of course; he could see the faint blurring of edges where the gravitic shielding twisted light. But a nuke or a determined particle-beam attack could overload those shields or destroy their projection wave guides, and then the carrier’s vital nerve centers would be defenseless.
On the other hand, the Jeanne d’Arc had point-defense turrets that were doing their best to hit him. This close to the carrier’s spine, they were having trouble reaching him, but they were trying to hit the other fighters in the squadron as they moved in closer. A stream of KK rounds reached out and caught Dragon Eight—Lieutenant Will Rostenkowski’s ship—sending it into a helpless tumble.
“Jeanne d’Arc!” Gray barked again. “Cease fire and cease acceleration or I’m going to put a hundred megatons right on your bridge tower!”
“Don’t shoot, Dragon One,” a voice said over the fleet channel. “We will comply.”
He had to back out of his safe pocket, then, or risk hurtling into the underside of the carrier’s shield cap when the Jeanne d’Arc cut her acceleration. It could have been a trick, a ruse designed to pull him out of his pocket … but the other Dragonfires were in close now, and the Pan-Europeans evidently had no desire for a stand-up fight.
Gray’s threat to use nukes had been pure bluff, of course. A Krait missile going off at such close range would probably have burned through the carrier’s bridge shielding, but definitely would have vaporized Gray’s fighter.
“America CIC,” he called, “Dragon One. Hostile carrier has ceased acceleration.”
“Well done, Dragonfires,” Wizewski’s voice called back. “Keep them in your sights. California and Saskatchewan are on the way to take over.”
“Copy that. He hesitated. “We also need a rescue SAR. One casualty.”
Rostenkowski was no longer transmitting. His ship had been smashed; he might have survived the impact, but a search-and-rescue tug would have to match courses with him and drag him back to be sure.
He watched as Jeanne d’Arc continued to bleed water into space.
How, he wondered, was Koenig going to handle this one? …
Chapter Four
11 April 2405
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Kuiper Belt, HD 157950
98 light years from Earth
0940 hours, TFT
“Admiral Giraurd,” Koenig said, standing. “Welcome aboard.” He kept his voice and his expression pleasant, even mild. It was important at this point to avoid any sense of drama.
Testosterone-laced posturing would not help at all at this point.
“Koenig,” Giraurd replied with a curt nod. “You still have the option of surrendering.”
“I think, sir, that I will decline that privilege.”
They were meeting physically instead of through virtual communications, within the spacious officers lounge in America’s hab modules. Present were Captain Buchanan and most of Koenig’s command staff and, just in case, several Marine guards flanking the doors as unobtrusively as they could considering that they were in full combat armor. Koenig and the other USNA officers wore full dress; Giraurd wore his command utilities, a blue jumper with the gold emblems of his rank on the shoulders and down the left sleeve.
“You are making an enormous mistake,” Giraurd said, taking an offered seat.
“Perhaps.” Koenig sat down as well, watching Giraurd across a low table grown from the deck. “But if so, I risk losing my command and, possibly, my fleet. If you and the Conciliationists are wrong, however, we could lose all of humanity. Our species could become extinct. Can you understand my point of view?”
Giraurd hesitated, then gave another nod. “I suppose so. But it is not for the military to make political decisions of this magnitude. You, of all people, should know that.”
Giraurd, Koenig knew, was referring to the peculiar political baggage the USNA derived from two of its predecessors—Canada and the United States of America. In those nation-states, the military had been expressly forbidden to participate in political decisions. While military coups had not been unthinkable, certainly, they’d been extremely unlikely when the military’s commander-in-chief had been the civilian president.
It was a tradition not all members of the Terran Confederation shared. Giraurd was chiding him for breaking that tradition, for making what was essentially a political decision without going through a democratic process.
“Out here,” Koenig said quietly, “we have to make our own decisions. They don’t see what we see, not from a hundred light years away.”
“And suppose your little raid behind the enemy lines backfires, Koenig? Suppose it brings down upon us the full weight of the Sh’daar?”
“In other words,” Koenig replied gently, “what if we make them angry? Earth lost sixty million souls during their last foray into the Sol System. It’s hard to see how they could be any madder.”
During the Defense of Earth, in October of 2404, a twelve-kilo mass traveling at a significant fraction of c had skimmed past the sun and slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, 3,500 kilometers off the North American seaboard. The resultant tidal waves had scoured the coastlines of North and South America, Africa, and of Europe, killing an estimated 60 million people.
“Perhaps,” Giraurd said. “We might not be so lucky with another direct attack on Earth. That impactor might have simply been a demonstration of their power. We would not survive a determined attack.”
“I agree,” Koenig said. “And that’s why we’re out here. Even the Sh’daar don’t have unlimited resources. If we pose a threat to their worlds, to their star systems and the systems of their allies, we’ll draw them away from the Confederation.”
“You are a fly attacking an elephant, Koenig.”
“Perhaps. But elephants, I will remind you, are extinct. Earth still has lots of flies.”
“Listen to what I am saying! My point is that the Sh’daar and their allies, the Turusch, the H’rulka, the Nungiirtok, and others, are too big, too powerful, for Earth to face alone!”
“I hear what you’re saying, Grand Admiral. My point is that Earth needs time, and I’m attempting to buy that time. I’m not against negotiating. I’m just hoping we can negotiate with the Sh’daar when they’re not holding a gun to our head!”
“And if we give in to the Sh’daar demands … what is the worst that will happen? We give up our insane gallop into a world of ever higher and higher technology! We become content with what we have! We avoid the Vinge Singularity! And what would be so bad about that?”
Giraurd was referring to a long-expected exponentiation of human technology, sometimes called the Technological Singularity, when human life, blending with human technology, would pass out of all recognition. It was named for a late-twentieth-century math professor, computer scientist, and writer who’d pointed out that the rate of increase in human technology had fast been approaching a vertical line on the graph, and that had been in 1993. When the Sh’daar had delivered their ultimatum almost four centuries later, they’d demanded that Humankind stop all technological development and research, especially in the fields of genetics, robotics, information systems and computers, and nanotechnology. These so-called GRIN technologies were seen as the principal drivers in the coming Technological Singularity; arrest them, and human life might not evolve into something unrecognizably alien.
“I don’t