For Honor We Stand (15 page)
“Sir, I know two of these men personally. If Admiral Charles L. Middleton isn’t the most honorable man in Known Space, he’s the runner up and the guy ahead of him should be Emperor of us all. The other one, old Hit ‘em Hard Hornmeyer, may kick you in the ass, and he may curse you to your face, but he’s sure as hell not going to stab you in the back. If these guys wind up commanding some of your forces—and remember—there will be times when
your
Admirals will command
our
forces, you can be certain that they’ll make decisions based on military considerations only. This is not the same Navy that fought at the Great Rift. Our Admirals aren’t politically ambitious, power-seeking, effete, headquarters drones and empty heads in pretty uniforms who move icons around in the tactical projector.”
“I understand that, Captain. I have no doubt that these are honorable men. I have come to know the Ambassador here as an honorable man and your actions prove you, also to be a man of honor. But, we would be forming a relationship, not just with Admirals Litvinoff and Middleton and Hornmeyer and with Captain Robichaux and Doctor Sahin, but with dozens of Admirals and Commodores and thousands of other officers. Trust in this situation does not come easily.”
“Sir, this is the Navy I’ve been a part of since I was eight years old, and that I love as much as my life. It is the most effective large military force in the history of the human race. Our Admirals are seasoned warriors, our officers tough and competent professionals, our Navy an instrument of death. We’ve been fighting for our lives for thirty years. We, or the Krag, have weeded out everyone, at least everyone at the senior levels, who isn’t brave, capable, and aggressive, not to mention honorable and worthy of trust as well. I would trust any one of them with my life. In fact, that’s exactly what I do. Every day.”
“Minister,” Sahin added, “you know what is at stake. If the Union falls, the Kingdom will not be far behind, then the Romanovans, then the Ghiftee, and everyone else. No one will be left behind to pray to Allah, to tend the graves of your ancestors, to carry the flame of learning and achievement and building and exploration handed down to us over the thousands of years from those who have come before. To fail to make common cause against the Krag now is to take the torch that bears that flame and to cast it into the dust. All of mankind’s struggles through the ages will have been for nothing.” He paused, drew in his breath, and played what he hoped would be the trump card. “Visualize the holy places on all the worlds defiled, then leveled and covered with the dust of the ages, without so much as a single human eye to shed a single human tear for their passing. Imagine all the cities and abodes of man empty and silent for all time. Think of the Orion-Cygnus arm of the galaxy, not as the cradle of man, but as his graveyard.”
The man whom Sahin had come to know as Mr. Wortham-Biggs stirred his coffee again, stared at the liquid for a moment, and set his spoon down in the saucer. He touched the handle of the cup, but did not pick it up. Again the internal battle: he wanted coffee but resisted subjecting his sophisticated palate to a beverage prepared from inferior beans, inexpertly blended, and roasted too hurriedly at too high a temperature and without dialing back the burner in mid-roast when the normal exothermal chemical reaction causes the beans to produce their own heat, brewed in an institutional coffee maker not thoroughly cleaned in weeks or months, and that was allowed to sit for too long on a too-hot burner driving most of the delicious volatile aromatics out of the liquid and turning the chemicals used in the processing of inexpensive coffee from mildly sour acids to extremely bitter oxides. With a subtle shake of the head, he decided that the coffee was best if left in the cup, eventually to find its way into a drain somewhere.
He withdrew his hand from the cup as he met Max’s eyes, and then those of the doctor. Clearly, he had made a decision. And not one about coffee. “The King has authorized me to speak for him in these matters. But he also gave me clear instructions. I fear that I have deviated from them slightly by insisting so strongly in securing these guarantees for the Kingdom. The need to strike the best bargain possible is deeply rooted in my nature and, of more importance, I felt a duty to my people. In a just cause, the blood of our sons may be spent, but must not be squandered. The fathers and mothers and wives and children of the men who serve are worthy of the best assurances in that regard that I could provide.”
He stood, his eyes grave. His head turned sharply toward the window which looked into the courtyard containing the broken airplane, the shattered trellis, the broken statues, the crushed roses, and the obliterated ferns. Machine gun fire could be heard in the distance—the King’s troops finally arriving to deal with the Emir’s forces. “We are a warrior people: our culture celebrates and ennobles the warrior virtues of courage, honor, loyalty, and sacrifice. We do not, however, celebrate or glorify the taking of life, the spilling of blood, or the death of our own men. We know that if we enter the war now, many of our brave sons will die, and that they will start dying very soon. Next week. Tomorrow. A few hours from now. How soon will it be when the first names of the dead are made known, the first notices to the families, the first lists on the newswebs with their pages bordered in black?”
A burst of automatic weapons fire echoed down the streets. The Minister gestured vaguely in the direction of the sound. “In a manner of speaking, our first casualties are bleeding and dying as we speak.” He sighed heavily. “The price of doing nothing is too great to contemplate. If there are to be future generations of our people, we must act. Our grandchildren are so precious to us that we must buy their lives with the blood of our sons.” He assumed a formal stance. “Ambassador, Captain, the Unified Kingdom of Rashid, Allied Emirates, and Protected Islamic Worlds will enter the war on the side of the Union as an Associated Power with appropriate Union guarantees of the continued independence of the Kingdom. The
Equilateral
protocols will serve as a framework for the integration of forces, further arrangements to be made by commanders in the field or further negotiations between the representatives of our governments. Are we in agreement, Mister Ambassador?”
The doctor stood and bowed formally. “We are in agreement, Minister. May our swords shine together.”
“And may their edges be a scourge to our enemies,” the Minister completed the benediction. He touched the comm panel. “Authorization Altair-Mirfak-Deneb.”
Less than two seconds later a voice came over the panel’s transducer. “Yes?”
“It is done.”
The comm clearly picked up a heavy sigh, but it was a sigh of resignation and resolve rather than of sadness. “Good. We will do what we must. Ambassador, Captain, this is Khalil.” Not “the King,” not “King Khalil.” Just “Khalil.” “All of Rashid, every man, every ship, every drop of blood, every gram of treasure, is now committed to this cause. Humanity will stand together. We will fight beside our Union brothers and let nothing stand between us. Admiral Taniq and a small staff will leave within the hour for the
Halsey
to serve as liaison between your command structure in this theater and ours. Taniq is a Fleet Admiral, and the fourth most senior officer in our Navy. He has my complete trust and will be empowered to make binding agreements as to the use and deployment of all our forces without recourse to any higher authority.
“Further, at my suggestion, five years ago we elevated the status of the ‘Military Attaché’ to our Embassy on Earth from a Commander’s posting to a Rear Admiral’s billet and greatly enlarged his staff. Obviously, this team’s true purpose is to be ready to step in as the Kingdom’s representative and his staff in any joint command arrangements that we might make were we to enter the war. Orders activating those personnel in that capacity will go out momentarily as will our notice to your President. Captain, is there any other military step that you suggest we consider taking immediately?”
Max gulped. He wasn’t used to being asked for advice by anyone higher than a Captain by Rank and here he was being asked for advice on the force disposition of one of Known Space’s Great Powers. By a King. What do you even call a King? The last King to whom his forbears had been subject was George II of Great Britain, and that didn’t end so well—he threw them out of Canada and they wound up in the French territory known as Louisiana. He threw a panicked look at the doctor who perceptively mouthed “Your Majesty.”
Deep breath. Tactical Officer. Captain just asked for a recommendation. Done that before. “Yes, Your Majesty, this is Max Robichaux. If the Emir is in league with the Krag, and if he knew that you were planning to enter the war on our side, then I think we may safely assume that the Krag know that too. Now, I’m just a Destroyer Captain, sir. I operate on the tactical, not the strategic level, but if I’m the Krag Horde Master for this Theater of Operations, I’ve got to be thinking about making a pre-emptive attack the minute I suspect that the Kingdom is going to enter the war. Strike now to eliminate the Kingdom’s forces before they can be made ready for combat and integrated into the larger force structure of the Union. I don’t know the readiness state and disposition of your forces, but if I were you I would get as much of my fleet as possible, and preferably all of it, fueled, loaded for bear, and deployed. And I would not waste any time doing it, either. I’d want my forces in an operational deployment no more than two hours from now. That’s the earliest an attack force of fast Destroyers could get here if the Krag launched it immediately upon finding out from the Emir you were going to join forces with us.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. “One moment.” Whereas at the beginning of the conversation, King’s voice sounded determined and confident, there was now a definite note of concern. Max could hear the click followed by deadness that meant the audio pickup on the other end of the comm had been muted. About a minute and a half passed. Another click. “I have given the orders to dispatch Admiral Taniq and activate our liaison on Earth, and to notify Admiral Hornmeyer and the Union President of what has taken place today. Now, Captain, to your suggestion. We gave the activation order hours ago. My brother will fill you in on our forces’ status. Once you understand the complete situation, if you have any further advice, please convey it to him. Be assured that he has my ear at all times and that, in light of your most interesting combat record, any insights you may have will be welcome. Good day to you both, Captain, Ambassador. My brother, we will speak soon. Khalil out.”
Max could not help but notice that he closed the comm link more in the manner of a warship Captain than a civilian political leader. A warship Captain with a problem.
Max wanted to get to the bottom of this. Quick. “Minister, I may not know squat about Kings, but I’ve been taking orders from warship Captains since I was eight years old, and I know when one of them is worried. That was one worried warship Captain. Why?”
The Minister retook his seat. He glanced down at his watch, still on the table. The machine gun and assault rifle fire outside were rising to a crescendo, punctuated by the occasional burst of a grenade or mortar round. He turned back to Max and took a deep breath in the manner of a man charged with the delivery of unpleasant news. “Unlike the Texians and many of the other Independent Powers, our Navy does not have institutional roots in your Navy. Accordingly, our ships are not an extension or branch of the same design lineage as yours. There is no ‘family resemblance’ between the vessels of the two navies as there is between those the Union and so many other human powers. We have always gone our own way. That is why our ships look so different from yours and possess radically different strengths and weaknesses. What many people do not understand is that the difference is, as we say, ‘more than skin deep.’ Indeed, it goes to the very core.
“Your fusion reactors are of the Svavarsdottir or ‘S-Dot’ design in which plasma containment is achieved purely by means of two spherical and concentric reciprocally polarized graviton fields. S-Dot reactors can achieve a cold start in less than five minutes, but at the expense of a comparatively low power to weight ratio and less than optimal fuel efficiency.”
Oh, shit.
The Minister continued. “It is little known outside of the Kingdom’s naval circles that our warships are not powered by S-Dot reactors.” Double shit.
“Don’t tell me you are still using tokomaks,” Max said anxiously.
“Nothing even remotely so primitive. In fact, our reactors are of an extremely advanced design. As you are probably aware, almost ninety percent of the energy expended in an S-Dot reactor to achieve complete containment is directed to bottling up the most energetic ten percent of the plasma. So, we employ a hybrid design in which the plasma is ninety percent graviton contained and remaining ten percent contained by a more energy-efficient technology--conventional Bussard-Polywell polyhedral electromagnetic coils. This design approach is, as far as we know, used only by us and by the Romanovans, with whom we jointly developed it. It has advantages of a more than twenty percent increase in efficiency and accompanying savings in fuel consumption as well as an almost thirty percent improvement in power to weight ratio. The reactors are also smaller per unit of power and have less demanding cooling requirements, resulting in additional savings in power, size, and weight.”
“But you have to granny start them, don’t you?” said Max.
“Granny start?” It seemed that there was no bit of spacer slang of which the doctor was not ignorant.
