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?”
“I believe we could have negotiated—”
Clover jumped in. “You’re wrong. You’re flat wrong. Sun was nuts. She was going to kill all of us.”
Fang-Castro snapped: “I didn’t ask your opinion, Mr. Clover. This will all be subject to an inquiry. In the meantime, Mr. Darlington goes to jail. We’ve lost access to centuries’ worth of knowledge that would have revolutionized the world as we know it. Mr. Francisco, remove him.”
Sandy gave Crow the toothy grin: “Some days you ride the board, and some days the board rides you. That’s just life, big guy.”
63.
Santeros was all too aware of the light-speed delay. It was not improving her temperament. It would be difficult for anything to put her in a worse mood than the past week. Starting with goddamn Fang-Castro’s taking the Chinese survivors on board the Nixon, and hadn’t that worked out well?
Then came the takeover and the runaround she’d gotten from Beijing. This was an act of piracy, clear and simple. Or maybe an act of war. Nobody disputed that. How had Beijing responded? With the diplomatic equivalent of a shrugged shoulder and a mock-sympathetic “Life is hard, isn’t it?”
And in the meantime, the Chinese had started a worldwide scare campaign: they were just trying to keep the Americans from keeping the tech that belonged to all humans. The scare campaign was gaining ground.
And that goddamn general secretary, Hong, was doing his best to piss her off even more. On the phone, just now: he didn’t say it in so many words, but the condensed version was that she—the fuckin’ President of the whole United fuckin’ States—was being blown off!
She said her polite good-byes, wished the general secretary’s family well, added under her breath that she hoped they’d all get tertiary syphilis, and slammed the handset down so hard that it cracked.
The bang made Paula White and Richard Emery, the chairwoman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wince. They glanced at each other. Santeros had a famous temper, but this was off the scale.
Carefully and quietly, White asked, “No improvement, Madam President?”
“Oh no, it’s just great. Can’t you tell from the expression on my face?” She caught herself and took a deep breath, swallowed. “I’m sorry, Paula, I’m taking it out on you and I should be taking it out on that asshole, Hong. He’s got that grandpa face, and he’s a bigger hard-liner than me. Publicly, he’s all wringing of hands and bemoaning the ‘rogue activities’ of the Chinese pirates. In private he’s throwing a party. Hell, it’s not even that private.”
“Madam President,” said Emery, “we need to up the ante. Put pressure on Beijing as well as prepare for the worst. Paula and I”—he glanced over at his boss, who nodded—“we think you need to start mobilizing. Take our forces up to Tier Three. And if this doesn’t resolve soon, Tier Two.”
Her chief of staff stuck his head in: “Ma’am, you’ve got a highest priority incoming from the Nixon. You’re gonna want to look at it.”
“How bad?”
The chief of staff scratched his head. “Honestly… I don’t know. It’s… I’m just going to spool it over to you.”
“Give it to me in one word. Are we going to war?”
“Uh… no, but I’m not sure how much happier you’re gonna be. Let me spool it over.”
64.
Hong’s call came just past midnight in Washington, early afternoon in a sunny, flower-scented Beijing. In Washington, Gladys’s soft, synthesized voice spoke in the Oval Office. “Madam President, General Secretary Hong is on the line. May I put him through?” Santeros waved assent.
She said, “Mr. Secretary, we’re going to need something that’ll make both our populaces… and our governmental oppositions… happy. I’m getting a lot of push here just to have the Chinese rescuees shot outright, as pirates. No international tribunals, no repatriation. Just a bullet for each one.”
Hong: “And I’m dealing with folks who think they’re the Heroes of the Revolution. You shoot them and my administration won’t stand. The MSS will have me replaced with someone even more intractable within hours.”
Santeros chuckled. “Things don’t move quite so fast here, but if your ‘heroes’ get their way and my opponents can pin that on me, the next sound you hear will be the House drawing up articles of impeachment.”
Representative Cline shook her head vigorously no.
“Oh, face facts, Francie,” Santeros said. “If it looks like I caved in to the Chinese pirates, and you don’t support a motion to impeach, you’ll find yourself ex-Speaker before you could blink twice.”
Hong continued, “So, here’s our proposed joint statement: our two crews had some communications difficulties to begin with. Language barriers, misunderstood orders, which created some confusion and concern, but it was all over nothing. I can toss in something about radical dissidents trying to foment trouble, not in concert with our policies. I’m sure you can come up with something about minor difficulties in the power plant delaying the restart of the engines. The important thing being that everyone is working together now in the spirit of international cooperation to see that both our peoples come home safely.”
“That could fly, if your guys will go along. We’ll have to shut everybody up when they get back, but I can do that on my end.”
“And I can assure you that I can do it on mine. But I have to give the MSS a bone. They don’t believe that all the memory is gone. They point out that you have three major computers, not one.”
“You should know, you sabotaged one of them.”
“I’m trying to be… cooperative here, and find a way to save both our asses.”