Crow tipped his head: “You see?”
“I see.”
In another minute, the slate finished initializing the downlink. Had they been close to Earth, Crow would have waited for a response from the White House server confirming the link. With more than an hour of light-speed delay, that was infeasible.
Crow looked at Cui, who nodded, and Crow looked at the vid screen, with a still image of Santeros smiling from the Oval Office.
“President Santeros. I am calling to inform you of some extraordinary events this morning. The Nixon has been seized by military members of the Chinese ship Celestial Odyssey. Admiral Fang-Castro has refused any cooperation with the Chinese and has indicated by her actions that she considers herself a prisoner of war. Her legal status, of course, would be up to you and to Congress, since she can’t unilaterally declare war. At the moment, however, she is refusing the Chinese any cooperation.”
He told Santeros that the burn box had been activated. He told her that the Chinese wanted to examine the alien datastore in the Nixon’s computer memory, and that he’d informed them that he didn’t know the location, and that in any case, the files were fully encrypted and the only key to the encryption was on Earth, as the President knew.
When he finished, he nodded at Cui, who said, “Madam President, this is neither an act of war, nor of piracy. However, what the Nixon has done poses an existential threat to the Chinese people, more serious than any atomic bomb. You have, essentially, declared war on us by seizing all the memory modules from the alien planetoid, when they were clearly intended for all humans. There are eight QSUs. We want two of them. You may have two of them. The other four would go to the other major geopolitical blocs. If this is agreed, we will promptly turn control of the ship back to Admiral Fang-Castro.”
She nodded at Crow and said, “You may close the link.”
Crow said, “It’ll be at least a couple of hours before we hear back—probably more than that, especially if they have to fight a war first. What would you like me to do in the meantime?”
Cui looked at him soberly. “You might wish to think about ways to persuade her.”
Sun: “When I was going to graduate school at UCLA…”
Crow: “I would have guessed Berkeley…”
Sun: “…there was a saying. ‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission.’ If you deliver the QSU units to us—only two of the eight, along with two readers—you will present her with a fait accompli, and she will have to make the best of it. We return control of the ship to you, with certain safeguards, and there will be no war, no controversy, no piracy, no problem.”
“Only the admiral has the power to do that, and she won’t,” Crow said. “Perhaps I should give you a few more details on the switches.”
“Please…”
“You can’t disable the burn box. Try to force your way into it, you’ll trigger the devices. Remove the box from the strong room, they go off. Try to power them down without the release code, they’ll go off. I don’t know who has the switches: only Admiral Fang-Castro knows how they were distributed. If Fang-Castro is sequestered and you attempt to torture her for the information, the first trigger-holder to find out will burn the box. Really, over some long period of time, and with more of that gas you used on us—another, separate act of war, by the way—you might get some of the switches, but I doubt that you’ll get all of them.”
Sun looked at him, then said, “Shit.”
Two hours later, one of the Chinese special forces officers escorted Fang-Castro to Crow’s quarters.
“How’s it going?” Crow asked. Cui and Sun were not yet there.
“I’m frantically bored,” she said. “They’ve turned off everything inside my quarters. I can’t even watch Feeling Up Frankie.”
“So maybe there is an upside to this mess,” Crow said.
“How did they get away with that gas, or whatever it was?” Fang-Castro asked.
“I don’t want to think about that, because I might have to find a pistol and stick it in my ear,” Crow said. “My fault: I should have thought of it. It was some form of encapsulated LSD, I’m sure. It’s powerful stuff.”
“Do we have any?”
“I wish.”
There was a ping at the door, and then Cui and Sun stepped in. Fang-Castro stood up, turned her back on them.
Cui shook her head and asked Crow, “Anything?”
“No, but it won’t be long.”
Fang-Castro broke her silence after fifteen minutes. Addressing Cui, she asked, “Do I have permission to return to my quarters?”
Cui shook her head: “No. You must hear what the President has to say.”
Fang-Castro turned away again.
Santeros showed up five minutes later. She was seated at her desk, the pale greens of Washingtonian spring visible through the windows of the Oval Office. It had been a long time since any of them had seen trees.
With her hands clasped calmly in front of her on the desk, she said, “Good morning, Mr. Crow. I presume your Chinese visitors”—she paused very briefly at that word—“are listening in to this. If not, please let them know that I am glad we could offer them rescue and I have forwarded their proposal to my advisers for discussion. Convey my sincerest hope for a speedy resolution to this situation. Also, I’ve spoken to the chief of staff, who knows Admiral Fang-Castro quite well, and says that she can be quite the hard-ass. Inform the admiral that we do not consider her a prisoner of war at this point and that she can negotiate with the Chinese on behalf of the crew. She is not to negotiate the release of the QSUs or any other alien information. That is ours, and ours alone, pending discussions with the Chinese government. That’s all for now, and TTTFO.” Her hand reached over to click the off switch and the screen went blank.
Crow coughed, said, “Sorry, I’m a little nervous. You heard what we heard. Where does that leave us?”
Sun said, “Political doublespeak. I am familiar with it. They will discuss and stall for as long as they can. Eventually they will have to give in. We hold the ship. One thing I did not understand—this ‘TTTFO.’ Code of some sort, Mr. Crow?”
He smiled blandly. “Of a sort, Commander Cui. It’s diplomatic shorthand for the usual boilerplate formalities. Extend the other party the usual courtesies, try not to start a war, et cetera, et cetera.”
Fang-Castro joined the conversation. “So we have nothing of substance back. I didn’t expect we would. You are asking a lot of Washington, regardless of how much control you have over this vessel. Excuse my bluntness, but they are going to take some time over this.”
Sun said, “Double shit.”
“Yes. Now, as legal commander of this vessel, I need to talk in private with Mr. Crow. Regardless of what you may have effected, in the eyes of the U.S. government, I remain the only legitimate authority on this ship. I need to speak to Crow frankly about this situation, and through him, to the President. We can’t have those discussions in your presence. It would be like me expecting to sit in on the private policy discussions of your top party officials in Beijing. If we can’t have opportunities to talk in private, we can’t discuss anything of substance. It simply will not happen—Washington would never permit it.”
Crow did his best to look both sincere and harmless, and added, “I understand you’d consider this a risk. The admiral and I can meet here, and you can search my quarters again. You won’t find any weapons or equipment a diplomat in my position wouldn’t be expected to have. We have no arms, no means to communicate with the rest of the crew, and we will be locked in.”