Statesman

Bio of a Space Tyrant 5 - Statesman

Anthony, Piers

The Space Tyrant, as he came to be known, had risen from the status of a helpless Hispanic refugee to dominance of the planet Jupiter. One might have supposed that his career would have ended when he was deposed by his wife and exiled, but that was not the case. Hope Hubris referred to himself as a statesman: one who had lost power. But in truth his power abated only temporarily, and eventually became greater than ever before.

As usual, his narrative of events and feelings understates the solid political and economic groundwork he did, and perhaps dwells too much on his emotional life. He was a far more competent and hard-nosed executive than he pretends, and chance did not affect him as much as he allows it to seem. Not only did he fashion the program that was to put mankind into the galaxy—what he terms the Dream—he fostered the substantial bettering of the human condition throughout the Solar System, benefiting the downtrodden and abused folk as much as the leaders. I believe it is fair to say that at the end the Tyrant was almost universally respected and loved, and every day the monument to him erected in the Province of Laya, Saturn, is visited by throngs of people from all over the System. That monument is impressive, consisting of a statue of a giant man whose right hand rests upon a model of the Solar System and whose left strokes a saber-tooth tiger, his gaze outward toward the galaxy, while a woman who resembles him watches from behind. That says it all.

But in the end nothing could avail against the terminal physical malady that Hope Hubris had, though for years its nature was concealed from the public. Perhaps his knowledge of that malady contributed to the abrupt and some say insane manner of his death.

Herewith, the final volume of the biopsy of the Space Tyrant, my father.

HMH

We might as well have been children again, though I was sixty and my sister Spirit was fifty-seven. We faced the presentation screen and gawked at the magnificence of Planet Saturn. The rings were spectacular. Of course the image was enhanced by false-color, making it more dramatic, but still it was a wonder. All the colors of the spectrum seemed to be there in the great splay of the rings, and in the roughly spherical body of the planet itself. “Beautiful!” I breathed. “Jupiter's rings hardly compare!”

Spirit murmured agreement. “But nevertheless a sterner environment than we knew on Jupiter,” she reminded me. “Their residential band has about eight and a half bars pressure, and their winds are up to quadruple Jupiter's—almost five hundred meters a second.”

“A thousand miles an hour,” I agreed, making a rough translation in my head. In my time on Jupiter I had become accustomed to the archaic Saxon measurements, inefficient as they were. Of course such velocities were not directly experienced, because the city-bubbles floated in the wind currents. Survival would be impossible if relative wind velocity of that strength were felt; storms whose winds were only a tenth as strong had been called hurricanes back on ancient Earth, and had wreaked enormous damage.

The pressure bothered me more; as a former native of space, I tended to feel claustrophobic in pressure higher than one bar, the normal atmospheric level we lived in. It had been six bars on Jupiter, and would be higher on Saturn even though the planet was smaller, because the residential band was deeper in the atmosphere.

We were on our way to Saturn because we had been exiled from Jupiter, and the ringed planet seemed to be the best prospect of those that had expressed interest in taking us. I had just one personal acquaintance at Saturn—but that one was Chairman Khukov, the highest political figure there. He had achieved his dominance at about the time I became the Tyrant of Jupiter, and we had worked tacitly together to buttress each other's power and defuse interplanetary tension. I did not really like Khukov, but I trusted him.

“Ship ahoy,” the ship's intercom announced. “Passengers to quarters.”

I exchanged a glance with Spirit. We were in deep space between planets; our trip had not been announced, because the new government of Jupiter wished us no ill but wanted us out of the public eye.

We cooperated because my wife Megan headed that new government, and I bore her no ill will. She had done what she felt she had to do, and I cannot say she was mistaken. The Tyrancy had accomplished a lot of good, but had also become increasingly arbitrary about the uses of power. Power does seem to corrupt the conscience, much as alcohol corrupts judgment; from the vantage of my abrupt loss of power I was able to see how far I had been straying. But because I was who I was, I was a target, which was another reason for the secrecy of this transportation. Was the other ship merely a passing merchant, or was it something else?

We retreated quickly to our quarters, obeying the authority of this ship. This was a Saturn vessel, of the escort class, displacing (as the usage still had it) about two thousand tons. She should be fast, capable of about three gees acceleration, but only lightly armed. It was her purpose to transport us swiftly and quietly to Saturn; she would be in trouble if attacked. We snapped into our acceleration harnesses.

“Ship under attack,” the intercom voice said, as if responding to my thought. “Secure—”

The voice was cut off by the impact of a strike. The ship shook, and the power blinked. We were not under acceleration at the moment; the normal course is to achieve cruising velocity, then coast to the destination, conserving fuel. The vessel was spinning to provide half gee in that interim.

“Better take evasive action,” Spirit muttered. She and I had been career officers in space for twelve to fifteen years; that was three decades past, but the reflexes are never lost.

The ship did not. It drifted along on its original course, not cutting in the drive.

We got out of our harnesses, acting as one. Obviously the ship's captain was a noncombatant, uncertain what to do in battle. That would get us killed promptly enough. He didn't realize that the first thing to do was to put the ship under acceleration, regardless of its course.

We burst into the control chamber. “Get it moving!” I barked in Russian.

“But the damage report is not yet in,” the pilot protested. He was young, obviously inexperienced: the kind normally used on what is called a milk run, a routine mission. “The captain has not—”

I reached down and took his laser pistol from his body. I gave it to Spirit. “Get out of that seat,” I said. I didn't have time to educate him in battle procedure.

“But you are passengers!” he said. “Not even of Saturn—” Then he turned his head and spied the laser bearing on his right eye. He got out of the seat.

I jumped into it. The ship's controls were unfamiliar in detail, but I understood the principle well enough.

In a moment I had the drive started.

Meanwhile, Spirit was marching the pilot out of the chamber. I knew where she was headed. I spoke into the intercom. “Captain, I am assuming temporary command of this vessel,” I said in Russian.

“Acknowledge, and relay the directive to your crew.”

“This is impossible!” the captain sputtered.

“Captain, we don't have time for debate. I am taking evasive action, but very soon the pirate will reorient and tag us with another shell. We have to fight effectively, and for that I require your implicit cooperation.” I guided the craft on a random course, getting the hang of the controls in the process. This was a good little ship, I realized, capable of more acceleration than I had judged. I verified that she had not suffered any critical damage; she was responding perfectly. We had been lucky, so far.

“This is piracy right here!” he huffed. “I will not—”

“Captain, do you know who I am?” I cut in.

“No, they did not inform—”

“I am the Tyrant of Jupiter, deposed.”

He made a gasp of surprise. Then Spirit's voice came: “Chamber secured, sir. Orders?”

I had of course been distracting the inexperienced captain while Spirit made her way to his office. Now she had her pistol on him. She could not speak Russian, but the weapon was surely persuasive enough.

“Captain,” I repeated. “I am assuming command. I do this because of the need to save this ship from destruction by the pirate, and will return control to you when the crisis abates. Acknowledge.”

This time there was a laser pointed at his eye. “Acknowledged,” the captain said.

“Direct your crew.”

He obeyed, ordering the crew to obey my orders. I had taken over the ship illegally, but the authority was mine for the duration.

“Observation,” I said, addressing the officer I knew would be present. “What is the nature of the enemy?”

“Destroyer-class vessel, sir,” he answered promptly. “Now showing pirate colors.”

That meant that the attempt to communicate with the ship had resulted in a skull-and-crossbones picture on the screen, the universal signal of piracy. The fact that it was of the destroyer class told me all I needed to know about its capabilities, which was why the observation officer had not said more. He was obviously experienced, perhaps retired to this ship after long service.

“Armament,” I said. “What are our resources?”

“Five cases stun-gas grenades, sir,” he said. “Hand weapons, laser.”

It was my turn to be stunned. “ Hand weapons? What of the space cannon?”

“Dismantled, sir, in favor of the drive. This is not a combat vessel.”

Obviously not! “Propulsion,” I said. “What is our maximum acceleration?”

“Five point two gee, sir.”

“Five point...!” I exclaimed. The fastest ship in my fleet in the old days had been the destroyer The Discovered Check , upgraded to a capacity of 4.5 gee. This little escort ship supposedly could leave that ship rapidly behind. Perhaps they had figured to outrun any trouble along the way.

But no ship could outrun shells or drones, let alone lasers. The pirate had gotten too close, and now it was way too late to flee. But we couldn't fight either—not with hand grenades.

“Spirit,” I said.

“Have to try chicken,” she said in Spanish. If any of the Saturn personnel knew that language, they might still miss the implication. That was the intent. If they caught on, there would be a counterrevolution aboard ship.

Chicken. When two foolish kids got into transport bubbles and headed straight for each other. Collision course—and the first to swerve was “chicken.” The game had been played in one form or another for centuries, and had accounted for its share of injuries and deaths.

I nodded. The pirate was matching our velocity, or trying to, so as to have a steady target for another shot. It had made no effort to communicate; there had been no demand for surrender. It simply intended to hole us; then its personnel would board in space suits and take the spoils. It was the way of the more vicious pirates, and it was evident that they had not been rousted out of this region of space. But they were bold indeed to tackle a marked Saturn ship; that would bring a fleet out here to extirpate every pirate ship.

I oriented the ship, then jammed up the drive. Suddenly we were accelerating, in the relative framework of the two moving ships, toward the pirate.

It took a moment for the pirate to realize what was happening, for this was completely unexpected. It was like a wounded rabbit charging the pursuing hound.

The pirate reacted by firing another shell at us. That was an error; we now presented a minimal target, end-on, and were accelerating; there was little space or time for this. The pirate had to move in a hurry, or be rammed. That would likely destroy both ships.

Now our own crewmen were catching on. “Suicide!” someone screamed in Russian on the intercom.

“It is chicken,” I said in Russian. “But we have less to lose than they do.”

“All will die!” the voice cried.

“Armament,” I said.

“Sir,” the experienced officer replied immediately.

“Can you launch the lifeboat by remote control?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the manner of a torpedo?”

Now he caught on to my new ploy. “The window is very narrow, sir.”

“The lifeboat!” another voice exclaimed. “Without that, we die!”

“Silence,” the captain snapped. He had evidently come to terms with his demotion and was enforcing discipline under the new order.

“Watch the pirate,” I said to the armament officer. “Judge the direction he moves. Assume he will accelerate at his maximum. Plot the course to intercept that escape path. I will proceed straight, accelerating at three gee till launch.”

“Understood, sir.”

We closed rapidly as I brought the gee up to three. That tripled the weight of every person on the ship; even in acceleration harness, that isn't comfortable. But if this ship was built to do five gee, the personnel had to have been trained for it. I was the weak link here; I wasn't sure I could handle more than three gee at my age and condition, at least not for long.

The pirate ship moved out of the way. It was indeed chicken. It had double our mass and at least double our personnel, and it could destroy us in any ordinary encounter. Thus it had much more to lose than we did. I had never doubted it would avoid the collision; the only question was when it would start its maneuver. Because it had foolishly tried to shoot us down first, it had lost valuable time; now it had no chance to reorient. That meant that its path was predictable. If that Saturnian officer was worth his salt—

We closed. The pirate was in motion, but barely in time. Our lifeboat launched. Then we shot past the pirate's tail section—and the lifeboat rammed it.

We watched it in the screen as I cut our acceleration. Vapor shot out of the pirate's side. She had been holed by our missile. A cheer went up on the intercom.

I rotated our ship in place and resumed thrust. This had the effect of decelerating us, relative to the other ship. There was no rush now; I held it at one gee. “Captain,” I said.

“Sir.”

“My mission has been accomplished. I am returning command to you.” And I knew that Spirit was putting away the laser pistol.

“Thank you, Tyrant,” he said, with only a trace of irony.

“But if I may make a suggestion, sir?” I continued.

“Speak.”

“We should take the pirate's lifeboat—and perhaps make an investigation of the ship to determine its identity. The men might wish to salvage artifacts also.”

He hesitated. Military vessels were not supposed to take spoils, but the temptation could be great in a situation like this. “Tyrant,” he said after a moment. “There will be an investigation into your actions, of course. But I believe they will establish the validity of your position. In the interim, would you accede to commanding the investigation party?”

So that any spoils taken would be my responsibility, not his. He was canny enough! He knew that no Saturn court-martial would convict the Tyrant of Jupiter—not when Saturn had invited that Tyrant to accept sanctuary there. I was sure that the entire Saturn Navy knew the political situation; this ship simply had not been advised that it was the one with the Tyrant actually aboard. Perhaps its crew did not know about the Tyrant's change of status, after all. In fact, this entire episode would probably be hushed up, and that would do the captain more good than harm.

“I shall be pleased to do that,” I said graciously.

In fact, it might be best if my temporary assumption of authority were, not advertised. It could not be concealed from the authorities, of course, but they would probably be willing to bury it if I was.

I relinquished the pilot's seat to the regular pilot and set about organizing the boarding party. We had to don suits, as there would be no pressure in the holed ship. Spirit joined me. “Like old times,” she murmured in Spanish.

She was right, and I discovered that I relished the feeling. I had been thirty when I left the Jupiter Navy, just half my present age, and this activity gave me the semblance of my youth. Of course I knew it was illusion, but a person can at times appreciate illusion as much as reality. Consider, for example, the feelie helmets, which facilitate all manner of vicarious experience ranging from interplanetary travel to explicit sexual encounters. I have on occasion received great satisfaction from the helmet, and now I had satisfaction from the action occurring here in space. Danger near, Spirit beside me—I wished I could kiss her, but of course that was not feasible in our suits.