Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 2) (16 page)

As the shuttle approached the Capital Jackson craned his head to get a look at the enormous domed structure of the Senate, the word given to both the building and the body it housed. It was loosely modeled after the Roman Pantheon as it was the only historical structure the original government on Haven could seem to agree on. The thought was to be inclusive of everyone by not copying the existing seats of power on Earth like the Capitol in Washington, D.C. or the Kremlin. Jackson always welcomed the sight of the Senate, since it was one of the few buildings left on Haven originally built by settlers from Earth.

“We’ll be in the gallery on the main floor,” Marcum warned them as the shuttle began its descent. “Please remember that you’ll have a news camera on you at all times. Let’s act like professionals. No eye rolling, no laughing, and for God’s sake no picking in your nose or ears.”

The last comment elicited a handful of polite chuckles.

“We’ve all been through these before.” Marcum continued. “Let the politicians put on their show, and then the real power brokers will make deals behind closed doors. There are two enclaves making all the noise, and hopefully today, we’ll figure out what concessions they’re trying to wring out of Haven.”

Jackson was only half listening since this was, almost verbatim, the exact briefing they’d gotten before the shuttle had landed to pick them up. Was Marcum so nervous because of what he knew and wasn’t telling them, or because of what he didn’t know?

Once they’d been ushered in through the security checkpoint and shown to the section they’d be sitting in, it didn’t take long before the delegates from the five enclaves began filing in, as well as the representatives from Haven and, surprisingly, two observers from Earth. The birthplace of humanity had refused entry into the Confederacy so long ago, a choice that they were continually punished for since, as Haven made sure they never forgot their place.

Just as Jackson was about to ask if it was normal for his home planet to even have representatives on Haven, the swelling score of the official anthem of the Terran Confederacy started, and everyone solemnly stood and faced the banner hanging at the back of the immense hall. As the last notes died out, there was one final surprise for everyone as President Caleb McKellar, decked out in the crimson robes of his office, climbed the steps near the dais and took his seat. A sitting president very rarely attended a full assembly of the Senate during their tenure, if ever.

“Please remain standing as we welcome the President of the Terran Confederacy… the honorable Caleb Sasha McKellar!” the Sergeant at Arms boomed from the back of the hall.

President McKellar stood, bowed, and waved that everyone be seated. Once the crowd had settled in their seats and the murmurs had ceased, a wispy man in the traditional black robes worn by the Senate came to the podium.

“The floor recognizes the honorable Jespen Wilcox from the planet Columbiana, New America enclave.” He set down a small gavel and tottered off the dais. He was replaced by a rotund, flushed-faced senator who marched up to the podium and slapped his tile down loudly, eyeing the assembly in what was unmistakably open aggression.

“This should be fucking good,” Admiral Pitt muttered beside Jackson, his lips not moving.

“Thank you, Speaker Graves,” Wilcox said. “Honorable delegates, esteemed guests… much of our deliberations today are to be geared toward discovery—and to pull the cloak of secrecy from the events we are being told threaten our very existence. I will not draw this out any longer than I need to. The Chair would like to call Dr. Eugene Allrest to the floor.”

Dr. Allrest, not seeming surprised by the summons, walked onto the floor from a side chamber. He was dressed in an expensive, if slightly archaic, suit and looked completely at ease as he sat at the table facing the dais.

“Thank you for coming, Doctor,” Wilcox said as if the summons he had issued left Allrest any choice. “I’ve asked you here to give your expert testimony in regards to what many are calling a
war
with the first intelligent species we’ve met besides ourselves.”

“That’s technically incorrect, Senator—”

“The first that has shown any indication that it wishes to interact with us.” Wilcox corrected himself quickly, waving off Allrest’s protest. “As the project leader of what the military has dubbed the Phage Discovery Project, a fairly innocuous name, you have been privy to an overview of not only the effort Starfleet has put into destroying these aliens but what we’ve been able to discover about them so far. Is this a fair assessment?”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Very well, then.” Wilcox clasped his hands behind his back. “Could you enlighten this assembly as to how your efforts have fared in making contact with the civilization we’ve colloquially been calling the
Phage?
”

“Senator, we have not captured a significant enough number of Phage constructs—”

“No, Doctor.” Wilcox leaned forward suddenly and grabbed the podium. “I’m asking about the effort to send an envoy to the aliens and attempt direct communication. You
have
made an attempt to simply talk to them, have you not?”

Allrest now looked like a frightened animal in a spotlight. “I have simply performed the analysis required of me, Senator. I don’t dictate strategy or policy to Starfleet.”

“Let me ask it a different way,” Wilcox said. “At any time, did Starfleet R&D or Science Section ask you to develop a plan for first contact?”

“No.”

“Is it possible that this
war
is simply a misunderstanding? That a single destroyer captain of questionable character may have put our two species on a collision course with a shoot-first-ask-questions-never attitude?” Wilcox was now obviously playing to the room, barely even looking at the doctor.

“I respectfully refuse to answer the question,” Allrest said. “The entire line of inquiry is speculation and, as I understood it, I was asked here to speak on technical matters.”

“Of course, of course.” Wilcox smirked to the delegation from Britannia.

Jackson clenched the armrests of his seat so hard his skin squeaked against the varnished wood.

“Relax, Captain,” Pitt whispered, leaning over. “We were expecting this. We’re going to return fire. Don’t worry.”

Jackson nodded and forced himself to look relaxed and unconcerned as he again became painfully aware that the news cameras in the room were likely focused on him during that last line of questioning.

Wilcox grilled Allrest for another thirty minutes, nearly all of the questions having nothing to do with scientific fact and everything to do with CENTCOM’s response to the threat. More specifically, the questions were just a pretense for the senator to grandstand and insinuate that Starfleet was little more than a rogue military agency out on the Frontier starting wars for their own benefit.

Mercifully, the inquisition ended after a few halfhearted questions from two other senators, and a visibly shaken Dr. Allrest was led away from the table. A brief recess was called, and the table was set up for the next person to give their testimony.

Pitt grabbed Jackson’s shoulder and pushed him back down when he tried to stand. “The press is circling like sharks out there. I’ll grab you a water, but you stay put.”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson sat back down and ignored some openly hostile looks he was getting.

Senator Wilcox hadn’t mentioned him by name, but there was little doubt in anyone’s mind to whom he was referring when he accused some “Fleet hothead” of launching an unprovoked attack. The hell of it was that technically, Wilcox was right. Jackson
had
opened fire with the
Blue Jacket’s
forward laser battery before the Alpha had melted them off the prow with a single plasma burst.

As far as he was concerned, that was all a legal technicality since he’d encountered two lifeless planets that used to host human colonies before he’d finally caught up to the big son of a bitch. But, governments tended to be quite enamored with legal technicalities when they served a purpose. Not for the first time, he wished he was back on the bridge of the
Ares
.

“The Chair welcomes Central Command Chief of Staff, Fleet Admiral Joseph Marcum.” Wilcox’s tone left little doubt as to the senator’s opinion of the Fleet officer.

“Senator.” Marcum nodded to Wilcox. “Esteemed delegates.”

“Admiral, you heard the testimony from Dr. Allrest, did you not?”

“I did.” Marcum leaned forward slightly, looking completely within his element.

“I’ll get right to the point, Admiral,” Wilcox said. “Many within this body have become concerned recently that Starfleet has dragged humanity into a war with another species by mistake. Some are even questioning the motivations of CENTCOM, given that the projected budget analysis begins phasing out a militarized Starfleet within the next twenty years.”

“What, exactly, are you implying, Senator?” Marcum asked.

“Do I need to spell it out for you, Admiral?”

“I think, for the sake of the official record, that it would be best if you did, sir,” Marcum said.

“I am giving voice to the concern that CENTCOM has taken a convenient opportunity to justify the existence of a bloated bureaucracy that supports an unneeded and generally unwanted fleet of sinfully expensive warships and their crews,” Wilcox said. “With this war coming when it has—a war that hasn’t threatened us in the nearly four years it’s been going on, I might add—Haven and Tsuyo Corporation are now fully justified it maintaining the status quo and withholding technology and intelligence from the other Terran enclaves—”

“Objection!”

“The Senator from Haven does not have the floor!” Wilcox said loudly. “Admiral… would you care to address these allegations?”

Jackson knew politics at least well enough to realize he was watching a performance. Wilcox wasn’t actually addressing Marcum, he was playing to the cameras and making sure his outrageous charges were implanted in the public consciousness regardless of their validity or even if he actually believed them. If Marcum couldn’t answer with a definitively negative response, no matter how absurd the accusation, it would be spun to the people of New America as a sort of admission of guilt.

“The charges are fairly ridiculous,” Marcum said thoughtfully. “But I will, of course, provide an answer to the assembly to the best of my ability.”

“We look forward to your answer,” Wilcox said.

Marcum waved his aide forward and whispered instructions into his ear, holding the mute button on his microphone as he did.

“If you’ll indulge me, Senator, I’ve prepared a presentation in anticipation of this line of questioning.” Marcum stood up from the table. “Please be aware that the imagery you’re about to see will be highly disturbing. This will be the first time they’ve been declassified in order to show the general public. Even for members of the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee, a lot of these will be new as we’ve just received the intel ourselves.”

“Please get to the point, Admiral.” Wilcox looked annoyed now that Marcum had taken the initiative.

“Steward, please activate the chamber screens.” Marcum ignored Wilcox. “Ladies and gentleman, members of the press… I’m about to show you a brief compilation of imagery collected during our engagements with the Phage. I will provide pertinent facts to accompany the imagery, and we’ll be reviewing these in chronological order. If I may, I’d ask that you reserve all questions until I’ve completed the presentation.”

Over the next ninety minutes, there were gasps of shock and cries of outrage as images of the Phage’s path of destruction were paraded on the screens. Marcum calmly narrated the events as they unfolded, culminating in the footage of the new super weapon destroying what was left of Xi’an. Those same cries of outrage were then tinged with fear as the war finally hit home for the people who had looked at it as a “Frontier problem” for the previous few years.

When the footage from Pike’s Broadhead of Jackson driving the
Blue Jacket
into the first Alpha unit played, and Marcum explained that he alone had remained on the ship to finish off the threat, the looks cast in his direction were no longer angry, but awed. Jackson simply felt ill as he again watched his old ship in her final, glorious moments.

“As you can see, the threat is very real, and it was brought to us by an inexplicable, terrible enemy,” Marcum said. “Despite the insinuations to the contrary, we did not ask for this war, nor are we particularly excited to fight it… but what we want is irrelevant right now. Thank you.” Without waiting to be dismissed, Marcum turned and walked away from the table as the lights came back up and showed a bewildered Senator Wilcox standing at the podium, gripping the gavel in both hands.

“These proceedings are adjourned for the day,” he said when he noticed that everyone was staring at him. “We will reconvene tomorrow.”

****

“Look at Wilcox… I’ve never seen someone so pissed.” Admiral Pitt laughed quietly as they all took their seats again the next morning.

Jackson looked over at Senator Wellington. The man was positively seething. The previous night, the news coverage had not been kind to the senator from New America as Marcum’s surprise presentation had pulled the rug right out from under him. Wilcox still had the floor from the previous day, so he slowly climbed the dais, watching impassively as delegates and media reporters slowly filed in.

Jackson had stayed in the capital the night before, having been met by the party of observers from Earth and begged to come and speak to the rest of their group. After dinner, he’d even been convinced to record a few interviews to be aired on Earth’s various news outlets. As the evening had worn on. he’d become exceedingly uncomfortable with the adoration and lavish praise his fellow Earthers heaped upon him. At the best of times, Jackson considered himself a victim of circumstances. At worst, he felt little more than a fraud who had gotten exceedingly lucky with an impossible gamble that still ended up getting a sizable number of his crew killed.

“The assembly will now come to order!” Wilcox’s booming voice shook Jackson out of his reverie as it echoed throughout the domed chamber. The delegates’ private conversations tapered off, and they looked on with interest. Wilcox had been embarrassed badly the day before, and there were more than a few friendly wagers as to how he would respond.