Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (2 page)

On the other hand, he had been promoted from the second in command of
Orion
under Absen, to both the rank and position of Captain, solely responsible for his enormous vessel.

It could be far worse.

As the next eight years would involve a frantic grueling schedule of full-capacity production, he had no doubt that this huge flying truck would get a workout. If he did his job well – and he intended to be as impeccable in his duties as he was in preparing his blazing white uniform and gleaming black shoes – he would be competitive for other commands, and hopefully he would be given some kind of warship.

Not that he had a clue what such a thing would look like. Engineers worked at labs and technical centers across the globe, coming up with design after design to take advantage of rapidly advancing technologies and of the modular cloned engines. Better minds than his would decide the form of the spaceships to be built, just as master shipbuilders had created sailing vessels in the centuries before, not ship captains.

Huen noticed that others now converted their crash couches to standard work chairs, so he touched the control that told the articulated structure surrounding the biotech filling to rearrange itself for work. Soon he sat in the five percent gravity provided by the fusion engines’ acceleration. He imagined them like outboards straining to push along a supertanker, but fortunately in space there was no resistance to slow them. As long as
Artemis
stayed above escape velocity, she would continue to climb as the motors thrust them forward.

He reviewed his basic orbital mechanics one more time: forward goes
up
, up goes
backward
, backward goes
down
, down goes
forward
. This counterintuitive mantra meant, in this case, that pushing the ship forward made it rise until it found an orbit appropriate to the new velocity. Continuous thrust meant continuous gain in altitude and true speed, though apparent groundspeed would not change much, like a ball on a rubber string that stretched longer and longer around its central point as it swung.

“Time to rendezvous?” Huen asked.

“Fourteen hours, Captain,” the helmsman responded.

Not
Skipper
yet. Absen had pointed out this moniker as a bellwether of crew morale, and Huen never forgot something a senior told him. “Have Commander Kessel report to the bridge in ten minutes, and pass the word that all other rotations will remain according to schedule.”

Now was not the time to begin throwing new things at the crew. About half of the diminished complement of three hundred were veterans of
Orion
’s flight, but this was still a shakedown cruise and he wanted it to go smooth and easy.

Nine minutes later he turned the Chair over to Kessel and told him, “I’ll be touring the ship. Pass the word to maintain standard operations. This is not an inspection.” Huen nodded at Schaeffer, his senior steward, who subvocalized something into his internal transmitter and led the way off the bridge, through the back door to the senior officers’ quarters.

On the way they picked up the rest of the captain’s bodyguards. Two of them were also Americans, simply by virtue of the fact that only that nation had enough cybernetically augmented personnel to go around. The fourth, the newest, was a Han Chinese called Shan, from the People’s Republic. It was rumored that access to the newest cybertech had been the price of their continued support for the world military effort, and for keeping North Korea on a short leash.

The new man loomed huge and squat, looking like a James Bond villain, with glittering eyes set deep within the hooded ridges of his brow. He moved like a mountain on gimbaled joints, his sheer bulk and easy grace impressive. Schaeffer had him take point, which allowed his Americans to keep an eye on him. They obviously trusted Huen, as he’d fought alongside them on
Orion
, and as a Hong Kong native, occupied a hybrid Chinese-Western status in their minds.

Shan, on the other hand, had People’s Republic written all over him.

The irony of Americans protecting one ethnic Chinese against another did not escape Captain Huen. Now that they had made it into space, he thought it was time to put the problem to rest, one way or another.

At the door to his quarters, Huen motioned for Shan to enter first, silencing Schaeffer with a look. When he moved to follow Shan inside, though, the American steward tried to interfere.

“Stand aside, Steward Schaeffer,” Huen ordered.

“But sir –”

“Am I Captain here, Mister Schaeffer?” Huen’s tone was deceptively mild.

“Yes, sir,” the steward responded, his face turning as blank as a Caucasian was able.

Huen smiled inside himself. Inscrutability was a cultural Asian trait, well developed in the Hong Kong upper classes by the dictates of manners, so the man’s attempt seemed quite inept.

Still in the corridor, he reached over to shut the cabin door and dog it tight, which should make it nearly soundproof even to cybernetic ears. “Then if I remain Captain after my conversation with Steward Shan, you will cease this pointless waste of vigilance with regard to him and my person. Feel free to watch and see if he engages in any suspect activities, but I cannot operate with a dysfunctional personal security detachment. Do you understand?”

All the man could say was, “Yes, sir.”

Now was time for Huen to face his destiny. If the mandate of heaven was not his, then so be it. He undogged the door to his stateroom again and entered.

Shutting it behind him, he looked across the room at the man-mountain standing at a relaxed but correct position of attention, off to the side of his sofa. As large as
Artemis
was, his captain’s quarters were capacious, deliberately big enough to hold a dinner party.

As soon as the door shut behind Huen, Shan bowed deeply and then returned to his position, eyes unfocused. The captain returned the bow at a precise and shallower angle appropriate to their social and rank difference, and then opened the conversation. “Do you speak Cantonese?”

“Yes, Comrade Captain.”

“Mandarin,” he asked, switching to that dialect.

“Yes, Comrade Captain.”

There was no need to ask him if he spoke standard Han Chinese, mandated in the People’s Republic. “How about English?”

“Yes, Comrade Captain.”

“You will cease to use the title ‘Comrade,’ especially in English. In that tongue, I am properly called ‘Captain’ or ‘Skipper.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, Captain.” The man’s eyes remained unfocused and slightly downcast.

A Westerner might have interpreted this as stupidity or the result of intimidation, but Huen saw in it nothing more than good manners. Now for the tests. He walked over to stand to the man’s left.

Shan did not move, not even when Huen slapped him suddenly on the back of the head, as if to a small boy. The captain’s next ploy was an attempt to poke the man in the eye, an attack that might have done some actual damage and certainly would have caused him pain.

The Chinese cyborg lowered his head slightly, enough that Huen’s fingernail scored a gash on the larger man’s forehead and missed his eye, which immediately opened again.

Huen then stepped directly in front of Shan, within easy reach of his enormous hands. Even had the man not been a cyborg, Huen would have been placing himself in grave physical danger. “Steward Shan,” he said, “if your orders from your government include doing me harm in any way, I would prefer you carry them out immediately, so that the others may eliminate you and my replacement can continue the mission.”

A flicker of emotion, just the tiniest shadow, crossed Shan’s face.

Huen judged the man genuinely young, and thus not fully adept at concealing his feelings in this unusual situation. “You are distressed. I have insulted you.”

“I would not presume to question my captain,” Shan replied.

“Not with your mouth, but with your eyes, you already did.”

The big man said nothing, but bowed deeply and held that position. Huen took the opportunity to step behind him and suddenly slam his shoulder into Shan’s backside with all of his ordinary human strength.

This maneuver threw Shan slightly off balance in the low gravity, and only because it must have been completely unexpected. The man took a half step forward to catch himself, then reset his feet with a slightly wider stance, not lifting from his bow. Huen was certain he would not be able to budge him again. The captain could see the muscles at the edges of the man’s face move enough to be sure that he was using his peripheral vision to watch more carefully this time.

“Steward Shan, stand up. I have been testing you. I am satisfied with the results so far. The other stewards may take longer to warm up to you. Do you understand that idiom?”

Shan stood. “Yes, Captain. My English language training was quite extensive.” His accent was noticeable but his facility appeared better than expected.

“Then I will only remind you of this once. I have the mandate of heaven.” This was a Chinese saying, one that claimed he had the legitimacy of the gods and ancestors. Less specifically, it meant something like “things are going my way right now.” While the Communists had tried to stamp out all religion, getting rid of five thousand years of cultural history had proved impossible, so this was a shorthand Huen was certain the man understood.

Huen continued. “The current government of the People’s Republic is not China. It would like you to believe it is, but it is not. It would like you to think it always speaks for greater China, but it does not. As the Communist Party itself correctly teaches, the historical dialectic alters governments constantly, even its own. We have seen the entire world, except for China, change radically in the past two decades. Governments come and go, but China remains. Do you agree?”

“I would not presume to disagree with one so wise, who retains the mandate of heaven,” Shan replied.

In Western terms, Huen mused, Shan just told him he knew which way the wind was blowing. “Then I believe we understand each other. All I wish is for you to do what is good for the true China, and thus for the world.” Huen hoped that Shan understood his meaning: like “Russia” or “America” or “
La France
,” China remained ultimately more a concept than a country.

“Resume your duties, Steward Shan.” Huen pointedly turned his back on the man and opened his door to see a very nervous Senior Steward Schaeffer and his two compatriots. “Come in, gentlemen,” he said, opening the portal wide.

Schaeffer certainly did not miss the spot of blood on Shan’s already-healing forehead, but he said nothing.

“Open a bottle of my best sherry, will you? Pour five galsses.”

Schaeffer flicked his eyes at Steward Clayton, who nodded imperceptibly and then stepped over to the cabin’s dry bar.

From inside he selected a carefully padded bottle of sherry and soon decanted five drinks in crystal glasses onto a silver tray, all items heirlooms from Huen’s family, tracing back to the days when his city-state had been a British holding. His family had been wealthy then, and remained so to this day, but he accessed such privileges sparingly, preferring this military life.

Huen took a glass and raised it. “Cheers and good fortune, gentlemen,” he said, and drank. Everyone managed to watch Shan out of the corners of their eyes, but the big man held the delicate crystal without difficulty and sipped as if he was attending a dinner party. Finishing his glass, the captain continued, “All right. Let’s go take a look at our ship and crew.”

Some of that gear included orbital habitat modules housing threescore space construction workers to get things started. Their first order of business was to open up a large more-than-hemispherical geodesic latticework supporting a highly absorptive shroud of film. Along with computers and a dozen thrusters around its rim, it would cup the former comet like ice cream in a scoop, consuming ninety-nine percent of available solar energy and turning it into electricity, dramatically reducing the outgassing and loss of vital materials.

Triangular panels could be selectively opened if needed, but most of the time the workers would perform their tasks in the light of the cold emitters on its inside.

Afterward would come the processing plant, a modular setup that would attach to the shroud and sit in the open space like the pupil of an eye. Eventually more film would be extended to complete the golf-ball sphere, once the facility was ready to suck up all the gases and turn them into useful liquids. Each fluid would be stored in enormous tanks, creating an orbital fuelling station to serve the growing shuttle, grabship and tug traffic.

Artemis
’ next stop was at Hiera, the first captive asteroid. Huen understood that other rocks even now wended their slow way in from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with tiny fusion engines slapped onto them by the half-alien Raphaela in the captured Meme scout ship. Soon Earth would be ringed by dozens of these stepping-stones to space.

But this first one was critical. Whereas Atlantis, an unstable chunk of ices, had to be treated with utmost care, Hiera had been selected as a solid hunk of high metallic content, full of iron, nickel, and many other critical elements. Instead of gently offloading the vast array of supplies into co-orbital space, this time
Artemis
actually landed.

Even in microgravity, unloading four million tons of equipment took time, careful weeks in this case. Instead of hastily dropping off habitats and workers to work on their own, this time
Artemis
became what she was designed for – a vast factory base the size of a hundred aircraft carriers, with machine shops and quarters for the human components of the enormous edifice.