Post by Lorpius Prime on Oct 22, 2009 22:01:59 GMT -5
Unlike Pascual Molinas, Captain Yolanda Piper of the EFS Garibaldi was not known for her diplomacy. Nor was she known for her friendly demeanor or caring attitude. What Captain Yolanda Piper was known for was being a mercilessly competent commander with little patience for nonsense.
"Admiral," Yolanda said loudly, glowering at one section of the teleconference screen in front of her, "what the hell is this?"
Admiral Q. Godavarthi, EarthCOM's commander in chief, was one of the few flag officers in Earth Fleet who actually liked Captain Piper, although he would never have admitted it. He looked patiently at the PDA Yolanda was holding in her upraised hand.
"Well I can't be sure over the video screen, Captain, but if I presume that you have been following along, then it should be the summary of maneuvers for Saturday's joint-command live fire exercise."
"The hell it is!" Yolanda shot back. "This isn't an exercise, it's a goddamn choreographed nuclear fucking ballet!"
Most of the other faces on the monitor rolled their eyes. Godavarthi just tilted his head.
"Do you feel that your ship will be unable to perform the required maneuvers of this exercise, Captain?"
"No sir," Yolanda gritted her teeth. "I'm merely wondering about the purpose of these maneuvers. No battle will ever look like this."
"Not every exercise is a battle simulation, Captain," the Admiral scolded her gently. "Admiral Kozlov tells me that the Chief Executive himself has decided that it's time for Earth Fleet to make a very public demonstration of our capabilities. Our furry friends have apparently been underestimating us lately, and it's our job to discourage them from making that mistake again."
Yolanda was saved from having to make a retort herself. Commander Elijah Nnamani of the EFS Nile spoke up, "Due respect, Admiral, but the Bats already know what we can do."
Godarvathi's gaze shifted slightly as he looked to his own image of the destroyer captain's face. "Perhaps they do," he acknowledged, "but simply knowing something does not always have the same power as seeing it for yourself. We want to make the Bats feel our strength. They've sent us a new ambassador, so we even have the opportunity to make a first impression."
He paused, but no one seemed to have a new retort.
"All right then," Godavarthi continued, "if that's cleared up, why don't we review the preliminary positioning and then run through the first five minutes of maneuvers. As you can see, Fifth Fleet's cruisers will divide into two task forces and assume geosynchronous orbits two hours prior to the start of maneuvers…"
"So how much did we get?" Bernardo asked before everyone had even finished settling into their seats. He was lucky that he couldn't see the glower that Admiral Kozlov gave him behind his back. Eduard chuckled quietly and then turned to Wilhelm Trautmann. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he was just as impatient to hear the answer to Bernardo's question.
"Seventy-one billion and change," the Financial Councilor answered.
"I thought they said it was over a hundred!"
Willy shook his head, "Part of it's an advance on next year's contribution—which they're making to get the one-hundred figure. But the net impact on the budget is really only the seventy billion."
"Okay," Bernardo sighed, "what does that buy us?"
Kozlov fielded this one. "Oh, that's just a little less than what NMC paid for one of the ground habitats," he said in a falsely cheery tone.
"Call it even with depreciation," Eduard quipped.
"That's it?" Bernardo was working himself up into a rage.
"Well it's better than I expected," Eduard said. He couldn't bring himself to feel the same anger as the Foreign Councilor.
"That's like, what? Three-tenths of a percent of their GDP?"
"Yeah, but when you consider that they've still got a good two-hundred million people living on less than two-Euro a day, it's a good chunk of money," Willy observed.
Bernardo rolled his eyes.
"It is better than I thought we'd get," Eduard said, deciding to stop the discussion before it became a real argument. "I'm still trying to figure out what sort of angle Jahnavi could be working here."
The Indian parliament had just approved the special appropriation which the Prime Minister had requested for Earth Fleet. Eduard didn't know if he was more pleased that Jahnavi had come through in the end, or annoyed that his political rival had pulled off the political victory against a hostile parliament to do it.
Probably pleased, Eduard thought with resignation. Eduard really did need the money for Earth Fleet and the OES, and he really didn't need to keep on beating Subhas Jahnavi. Still, it was hard to let go of old enmities.
"What about the EU, Willy?" Eduard asked.
"I'm reasonably certain they'll come through for us now, but it's going to take another month or two."
"Always does."
Willy nodded, "Anyway, once that check clears, we'll probably be up another thirty or forty billion. So if you're still sure your own congress will approve—"
"They will," Bernardo dismissed Willy's worried glance with a wave and Eduard nodded his support.
"—then that'll be another five billion. It's looking like we'll probably settle somewhere between one-forty and one-seventy billion."
"So not great, but not as bad as it could have been," Eduard summed up.
The Financial Councilor nodded.
Eduard was still thinking up an appropriate remark with which to conclude that item of the agenda when Admiral Kozlov spoke up.
"Are we really sure that we want to pay at all?"
Everyone else at the conference table looked at him. Eduard raised an eyebrow, "Lavrentiy?"
"Do you really want to throw all this money right back out again? You already know it's not going to save the company, why waste it?"
Willy sounded aghast, "We have to pay the compensation for—"
"No we don't," Kozlov interjected. "At least, not in full." He looked at Eduard again, "Due compensation means whatever we want it to mean. The seizure's already been effected, and we knew from the beginning that we could never pay actual market prices for all those assets. There's no reason we can't impose a bigger discount."
Bernardo was staring, "My, Admiral, but aren't you the ruthless one today?"
Kozlov ignored him, "A hundred and seventy billion Euros is a lot of money, Chief Molinas. We could afford to finish the Bangkok and New Delhi on schedule as well as start rigging up a few of these new pulse mines it looks like we'll be able to build."
"It's not that easy!" Willy protested. "Most of the contractors for those projects are the same ones getting screwed by our seizure. If they go belly up, we might have to take over the operations ourselves, and I'm not sure that we can."
The Admiral snorted, "We already do, what other customers have they got? We own those yards."
"You can't seriously—"
Eduard slapped a palm against the tabletop. The noise made Willy jump slightly, while Kozlov merely grimaced. Both of them turned towards the Chief Executive in silence.
"Time to come off the power trip, Lavrentiy," Eduard said gently. "I know you're fed up with the contractors, but we can't just seize their whole operation; especially not because of a crisis that we created in the first place." He held Kozlov's gaze for a moment, "You know how the member states would see something like that."
The Russian Admiral pursed his lips, and for a few seconds Eduard thought he might actually go on trying to argue the point. But then he sighed.
"Yes," he said, and fell silent.
Eduard nodded, "All right, so it appears we're muddling through well enough on the legal and financial side. Thanks, Willy."
"Of course, Chief."
"So, then," the Chief Executive turned to look at Kozlov again, "how's the actual operation progressing, Admiral?"
"Still on schedule," the Russian said. There was no hint of sulkiness in his voice, but Eduard knew from the way he would not meet anyone's eyes that Kozlov was still quite unhappy. "We're detaching the Haifa from Third Fleet to replace the Douala, so that mess isn't going to cost us any time."
"Will that affect MarsCOM's operations?" Wilhelm Trautmann asked.
"Not beyond the monetary cost of the repairs," Kozlov gave the Financial Councilor a dirty look over the top of his glasses, "though even I'll admit those are minor. Third Fleet's tankers are really just reserves in case anything goes wrong at the Belt Stations. Otherwise they're there to support any long-range operations mounted by Third Fleet, so this fits neatly into the mission profile."
"What are we doing about the crew of the other tanker, the Douala?" Eduard asked.
Kozlov ran a hand across his brow. "Well, at the moment the officers we suspect were involved in the theft have been arrested and are being held at MarsCOM. I think the next step is probably to ship them back to Earth, but we're going to have to talk about what happens after that."
Councilor Durante scoffed, "We court martial them, don't we?"
"Maybe," Kozlov said.
"What's the problem, Lavrentiy?" Eduard asked.
The Admiral frowned, "Well my first reaction, as well as that of most of the officers I've talked to, was the same as Bernardo's. I want to see them tried and—if possible—shot for treason." He paused, "Unfortunately, it's not really clear that we can do any such thing."
"What do you mean?"
"We've never had a breach of discipline this serious before. Our court martial procedures are pretty simple by the standards of most national militaries. They mostly just deal with fights among spacers, or sometimes the occasional theft of personal property. My legal advisors aren't certain if the system is really robust enough to handle a capital case like this. And you know it'll get a lot of public scrutiny, and that could lead to some bad politics."
"Um, can we handle it through another arm of the OES?" Willy suggested. "They did break international law in a pretty serious way."
"Oh God," Bernardo Durante buried his head in his hands.
"What?" both Eduard and Willy asked at the same time.
The Foreign Councilor looked up at them with a horrified expression. "I just realized I want to throttle the people who wrote the OES Charter." When everyone just stared at him blankly, he continued, "We don't have a court system, guys! How the hell were we ever going to handle legal violations like this? Is the Assembly supposed to try cases? If you want to talk about political shitstorms…"
Eduard gave him a lopsided smile, "In fairness, Bernardo, I think everyone was too worried about getting all the members cooperating to consider the possibility that you might have single individuals violating the charter."
"Idiots!"
"I guess we can try kicking it over to the ICC," Eduard offered.
"My subordinates and I have talked about it," Kozlov nodded, "but there could be a big snag. Captain Gordon's an American."
Wilhelm Trautmann actually banged his forehead against the conference table.
"Do you really think the Americans will want to defend Gordon?" Eduard was skeptical.
Kozlov shrugged. Durante was frowning, "They might insist on trying him in their own courts instead. The ICC's never been popular in Washington," the Foreign Councilor glanced at Willy, "and they might be particularly prickly about it these days."
Eduard sighed, "Well, unless we think of a better alternative, I say we try that move for now. The International Court's the closest thing we've got to a—well, international court. Let's see if we can use it that way, and maybe the Americans won't try to derail the whole thing."
"And if they do?" Kozlov asked.
"We deal with the problem then," Eduard said. "Interesting as it is, we've got much bigger concerns right now. Like making sure no one blows up our ships before they get to Uranus. And lunch. Who's hungry?"
"Do I really have to wear this damn harness?" Casey Rukavina grumbled. He tried to shift and relieve the uncomfortable pressure, but of course his head, neck, and shoulders were completely restrained.
"God yes," the Fleet medical technician said without even glancing down at Casey. "This is going to be dangerous enough without the risk that you'll pull out a catheter. Now hold still, I'm inserting the jugular." He tapped the screen of his PDA.
"Hmph," Casey grunted. As if he had any choice. Then he winced at the small, but sharp pain in his neck.
"Looks good," the tech said. "Of course, I'm going to want to observe all of these for a few hours to make sure nothing seems to be slipping. Vena cava next."
Casey's eyes bulged as a second needle inserted itself even more painfully into the top of his chest.
"It's not that I don't see why you people think I should wear the thing," he said once it was over. "It's that you're expecting me to keep this thing on for three damn months!"
"Your crew are doing the same," the tech still wouldn't look away from his PDA.
"They get to sleep through this whole ordeal! I've got to remain conscious."
"That's the theory, anyway."
Casey rolled his eyes, "Well, there's not a lot of point to this whole set up otherwise."
Now the tech did finally glance up from his controls to meet Casey's eyes. "Captain," he said, "you couldn't find a liability waiver airtight enough to convince any hospital on Earth to try this procedure. You'll be beating the odds just to wind up in a permanent coma."
"You think maybe I could get a different doctor? Someone who thinks this operation isn't going to kill me?"
"Sorry," the technician shook his head, "no such person. Intrathecal line's going in now, you'll feel a little pinch."
"Fuck!" Casey howled. Little pinch? Someone might have just stabbed a knife into his back. "Would some topical anesthetic kill either of us, doc?"
"Stop whining," was the dismissive reply. "We haven't even gotten to the marrow taps yet."
"Admiral," Yolanda said loudly, glowering at one section of the teleconference screen in front of her, "what the hell is this?"
Admiral Q. Godavarthi, EarthCOM's commander in chief, was one of the few flag officers in Earth Fleet who actually liked Captain Piper, although he would never have admitted it. He looked patiently at the PDA Yolanda was holding in her upraised hand.
"Well I can't be sure over the video screen, Captain, but if I presume that you have been following along, then it should be the summary of maneuvers for Saturday's joint-command live fire exercise."
"The hell it is!" Yolanda shot back. "This isn't an exercise, it's a goddamn choreographed nuclear fucking ballet!"
Most of the other faces on the monitor rolled their eyes. Godavarthi just tilted his head.
"Do you feel that your ship will be unable to perform the required maneuvers of this exercise, Captain?"
"No sir," Yolanda gritted her teeth. "I'm merely wondering about the purpose of these maneuvers. No battle will ever look like this."
"Not every exercise is a battle simulation, Captain," the Admiral scolded her gently. "Admiral Kozlov tells me that the Chief Executive himself has decided that it's time for Earth Fleet to make a very public demonstration of our capabilities. Our furry friends have apparently been underestimating us lately, and it's our job to discourage them from making that mistake again."
Yolanda was saved from having to make a retort herself. Commander Elijah Nnamani of the EFS Nile spoke up, "Due respect, Admiral, but the Bats already know what we can do."
Godarvathi's gaze shifted slightly as he looked to his own image of the destroyer captain's face. "Perhaps they do," he acknowledged, "but simply knowing something does not always have the same power as seeing it for yourself. We want to make the Bats feel our strength. They've sent us a new ambassador, so we even have the opportunity to make a first impression."
He paused, but no one seemed to have a new retort.
"All right then," Godavarthi continued, "if that's cleared up, why don't we review the preliminary positioning and then run through the first five minutes of maneuvers. As you can see, Fifth Fleet's cruisers will divide into two task forces and assume geosynchronous orbits two hours prior to the start of maneuvers…"
* * *
"So how much did we get?" Bernardo asked before everyone had even finished settling into their seats. He was lucky that he couldn't see the glower that Admiral Kozlov gave him behind his back. Eduard chuckled quietly and then turned to Wilhelm Trautmann. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he was just as impatient to hear the answer to Bernardo's question.
"Seventy-one billion and change," the Financial Councilor answered.
"I thought they said it was over a hundred!"
Willy shook his head, "Part of it's an advance on next year's contribution—which they're making to get the one-hundred figure. But the net impact on the budget is really only the seventy billion."
"Okay," Bernardo sighed, "what does that buy us?"
Kozlov fielded this one. "Oh, that's just a little less than what NMC paid for one of the ground habitats," he said in a falsely cheery tone.
"Call it even with depreciation," Eduard quipped.
"That's it?" Bernardo was working himself up into a rage.
"Well it's better than I expected," Eduard said. He couldn't bring himself to feel the same anger as the Foreign Councilor.
"That's like, what? Three-tenths of a percent of their GDP?"
"Yeah, but when you consider that they've still got a good two-hundred million people living on less than two-Euro a day, it's a good chunk of money," Willy observed.
Bernardo rolled his eyes.
"It is better than I thought we'd get," Eduard said, deciding to stop the discussion before it became a real argument. "I'm still trying to figure out what sort of angle Jahnavi could be working here."
The Indian parliament had just approved the special appropriation which the Prime Minister had requested for Earth Fleet. Eduard didn't know if he was more pleased that Jahnavi had come through in the end, or annoyed that his political rival had pulled off the political victory against a hostile parliament to do it.
Probably pleased, Eduard thought with resignation. Eduard really did need the money for Earth Fleet and the OES, and he really didn't need to keep on beating Subhas Jahnavi. Still, it was hard to let go of old enmities.
"What about the EU, Willy?" Eduard asked.
"I'm reasonably certain they'll come through for us now, but it's going to take another month or two."
"Always does."
Willy nodded, "Anyway, once that check clears, we'll probably be up another thirty or forty billion. So if you're still sure your own congress will approve—"
"They will," Bernardo dismissed Willy's worried glance with a wave and Eduard nodded his support.
"—then that'll be another five billion. It's looking like we'll probably settle somewhere between one-forty and one-seventy billion."
"So not great, but not as bad as it could have been," Eduard summed up.
The Financial Councilor nodded.
Eduard was still thinking up an appropriate remark with which to conclude that item of the agenda when Admiral Kozlov spoke up.
"Are we really sure that we want to pay at all?"
Everyone else at the conference table looked at him. Eduard raised an eyebrow, "Lavrentiy?"
"Do you really want to throw all this money right back out again? You already know it's not going to save the company, why waste it?"
Willy sounded aghast, "We have to pay the compensation for—"
"No we don't," Kozlov interjected. "At least, not in full." He looked at Eduard again, "Due compensation means whatever we want it to mean. The seizure's already been effected, and we knew from the beginning that we could never pay actual market prices for all those assets. There's no reason we can't impose a bigger discount."
Bernardo was staring, "My, Admiral, but aren't you the ruthless one today?"
Kozlov ignored him, "A hundred and seventy billion Euros is a lot of money, Chief Molinas. We could afford to finish the Bangkok and New Delhi on schedule as well as start rigging up a few of these new pulse mines it looks like we'll be able to build."
"It's not that easy!" Willy protested. "Most of the contractors for those projects are the same ones getting screwed by our seizure. If they go belly up, we might have to take over the operations ourselves, and I'm not sure that we can."
The Admiral snorted, "We already do, what other customers have they got? We own those yards."
"You can't seriously—"
Eduard slapped a palm against the tabletop. The noise made Willy jump slightly, while Kozlov merely grimaced. Both of them turned towards the Chief Executive in silence.
"Time to come off the power trip, Lavrentiy," Eduard said gently. "I know you're fed up with the contractors, but we can't just seize their whole operation; especially not because of a crisis that we created in the first place." He held Kozlov's gaze for a moment, "You know how the member states would see something like that."
The Russian Admiral pursed his lips, and for a few seconds Eduard thought he might actually go on trying to argue the point. But then he sighed.
"Yes," he said, and fell silent.
Eduard nodded, "All right, so it appears we're muddling through well enough on the legal and financial side. Thanks, Willy."
"Of course, Chief."
"So, then," the Chief Executive turned to look at Kozlov again, "how's the actual operation progressing, Admiral?"
"Still on schedule," the Russian said. There was no hint of sulkiness in his voice, but Eduard knew from the way he would not meet anyone's eyes that Kozlov was still quite unhappy. "We're detaching the Haifa from Third Fleet to replace the Douala, so that mess isn't going to cost us any time."
"Will that affect MarsCOM's operations?" Wilhelm Trautmann asked.
"Not beyond the monetary cost of the repairs," Kozlov gave the Financial Councilor a dirty look over the top of his glasses, "though even I'll admit those are minor. Third Fleet's tankers are really just reserves in case anything goes wrong at the Belt Stations. Otherwise they're there to support any long-range operations mounted by Third Fleet, so this fits neatly into the mission profile."
"What are we doing about the crew of the other tanker, the Douala?" Eduard asked.
Kozlov ran a hand across his brow. "Well, at the moment the officers we suspect were involved in the theft have been arrested and are being held at MarsCOM. I think the next step is probably to ship them back to Earth, but we're going to have to talk about what happens after that."
Councilor Durante scoffed, "We court martial them, don't we?"
"Maybe," Kozlov said.
"What's the problem, Lavrentiy?" Eduard asked.
The Admiral frowned, "Well my first reaction, as well as that of most of the officers I've talked to, was the same as Bernardo's. I want to see them tried and—if possible—shot for treason." He paused, "Unfortunately, it's not really clear that we can do any such thing."
"What do you mean?"
"We've never had a breach of discipline this serious before. Our court martial procedures are pretty simple by the standards of most national militaries. They mostly just deal with fights among spacers, or sometimes the occasional theft of personal property. My legal advisors aren't certain if the system is really robust enough to handle a capital case like this. And you know it'll get a lot of public scrutiny, and that could lead to some bad politics."
"Um, can we handle it through another arm of the OES?" Willy suggested. "They did break international law in a pretty serious way."
"Oh God," Bernardo Durante buried his head in his hands.
"What?" both Eduard and Willy asked at the same time.
The Foreign Councilor looked up at them with a horrified expression. "I just realized I want to throttle the people who wrote the OES Charter." When everyone just stared at him blankly, he continued, "We don't have a court system, guys! How the hell were we ever going to handle legal violations like this? Is the Assembly supposed to try cases? If you want to talk about political shitstorms…"
Eduard gave him a lopsided smile, "In fairness, Bernardo, I think everyone was too worried about getting all the members cooperating to consider the possibility that you might have single individuals violating the charter."
"Idiots!"
"I guess we can try kicking it over to the ICC," Eduard offered.
"My subordinates and I have talked about it," Kozlov nodded, "but there could be a big snag. Captain Gordon's an American."
Wilhelm Trautmann actually banged his forehead against the conference table.
"Do you really think the Americans will want to defend Gordon?" Eduard was skeptical.
Kozlov shrugged. Durante was frowning, "They might insist on trying him in their own courts instead. The ICC's never been popular in Washington," the Foreign Councilor glanced at Willy, "and they might be particularly prickly about it these days."
Eduard sighed, "Well, unless we think of a better alternative, I say we try that move for now. The International Court's the closest thing we've got to a—well, international court. Let's see if we can use it that way, and maybe the Americans won't try to derail the whole thing."
"And if they do?" Kozlov asked.
"We deal with the problem then," Eduard said. "Interesting as it is, we've got much bigger concerns right now. Like making sure no one blows up our ships before they get to Uranus. And lunch. Who's hungry?"
* * *
"Do I really have to wear this damn harness?" Casey Rukavina grumbled. He tried to shift and relieve the uncomfortable pressure, but of course his head, neck, and shoulders were completely restrained.
"God yes," the Fleet medical technician said without even glancing down at Casey. "This is going to be dangerous enough without the risk that you'll pull out a catheter. Now hold still, I'm inserting the jugular." He tapped the screen of his PDA.
"Hmph," Casey grunted. As if he had any choice. Then he winced at the small, but sharp pain in his neck.
"Looks good," the tech said. "Of course, I'm going to want to observe all of these for a few hours to make sure nothing seems to be slipping. Vena cava next."
Casey's eyes bulged as a second needle inserted itself even more painfully into the top of his chest.
"It's not that I don't see why you people think I should wear the thing," he said once it was over. "It's that you're expecting me to keep this thing on for three damn months!"
"Your crew are doing the same," the tech still wouldn't look away from his PDA.
"They get to sleep through this whole ordeal! I've got to remain conscious."
"That's the theory, anyway."
Casey rolled his eyes, "Well, there's not a lot of point to this whole set up otherwise."
Now the tech did finally glance up from his controls to meet Casey's eyes. "Captain," he said, "you couldn't find a liability waiver airtight enough to convince any hospital on Earth to try this procedure. You'll be beating the odds just to wind up in a permanent coma."
"You think maybe I could get a different doctor? Someone who thinks this operation isn't going to kill me?"
"Sorry," the technician shook his head, "no such person. Intrathecal line's going in now, you'll feel a little pinch."
"Fuck!" Casey howled. Little pinch? Someone might have just stabbed a knife into his back. "Would some topical anesthetic kill either of us, doc?"
"Stop whining," was the dismissive reply. "We haven't even gotten to the marrow taps yet."