“When was the first due to report back?” Daniel asked.
“The StAsaph should be back at Anshun within another ten days, assuming they didn’t find anything.”
“And if they did?”
“They’re searching fifteen star systems three hundred light-years from the edge of phase three space. Basically their course is a big curve to take them within hysradar range of each star. If the Primes have opened their giant wormhole to any of those systems they’ll be able to detect it. But given the nature of the flightpath, their journey back will be a long one. As they’re not back yet, we know that they didn’t find anything at the first eleven stars.”
“Or they did, and the Primes caught them,” Rafael said. He shrugged into the silence. “Just being realistic.”
“The remaining six scoutships we’ve got out there should be returning over the following two months,” Oscar continued. “Between them, they’ll have covered over a hundred star systems. Admittedly, that’s not many considering the distances involved and the number of stars between us and Dyson Alpha. But if the Primes are coming this way, then one of those stars will be used as a staging post. We need to find it; at the very least that will enable us to start building realistic tactical scenarios.”
“Are these scouting patrols going to be constant?” Patricia asked.
“Yes,” Wilson confirmed. “We need to establish some early warning if the Primes are moving in our direction. It’s a three stage approach. Rafael is overseeing our short-range detector network which will find any wormhole opening inside the Commonwealth. The fleet will be running scoutship flights past the stars within one hundred light-years in the direction of Dyson Alpha on a continual basis; if the Primes appear at any of them we’ll know about it within three days maximum. Outside that, we’ll fly regular patrols to more distant stars, but the revisit times will be months apart rather than days.”
“When does this come into effect?”
“We’ve already begun siting the first elements for the border network detectors,” Rafael said. “If they come at us directly, we’ll know about it. Our estimates for completing the full Commonwealth-wide network are anything up to a further eighteen months.”
“I see. Admiral, what about the scout flights?”
“It depends on ship numbers, of course. Once this preliminary operation we’re running now is finished, I’m going to pull back those scoutships to begin patrols of the closer stars. We’ve got two more scoutships undergoing flight trials, and the remaining five of batch three will come off their assembly platforms over the next four months. That’ll give me fifteen, which is enough to provide the near-border patrols. The distant patrols will require another ten scoutships, though I’d prefer fifteen to twenty.”
“They cost three billion Earth dollars each,” Patricia said tersely.
“I’m aware of that; and their operating and maintenance costs as well. The executive knew the budget would have to increase almost exponentially for the first three to five years of the navy’s existence.”
“I’ll take those preliminary figures back with me. What about the warships?”
“The first batch of three is due to finish assembly in four months. After that, we’ll be building one every three weeks. How many we ultimately need depends on the nature of the Prime threat.”
Everybody turned to Dimitri Leopoldovich. Since the return of the Second Chance he’d been consulted by the Commonwealth executive and the Senate on an increasingly regular basis. The experience gave him a degree of confidence facing down high-powered questioners in a way that wasn’t evident in his appearance. “Just about the only thing we know for certain about the Primes is that they cannot be assigned human motivations,” he said in mildly accented English. “Even with such a huge civilization contained within a single solar system, a vast amount of their resources had to be diverted to construct the giant wormhole which my team has named Hell’s Gateway.” His lips twitched, as if expecting censure. “We do not fully understand why it was built on such a scale. One of the most obvious possibilities is that it was built without any reference to economics because it is a species survival route. The Primes fear the return of the surrounding barrier, and are trying to spread their seed across the galaxy. Arkships will travel through it, carrying breeding stock and enough machinery to support a colony. If they switch the other end of the wormhole to a new star system every week, or even every day, they will have dispersed themselves in such a fashion that will make it very difficult for the barrier builders to imprison them again. In effect, a fast-forward version of our own Commonwealth.”
“Wait,” Patricia said. “You’re claiming they’re not even a threat to us?”
“Not at all, my team is simply providing you with theoretical possibilities. A second option is that they know the location of the barrier builders, and have crossed interstellar space to confront them and finally wage the war which the barrier was put up to prevent. A third option is that they built it to reach the Commonwealth. This is the only option which concerns us. We have to emphasize here that we cannot assign a satisfactory motivation to this, but we are hampered by the human perspective. As the Silfen and the High Angel have demonstrated, our logic and behavior patterns are not universal. And the very existence of Hell’s Gateway demonstrates how true that is. Therefore, for the purposes of this meeting, it doesn’t matter why they are coming here, only that they are. Those are the terms on which we must consider their actions. They have now had two opportunities to begin peaceful contact procedures with us, and have chosen not to do so on both occasions. Following this, it is my team’s conclusion then that if the Hell’s Gateway was constructed to allow the Primes access to the Commonwealth it is for hostile purposes. We recommend that if the Primes open a wormhole either close to or within the Commonwealth that the navy responds with maximum force.”
“Won’t that be tantamount to us declaring war on them?” Patricia said. “I’m not sure the executive, or even the Senate, would approve those rules of engagement.”
“To use an old analogy: you are playing croquet while they are kick boxing. If the Primes did succeed in extracting information from Bose and Verbeke, as the evidence we have so far indicates, then they know everything about us. They will know that our attempts to contact them were peaceful. They know how to reciprocate by opening channels of communication to us in a nonhostile, nonthreatening manner. That they have not sought to at least investigate the state of the galaxy around them after a thousand years of isolation is extremely suggestive. In tactical terms, they are maneuvering themselves into a position of considerable advantage.”
“But why come all this way?” Oscar asked. “If all they want is material resources, then there are hundreds of star systems close to their own that they could spread out to and exploit.”
“The number of unknown factors we’re dealing with means we really do have to concentrate on the few facts we have, rather than engage in perpetual speculation,” Dimitri Leopoldovich said somewhat reprovingly. “We still don’t know why the Dyson barriers were put up, nor by whom. We don’t know why one was switched off. Break it down to basics, my friends, all we know is that they’re demonstrably hostile, they have tens of thousands of warships, and they’re building wormholes that can reach us. We have to reset our civilized way of thinking to default mode: shoot them before they shoot us. In this instance, we have no alternative other than to prepare for the worst-case scenario. I’d rather spend a trillion dollars on the navy and live to regret the waste of tax money than not spend it and find out we really needed to. Remember Pearl Harbor.”
Wilson watched with silent enjoyment as Patricia forced herself not to comment on Leopoldovich’s trillion-dollar navy. “I’m not sure the parallel strictly applies,” he said. “But I do understand where you’re coming from.”
“We will have one strategic advantage,” Dimitri Leopoldovich said. His rigid smile of emphasis made him look even more vampirish. “Precisely one. It must be exploited no matter what the cost to ourselves for it will be our only chance of survival. The Primes are at the end of a very long, singular supply line. Without it, there can be no hostilities. That is why my team makes the urgent recommendation that the Prime wormhole is attacked the instant they open it in Commonwealth space. Attacked and destroyed. I cannot emphasize this strategy strongly enough. There will be no rules of engagement once they start coming through. We have studied the records from the Conway; they were sending dozens of ships through Hell’s Gateway every hour, and that was months ago. While here you talk of building one warship every three weeks, and the first one isn’t even finished yet. If we devoted our entire industrial output to shipbuilding, it would take decades to reach the number which the Primes can deploy against us right now.”
“Is that combat scenario possible?” Patricia asked. “Can we fire something back through their wormhole which will destroy the generator mechanism at the other end?”
“A crowbar or even a slingshot can knock out a wormhole generator if you know which critical components to smash,” Wilson said. “The key is getting close enough to inflict the relevant damage. You can be sure the opening at this end will be defended by squadrons of ships, and the strongest force fields they can throw up. We would have to break through them to reach the station at the other end. At the moment, the kind of systems which can do that are not part of the armaments we’re fitting to the warships.”
“Then they must be designed and installed,” Dimitri Leopoldovich said forcefully. “Immediately.”
Patricia and Daniel looked at each other. Daniel inclined his head minutely.
“Very well,” Patricia said. “If that’s your team’s official recommendation, academian. Admiral, would your staff look into the proposal, please, and cost it out for the steering committee to review.”
“Certainly,” Wilson said.
…
In summer, Paula actually quite enjoyed sitting out on Paris’s pavement cafés. The coffee in the deeply nationalistic city was still bitter and natural, avoiding a great many UFN processing regulations, while the pastries accompanying them contained way too many calories. The sun and the people made a refreshing change from the sanitized office environment. But for this call she went inside a little bistro a few hundred meters away from the office, and took a private booth. She’d been using the same place for fifty years; the waitress showed her to the booth at the back without even asking. Paula ordered a hot chocolate, and one of the pastries with almonds and cherries.
Her e-butler said the call was coming through. She put a small handheld array on the table, and waited for its screen to unfurl. It wasn’t that she couldn’t take this call in the office, she just felt it was more appropriate to take it in her own time. Thompson Burnelli’s face appeared on the thin plastic; from the blurred gold and white background she thought he was in his Senate Hall office.
“Paula.” He gave her a relaxed smile. “No uniform?”
Anyone else would have earned a crippling stare for that dig, the Senator merely got a raised eyebrow. “It must be in the wash,” she said. The formation of a Commonwealth navy had caught Paula by surprise; she wasn’t prepared for the brand-new Planetary Security Agency to be switched to naval funding and change once again. But like it or not, she was now in naval intelligence with the rank of commander. The day after the changes had been announced to the Paris office, Tarlo had saluted her as he came in to work. Nobody would be doing that again. Nobody in the Paris office wore uniforms, either, although they were technically entitled to. Office rumor said that several members of the staff changed into them before going out for a night clubbing in town, testing the ancient theory that every girl loves a sailor.
Uniforms were the least of her worries. To start with Mel Rees had told them the whole office would be moving to Kerensk, where Vice Admiral Columbia was establishing his administration. That led to a showdown between her and Rees where calls were fired off to political allies with the speed of Prime missile salvos. Mel Rees desperately wanted the move to the navy’s planetary defense headquarters where his chances for promotion inside the new navy were considerable; Paula threatened to resign if any kind of relocation or team alteration went ahead.
Rafael Columbia solved the problem with his usual political deftness. Paula was appointed commander of the Johansson project, which would remain in Paris for strategic reasons. Mel Rees was also promoted, and would run a new unit on Kerensk dealing with the deployment of the wormhole detector network. She was rather pleased to find that her contacts outweighed his family connections.
“Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you on this,” Thompson said. “Life in the Senate hasn’t been this exciting for… well, I don’t ever remember a session like this one before. Kime’s second flight really stirred things up. I never really thought we’d have to form a navy, and I was heavily involved in the early preparation work.”
“Did you know the old Serious Crimes Directorate would end up as navy intelligence?”
“No, Paula, I didn’t realize quite how ambitious Rafael was going to be. I heard about your fight with Rees. I’m glad they managed to work out a compromise that allowed you to stay on. Hell, we only just managed to hang on to Senate Security. Can you believe Columbia wanted that as well?”
“It can’t last, Thompson. We still need some kind of Intersolar department to track down criminals. Apart from Johansson, there is nothing for navy intelligence to do. My former colleagues are still working on their old cases. They just wear uniforms to do it.”
Thompson smiled sadly. “Not quite. There is a small amount of opposition to the navy taking shape. Disaffected hotheads for now, but they need to be monitored, those that don’t go and join the Exodus.”
“Local police can handle that.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Paula. I’m calling because I have news.”
“I’m sorry, go ahead.”
“Okay, first, there is no secret security department run by the executive. That’s a definite. I did consult my father. Whoever it was that made the hit at Venice Beach, they weren’t authorized by the President or Senate Security.”
“Thank you. What about Boongate and the Far Away cargo?”
“Ah.” Thompson shifted around uncomfortably. “This is where it gets interesting. I spoke to Patricia Kantil about that myself, pointed out that we really needed to inspect everything going to Far Away. She said she agreed, and she’d put it on Doi’s agenda. Since then all I’ve had is memos about how the proposal is under active consideration. Even before your suspicions I would have been curious about that. Something this trivial should be easy for me to arrange; normally I’d just tell an aide to sort it out. The fact that I can’t swing it is very suggestive.”