Post by Lorpius Prime on May 11, 2009 2:14:31 GMT -5
2073 AD.
Pascual Augusto Molinas was a diplomat. He was a highly ranked diplomat, too, since he reported directly to the Councilor for Foreign Affairs, who himself reported directly to the Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States. In terms of his official authority, Pascual was outranked by less than a dozen people on the entire planet. In terms of his unofficial authority, one could be forgiven for thinking that Pascual was even more highly ranked, since the Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States was, in fact, Pascual's uncle. But then one would be forgetting that Pascual was a diplomat.
Pascual was not qualified to judge the relative merits of inertial navigation systems for military spacecraft, nor arrogant enough to imagine that he was. If anyone ever bothered to ask, Pascual would have admitted that his technical knowledge of advanced flying vessels ended with paper airplanes.
But no one ever asked. They either looked at his place in the bureaucratic hierarchy or, more probably, they looked at his last name, and they decided that this guy was a real mover and shaker.
Which was why when Pascual's uncle paged him, he had been in Martha's Vineyard in a clothing shop so upscale that the sales tax alone could probably have put a family of five over the poverty line.
Pascual was more than a little relieved to receive the call and the excuse to pack his things. Martha's Vineyard was nice enough—the entire island was essentially one big enclave, but Pascual had still never been able to overcome his feeling of unease. He had been uncomfortable about staying in the United States ever since he and a school friend had once gotten lost outside of the Gainesville enclave. They had driven around the Florida countryside growing increasingly afraid for their lives, until they had finally been forced to stop and ask directions from a group of dirty-faced Americans in a town that looked like it was constructed mostly out of mud. They had gotten home safely, but Pascual transferred to Cambridge that same year.
He shuddered at the memory, then tried to focus his thoughts. Sonia would give him a tongue-lashing, but would not be seriously upset. Actually she would probably choose to stay behind for a few more days and visit more of the shops that she had been dragging Pascual into whenever they weren't attending lobbying sessions cleverly disguised as fancy dinners.
Pascual folded up his phone and returned it to its home in his stretchy pants pocket. His bigger problem was going to be Ms. Fournier, their hostess. She had become increasingly frustrated the last few days as she began to realize that Pascual Molinas was not the perfect opportunity her third-tier defense contractor needed to get its foot in the door on some upcoming prime Fleet bids. Pascual rather suspected that Fournier's company wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of dislodging any of the big consortiums from that market even if she were having dinner with Admiral Kozlov himself. Not that Pascual was about to pass up the opportunity to eat thousand-euro lobster for free by saying so.
He wondered if the complimentary meals were likely to end after he told Ms. Fournier about his early departure. Pascual resolved not to reveal the information at least until they were already seated for that evening's dinner.
Part of him was tempted to leave even before dinner. His uncle's refusal to discuss the reasons for the abrupt summons had only worked to send Pascual's curiosity into overdrive. But Eduard Molinas had said he would brief Pascual tomorrow, and Pascual knew that expediting his return would do nothing to change the timing of that meeting. Plus, he really wanted another dinner like the previous three. The busy pace of work meant that his usual diet was not kind to his stomach.
Pascual pushed open the door to the hotel suite's little office and returned to the big bedroom and living area. Sonia was standing in front of a three-way mirror in one corner, inspecting one of the dresses that she had bought in a hurry after Pascual had been paged. Pascual thought it would have looked very nice on her if it wasn't such a painful shade of yellow.
Sonia looked back at him over her shoulder, "What did he say?" Then she noticed the way Pascual was looking at her. "What?" she demanded sharply.
Pascual tried to correct his grimace, but it was difficult. "That's a really bad color," he said.
She rolled her eyes, "Well it's this or the backless for dinner this evening, so pick one."
He looked over to the black dress on the bed which she was indicating, and blinked.
"Does that even qualify as clothing?"
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him for a moment before shaking her head, "No, I'm having too nice a time to get angry with you. What did your uncle say?"
Pascual told her.
It turned out Sonia was not having too nice a time to get angry after all.
Captain Lee Xi Feng set her shoulders and folded her hands behind her back in the slow, methodical way she had practiced for many years. Done right, the gesture struck a dignified and commanding pose. If she moved with too much haste or violence, however, it would send her spinning across the deck, hardly the image Xi Feng wanted to project at any time.
The grey and cratered surface of the moon slid lazily overhead. The intricate spider webs of linear accelerators, habitats, and industrial compounds were growing large enough to see from orbit now. Environmentalists were beginning to wail about that, but no one important really cared. Xi Feng certainly had no sympathy. Such was progress.
She took a deep breath, letting her chest fill with satisfaction and sterile, recycled air. Xi Feng didn't actually visit the observation bubble that often, even when she did have free time away from the mundane aspects of her work. She found space to be interesting, even beautiful at times, but it wasn't something over which she ever became giddy or tearful like so many others she knew. Xi Feng had been drawn to space because it was in space that humanity's destiny would be made or lost, and she had seized the opportunity to be a part of that with both hands, like a greedy child.
It had paid off, too. Xi Feng's cruiser, the EFS Uruguay, was the lead ship of the Fleet's most powerful class of warships. It was an honor the vessel would hold for at least another year, until the Moscow finally left its yard. Xi Feng was in personal command of more nuclear warheads than had been used on both sides of the entire Straits War. She could launch them in flights of twenty from the Uruguay's rails, or in two apocalyptic barrages from their rocket pods. Doctrine was still divided over which was the best approach. Combined with the ship's array of short-range cannon and lasers, the Uruguay had enough firepower to qualify as an entire first-tier national military all on its own.
Yesterday the Uruguay had joined five other ships of its class, two dozen older cruisers, and five destroyer squadrons, Earth Fleet's entire home division, in standing off a single armed cutter sent by the Bats in violation of the Earth Exclusion Zone. Neither Xi Feng nor any of her fellow captains were sure they could have won the battle if the Bats had refused to withdraw.
Steps sounded in the halls. Xi Feng did not look away from the scenery above her. Even several inches thick, the new plastics hardly distorted the image at all. A few people had actually proposed making entire hulls out of the stuff, much to the dismay of old school designers who couldn't seem to think in terms of anything other than plate steel. "Armor", they called it. As if anything the human race could build would stand up to gigajoule lasers or iron slugs traveling at ninety-percent of light speed. No, the big trick to surviving space combat was to not get hit in the first place. It was also the only trick.
The steps ended and Lt. Commander Hiram Wade deftly planted his feet and grabbed the ceiling handles to bring himself to a stop alongside Xi Feng. He glanced up at the lunar view overhead before turning his attention to the woman beside him.
"Hiding from me, Captain?"
"Apologies, Commander," Xi Feng replied without looking at him. "I thought I would catch a glimpse of our ward for myself."
"Ahh," he said, and gazed up once more. "I came to inform you that the watch is transferring to us in half an hour."
Xi Feng nodded. Her feet were leaving the deck now, and she reached up a hand to brace against the ceiling and steady herself back into place. The longest she had ever been able to keep that pose was five minutes, so holding it for even three was good.
"The section chiefs will have everyone at their posts?"
"Yes, sir. You just need to give the word."
Xi Feng tore her eyes away from the view to look at her executive officer. "Give it another fifteen minutes, then sound for general quarters."
"Aye aye, sir," he gave the exaggerated nod which had replaced traditional salutes in an environment where free hands were a luxury.
A pause, and both of them looked up as a shape cut across the lunar surface. Even at this distance, the tremendous volume of the alien vessel was apparent. Intelligence had taken to calling it a "small transport", but it was still larger than any cruiser the Fleet had even designed. Yet another indication of how far humanity still had to go.
"Think we'll have any more problems?" the XO asked.
"The Bats already made their bid," Xi Feng shook her head. "And the word is these guys are actually friendly with the Charterlings."
"And the Kyhyex?"
She shrugged, "Who can say? Either they will or they won't, but my feeling is they would have tried something by now if they were so inclined." She pushed away from the window with one hand and twisted around. "Not that we won't be ready for them if they show up anyway."
Lt. Commander Wade smiled slightly, "So have you looked at their pictures yet?"
"I have."
"Then you need to hear what Chief Hamad thinks we should be calling them."
"And how, exactly, have you managed to keep this out of the news?"
The building's air conditioner was failing to keep up with the Caracas heat, and Pascual loosened the top button of his collar, noticing that the two men across the table from him had already done the same.
The one on the right, Councilor Durante, Pascual's boss, shrugged.
"We haven't actually tried that hard. The Fleet's keeping silent, obviously, but there are going to be a lot of reporters kicking themselves in a few days. No one on the moon seems to have given the ship a second glance yet."
Pascual sighed, and shuffled through some of the papers laid out in front of them, trying to take in everything at once. "Why did we leave them hanging for so long?"
"Quarantine," Durante said. "They're not as simple as the Bats, apparently, and it took a few days to make sure we could reconcile environments."
"Speaking of…" Pascual picked up one of the pages he'd found particularly disturbing, "they actually sent a warship?"
The man on the left, who was Durante's boss, nodded, "I threatened to expel Hyarahek and his entire delegation before he called them off."
Pascual grimaced at his uncle. Eduard Molinas was Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States; he had to know that he had been playing with fire by making such threats. And that told Pascual just how serious this business was. He suppressed the urge to swallow.
"All right then, what do you want me to do?"
"Just sit in for now," Durante said, after waiting for Eduard Molinas' nod of permission. "We're still feeling our way into this one at the moment, but my impression is we're going to need someone who can represent Earth on a high level assigned to this case on a long-term basis. The Chief Executive asked for you, and I agree," Pascual could see the honesty in his expression, and felt his ego swell just a little.
He went on, "We've got a pair of Bats in the room to advise and help out with any communication issues."
"And to spy for Hyarahek," Pascual added.
Both men nodded. "Yes," acknowledged Durante, "so we'd like you to keep an eye on them, too. I don't know if you'll be able to glean much, but see if you can't get a feel for how they'll respond to anything we do."
"You know if they've already threatened armed action, we may be walking into extremely dangerous territory by doing anything, right?"
Nods again, graver this time. Pascual sighed; it wasn't his place to question decisions, just to offer his assessment of a situation.
"Have we gotten anything better to call them since we've talked?"
His uncle smirked, but it was Durante who answered, "Not yet. We did ask them, but either they were having difficulty with the concept, or our translators were with their answer. We're still going with the Bat label at the moment."
"And did we ever figure out what, uh, 'Kekregka' means?" Pascual raised an eyebrow.
Durante winced, and Eduard Molinas chuckled. "The last time I asked a linguist about it," the Chief Executive said, "he told me that 'shit heads' would not be far off the mark."
Pascual rolled his eyes.
"But," his uncle went on, grinning, "Kozlov told me that some of his intelligence people have been using another name, one which he and I both found quite fitting."
"Tell me," Pascual tapped a finger against the table, trying to encourage his uncle to get to his point.
"Tadpoles," he said, and laughed.
Pascual rolled his eyes again, but the Chief Executive just laughed harder.
Pascual Augusto Molinas was a diplomat. He was a highly ranked diplomat, too, since he reported directly to the Councilor for Foreign Affairs, who himself reported directly to the Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States. In terms of his official authority, Pascual was outranked by less than a dozen people on the entire planet. In terms of his unofficial authority, one could be forgiven for thinking that Pascual was even more highly ranked, since the Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States was, in fact, Pascual's uncle. But then one would be forgetting that Pascual was a diplomat.
Pascual was not qualified to judge the relative merits of inertial navigation systems for military spacecraft, nor arrogant enough to imagine that he was. If anyone ever bothered to ask, Pascual would have admitted that his technical knowledge of advanced flying vessels ended with paper airplanes.
But no one ever asked. They either looked at his place in the bureaucratic hierarchy or, more probably, they looked at his last name, and they decided that this guy was a real mover and shaker.
Which was why when Pascual's uncle paged him, he had been in Martha's Vineyard in a clothing shop so upscale that the sales tax alone could probably have put a family of five over the poverty line.
Pascual was more than a little relieved to receive the call and the excuse to pack his things. Martha's Vineyard was nice enough—the entire island was essentially one big enclave, but Pascual had still never been able to overcome his feeling of unease. He had been uncomfortable about staying in the United States ever since he and a school friend had once gotten lost outside of the Gainesville enclave. They had driven around the Florida countryside growing increasingly afraid for their lives, until they had finally been forced to stop and ask directions from a group of dirty-faced Americans in a town that looked like it was constructed mostly out of mud. They had gotten home safely, but Pascual transferred to Cambridge that same year.
He shuddered at the memory, then tried to focus his thoughts. Sonia would give him a tongue-lashing, but would not be seriously upset. Actually she would probably choose to stay behind for a few more days and visit more of the shops that she had been dragging Pascual into whenever they weren't attending lobbying sessions cleverly disguised as fancy dinners.
Pascual folded up his phone and returned it to its home in his stretchy pants pocket. His bigger problem was going to be Ms. Fournier, their hostess. She had become increasingly frustrated the last few days as she began to realize that Pascual Molinas was not the perfect opportunity her third-tier defense contractor needed to get its foot in the door on some upcoming prime Fleet bids. Pascual rather suspected that Fournier's company wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of dislodging any of the big consortiums from that market even if she were having dinner with Admiral Kozlov himself. Not that Pascual was about to pass up the opportunity to eat thousand-euro lobster for free by saying so.
He wondered if the complimentary meals were likely to end after he told Ms. Fournier about his early departure. Pascual resolved not to reveal the information at least until they were already seated for that evening's dinner.
Part of him was tempted to leave even before dinner. His uncle's refusal to discuss the reasons for the abrupt summons had only worked to send Pascual's curiosity into overdrive. But Eduard Molinas had said he would brief Pascual tomorrow, and Pascual knew that expediting his return would do nothing to change the timing of that meeting. Plus, he really wanted another dinner like the previous three. The busy pace of work meant that his usual diet was not kind to his stomach.
Pascual pushed open the door to the hotel suite's little office and returned to the big bedroom and living area. Sonia was standing in front of a three-way mirror in one corner, inspecting one of the dresses that she had bought in a hurry after Pascual had been paged. Pascual thought it would have looked very nice on her if it wasn't such a painful shade of yellow.
Sonia looked back at him over her shoulder, "What did he say?" Then she noticed the way Pascual was looking at her. "What?" she demanded sharply.
Pascual tried to correct his grimace, but it was difficult. "That's a really bad color," he said.
She rolled her eyes, "Well it's this or the backless for dinner this evening, so pick one."
He looked over to the black dress on the bed which she was indicating, and blinked.
"Does that even qualify as clothing?"
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him for a moment before shaking her head, "No, I'm having too nice a time to get angry with you. What did your uncle say?"
Pascual told her.
It turned out Sonia was not having too nice a time to get angry after all.
* * *
Captain Lee Xi Feng set her shoulders and folded her hands behind her back in the slow, methodical way she had practiced for many years. Done right, the gesture struck a dignified and commanding pose. If she moved with too much haste or violence, however, it would send her spinning across the deck, hardly the image Xi Feng wanted to project at any time.
The grey and cratered surface of the moon slid lazily overhead. The intricate spider webs of linear accelerators, habitats, and industrial compounds were growing large enough to see from orbit now. Environmentalists were beginning to wail about that, but no one important really cared. Xi Feng certainly had no sympathy. Such was progress.
She took a deep breath, letting her chest fill with satisfaction and sterile, recycled air. Xi Feng didn't actually visit the observation bubble that often, even when she did have free time away from the mundane aspects of her work. She found space to be interesting, even beautiful at times, but it wasn't something over which she ever became giddy or tearful like so many others she knew. Xi Feng had been drawn to space because it was in space that humanity's destiny would be made or lost, and she had seized the opportunity to be a part of that with both hands, like a greedy child.
It had paid off, too. Xi Feng's cruiser, the EFS Uruguay, was the lead ship of the Fleet's most powerful class of warships. It was an honor the vessel would hold for at least another year, until the Moscow finally left its yard. Xi Feng was in personal command of more nuclear warheads than had been used on both sides of the entire Straits War. She could launch them in flights of twenty from the Uruguay's rails, or in two apocalyptic barrages from their rocket pods. Doctrine was still divided over which was the best approach. Combined with the ship's array of short-range cannon and lasers, the Uruguay had enough firepower to qualify as an entire first-tier national military all on its own.
Yesterday the Uruguay had joined five other ships of its class, two dozen older cruisers, and five destroyer squadrons, Earth Fleet's entire home division, in standing off a single armed cutter sent by the Bats in violation of the Earth Exclusion Zone. Neither Xi Feng nor any of her fellow captains were sure they could have won the battle if the Bats had refused to withdraw.
Steps sounded in the halls. Xi Feng did not look away from the scenery above her. Even several inches thick, the new plastics hardly distorted the image at all. A few people had actually proposed making entire hulls out of the stuff, much to the dismay of old school designers who couldn't seem to think in terms of anything other than plate steel. "Armor", they called it. As if anything the human race could build would stand up to gigajoule lasers or iron slugs traveling at ninety-percent of light speed. No, the big trick to surviving space combat was to not get hit in the first place. It was also the only trick.
The steps ended and Lt. Commander Hiram Wade deftly planted his feet and grabbed the ceiling handles to bring himself to a stop alongside Xi Feng. He glanced up at the lunar view overhead before turning his attention to the woman beside him.
"Hiding from me, Captain?"
"Apologies, Commander," Xi Feng replied without looking at him. "I thought I would catch a glimpse of our ward for myself."
"Ahh," he said, and gazed up once more. "I came to inform you that the watch is transferring to us in half an hour."
Xi Feng nodded. Her feet were leaving the deck now, and she reached up a hand to brace against the ceiling and steady herself back into place. The longest she had ever been able to keep that pose was five minutes, so holding it for even three was good.
"The section chiefs will have everyone at their posts?"
"Yes, sir. You just need to give the word."
Xi Feng tore her eyes away from the view to look at her executive officer. "Give it another fifteen minutes, then sound for general quarters."
"Aye aye, sir," he gave the exaggerated nod which had replaced traditional salutes in an environment where free hands were a luxury.
A pause, and both of them looked up as a shape cut across the lunar surface. Even at this distance, the tremendous volume of the alien vessel was apparent. Intelligence had taken to calling it a "small transport", but it was still larger than any cruiser the Fleet had even designed. Yet another indication of how far humanity still had to go.
"Think we'll have any more problems?" the XO asked.
"The Bats already made their bid," Xi Feng shook her head. "And the word is these guys are actually friendly with the Charterlings."
"And the Kyhyex?"
She shrugged, "Who can say? Either they will or they won't, but my feeling is they would have tried something by now if they were so inclined." She pushed away from the window with one hand and twisted around. "Not that we won't be ready for them if they show up anyway."
Lt. Commander Wade smiled slightly, "So have you looked at their pictures yet?"
"I have."
"Then you need to hear what Chief Hamad thinks we should be calling them."
* * *
"And how, exactly, have you managed to keep this out of the news?"
The building's air conditioner was failing to keep up with the Caracas heat, and Pascual loosened the top button of his collar, noticing that the two men across the table from him had already done the same.
The one on the right, Councilor Durante, Pascual's boss, shrugged.
"We haven't actually tried that hard. The Fleet's keeping silent, obviously, but there are going to be a lot of reporters kicking themselves in a few days. No one on the moon seems to have given the ship a second glance yet."
Pascual sighed, and shuffled through some of the papers laid out in front of them, trying to take in everything at once. "Why did we leave them hanging for so long?"
"Quarantine," Durante said. "They're not as simple as the Bats, apparently, and it took a few days to make sure we could reconcile environments."
"Speaking of…" Pascual picked up one of the pages he'd found particularly disturbing, "they actually sent a warship?"
The man on the left, who was Durante's boss, nodded, "I threatened to expel Hyarahek and his entire delegation before he called them off."
Pascual grimaced at his uncle. Eduard Molinas was Chief Executive of the Organization of Earth States; he had to know that he had been playing with fire by making such threats. And that told Pascual just how serious this business was. He suppressed the urge to swallow.
"All right then, what do you want me to do?"
"Just sit in for now," Durante said, after waiting for Eduard Molinas' nod of permission. "We're still feeling our way into this one at the moment, but my impression is we're going to need someone who can represent Earth on a high level assigned to this case on a long-term basis. The Chief Executive asked for you, and I agree," Pascual could see the honesty in his expression, and felt his ego swell just a little.
He went on, "We've got a pair of Bats in the room to advise and help out with any communication issues."
"And to spy for Hyarahek," Pascual added.
Both men nodded. "Yes," acknowledged Durante, "so we'd like you to keep an eye on them, too. I don't know if you'll be able to glean much, but see if you can't get a feel for how they'll respond to anything we do."
"You know if they've already threatened armed action, we may be walking into extremely dangerous territory by doing anything, right?"
Nods again, graver this time. Pascual sighed; it wasn't his place to question decisions, just to offer his assessment of a situation.
"Have we gotten anything better to call them since we've talked?"
His uncle smirked, but it was Durante who answered, "Not yet. We did ask them, but either they were having difficulty with the concept, or our translators were with their answer. We're still going with the Bat label at the moment."
"And did we ever figure out what, uh, 'Kekregka' means?" Pascual raised an eyebrow.
Durante winced, and Eduard Molinas chuckled. "The last time I asked a linguist about it," the Chief Executive said, "he told me that 'shit heads' would not be far off the mark."
Pascual rolled his eyes.
"But," his uncle went on, grinning, "Kozlov told me that some of his intelligence people have been using another name, one which he and I both found quite fitting."
"Tell me," Pascual tapped a finger against the table, trying to encourage his uncle to get to his point.
"Tadpoles," he said, and laughed.
Pascual rolled his eyes again, but the Chief Executive just laughed harder.