can, but in any emergency they’ll look to the book for an answer, and if the answer isn’t there, they’ll be lost.”

“They won’t innovate?” Rob asked, skeptical.

“They can’t innovate,” Danielle said. “It’s been trained out of them. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in an assigned task. If they failed to follow every step on the checklist and every applicable rule for that task, they will be judged as having failed. The process is what matters, not the outcome.”

“You’re serious?” Rob demanded.

“Absolutely. Why do you think I was willing to believe that fairy tale the recruiter from Scatha spun? I couldn’t wait to get out.”

Rob nodded to her. “I’ll remember that. Do you know if Scatha already has any other Earth Fleet vets?”

“Maybe,” Danielle said. “But I don’t know. One of the first things that tipped me off that Scatha was bad news was when I first reported and asked about that. I was told that who was in the crews of the other warships was none of my business.”

“That’s weird,” Rob said, startled.

“More like paranoid. I wanted to work where I could make a difference, not where I had to watch every step I took.”

“Good luck with that,” Rob said.

“The people running Scatha are as bad as Reds,” Danielle Martel said. “I bet a lot of them are Reds originally.”

“Reds?”

“From Mars. Haven’t you heard about it? The planet is a mess of little klepto-states run by gangs and dictators. Half of Earth Fleet’s missions in the last century involved dealing with Red scams and predations. If you meet a Red, keep one hand on your wallet and use the other hand to call for backup.”

“Everyone from Mars is like that?” Rob asked, skeptical.

“Everyone I ever heard of,” Danielle assured him. “Why’d you leave Alfar?”

“Mostly because everything you did was supposed to be the way it had been done before. You couldn’t breathe differently than they had twenty years ago because the way they breathed back then was the way it should be done. Plus, their fleet was small and getting smaller.” He looked away, remembering how it had felt to know that the future held nothing but less and realizing in that he and Danielle Martel had experienced similar things. “Not dead or dying, but shrinking with no hope that it would ever grow again. Why do you suppose Old Earth and the Old Colonies started drawing inward when humanity started expanding outward?”

“Maybe it was easier,” Danielle suggested. “Everybody actually looking forward to the future is heading out here. Like you.”

“And you.” Rob paused as a thought struck him. “And the people who colonized Scatha. You told me they’re recruiting citizens by promising they won’t let anyone push Scatha around. Are the old places exporting their troublemakers? Sending them off to mess with each other and leave the past to slumber undisturbed?”

“If so, you’re in on the ground floor of a growing business,” Danielle commented.

He laughed. “Yeah, nothing but opportunity. Look how far I’ve come! I have a temporary, conditional sort of command of a Buccaneer Class cutter, whose few weapons I am not allowed to employ, crewed mostly by inexperienced volunteers who are discovering that this stuff is a lot more fun when viewed on a vid, and under the orders of a council that wishes none of this was happening. And if anything goes wrong, it will be my fault.”

“You didn’t think that would change, did you?” She gave him a sharp look. “Why did you ask me to view that message?”

“I needed someone else’s point of view,” Rob said.

“That wasn’t the only reason.”

Rob grimaced. “No. I wanted to vent to someone.”

“So you picked me. May I speak freely, Lieutenant Geary?”

Rob’s expression changed to a frown as he looked at her, wondering why Danielle Martel had adopted such a formal demeanor. “Of course you can.”

“You’re the commander of this ship,” Danielle said. “The senior officer in what military force Glenlyon has. Which means you can’t vent like that. Not when it comes to civilian oversight. Your crew is listening. Maybe hearing you talk like that would make them respect you less as well as respecting the government less. Or, worse, maybe they’ll continue to respect you but respect the government less. Where does that vector lead?”

Rob shook his head at her. “I would never threaten the government.”

“What about those who come after you?” Danielle Martel asked. “Everything you say and do will play a role in what becomes the traditions of Glenlyon’s military. You’re laying the foundation for whatever military Glenlyon ends up with. What do you want that foundation to look like?”

He hadn’t really considered that before. “I’ve just been trying to get by, doing what needs to be done. Do you really think what I say matters that much?”

“Do you really think it doesn’t?”

Rob shook his head. “No. You’re right. I guess I’ve spent too much time thinking about what I can’t do. But I can do other things without even realizing I’m doing them. This is the first ship in Glenlyon’s fleet, no matter how much larger that fleet someday gets or how small it stays. What we do here, what I do here, will influence what comes after, won’t it? All right. I’ll set a good example.” As she got up to leave, he looked at her, feeling depressed. “Nobody will remember, will they?”

“What?” Danielle asked.

“What we did. Stuff like this. Maybe people will remember the traditions, but not us. That will be in the footnotes of history, buried in databases. No one will remember you and me.”

She shrugged, looking down at him. “Is that why you do things? Because history?”

“No. Because of me or people or things I care about.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’d like to think it mattered what I did,” Rob said.

Danielle shrugged again. “I thought we’d agreed it did matter. But its mattering and your being remembered are two different things.”

“It really doesn’t bother you?” Rob asked.

She smiled slightly. “Rob, I come from Earth. It’s old. Countless men and women have come and gone there. They’ve left their marks. Old ruins and new ruins, changes to the landscape, species wiped out and species preserved, structures thousands of years old. It gives you perspective, I guess. A lot of their names aren’t remembered, but what they did contributed to what Earth is. There’s no sense complaining about it. That’s how things work. If you want something different, you could try some of the reverence for ancestors movements that are spreading everywhere.”

“I thought that was mostly on Alfar,” Rob said. “Looking back to Old Earth, where we came from, and the people we came from.”

“I’ve noticed it seems to be everywhere out here,” Danielle said. “There’s always been that form of belief among some groups on Earth, but it’s very popular in the new colonies. Reverence for the past, for the Earth, and for our ancestors, who hopefully care about us in places where everything else is unfamiliar. It might be a fad, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a fad. Is death a final ending or a new beginning? We still don’t know. Maybe we never will.”

He grinned, for some reason feeling better. “We’ll all find out eventually. If they don’t come up with the immortality fix that’s been on the horizon for how many centuries now?”

She smiled back. “Do you know what a horizon is? It’s an imaginary line that recedes as fast as you approach it.”

“Thanks, Danielle. I really appreciate being able to discuss problems with a real pro.”

“You’re a real pro, too, Lieutenant,” she replied, saluting him with a solemn expression. “Don’t forget it.”

Wary that the freighters from Scatha might be Trojan horses filled with well-armed troops that would try to board the Squall and retake the ship, Rob brought Squall to only within a light second of the other ships before matching vector with them. No matter how well trained or equipped they were, no soldiers were going to be jumping three hundred thousand kilometers through space.

Nervous as well about the potential for a Scatha hack aimed at Squall, Rob kept checking the firewalls that Ninja had installed to protect the systems on the warship.

“They’re trying to get in,” Danielle Martel reported. “But our firewalls are holding. That stuff Ninja patched in is solid.”

“But the automated intrusion routines that Ninja sent still aren’t finding any way into their systems,” Rob said.

It felt odd to realize that on the surface, the three ships were racing through space, no sign of conflict or hostility between them, yet on a level outside of direct human observation, battles were being fought at light speed. The only immediate casualties in those invisible battles where codes and radiation strove against each other would be in damaged code or deflected intrusion attempts. But should one side triumph, the men and women on the losing side would suffer for it.

“This looks like a standoff,” Drake Porter said, putting Rob’s thoughts into words.

“Let’s try some macro coercion,” Rob said. He put on his best “I am in charge” attitude and tried not to be self-conscious about using the command voice that he hadn’t been aware of having until Danielle pointed it out. “Ships from Scatha, this is Lieutenant Robert Geary of the Glenlyon fleet, aboard the cutter Squall. You are in space owned by and controlled by the government of Glenlyon. You are directed to immediately identify your intentions in this star system and to open your automated systems to examination by my ship. You are also to signal your willingness to be boarded by inspection parties to determine what you are carrying. If you fail to respond as ordered, you will be required to reverse vectors and return to Scatha.”

Only a light second lay between the freighters and Squall. No noticeable delay should have held up the reply. But no reply came as the minutes went by.

“Now what?” Drake Porter asked.

Rob exchanged a glance with Danielle Martel, who spread her hands in the age-old gesture of helplessness.

He could repeat his demands, but that would just emphasize his inability to get the freighters from Scatha to reply. He could increase the level of menace in the demands, but the only way to do that was to threaten to fire on the freighters, and if they continued to ignore him he wouldn’t be able to make good on his threat. Aside from personally embarrassing him, that would create an impression with whoever was on the freighters that Glenlyon was all talk and no action, which might lead to further problems.

There was only one thing he could do. “Given my orders from the council,” Rob told Drake Porter and the others on the bridge, “all I can do is request permission to threaten those freighters.”

“How about powering up the pulse cannon and locking it on one of them?” Drake said.

Rob saw Danielle Martel shake her head so fractionally that it was barely noticeable. Her opinion was clear though she was diplomatic enough not to openly say it.

The idea was tempting, though. Technically, that wouldn’t be a violation of what the council had told him.

But it would violate the spirit of those orders. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

“No,” Rob told Drake. “My orders are clear. I’ll request that the council permit us to take other action.”

“If we did something, it’d be over long before the council even saw it,” Drake argued.

“This isn’t a matter of debate,” Rob said, his resolve stiffening. “Drake, if we decide we can do whatever we want, even if the government has told us not to, then we’re introducing a fatal illness into Glenlyon. The government gives us weapons and responsibility. We follow orders. That may sound dumb, but it’s far preferable to what would happen if we established a tradition of the military ignoring orders from the government. None of us want to go where that would lead someday.”

He waited, watching the others, and one by one they nodded. Danielle Martel smiled as she nodded as well.

All right, Rob consoled himself as he went to his stateroom to compose his message to the council. So he hadn’t stopped the freighters yet. But he had stopped something that might have done a lot more damage in the long run.

“The freighters have refused to answer my transmissions. They are not responding to demands to allow us access to their systems and that we be allowed to inspect them, and are not responding to orders to return to the jump point and leave this star system. If I am not given more options for dealing with these ships, I will not be able to prevent them from reaching the planet. Given my current orders from the council, I have no means of discovering what the freighters are carrying or what their mission is or whether they are carrying anything that would be a threat to the population of Glenlyon. I recommend that I be given authorization to threaten firing on them to enforce our demands. If I am allowed to fire on them, the shots can be aimed to damage equipment such as the main propulsion unit with minimal risk to whoever is on the freighters. I must repeat that given my current orders, I cannot prevent the two ships from Scatha from reaching the planet and cannot determine who or what they are carrying before they reach the planet. I must also remind the council that according to our best information, Scatha has a significant number of ground forces at its disposal, while Glenlyon has no effective means of dealing with hostile soldiers if they are landed on our world. Geary, out.”

He couldn’t spell it out any more clearly than that.

This time the reply took nearly a full day, as the three ships continued on toward the planet at point zero two light speed, or twenty-one million kilometers per hour, and Rob as well as his crew continued to grow more worried and frustrated.

Rob was surprised to see that this answer came from Council Member Leigh Camagan. She didn’t look happy, her expression as stern as her voice. “Lieutenant Geary, we understand your concerns and your recommendations and the reasoning behind them. However, you are not authorized to fire on the civilian vessels from Scatha. You are not authorized to threaten to use force against them. Glenlyon cannot be seen as the cause of any conflict or as having acted aggressively. The council does not trust Scatha and is worried about Scatha’s intentions, but if Scatha intends expanding aggression against us, we cannot stand alone. If we are to gain any support from other star systems, it has to be clear that we were attacked and that we did nothing to provoke that attack. We will take the first punch if necessary, Lieutenant, so that when we strike back it will be clear that we had no choice. I know that we can count on you to ensure that the Squall remains ready for whatever tasks are required. Camagan, out.”

Rob sat back, staring up at the overhead. “Great. Take the first punch.” He wondered where and how that would land.

And realized what the council must surely know as well, that whatever Scatha attacked, it wouldn’t be the Squall since the freighters lacked any apparent means to do so. Any blow might fall instead on the planet and on the council itself.

“They’re going to take the first punch, aren’t they?” he asked Danielle Martel after sharing the message with her.

“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding and looking impressed. “Maybe it’s because they can’t agree on what to do until that happens, but still they have to know Scatha is aiming at the planet. There’s no other explanation for those heavy-lift shuttles.”

“Is that why Camagan looked so grim?”

“Maybe.” Danielle shook her head at Rob. “But maybe she wanted you to know that she meant every word. If she had displayed any other behavior, there was a chance you could have taken it as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that disobeying those orders would have been all right in the eyes of some members of the council.”

“That’s possible,” Rob admitted. “Their experience with me is limited, so I can understand their not wanting to take chances. And Scatha is being very clever with this whole game. If they had responded to our capture of the Squall by immediately sending warships to attack us, then they would not be able to deny being the aggressor. Instead, they sent civilian ships, so if we fire on them we’ll be seen as the ones who started a war.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you think Scatha would have sent noncombatants on those freighters?”

“Civilians?” Danielle paused to think, frowning. “I wouldn’t put it past them to have families on at least one of those ships.”

“And there’s no way for us to know.” Rob sat for a moment, brooding, then looked up at Danielle Martel again. “If those freighters are carrying troops, and they land them on Glenlyon, they’ll be able to take over the one city we’ve got easily. The police won’t be able to stop them.”

“Yes. And?”

“Council Member Camagan told me to ensure the Squall was ready for any mission that is required,” Rob said. “If our city is attacked and taken, other colonies are almost certain to do something. But only if they hear about it before Scatha has dug in.”

She nodded in understanding. “Your mission will be to carry the word to other star systems. Scatha must know that you’d do that, though.”

Which meant that Scatha had something on those freighters designed to knock out Squall.

But what?