“Much of the time, I need to be not-noticed.”
She understood. “One question, though—that TTTFO? That seemed to catch you up for a second.”
“She surprised me with that,” he said. “It’s White House shorthand, usually applied to members of Congress. Means ‘Tell them to fuck off.’”
The Chinese returned to Crow’s quarters about an hour and a half after they left. They knocked before entering, to Fang-Castro’s surprise.
Cui smiled. “We understand your need for private communication and we want a proper resolution to the problem. In line with that, we’ve drawn up a schedule for the release of your people from their quarters. Not all at the same time, of course, but on a rotating schedule. I believe my people have also distinguished between crew members who are necessary to the continued operation of the
Nixon
and those who are merely passengers, like our scientists were.
“I think we have drawn up an acceptable duty roster, but please review it. We would also like to do a complete Engineering shift change. They have already been on duty for twice the normal time. We don’t wish there to be any misunderstanding with the on-duty or off-duty teams, so we are providing you with a comm channel to both. Please inform them that you are authorizing this shift change and that we will be shepherding the new engineering team down and the old one back to their quarters.”
Fang-Castro was rankled by having the terms of operation of her ship dictated to her. She swallowed her annoyance; the Chinese were doing the right things, but . . . they shouldn’t have been there at all.
She issued the orders. “You don’t think you can keep control of the ship indefinitely, do you? There just aren’t enough of you to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time.”
Lieutenant Sun shook her head. “We don’t expect to hold control indefinitely. Just until we get what we want: an equal share in the alien discoveries.”
“We’ve already explained that full access to our computer system and data files is impossible without a presidential directive to release the crypto key, and hell is likely to freeze over before that happens,” she said. “You might as well shoot us now, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Crow said, “You’re both military, so I’m sure you can understand this: getting superuser status on that system would be a breach of U.S. security on an unprecedented level. You’d have access to the designs and engineering information for the
Nixon
, all communications we’ve had with Earth, the security and crypto protocols that supported those communications, and every bit of political or military information that happens to be in the system. That would compromise U.S. operations for years. At the very least we’d have to treat every channel of communication as unsecured until it could be completely replaced and the code rewritten from scratch. If you can start mining our datastore, you don’t just learn what data we’re securing, you learn how we do it. It’s not even open to consideration. If you think it is, imagine what your own superiors would say to the idea that you give us the key to the
Celestial Odyssey
’s datastore.”
Cui looked at her feet: almost a concession of defeat. Then her eyes came up: “But the QSUs aren’t encrypted. You give us two QSUs, and two readers, you jeopardize nothing—”
Sun: “Except your plan to dominate Earth’s technology for a few hundred years . . . which is exactly what we can’t allow. Give us the QSUs.”
Fang-Castro said, “With our ship and people being held hostage, I can pretty much guarantee that Santeros won’t negotiate over the QSUs. Even if she wasn’t mightily pissed off. Her policy has been to never, ever give in to ransom demands.”
Sun opened her mouth to answer, but Crow jumped in: “We need to relax. All of us. Leave it to the governments. Right now, the main thing we all need is patience.”
The Chinese left again.
Fang-Castro said to Crow, “If we hint that we’re willing to give a centimeter, Cui and Sun’ll conclude we’re vulnerable to pressure, and they will ratchet up that pressure in the expectation we will ultimately capitulate on all demands. We won’t, but they will assume we will. They will make things as unpleasant as they possibly can to reach that objective.”
“I’m worried they could decide that you’re bluffing about using the kill switches, and they start shooting people until we turn over the QSUs. You’ve got to think about what you’d do, Naomi. If they say they’re going to shoot one person every so many hours until we give in. If they don’t think you’ll give in, they’ll start with you until, eventually, they work their way down to someone who will. Once that kind of bloodshed starts, it’s hard to stop. Even triggering the kill switches might not put an end to it. A very few of our people still have access to weapons, and they might decide on their own to take the ship back. They might even succeed, if they got lucky. A truckload of people would die in the process, though.”
“I have been thinking about that. But you know what? I don’t think they’ll do it. I don’t think they have as much freedom to act as I do. If they start shooting people, it’ll be because the chairman ordered them to. And that could lead to a war of some sort. Will the chairman go to war?”
“Don’t know.”
The Chinese and Fang-Castro put together duty rosters that let most of the
Nixon
’s crew move about the ship; the Chinese had to do that, simply to keep the ship operating. They maintained armed guards at key points, including the entrance to Engineering, and the bridge, where they monitored and controlled the communications, ship security, and safety workstations. Another person had to supervise life support and one more covered the cafeteria/commons. They agreed to let Fang-Castro and Crow consult in private. When they weren’t talking, Fang-Castro was confined to quarters, except for mandatory exercise. She was allowed inbound entertainment vids.
Crow was not confined, but was allowed access to the ship for two shifts a day, sixteen hours. He spent most of his time talking either to Fang-Castro or to the personnel who still had access to weapons: there were seven of them, but only four were out at the same time.
On the second day, the Chinese government offered a compromise: Martinez and two Chinese engineers would fab a rocket-powered capsule that would contain two of the QSUs, and put them in an orbit back to Earth, where the Chinese would pick it up on arrival.
The American government refused to negotiate any settlement as long as the
Nixon
was forcibly held by the Chinese.
“Something’s gotta happen,” Crow told Sandy, as they sat in the cafeteria. “The Chinese don’t have enough people to keep this up.”
“I know. There are nineteen of them—turns out they had one hidden on the
Odyssey
, which I didn’t find out until last night. That boy had some guts. Two of them, Dr. Mo and that Dr. Gao, they’re not military and nobody’s gonna make a guard out of them. So there are seventeen of them, including Cui and Sun, and that’s not enough for everything they have to watch.”
“How many do you think we could take down before things evened out?”
“Should we be talking here about this?” Sandy looked about, a bit nervously.
“Safest place,” replied Crow. “They don’t have enough people to monitor in real time, especially in the Commons, with the mikes picking up overlapping conversations. They don’t all speak great English.” He shrugged. “There’s risk, but this whole business is well into risky territory. You think of a better place to talk, fine. You won’t.”
“If you say so. Okay, my best guess?” Sandy gave him the big goofy grin, just a couple of good ol’ boys bullshittin’ here, eating fake bacon and waffles. “If all your guys with guns could get out at the same time, and they probably could, if we worked it right . . . we could probably get eight of them before they could react. The problem is, they’ve got communications, and we don’t. They’ll know instantly that the shooting’s started, and they’ve got better weapons. After we took out eight of them, they’d start getting some of us . . . and there aren’t that many of us. And what do we do if they hole up and start taking hostages and killing them?”
Crow chuckled. “Want another cup of coffee?”
“Sure.”
Crow got two more, sat down again, scratched his neck, and said, “Then there’s the question of what happens if we’re about to win. Would Sun do something to blow the ship? She wouldn’t have to do
much. A few shots into the cafeteria view window and the decompression would take out most of the crew . . . and kill her, of course, but maybe she’d do it.”
“There’s something else I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Sandy said. “Way back when, I asked you if I could be a major, and you said, ‘No, but you could be a captain.’ Did I ever get that promotion? I mean, really? On paper?”
“To tell you the truth, I forgot all about it,” Crow said.
“But when Becca was killed, and you had to tell the doc about my post-traumatic stress problem so he could rig the grief drugs . . . you called me ‘captain,’” Sandy said.
“Just giving you a little more status in the eyes of the crew, you know. Letting them know you weren’t just some jerk-off Hollywood videographer. . . . But if you’re really worried about it, I can talk to the guys on Earth and get the routine started.”
Sandy got his grin going again and slumped in his chair and said, “That’s not where I’m going, Crow. When we went over to the
Celestial Odyssey
, Sun referred to me as ‘Captain Darlington.’ Showing off, like she did with you.”
Crow rubbed a spot between his eyes and said, “Okay. I missed it, goddamnit. Where’d she get the ‘captain’?”
“Curious minds . . .”
Crow glanced around the cafeteria. A dozen people, eating and chatting, two sleepy-looking Chinese . . . with guns. “They’ve not only got a spy on board, he could talk to them. Maybe talk to them directly, ship to ship.”
“Yeah. So if you decide to cook up a little revolution . . . who do you trust?”
“Ah, Jesus.”
As it happened, trust wasn’t critical.
No one was entirely sure what Lieutenant Albi Summerhill had in mind when he came on shift at the security station, midday on Sunday, April 29, 2068. He hadn’t discussed plans ahead of time with anyone, hadn’t even hinted at any. Maybe he hadn’t had one. Maybe he just thought he saw an opportunity and seized it.
Whatever his reason and forethought, or lack of it, shortly after one o’clock in the ship’s afternoon, when the Chinese soldier who was monitoring Summerhill’s activities was eating his lunch, Summerhill attempted to surreptitiously unlock all the American crew quarters from the security panel.
Lieutenant Lei was not as distracted as Summerhill had thought. He pushed toward the console, his sidearm drawn, and ordered the lieutenant to relock the doors. When Summerhill tried to stall him, Lei attempted to push past and take control of the security station himself. Summerhill grabbed him, they wrestled, and Lei’s firearm went off.
They recoiled from each other, the Chinese as startled as the American, the American bleeding from the back of the head and the neck. The blood dripped with surreal slowness as the American’s body toppled slowly toward the deck.
As Summerhill and Lei began struggling, Lieutenant Peng Cong launched himself at them from the opposite side of the deck, leaving Ferris Langers unsupervised at the ship’s safety and communication station. As Summerhill dropped toward the deck, Peng waved his pistol at Langers: “Call for help! Call for a medic,” he screeched.
Langers hit the open channel tab, his call went out ship-wide.
“Shots fired on the bridge. We have a man down. We need medical personnel here, immediately.”
Seconds later he got nearly simultaneous acknowledgments back from Doctors Manfred and Mo—“On my way,” “Coming.”
Peng swung himself back toward the bleeding American. Lei was attempting to staunch the flow of blood, but it was like trying to stop a river with his fingers. Summerhill began to shake uncontrollably.
Peng screamed at Langers, “Tell them to hurry, hurry, hurry . . . he is dying!”
Langers called again.
Too late.
Mo arrived first, Manfred a second later. Mo crouched next to Summerhill, his feet in the growing puddle of blood that seeped across the floor of the bridge. Mo touched Summerhill with an extension from his slate; Manfred crowded next to him, looking at the slate, then they looked at each other and simultaneously shook their heads. No heartbeat, no brain function.
Lei’s bullet had ripped through Summerhill’s carotid artery on its way into his head, through a piece of his brain, and out the far side of his skull.
Manfred stood up: “He’s gone,” he said.
Peng stood staring for a moment. Lei’s gun lay on the floor, in the blood puddle. Peng turned toward Langers and extended his own pistol, and Langers put out his hands to fend off the bullet. Peng said, “No, no . . . take it.”
He turned the gun in his hands and extended it to Langers butt-first.
—
Cui was in her quarters, Sun doing a check on her sentries when the call went out. “Shots fired on the bridge . . .” A moment later, “Dr. Manfred, hurry, hurry . . .” and in the background, the sound of heavily accented English, “Get back, get back . . .”
Sun bolted for the bridge, nearly ran into Cui running out of her cabin. “We’re done,” Cui said.
“We’re not done,” Sun snarled.
The bridge was locked: Sun called for Peng to open the door, but the door didn’t open. Peng didn’t answer.
“Something’s going on in there. . . . Maybe Peng was shot,” Sun said. She looked wildly around, then said, “The Commons.”
“What?”
“The Commons, the Commons, that’s where the most people will be.”
“What . . .”
But Sun was already running, shaking loose her handgun as she went. There were fourteen Americans in the Commons, including the kitchen crew. Sun skidded to a stop as she entered: the two Chinese guards had drawn their sidearms and were facing the Americans across a narrow open space. Sun shouted, “Americans. Sit down. Sit down behind the tables.”
“What are we doing?”
Sun commed Peng, then Lei, got no answer. She grabbed one of the Chinese guards and said, “Go to the bridge. Pound on the door. Tell them to hook me to Fang-Castro.”
Crow was in his quarters when the call from the bridge went out.
If someone had been shot . . .
The walls of his quarters were made of hardened foam. There was one spot, indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, near the head of his bed, where it was just a bit softer. He forced his fingers into it, pushed side to side, thrust his hand deeper, and grabbed the butt of his Colt. He pulled it out of the wall, turned it on, did a power check.
Good to go.
Next he checked the door: to his surprise, it was unlocked. He turned back and checked his communication channels. The normal communication channels were open, and he pinged Fang-Castro.
“Yes, David.”
“Shots fired, somebody’s hurt, the comm’s working and the doors are open.”
“Then I’m going to the bridge.”
“Get your sidearm, but stick it in your waistband. Don’t carry it in your hand.”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t know yet, I’m looking at my personnel screen . . . hang there just one second, I can give you a reading . . .”
He pulled up the personnel screen, went to mapping. There were no Chinese heading to either his or Fang-Castro’s quarters. He could see two Chinese running away from the bridge. Barnes had armed himself and was setting up in the main hub intersection. Smart man. Francisco was still in his quarters, working his communications panel.
He tapped back to Fang-Castro. “You’re clear all the way to the bridge. I’d say we’ve got about half the ship back, but I don’t know the bridge status. Let me call Langers . . .”
Langers came up one second later: “Sir, we have the bridge. Summerhill’s . . . dead. The Chinese here have given up.”
“Hang on there, the admiral is on her way.”
To Fang-Castro: “Go. Go. We got the bridge.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“There’s a crowd of Chinese setting up opposite Barnes. I’m going that way.”
Before he went he called Greenberg and told her what had happened. “Jam the air lock. Don’t let anybody through.”
“Doing that now.”
He took one last look at the personnel screen. Where was Darlington? He tapped a couple of keys and Darlington popped up. The Commons: with four Chinese and a bunch of Americans. He didn’t bother to count them, just slipped out the door and ran toward the hub.
Everything froze. Armed Chinese and Americans faced each other, but nobody fired any weapons.
As Fang-Castro approached the bridge, she found a Chinese soldier standing outside. He started to draw his pistol, thought again, put it away. “I cannot get in.”
Fang-Castro’s slate was working again. She pinged the bridge and said, “I’m outside, with an armed Chinese soldier. His weapon is holstered.”
Langers replied: “We have control here. The Chinese have surrendered their weapons. Uh, ask him for his.”
Fang-Castro looked at the Chinese soldier, who’d overhead the call. The man scratched his face, and nose once, then said, “My commander is in the Commons. She wishes to speak to you. I have delivered the message, now I go back.”
He left, and a moment later Fang-Castro walked onto the bridge.
—
Sun kept her weapon fixed on the line of Americans; three or four minutes after she’d entered the Commons, she was pinged by Fang-Castro, whose image appeared on the large view screen. She said, “Lieutenant Cui, Lieutenant Sun, you have lost control of the ship. Please surrender your weapons to the nearest Americans and we will settle this amicably, as we should have from the start. This is not a situation we can really resolve at our ranks—”
Sun cut in. “You may call me Colonel Sun. You still have not understood the situation, Admiral. We cannot allow you exclusive control of this technology. We demand that you and the rest of the non-critical Americans return to your quarters, where you will be locked down until we reestablish control here.”
“We absolutely will not do that—”
“You had better,” Sun said. “I tell you this. We cannot allow you the tech. I will begin executing the people we have here, one every five minutes, until you are locked down again. If anyone attacks us, I will do what I can to destroy the ship. I know I can blow at least two holes in it. I doubt that you’ll survive. The five minutes starts . . . now.”
Everybody in the room looked at the clock at the corner of the Commons screen. Eight minutes after twelve, straight up.
Two minutes into the count, with no reaction yet from Fang-Castro—she’d asked to consult with her command staff—Bob Hannegan, the physicist, held up a hand. “Colonel Sun, I need to speak to you for ten seconds.”
Sun scowled at him. “Speak.”
Hannegan held up a gold stylus. “This is one of the kill trigger
switches.” He gripped it and turned one side against the other. “And this is how it works.”
Sun said, “Wait!”
Hannegan snapped the stylus in half, and said, “Ouch, I cut myself.” And to Sun, “Now there’s no reason to shoot anyone. The QSUs are gone.”
As he said the last word, an alarm sounded, and he added: “There goes the fire alarm. There’s a three-thousand-degree fire in the burn box.”
Cui pinged the Chinese guard outside the strong room. “What is your status?”
“There are two Americans here, with guns, but they have not drawn them. My gun remains holstered.”
“We have been told that a kill trigger switch has been fired. Do you have any indication—”
“Yes. I heard a . . . boom . . . one minute ago, and I believe it came from the strong room. One moment, another American is running here.”
They waited and a few seconds later, the guard called again: “He has a fire extinguisher, which he says he needs to shoot on the outside of the burn box before the fire burns through. He says it will cool the box. Shall I allow him to open the door?”
Sun said, “Yes. Tell me what you see.”
The guard called again a moment later: “It is very hot in here. There is a steel box sitting on what looks like ceramic bricks. The box is glowing red at the top and white at the bottom. The American is spraying it with a freezing foam which does not stay on, but the box is cooling somewhat.”
Sun said, “I can’t believe it.”
She turned to Bob Hannegan and shot him in the head. Hannegan’s body simply dropped straight down; he might have had a surprised look on his face.
Sun looked up at the view screen, where Fang-Castro had reappeared.
She shouted, “Admiral Fang-Castro. We demand that you return to your quarters. We have executed the first of your crew members, and will continue each five minutes until we are given access to the alien information.”
“The alien information has been destroyed,” Fang-Castro said. “Your own people can confirm this.”
“I do not believe this,” Sun shouted at her. “Even if so, you still have the I/O input. We demand that you return to your quarters, and return the ship to our control, so that we may access the datastore, or I will execute another crew member in”—she winked at her implants—“three minutes.”
Fang-Castro said, “Killing people won’t bring back the QSUs—”
“We can’t take the chance!” Sun shouted. “If you don’t believe me . . .”
She raised her gun, pointing it at Francisco.
Sandy shouted, “Wait, wait, wait . . . Colonel. I can fix this. . . . I promise you, I can fix this.”
Sun was wild-eyed: “And how would you fix this, Captain Darlington?”
“Let me . . .” He picked up his slate and unclipped his stylus. “A datastore switch.”
From the screen above him, Fang-Castro said, “Captain Darlington! Captain Darlington! Don’t do that. Don’t do that! That’s an order.”
Sandy looked up at the screen. “She’s crazy, ma’am. She’s going to kill Commander Francisco.”
Sun said, “Give me that switch.”
Sandy said, “No. Here. I’m going to fix everything.” He snapped the stylus in his hands, and said, “The datastore is gone.”
Sun shouted, “You are lying. You lie!” Spittle was flying from her lips as she looked around the room at the wide-eyed Americans. She pointed the gun at Sandy’s head and shouted, “Admiral, you have ten seconds to surrender the bridge—”
Cui shot her in the back.
Sun went down and rolled over, her eyes open, catching Cui just before she died. Cui felt nothing for her at all. She looked up at the screen
and said, “Admiral Fang-Castro, if you will put me on ship-wide comm, I will order my crew to lay down their arms.”
Propulsion and Engineering’s systems ran entirely independently of the rest of the
Nixon
. The shift on duty had no appreciation of how much the balance of power had shifted in a few handfuls of minutes.
“Hey, Wendy, the comm channels are all open again,” one of her techs called out. Dr. Greenberg shook her head. Why did it seem like the interesting stuff always happened on her shift? So far, on this mission, “interesting” meant “bad.”
Okay, maybe not bad this time,
she thought. She opened a channel to the bridge, thought about asking, “Hey what’s going on up there?” but decided on a more prudent formality, just in case she was speaking for history.
“Wendy Greenberg, here, chief engineer on duty. Can we have a status update? Over.”
“Wendy? You guys okay? Langers. The Chinese have surrendered. Summerhill, Hannegan, and Sun are dead. Over.”
There was a mutter all through Engineering: Summerhill was dead? But they had the ship back? Greenberg asked a tech, “Do I laugh or cry?”
When Fang-Castro and Crow got to the Commons, they found Sandy sitting in a chair next to a couple of Chinese soldiers. Sandy looked at Fang-Castro and said, “It’s all over?”
“It’s all over.” She shook her head: “We lost both the QSUs and the datastore. Mr. Francisco?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Take Captain Darlington to the remaining lockup and secure him there. I’m placing him under arrest for ignoring a direct order under combat conditions.”
Crow was dumbfounded. “Really?”