“What is the problem, Mr. President? You know you have my full support in the vote, though I don’t have any say myself.”
“Senator,” Newton said, “I need you to resign, right now. The Ambassador can accept it.”
“Just a minute,” she said, “You don’t get to tell me that.”
“What the devil is all of this about?” the Ambassador asked.
“It’s quite simple, really,” Chambers said. “We need to get Maggie into the Senate, and we need her to be able to speak. Senators are accorded immunity from arrest, and she might not have a vote, but she will be able to make herself heard.” Turning to her, she said, “You’re going to have to stall them as long as you can.”
“Don’t I need to be elected?” Orlova asked.
“Actually, no. In the event of a Senator from anywhere in the Confederation resigning, there is a by-election, but representatives from a Territory are appointed by local authorities, not elected. In this case, the Ambassador here acts as the representative of the President of Ragnarok.”
“Who needs to confirm my choice,” he said. “Which would take weeks.”
“But until then, your choice still has the job, yes?” Newton pressed. “We don’t need to worry about what happens in the next two weeks, we need to worry about what happens in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Wait, wait,” Orlova said…
“It’s all quite legal,” Newton said. “Lieutenant...Maggie…we need you to do this. You’ve got the credentials that enough of the Senate will listen. Senator Harper will run interference and get you started.”
Nodding, the Senator said, “I still have enough supporters to give you at least a fighting chance, Maggie. Of course, whether or not you will be able to pull it off is entirely up to you.”
“What the hell,” Morley said. “If this goes wrong, I’ll be leaving tomorrow anyway. I might as well get a head start on packing my bags.” Standing straight, she said, “Ambassador, I formally tender my resignation as the Acting Senator for Ragnarok. I’ll get it to you in writing as fast as I can.”
“Very well,” he replied. “Maggie, are you up for this?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, you do,” Newton said. “There’s a good chance this will still mean time in a cell, and every possibility that the Senate will simply throw you out before you say a word. You’ll have to be quick on your feet and with your wits. Twenty-one hours of hell before Alamo gets into orbit, and no-one will be able to help you.” With a sigh, he continued, “I sound like I’m about to send you alone into enemy territory, and in a way, that’s exactly what I am doing.”
“I don’t know the procedures,” she said, her protests dying away.
“I’ll brief you on the ride over,” Chambers said. “That really isn’t a problem. And as for the official announcement, I’ll go and see if our press corps is awake. This ought to get them moving.”
Closing her eyes, Orlova said, “I guess there isn’t a choice after all, is there. What do I have to say?”
Newton handed her a datapad. “I can witness this, along with Senator Harper and the Ambassador. It’ll be legal.”
“Though naturally your term will expire in twenty-five hours when the Senate rests,” Chambers added. “Which I think will give you a record for the shortest term in history.”
Taking a deep breath, Orlova read, “I solemnly swear to uphold the constitution of the Triplanetary Confederation, to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic,” she fought to stop herself from smiling at that last line, knowing that she was being recorded, “that I will maintain full allegiance to my nation and my people, and that I enter into this agreement of my own free will, owing my loyalty only to my country, to the cause of liberty, justice and freedom, and to the people I pledge myself to represent.” She gulped once, then concluded, “So I swear.”
“That’s that, then,” Newton said. “Did you get that?” he asked the technician.
“I hope so,” Orlova said. “I’d hate to have to do a retake.”
“No, that’s all fine,” he replied. “I’ll get a copy across to the Archives now.”
Senator Harper’s communicator beeped, and he said, “Word’s already out that the Senator from Ragnarok has resigned. I’m already getting some pretty worried messages. I’d bet the journalists know already.”
“That quickly?” Nelyubov said.
“The pundits are on this one round the clock,” Newton said. “I doubt anyone’s ever paid this much attention to the last day of a session before.”
“Come on,” Senator Harper said. “You’d better go and meet your public. Mr. Nelyubov, will you get the shuttle ready for launch?”
“I’m on it,” he said, shaking his head. “Never had two Senators and a President in my passenger cabin before.”
“I’ll wait for you at the shuttle,” Chambers said. “You’ve got a lot of homework to do in not much time, Maggie. I mean, Senator.”
“Keep calling me that enough and I might even start to believe it,” Orlova replied. “Lead on, sir.”
The two of them walked down the corridor, Orlova looking down at her uniform, frowning.
“Should I be wearing this?” she asked.
“There were quite a few Senators in uniform during the war, but it might give off the wrong message. I’ll make sure you have a change of clothes in the shuttle.” He paused, then said, “I know this is daunting you, but just think of it as if you were about to lead a ship into battle. You’ve just got words instead of missiles.”
“I’m no diplomat,” she replied.
“That’s a pity,” he said, “but you’re all we’ve got.”
“How the hell did we get this desperate?” she asked.
He stopped at the airlock door, then said, “The truth of the matter is that I don’t really know. I guess we just ran out of choices. Two sets of people sharing the Senate who both want diametrically opposite things, and the choice never gets more stark than that between war and peace.”
“They’re wrong,” she said.
“I think so, you think so, the President thinks so, but the people are what really matter in all of this. In about six weeks from now they’re going to tell us what they want in an election, and none of the polls, none of the debates, none of all this talk is going to mean a damn thing. If they want war then, they’ll tell us by voting Progressive. I’m sure they could find some way to abrogate the treaty.”
“Then why the hell have we gone through all this, Senator?” she asked. “What was the point of it?”
“I want the people to choose for themselves what they want, instead of having it presented to them by smiling pundits on the news. The Progressives are out to give them a fixed deck, a choice that is no choice at all. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I spent a long time in a uniform not that different to yours to make sure that they had that choice, and I don’t want to see it thrown away so quickly.” With a sigh, he said, “Not that our side is much better. Newton’s all talk, and old friend or no, he’s guilty as sin.”
“The lesser of two evils.”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of politics, Senator Orlova,” he said. “I wish I’d stayed in uniform.” Gesturing at the airlock, he said, “Go on, Maggie. You don’t
want
to keep your public waiting. And console yourself that you only have to stay in the pigpen for a day or two. Some of us have condemned ourselves to it for the rest of our lives.”
With a last glance at the Senator, who suddenly looked extremely tired, she tapped a hand on the control and stepped out into a babble of conversation.
Chapter 23
Cooper sat at the far end of the briefing room, looking at Captain Marshall at the far end as he scanned a datapad. Sergeant Forrest was sitting to his right, Barbara at his left; Quinn and Dixon were sitting next to each other on the left side of the table, Ryder and Caine on the right. It was beginning to feel more like a family meeting than a tactical planning session, but the hovering holographic image of the battleship in the middle of the room rammed home the enormity of the task at hand.
“Steele’s checked the course three times, and it matches with Ryder’s suspicions,” Marshall said. “Also, we’re getting some odd chatter from Mars, something about Senator Orlova.”
“Senator?” Caine asked.
“No idea. Hopefully it’ll become clear shortly. Weitzman’s trying to monitor as many channels as he can. The main problem remains the same, though,
h
ow do we get past that battleship and get to Mars?”
“What about the orbital defense network?” Dixon said. “That’s not an insignificant problem. Any two of those laser satellites could tear us to pieces.”
“Logan says he can deal with it,” Ryder replied. “I haven’t the f
aintest
idea how he’s going to pull it off, but I’ll trust that he can find a way. In any event, I don’t see we have much choice except to see what he can pull off
–
there’s nothing we can do about it from up here.”
Caine glanced up at the battleship, then said, “From a straight tactical perspective, we’ve had it. If we had three fully-crewed battlecruisers at our disposal, then I might be able to do something, but Alamo’s at half-strength or less and has been patched up once too often.”
“We can’t just give up,” Marshall said.
“I didn’t say that. I just mean that Alamo is no match for that ship, even in a straight fight. Her laser cannon is half again as powerful as ours, with a significantly reduced recharge time, and she has ten missile tubes to our six – and again, her reload time is faster. She can carry two squadrons of fighters, and from what I can see, is. They’ve been doing some practice launches.”
“That tells us two things,” Dixon said. “We know that they have the pilots and the fighters, but also that they haven’t trained much. I took a look at the tactics, and it was all refresher stuff, so I’m guessing we’re looking at old retreads being put back into service for the occasion.” Sighing, she said, “There’s been a lot of discontent in the fighter community for the last few years, ever since the drone fighter project really got going.”
Ryder’s face reddened, and she said, “That project is the rational future of the fighter community. It isn’t my fault that you’ve been using out-of-date tactics all these years!”
“Ryder,” Marshall snapped. “No-one blames you for this, and I know that you suffered as a result of that hostility, but Dixon isn’t the enemy.”
“No, sir,” she replied. “I apologize.”
Dixon added, “Partly my fault, as well. My mouth tends to run ahead of my brain at times; I’d forgotten that Ryder was involved in that project. Point is that there are a lot of discontented pilots out there, but a lot of them haven’t done much flying lately.” Shaking her head, she said, “I probably know some of them.”
“We all probably know people on that ship,” her husband said. “Though I still hate to think it. I’ve been going over Zeus with all our sensors, and they did a hell of a job on it. She’s a little slower than us, a little less responsive, but in all other respects is superior.”
“No weak spots?”
“Not that I can find, no. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t any, and I’ll keep looking.”
Marshall looked around the table, and said, “This is not acceptable, people. There is no other option open to us; we must take down that ship.”
“There is an answer,” Cooper said, glancing across at Barbara then back to the Captain. “Our assessment is that Zeus is somewhat undermanned, correct?”
“Almost certainly,” Caine replied.
“And I doubt they have
m
any Espatiers on board,” he continued.
“On what basis, Ensign?” Ryder asked.
“They’d have sent them to Hades or Hydra. Us coming home like that was unexpected, and they’re having to improvise. Hence liberating Zakharova from jail to command that ship. If they’d had time to prepare something better, I rather think they would have.”
“What about the shuttles they launched at us?” Caine asked.
“Decoys,” Cooper said. “Designed to trick us. We wondered why they launched them, then turned them around so quickly. They want us to think that they have more people on board than they do.”
“That’s...actually well reasoned,” Ryder said.
“Say you are right,” Marshall said. “What does that give us?”
“A chance to launch an assault on Zeus.” Cooper tapped a series of controls, highlighting three points. “Normally I wouldn’t try anything like this…”
“Ensign, that looks suspiciously like the strategy Major Burke gave us to attack Hades,” Forrest said, frowning.
“As I said, normally this would be crazy, but i
f
we’re attacking an undermanned opponent, it becomes a practical possibility. Besides, we don’t have time to take the entire ship. Just the bridge, engineering and weapons stations.”
“Take the ship with twenty-one men?” Caine said.
“Gabe, it’s suicide. You’d never get in. They’d shoot you down before you got halfway there,” Barbara said.
“Ensign, taking that ship in the limited time we’ll have…,” Marshall began.
“I’m assuming four minutes, sir. From when we hit t
he
deck to securing the departments. Otherwise we move to Plan B.”
“What’s that?” Marshall asked, as the room grew silent.
Looking at Forrest, Cooper said, “We detonate three low-yield bombs, which we can fabricate from ship’s stores in the time. It’s a lot easier to destroy a ship from the inside than it is throwing missiles at it from outside.”
Nodding, Quinn said, “That would turn Zeus into tumbling wreckage.”
“Wait a minute,” Ryder said. “What stops the bombs being disarmed, or jettisoned?”
With calm eyes, Cooper replied, “Each of the bombs will be guarded until the time of detonation, to prevent that from happening. One per device should suffice; the rest of the platoon can make for the escape pods.”
“Who stays?” Barbara asked, her voice a monotone.
“That would be a matter for volunteers.”
“Which means you, Sergeant Forrest, and Lance-Sergeant Fuller,” Caine said. “Am I right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cooper replied. “The rest of the men will have a fighting chance of getting clear of the blast zone, and naturally, we will warn the remainder of the crew of the Zeus to evacuate.”