“The Polk might be able to fight it out,” Roberts said.
“You heard Captain Basta as well as I did,” Bair said. “Too many missiles. And the Polk is already damaged.”
“Let’s hope the rest of our people made it to their escape pods, then,” Roberts said.
“I don’t think they were sent to the other escape pods,” Bair said.
“But Evans said—”
“Evans said what he needed to shut us up and get us off the Polk,” Bair said.
Roberts was quiet at this.
Several minutes later, he said, “If the Polk sent a skip drone, it will need, what, a day to reach skip distance?”
“Something like that,” Bair said.
“A day for the news to arrive, a few hours to gear up, a few hours after that to find us,” Roberts said. “So two days in this tin can. Best-case scenario.”
“Sure,” Bair said.
“And then we’ll be debriefed,” Roberts said. “Not that we can tell them anything about who attacked us or why.”
“When they look for us, they’ll also be looking for the Polk’s black box,” Bair said. “That will have all the data from the ship right up until the moment it was destroyed. If they were able to identify the attacking ships at any point, it’ll be in there.”
“If it survived the destruction of the Polk,” Roberts said.
“I heard Captain Basta tell her bridge crew to prep the box,” Bair said. “I’m guessing that means that they had time to do whatever they needed to to make sure it survived the ship.”
“So you, me and a black box are all that survived the Polk,” Roberts said.
“I think so. Yes,” Bair said.
“Jesus,” Roberts said. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
“I’ve had missions go badly before,” Bair said, and looked around the confines of the escape pod. “But, no. This is a first.”
“Let’s hope the best-case scenario is what we get here,” Roberts said. “If it’s not, then in about a week things are going to get bad.”
“After the fourth day we’ll take turns breathing,” Bair said.
Roberts laughed weakly and then stopped himself. “Don’t want to do that,” he said. “Waste of oxygen.”
Bair began to laugh herself and then was surprised as the air from her lungs rushed the other way, pulled out by the vacuum of space invading the escape pod as it tore apart. Bair had an instant to register the look on her assistant’s face before the shrapnel from the explosion that was shredding the escape pod tore into them as well, killing them. She had no final thoughts, other than registering the feel of the air sliding past her lips and the brief, painless pushing feeling the shrapnel made as it went through and then out of her. There was a final, distant sensation of cold, then heat, and then nothing at all.
II.
Sixty-two light-years away from the Polk, Lieutenant Harry Wilson stood stiffly near the edge of a seaside cliff on the planet Farnut, along with several other members of the Colonial Union diplomatic courier ship Clarke. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, warm without being so hot that the humans would sweat in their formal attire. The Colonial diplomats formed a line; parallel to that line was a line of Farnutian diplomats, their limbs resplendent in formal jewelry. Each human diplomat held a baroquely decorated flagon, filled with water brought specially from the Clarke. At the head of each line was the chief diplomat for each race at the negotiation: Ckar Cnutdin for the Farnutians and Ode Abumwe for the Colonials. Cnutdin was currently at a podium, speaking in the glottal Farnutian language. Ambassador Abumwe, to the side, appeared to listen intently, nodding from time to time.
“What is he saying?” Hart Schmidt, standing next to Wilson, asked, as quietly as possible.
“Standard boilerplate about friendship between nations and species,” Wilson said. As the sole member of the Colonial Defense Forces in the diplomatic mission, he was the only one in the line able to translate Farnutian on the fly, via his BrainPal; the rest of them had relied on translators provided by the Farnutians. The only one of those present at the ceremony was now standing behind Ambassador Abumwe, whispering discreetly into her ear.
“Does it sound like he’s wrapping up?” Schmidt asked.
“Why, Hart?” Wilson glanced over to his friend. “You in a rush to get to the next part?”
Schmidt flicked his eyes toward his opposite number on the Farnutian line and said nothing.
As it turned out, Cnutdin was indeed just finishing. He did a thing with his limbs that was the Farnutian equivalent of bowing and stepped back from the podium. Ambassador Abumwe bowed and stepped toward the podium for her speech. Behind her, the translator shifted over to stand behind Cnutdin.
“I want to thank Trade Delegate Cnutdin for his stirring words about the growing friendship between our two great nations,” Abumwe began, and then launched into boilerplate of her own, her words delivered with an accent that betrayed her status as a first-generation Colonial. Her parents had emigrated from Nigeria to the Colonial planet of New Albion when Abumwe was an infant; traces of that country’s speech overlaid the New Albion rasp that reminded Wilson of the American Midwest that he had grown up in.
Not too long ago, in an attempt to start a rapport with the ambassador, Wilson had noted to Abumwe that the two of them were the only members of the Clarke crew who had been born on Earth, the rest of the crew having been Colonials all their life. Abumwe had narrowed her eyes at him, asked him what he was implying and stalked off angrily. Wilson had turned to his friend Schmidt, who was looking on with horror, and asked what he had done wrong. Schmidt told him to access a news feed.
That was how Wilson learned that the Earth and the Colonial Union appeared to be undergoing a trial separation and were probably headed for a divorce. And learned about who was splitting them apart.
Ah, well, Wilson thought, watching Abumwe wrap up her speech. Abumwe had never warmed to him; he was pretty sure she vaguely resented having any CDF presence on her ship, even in the relatively innocuous form of a technology advisor, which was Wilson’s role. But as Schmidt liked to point out, it wasn’t personal. By all indications, Abumwe had never really warmed up to anyone, ever. Some people just didn’t like people.
Not the best temperament for a diplomat, Wilson thought, not for the first time.
Abumwe stepped away from the podium, bowed deeply to Ckar Cnutdin, and at the end of her bow took her flagon and nodded to her line of diplomats. Cnutdin likewise signaled to his line.
“This is it,” Schmidt said to Wilson, and then they both stepped forward, toward the Farnutians, just as the Farnutians slid forward to them. Each line stopped roughly half a meter from the other, still parallel.
As a unit and as they had practiced, every human diplomat, Ambassador Abumwe included, thrust forward their flagon. “We exchange water,” they all said, and with ceremonial pomp upended their flagons, spilling the water at what passed for the Farnutians’ feet.
The Farnutians replied with a hurking sound that Wilson’s BrainPal translated as We exchange water, and then spewed from their mouths seawater they had stored in their bodies’ ballast bladders, directly into the faces of the human diplomats. Every human diplomat was drenched with salty, Farnutian body-temperature water.
“Thanks for that,” Wilson said to his opposite number on the Farnutian line. But the Farnutian had already turned away, making a hiccuping sound at another of its kind as it broke ranks. Wilson’s BrainPal translated the words.
Thank God that’s over, it had said. When do we get lunch?
* * *
“You’re unusually quiet,” Schmidt said to Wilson, on the shuttle ride back to the Clarke.
“I’m ruminating on my life, and karma,” Wilson said. “And what I must have done in a previous life to deserve being spit on by an alien species as part of a diplomatic ceremony.”
“It’s because the Farnutian culture is so tied to the sea,” Schmidt said. “Exchanging
the waters of their homeland is a symbolic way to say our fates are now tied together.”
“It’s also an excellent way to spread the Farnutian equivalent of smallpox,” Wilson said.
“That’s why we got shots,” Schmidt said.
“I would at least like to have poured the flagon on someone’s head,” Wilson said.
“That wouldn’t have been very diplomatic,” Schmidt said.
“And spitting in our faces is?” Wilson’s voice rose slightly.
“Yes, because that’s how they cement their deals,” Schmidt said. “And they also know that when humans spit in someone’s face, or pour water on someone’s head, it doesn’t mean the same thing. So we devised something that everyone agreed was symbolically acceptable. It took our advance team three weeks to hammer that out.”
“They could have hammered out a deal where the Farnutians learn to shake hands,” Wilson pointed out.
“We could have,” Schmidt agreed. “Except for the little fact that we need this trade alliance a lot more than they do, so we have to play by their rules. It’s why the negotiations are on Farnut. It’s why Ambassador Abumwe accepted a deal that’s a short-term loser. It’s why we stood there and got spit on and said thank you.”
Wilson looked toward the forward part of the shuttle, where the ambassador sat with her top aides. Schmidt didn’t rate inclusion; Wilson certainly didn’t. They sat in the back, in the cheap seats. “She got a bad deal?” he asked.
“She was told to get a bad deal,” Schmidt said, looking toward the ambassador as well. “That defense shielding you trained their people on? We traded it for agricultural products. We traded it for fruit. We don’t need their fruit. We can’t eat their fruit. We’re probably going to end up taking everything they give us and stewing it down to ethanol or something pointless like that.”
“Then why did we make the deal?” Wilson asked.
“We were told to think of it as a ‘loss leader,’” Schmidt said. “Something that gets the Farnutians through the door so we can make better deals later.”
“Fantastic,” Wilson said. “I can look forward to getting spit on again.”
“No,” Schmidt said, and settled back into his chair. “It’s not us that will be coming back.”
“Oh, right,” Wilson said. “You get all the crappy diplomatic missions, and once you’ve done the scut work, someone else comes in for the glory.”
“You say it like you’re skeptical,” Schmidt said to Wilson. “Come on, Harry. You’ve been with us long enough now. You’ve seen what happens to us. The missions we get are either low-level or ones where if they fail, it’ll be easy enough to blame it on us, rather than our orders.”
“Which kind was this one?” Wilson asked.
“Both,” Schmidt said. “And so is the next one.”
“This brings me back to my question about my karma,” Wilson said.
“You probably set kittens on fire,” Schmidt said. “And the rest of us were probably there with you, with skewers.”
“When I joined the CDF we probably would have just shot the hell out of the Farnutians until they gave us what we wanted,” Wilson said.
“Ah, the good old days,” Schmidt said sarcastically, and then shrugged. “That was then. This is now. We’ve lost the Earth, Harry. Now we have to learn to deal with it.”
“There’s going to be a hell of a learning curve on that one,” Wilson said, after a minute.
“You are correct,” Schmidt said. “Be glad you don’t have to be the teacher.”
III.
I need to see you, Colonel Abel Rigney sent to Colonel Liz Egan, CDF liaison to the secretary of state. He was heading toward her suite of offices in the Phoenix Station.
I’m a little busy at the moment, Egan sent back.
It’s important, Rigney sent.
What I’m doing right now is also important, Egan returned.
This is more importanter, Rigney sent.
Well, when you put it that way, Egan replied.
Rigney smiled. I’ll be at your office in two minutes, he sent.
I’m not there, Egan returned. Go to the State Department conference complex. I’m in Theater Seven.
What are you doing there? Rigney sent.
Scaring the children, Egan replied.
Three minutes later, Rigney slipped into the back of Theater Seven. The room was darkened and filled with midlevel members of the Colonial Union diplomatic corps. Rigney took a seat at one of the higher rows in the room and looked across at the faces of the people there. They appeared rather grim. Down on the floor of the theater stood Colonel Egan, a three-dimensional display, currently unlit, behind her.
I’m here, Rigney sent to Egan.
Then you can see I’m working, she replied. Shut up and give me a minute.
What Egan was doing was listening to one of the midlevel diplomats drone on in the vaguely condescending way that midlevel diplomats will do when presented with someone they assume is below their station. Rigney, who knew that in her past life Egan had been the CEO of a rather substantial media empire, settled in to enjoy the show.
“I’m not disagreeing that the new reality of our situation is challenging,” the diplomat was saying. “But I’m not entirely convinced that the situation is as insoluble as your assessment suggests.”
“Is that so, Mr. DiNovo,” Egan said.
“I think so, yes,” the diplomat named DiNovo said. “The human race has always been outnumbered out here. But we’ve managed to keep our place in the scheme of things. Small, albeit important details have changed here, but the fundamental issues are largely the same.”
“Are they,” Egan said. The display behind her flashed on, picturing a slowly rotating star field that Rigney recognized as the local interstellar neighborhood. A series of stars flashed blue. “To recap, here we are. All the star systems which have human planets in them. The Colonial Union. And here are all the star systems with other intelligent, star-faring races in them.” The star field turned red as a couple thousand stars switched colors to show their allegiance.
“This is no different than what we’ve always had to work with,” the diplomat named DiNovo said.
“Wrong,” Egan said. “This star chart is misleading, and you, Mr. DiNovo, appear not to realize that. All that red up there used to represent hundreds of individual races, all of whom, like the human race, had to battle or negotiate with any other race they encountered. Some races were stronger than others, but none of them had any substantial strength or tactical advantage over most of the others. There were too many civilizations too close to parity for any one of them to gain a long-term lead in the power struggle.
“That worked for us because we had one advantage other races didn’t,” Egan said. Behind her, one blue star system, somewhat isolated from the main arc of human systems, glowed more brightly. “We had Earth, which supplied the Colonial Union with two critical things: colonists, with which we could rapidly populate the planets we claimed, and soldiers, which we could use to defend those planets and secure additional worlds. Earth supplied the Colonial Union more of each than it would have been politically feasible to provide itself from its own worlds. This allowed the Colonial Union both a strategic and tactical advantage and allowed humanity to come close to upending the existing political order in our region of space.”
“Advantages we can still exploit,” DiNovo began.
“Wrong again,” Egan said. “Because now two critical things have changed. First, there’s the Conclave.” Two-thirds of the formerly red stars turned yellow. “The Conclave, formed out of four hundred alien races which formerly fought among themselves, but now acting as a single political entity, able to enforce its policies by sheer mass. The Conclave will not allow unaffiliated races to engage in further colonization, but it does not stop those races from raiding each other for resources or for security purposes or to settle old scores. So the Colonial Union still has to contend with two hundred alien races targeting
its worlds and ships.
“Second, there’s Earth. Thanks to the actions of former Roanoke Colony leaders John Perry and Jane Sagan, the Earth has at least temporarily suspended its relationship with the Colonial Union. Its people now believe that we’ve been holding back the planet’s political and technological development for decades to farm it for colonists and soldiers. The reality is more complicated, but as with most humans, the people on Earth prefer the simple answer. The simplest answer is the Colonial Union’s been screwing them. They don’t trust us. They don’t want anything to do with us. It may be years before they do.”
“My point is that even without the Earth we still have advantages,” DiNovo said. “The Colonial Union has a population of billions on dozens of planets rich with resources.”
“And you believe that the colony worlds can replace the colonists and soldiers the Colonial Union until very recently received from Earth,” Egan said.
“I’m not saying there won’t be grumbling,” DiNovo said. “But yes, they could.”
“Colonel Rigney,” said Egan, speaking her compatriot’s name but keeping her eyes on DiNovo.
“Yes,” Rigney said, surprised at being called on. An entire room of heads swiveled to look at him.
“You and I were in the same recruiting class,” Egan said.
“That’s right,” Rigney said. “We met on the Amerigo Vespucci. That was the ship that took us from Earth to Phoenix Station. It was fourteen years ago.”
“Do you remember how many recruits were on the Vespucci?” Egan asked.
“I remember the CDF representative telling us there were one thousand fifteen of us,” Rigney said.
“How many of us are still alive?” Egan asked.
“There are eighty-nine,” Rigney said. “I know that because one of us died last week and I got a notification. Major Darren Reith.”
“So a ninety-one percent fatality rate over fourteen years,” Egan said.