5
Halfway to the assembly area I realized what a mess I was, and ducked into the head by the NCO lounge. Corporal Kamehameha was hurriedly brushing her hair.
“William! What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” I turned on a tap and looked at myself in the mirror. Dried blood smeared all over my face and tunic. “It was Marygay, Corporal Potter, her suit … well, evidently it got a crease, uh …
“Dead?”
“No, just badly, uh, she’s going into surgery—”
“Don’t use hot water. You’ll just set the stain.”
“Oh. Right.” I used the hot to wash my face and hand, dabbed at the tunic with cold. “Your squad’s just two bays down from Al’s, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“No. Yes. Not when it happened.” For the first time I noticed that she was crying, big tears rolling down her cheeks and off her chin. Her voice was even, controlled. She pulled at her hair savagely. “It’s a mess.”
I stepped over and put my hand on her shoulder. “DON’T touch me!” she flared and knocked my hand off with the brush. “Sorry. Let’s go.”
At the door to the head she touched me lightly on the arm. “William…” She looked at me defiantly. “I’m just glad it wasn’t me. You understand? That’s the only way you can look at it.”
I understood, but I didn’t know that I believed her.
“I can sum it up very briefly,” the commodore said in a tight voice, “if only because we know so little.
“Some ten seconds after we destroyed the enemy vessel, two objects, very small objects, struck the Anniversary amidships. By inference, since they were not detected and we know the limits of our detection apparatus, we know that they were moving in excess of nine-tenths of the speed of light. That is to say, more precisely, their velocity vector normal to the axis of the Anniversary was greater than nine-tenths of the speed of light. They slipped in behind the repeller fields.”
When the Anniversary is moving at relativistic speeds, it is designed to generate two powerful electromagnetic fields, one centered about five thousand kilometers from the ship and the other about ten thousand klicks away, both in line with the direction of motion of the ship. These fields are maintained by a “ramjet” effect, energy picked up from interstellar gas as we mosey along.
Anything big enough to worry about hitting (that is, anything big enough to see with a strong magnifying glass) goes through the first field and comes out with a very strong negative charge all over its surface. As it enters the second field, it’s repelled away from the path of the ship. If the object is too big to be pushed around this way, we can sense it at a greater distance and maneuver out of its way.
“I shouldn’t have to emphasize how formidable a weapon this is. When the Anniversary was struck, our rate of speed with respect to the enemy was such that we traveled our own length every ten thousandth of a second. Further, we were jerking around erratically with a constantly changing and purely random lateral acceleration. Thus the objects that struck us must have been guided, not aimed. And the guidance system was self-contained, since there were no Taurans alive at the time they struck us. All of this in a package no larger than a small pebble.
“Most of you are too young to remember the term future shock. Back in the seventies, some people felt that technological progress was so rapid that people, normal people, couldn’t cope with it; that they wouldn’t have time to get used to the present before the future was upon them. A man named Toffler coined the term future shock to describe this situation.” The commodore could get pretty academic.
“We’re caught up in a physical situation that resembles this scholarly concept. The result has been disaster. Tragedy. And, as we discussed in our last meeting, there is no way to counter it. Relativity traps us in the enemy’s past; relativity brings them from our future. We can only hope that next time, the situation will be reversed. And all we can do to help bring that about is try to get back to Stargate, and then to Earth, where specialists may be able to deduce something, some sort of counterweapon, from the nature of the damage.
“Now we could attack the Tauran’s portal planet from space and perhaps destroy the base without using you infantry. But I think there would be a very great risk involved. We might be … shot down by whatever hit us today, and never return to Stargate with what I consider to be vital information. We could send a drone with a message detailing our assumptions about this new enemy weapon … but that might be inadequate. And the Force would be that much further behind, technologically.
“Accordingly, we have set a course that will take us around Yod-4, keeping the collapsar as much as possible between us and the Tauran base. We will avoid contact with the enemy and return to Stargate as quickly as possible.”
Incredibly, the commodore sat down and kneaded his temples. “All of you are at least squad or section leaders. Most of you have good combat records. And I hope that some of you will be rejoining the Force after your two years are up. Those of you who do will probably be made lieutenants, and face your first real command.
“It is to these people I would like to speak for a few moments, not as your … as one of your commanders, but just as a senior officer and advisor.
“One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy’s information, political postures — dozens, literally dozens of factors.”
I was hearing this, but the only thing that was getting through to my brain was that a third of our friends’ lives had been snuffed out less than an hour before, and he was sitting up there giving us a lecture on military theory.
“So sometimes you have to throw away a battle in order to help win the war. This is exactly what we are going to do.
“This was not an easy decision. In fact, it was probably the hardest decision of my military career. Because, on the surface at least, it may look like cowardice.
“The logistic computer calculates that we have about a 62 percent chance of success, should we attempt to destroy the enemy base. Unfortunately, we would have only a 30 percent chance of survival some of the scenarios leading to success involve ramming the portal planet with the Anniversary at light speed.” Jesus Christ.
“I hope none of you ever has to face such a decision. When we get back to Stargate, I will in all probability be court-martialed for cowardice under fire. But I honestly believe that the information that may be gained from analysis of the damage to the Anniversary is more important than the destruction of this one Tauran base.” He sat up straight. “More important than one soldier’s career.”
I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely “cowardice” had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live.
The maintenance crew managed to patch up the huge rip in the side of the Anniversary and to repressurize that section. We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the area; without, of course, disturbing any of the precious evidence for which the commodore was willing to sacrifice his career.