Fermi's War Page 18

  He cracked a smile, "There are none. I operate alone; one man cannot be betrayed by a confederate, nor are their any complicated issues of trust at stake. Being captured was always a likely end to this mission, but it was a risk I was more than happy to take. Tell me; did you get a signal to Alamo?"

  "Yes."

  "Excellent. I thought you would find a way; the reports we have on you note your resourcefulness in difficult situations."

  Ruefully, Esposito replied, "I'm glad we didn't disappoint you."

  "Do not think badly of me, Ensign; I am simply trying to stop a war, whilst promoting the best interests of my government. Just as you did on Ragnarok. It is a game we play out here among the stars, nothing more. The best players are the ones who make sure that the stakes do not rise any higher than those our masters are able to risk."

  "I doubt Corporal Gomez agrees with you."

  "I suspect our captors are the ones responsible for his death, not I."

  Orlova was still poking around at the walls, then curled a finger around a couple of wires, smiling, then kicked at a cabinet underneath it, watching it wobble as she bounced back into the middle of the room. She reached up for a pair of wires, grabbed them, and pulled hard, sending a few sparks flying.

  "Maggie, what are you doing?" Esposito asked.

  "They took out most of the monitors. A real rush job, this one."

  "So?"

  "So I think I can knock out the primary feeds, so we can talk without being overhead. This one."

  She pulled a wire, and the room went completely dark, before the dull red of the emergency lighting kicked into life.

  "Got it. We can speak freely now." She looked around the room. "Anyone got any ideas on how to get out of here?"

  Chapter 21

  Usually, Marshall was reluctant to sit in the command chair on the bridge when he was anxious about something, believing that it did no good to the bridge staff to see him in a position of uncertainty and frustration. At one time, years ago, he had always been baffled at the amount of time his commanding officers spent hiding in their offices, and it was only when he first assumed command of Alamo that the reasoning became clear. In there, he had the privacy to be concerned, annoyed, even downright angry; on the bridge, he always at least attempted to appear professional at all times.

  Today was not such a time; he felt had to be on the bridge, ready for the next communication from Shakespeare Station, ready to make an instant decision. The Republic frigate was only a day away, an additional complication to a volatile situation. Most of the senior staff had found reasons for being on the bridge, with only Dietz making an effort to remain away. Shirase, sitting at Operations, looked worse than he did; he knew the stakes better than anybody else. Just as he was about to snap at the duty communications technician, he caught himself and decided that he had been stewing too long, that he needed a break.

  "Cunningham, you have the conn. I'm going down to the Science Labs to see if they have anything for us. Mr. Weitzman, make sure that I am contact instantly if there are any messages from anybody."

  "Understood, sir," the young technician replied.

  Marshall stood up, and made his way to the elevator; Caine stayed where she was at tactical, and with a little reluctance, Cunningham sat down in the command chair; that got a smile from the captain as the doors closed. He sped down to the far side of the ship, trying to wait patiently for the doors to open, twice pausing just before instructing the elevator to return to the bridge. He set an alarm on his datapad for thirty minutes – he'd spend at least that long away from the bridge. It wasn't as if there was much he could do short of breaking orbit, and that was the one option not on the table.

  The doors opened, and as usual, there was an argument taking place in the scientific sections. Douglas – who he noted had managed to find a uniform from somewhere, and a Triplanetary one at that – was shouting at Montgomery, while Vivandi adopted her usual role of moderator. When it finally registered that Marshall had entered the room, Douglas snapped to attention.

  "Captain on the deck," she said, while the rest of the science staff looked on with varying levels of amusement and disbelief. Marshall gestured for her to return to what she was doing, while working out in his head what to say to her inevitable request to transfer to the Fleet.

  "Can we help you, Captain?" Vivandi asked.

  "I thought I'd come to take a look at what you have found." He looked around. "Where's Cross? I expected him to be holding court."

  Montgomery sardonically chuckled, replying, "He's alternating between writing his report on the natural reactor and composing his Legion of Merit acceptance speech."

  "Well, we think that we've dated the site, at least provisionally," Vivandi began, while Douglas interrupted.

  "All we have is the date of its destruction, nothing more, Doctor. That base could have been there a hundred thousand years."

  "Ridiculous," Montgomery said, "the rate of decay doesn't suggest anything like that."

  Raising his hand, Marshall said to Vivandi, "Your best opinion, Doctor."

  "Forty thousand years. All from those bodies you found."

  A brief unpleasant scene flashed through his mind; he rapidly pushed it back down into his subconscious for a later nightmare.

  "You could date them from that?"

  "Well, one of them, anyway. Our friend from Earth – he's Homo neanderthalensis."

  "Neanderthal Man," Montgomery added, sotto voce.

  Vivandi shot him a look, then continued, "And from the later stages of his development. We've been able to trace his DNA samples back a way; obviously we haven't got anything like a complete picture, but we know that he was on Earth around 40,000 years ago. Right slap in the middle of the last ice age, this gentleman was walking on Earth before he had the surprise of his life."

  "I wonder what he was doing up here," Marshall pondered.

  "He could have been anything from an ambassador to a pet, I suppose. We've really hit the jackpot here, Captain – not only have we found evidence of aliens visiting the Solar System, but actual proof that they visited Earth."

  "That's not proven either," Montgomery said. "He could have made it here himself..."

  "With all the exploration of local space in the last two centuries, I think we'd have spotted some evidence of flying caveman, for Goddess' sake," Douglas half-yelled, "He was brought here. Now I might grant you that he was speaking to them on some sort of rational level rather than just grunting at them, but the idea that he got into his little stone spaceship and blasted up here is downright stupid."

  "You don't know that. You can't prove that."

  "I can't prove that invisible gremlins aren't taking a dump in my coffee right now either, but I'm not going to stop drinking it."

  Marshall smiled, watching the argument; Vivandi caught his eye and winked slightly, and he realized that he'd been set-up. He took the scientist off on one side, keeping his voice low.

  "Thanks. This helped."

  "Don't mention it. Louisa suggested that you might need a bit of a distraction. I hope we didn't lay it on too thick."

  "Not at all." He looked around at the genetic charts on the wall as the room quietened down, everyone returning to their work, then continued, "You've actually found a Neanderthal Man in there?"

  "Well, you did. It really is quite incredible. We need to get a top paleontologist out here, which I suspect means bringing the United Nations into the picture, unfortunately. That's not a qualification that is much in demand out here, but I've put a few feelers out."

  "What about breathing? We didn't see any airlocks."

  "Ah, that's the best part. Here." She pulled out a pocket holoprojector and put up a topographical map of the base, showing the now-familiar structure, then pressed another button to overlay a blue dome over the entire complex, seamless to the ground.

  "All of it was protected?"

  "That's right. We found some trace of the outline, enough to get the idea of wh
at we were looking for. Doesn't look a lot different to some of the early settlements on Mars, or the bases we've got on Triton for that matter. I'd say it was old, though. Old, established technology."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Our buildings all have emergency airlocks anyway. They don't; so they must have really trusted that the dome would hold. Until one day it didn't, and I suspect your theory of attack might be likely after all. If they had considered that their dome might fail, then they would have taken precautions."

  Marshall shook his head, "So they had an enemy. Maybe still have, somewhere out there."

  "I wouldn't worry about it. Forty thousand years is a long time – time enough for us to go from primitive flint tools to the stars." She looked at the genetic charts again, shaking her head, "I wonder if he realized why he was dying. One minute he is walking on the banks of the Mediterranean on Earth, and the next minute he is leaving his planet for the last time. I'd like to think he knew what sort of an adventure he was embarking on."

  Smiling at the thought, Marshall turned back, then suddenly froze on the spot, then turned and grabbed Vivandi by the shoulders.

  "Where did you say?"

  "The Mediterranean."

  "North or South?"

  "What does that have to do with it?"

  "Answer the question."

  She pondered for a second, then called out a map of Earth on her datapad before replying, "North. A place called Gibraltar. He matches genetic data we have picked up from that region. Why?"

  Ignoring her, Marshall raced down the corridors towards the elevator, slamming on the button to send him up to the bridge. Composing his thoughts for a few seconds, he pulled his communicator out.

  "Weitzman here, Captain. Nothing to report yet."

  "Get me Captain Jian, on the Ma Kong, right now. No scrambler, copy of the message to Mariner. Don't accept no for an answer; I'm on my way back to the bridge."

  The technician's puzzled voice replied, "Yes, sir."

  Tapping his foot, Marshall waited for the doors to open, then pulled out his datapad and called up the information he need to have to hand, data on 21st century political organizations and the migratory patterns of Neanderthal Man. He didn't need to understand it at the moment, he just needed to have a few facts at hand to wave in Jian's face. The doors opened, and ignoring the inquiring looks from Caine, he sat down on the command chair as Cunningham leapt up from it.

  "I have the Ma Kong, Captain. You'll be speaking to Captain Jian and Captain-Lieutenant Xun."

  "Captain-Lieutenant? The last Xun I remember..."

  "The same one, evidently demoted, Captain."

  "Interesting. Put them through."

  Jian was sitting on his command chair, Xun standing behind him. The last time he had encountered her, she had been commanding a blockade runner on its way to Ragnarok that his crew had managed to destroy. She still had a scar from that incident, and her rank insignia had been somewhat reduced; the Republic tended to be harsh towards those who failed at their assignments.

  "Have you received any new instructions from your superiors, Captain? My orders have remained unchanged," Jian began.

  "I have no new directives from the Combined Chiefs, Captain, but I do have some new information that I think changes the picture considerably."

  "And that is?"

  "We have completed our initial studies of the alien ruins on the surface..."

  "Intruding on our territory. You will cease these actions at once," Xun said sharply.

  "...and found some interesting artifacts," Marshall continued. "Including some of the residents of the base."

  Jian's eyes widened; it looked as if he was actually interested, maybe excited by this discovery, as he replied, "You have? My congratulations – sincerely – on an excellent discovery." He leaned forward, continuing, "I do not believe that my government would have any objection to you continuing your investigations, at least until our own researchers arrive, as long as we receive full copies of the research."

  "I have no objection to that, Captain. One element of the discovery that you should be aware of immediately, however."

  "The aliens are not active?"

  Marshall shook his head, "No. Not that. As well as several alien corpses, we also found the corpse of a primitive human, a Neanderthal Man."

  "On a satellite of Uranus? Are you sure?"

  "I was in the party that discovered him."

  "I don't blame you for wanting to see for yourself. I intend to visit as soon as possible; perhaps you would serve as a guide."

  Taking a deep breath, Marshall replied, "Genetic testing has proven that the human originated in the Iberian Peninsula, in a country that was a founder member of the European Federation."

  Jian's face clouded, "What are you saying?"

  "The European Federation being a predecessor state of the People's Republic of Callisto, in the same manner that the Lunar Republic considers itself a successor state of the Republic of China, we have a claim on Desdemona based on prior occupancy."

  "That's absurd!" Xun shouted.

  "Not at all. If the astronauts on the moon had been citizens of the Lunar Republic, you would have a stronger argument. In this case, we have a legitimate claim."

  Leaning forward, Jian replied, "You are not seriously suggesting that the presence of an extinct human species that happened to live in territory that tens of thousands of years later would be part of a now-defunct power bloc constitutes a strong claim on this moon, are you?"

  "I'm suggesting that this give grounds for arbitration. Captain, neither of us want to fight a war over this. All I am asking is that it gets thrown back to the diplomats to sort matters out."

  Shirase leapt up from his station, anger on his face, "Captain, you can't yield this far. We've got a claim that has precedence, we need to make use of it!"

  "Even your own staff disagree with that position, Captain," Jian said.

  "Mr. Shirase, either sit down and keep quiet or leave the bridge," Marshall hissed, before turning back to the screen, "Captain Jian, it boils down to this question. Do you want war, or do you want peace? Because under no circumstances will I break orbit voluntarily without orders from my government."

  "You cut to the heart of the matter."

  "This is a farce!" Xun yelled. "Break orbit at once, or suffer the consequences."

  It was Jian's turn to silence his subordinate with a glare, before turning back to face Marshall, "I will need to consult with my government. Naturally I will make an effort to ensure that such discussions are conducted with all speed."

  "Thank you, Captain."

  "Likewise." The screen winked out, and Marshall started to breathe again, as Caine rose from her Tactical station to stand next to him, shaking her head.

  "You don't believe that it is a valid claim, do you?"

  "Enough that we don't have to fight today. He wants a way out as much as I do. It gives us an opportunity to come up with some sort of mutual agreement, even if it means we end up sharing it." He looked up at her, saying, "Damn it, Deadeye, I know that it doesn't make much sense. Just enough that both sides can save some sort of face, just enough that we might not have to go war today."

  "Sharing our discovery," Shirase muttered.

  "Better that than a war, Lieutenant. I don't see how that would help the Belt."

  Triumphantly, Weitzman slammed his hand down on his console, turning to Marshall, "Message from Shakespeare Station, Captain, from Senior Lieutenant Warren."

  "At last. Put him on."

  "Aye, sir!"

  Warren's face appeared on the screen; he seemed to be working on a black eye, and there was a nasty cut running down the side of his cheek, but his relentless smile was still intact. Pandemonium seemed to be reigning behind him on the station's command center, but there was no sign of fighting – though plenty of signs that there had been a battle of some kind in the recent past.

  "Are you all right, Teddy?"

  "Wo
n't say I came through without a scratch, but sound of limb, Skipper. There was a bit of a fracas up here, but we've got matters under control now, and I have Lieutenant Tokubai on the run. Seemed that he didn't want to relinquish control, but Minako here," he gestured towards the Tactical Officer, who was screaming at some harried crewmen, "had other ideas. We should have him in custody soon."

  "What about the rest of the station? And Akimoto?"

  "Not completely good news, skipper. The Atomic Syndicate turned out to have a lot of people with guns running about, and they've managed to take control of the shuttle bays and the sensor stations. We're a bit blind at the moment. That freighter, the Maru, is worrying me – it's one of theirs, you know."

  "I remember. That's a priority once you can secure the shuttlecraft and take a look."

  "Wilco. As for Lieutenant-Major Akimoto, seems that he'd been given a rather massive dose of sedatives. Enough to sleep through an orbital bombardment, by the sound of things. I've got one of the medicos down with him now, one I can trust, but I don't think he's going to be awake for a few hours at the very least. Snores like a misfiring engine, as well."

  Taking a deep breath, Marshall asked his next question, "Orlova and Esposito?"

  "That's why I'm worried about the freighter, skipper. We picked up a couple of spacesuits heading over to the Maru from a disused airlock on the upper levels, and the guard reported that it was them. Knocked the poor kid out with a tranq patch. We weren't in any position to do anything about it at the time, we were in the middle of our little party over here. I've tried to hail the Maru, but they don't seem to be in a talking mood. I could send some people over in suits?"

  "No. Far too great a risk at this point."

  "I could get a lot of volunteers."

  "I can't authorize it. Put your house in order, Teddy, then go and get them. Don't forget you've got some fighters if it comes to that."

  "I hope it doesn't. Sorry I didn't have better news for you."

  "You've given me lots of good news, Teddy. Let me know when the situation stabilizes, but other than that, don't worry too much. I know you're busy over there."