Lillian spoke into the silence. “Do you think that she’s not beautiful?”
“Beauty only takes a person so far,” Captain Shalenko said, crossly. I caught his gaze and winced inwardly. “If she wasn’t such a big target, I might admire the designers, but as it is… she’s nothing more than a glorified pleasure yacht for the Admiral and his staff. If she gets hit and taken out of action, the entire fleet will be decapitated.”
“Coming in to dock now,” Anna said, breaking into the conversation. “The Command Deck has cleared Docking Twelve for us.”
“Closer to the conference room,” the Captain commented, as we swept closer. “They must be in a hurry.”
As we came in to dock, I realised that a dozen other shuttles and smaller craft were also docked to the battleship, studding her white hull like so many limpets. The Captain had mentioned that it was a briefing, but I hadn’t realised that it was for so many officers and men. It looked as if every starship in Earth’s solar system had sent representatives. We docked, with nary a bump, and I smiled inwardly. If nothing else, I was looking forward to seeing the interior of the battleship.
“Welcome onboard the Kofi Annan,” a very familiar voice said. It was Roger, wearing his dress uniform. I was surprised by how much I missed him and the others. I was also surprised that I hadn’t been ordered to get into my own dress uniform, but perhaps the Captain hadn’t cared. “I am to escort you to the conference room.”
“Of course,” Captain Shalenko said. “Lead on.”
I wanted to exchange comments with Roger, but we both had to be businesslike. The starship’s corridors were almost completely empty, apart from a handful of officers wearing more braid than I ever expected to be wearing in my lifetime. I saw seven Captains, two Commodores and the Port Admiral; Roger and I, of course, were beneath their notice. Captain Shalenko exchanged comments with a few of his contemporaries, while I lurked behind him and tried not to be noticed. It took nearly ten minutes to get into the conference room…and it was heaving. There were nearly two hundred people in the compartment.
“Take Lillian and go to the rear,” Captain Shalenko ordered, tightly. Roger had vanished into the crowd, perhaps to round up some more strays. “Report back to me once we’re dismissed.”
“Admiral on the deck,” a voice cracked out. The entire room rose, apart from the reporters, who looked unimpressed. Lillian was far from the only reporter in the room and I found myself wondering why the Admiral had wanted her. Some of the reporters actually looked intelligent.
“At least,” Admiral Hoover said, gravely. His voice seemed to hang in the air. I realised that he was using a sound-effect producer to be heard throughout the room. “You may be seated.”
I found myself studying the Admiral as the room sat down. He wore a white uniform covered in enough gold braid to feed a thousand starving families. His uniform seemed to distract from his face, which was slightly overweight; he was, in fat, a surprisingly fat man. His uniform, I saw after a moment, was carefully tailored to avoid showing his bulk. It had probably cost him more than I made in a year.
“This task force has been gathered together in accordance with UN Resolution #46537,” the Admiral said, without preamble. Now I could hear him properly, it sounded as if he had something caught in his throat. Despite himself, I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I saw. “By order of the United Nations General Assembly, summoned as of two months ago, we are empowered to do whatever is necessary to restore the Heinlein System to the jurisdiction of united humanity and punish those who have chosen to rebel against the system. Gordon?”
Another man stood up. He wore only a black jumpsuit, but I fancied that I had made him at once. He was an intelligence officer. “Heinlein’s government was fundamentally opposed to the United Nations and the Rights of Man ever since it was founded two hundred and forty years ago,” he said. He had a droll factual voice that wouldn’t have been out of place on a librarian or a teacher. “In accordance with various United Nations resolutions, a Peace Force garrison was moved into the system to begin the process of bringing Heinlein fully into the United Nations. Their mission has not been altogether successful.”
He paused. “Heinlein’s corrupt government restricts the franchise in a distinctly fascist manner,” he continued. “The local leadership, deeply unpopular with many of the planet’s residents, had no motive to assist us in bringing Heinlein into the United Nations and manufactured crisis after crisis to slow the process down. Eventually, there was a major confrontation between the garrison and the local authorities and the garrison was forced to retreat to the spaceport. As of last report, they were under permanent siege and were not expecting to hold out until relieved.”
I scowled. There was no way to send a signal faster than the speed of light. The only way to send messages from star to star was to transport it on a starship, and starships were always in short supply. If the last report was a month old, it was quite possible that the garrison had either been taken by storm or starved out already, or would fall before we arrived to save it. I also wasn’t sure if I believed everything he was saying. The Senior Chief, wherever he was now, had warned me that the higher ranks always lied to their juniors, and somehow I suspected that the garrison hadn’t behaved itself. There was no way to know.
“We have links with various friendly parties down on the planet’s surface,” Gordon concluded. “Our mission is to liberate the planet from their corrupt government, install a new government and complete the task of bringing Heinlein into the United Nations. Ideally, we also want to preserve the considerable orbital and asteroid belt infrastructure that the inhabitants have built up. Admiral?”
“Thank you,” Admiral Hoover said. He gazed around the room. “Heinlein possesses a considerable deep-space industry and various installations that may be used to develop weapons. It is also possible that they are one of the major sources for equipment and weapons for the rebel factions, including pirates and freebooters. It is therefore likely that our entry into the system will be opposed, but only on the level of converted freighters and small gunships. Heinlein never developed a space fleet of its own.”
“Are we sure of that?” Someone said, from the rear of the room. I realised with a moment of amusement that it was one of the reporters. “I was on the Balkans Campaign and they had all kinds of weapons and tech they weren’t supposed to have.”
“Intelligence checked everything in their records before the garrison was established,” Gordon said, tightly. I had the feeling that that reporter wasn’t going to be coming with us any longer. “They produced several dozen freighters, but mainly concentrated on mining ships for the asteroids and the gas giants. They have not produced any warships, although weapons are a very real possibility.”
I felt cold. I hadn’t forgotten the pirate we’d encountered back at Terra Nova, over a year ago. It had taken the Senior Chief to point it out to me, but it was clear that the pirate ship had risked itself in combat against a cruiser, without actually having to do anything of the sort. The Senior Chief had concluded that the pirate was actually a raider, showing off weapons that were more advanced than anything in the UN’s arsenal. It had been the one thing he couldn’t understand. Why had the raiders shown off their weapons…for nothing? They could have saved them for an unpleasant surprise later.
Admiral Hoover took centre stage again. “The fleet will depart tomorrow at 1300 precisely,” he said. I felt a faint murmuring passing through the audience. Most UN ships and units would be unable to make that time, and so the Admiral would probably be planning to leave later, which in turn meant that they had no incentive to be on time. “We will proceed as a group to the Heinlein system and rendezvous one light year from their star. Coordinates will be transmitted later. When the fleet has linked up again, we will advance at once into their system and secure the low orbitals.”