Chapter 19 - Looking For Trouble

We finally decided, for our first trip out looking for trouble, that we could best hedge our bets by keeping the pair of ships together where they could support each other, but at the same time trying to pretend that there was only one ship looking for trouble. When we got to a system that we thought might contain our enemies, one ship would go in with shield up and try to pick a fight with a single enemy ship, if we could. The other ship would follow about 1000 Km behind, twice what we had decided was effective range for our Particle Beam Projectors but well within our own detection range of anything at all including inert rocks.

That second ship would not have its shield up. We had already discovered that, if we kept our acceleration down, the shield was the most easily noticed thing about our ships, other than the gravity-whatever pulse that accompanied our popping out of hyperspace. If we came out of hyperspace far enough out, no one would notice our arrival. If the lead ship had its shield up, whoever noticed it when it entered within range of whatever they were using to detect intruders should not detect the trailing ship as it would have a far lower signature in just about any spectrum you could think of, and what little signature it did have should be masked by the lead ship.

If the lead ship was badly outmatched and was quickly destroyed by whatever they found, we hoped that a thousand klicks was far enough for the trailing ship to avoid the same fate and get away. At the same time, we hoped that was close enough to quickly join the fight and help if the contest appeared to be winnable.

The only way that we could fail in our primary mission of "initial combat test and return to report" would be if we ran into someone who far outgunned us, but at the same time appeared to be weaker than us. They had to first convince me and Julio over in Alnwick Castle that I needed help to win easily, and then when his ship showed up they had to take us both out so quickly that neither of us could get away.

We had several talks about that. About the only thing we could do if we somehow got suckered in like that was to immediately split up again and hope that they didn't have weapons that could keep us both under fire. If their weapons were short enough in range that they had to chase one of us, the other should escape.

If our opponents turned out to have weapons that reached out much further than our own, then hopefully we could find that out while it was still possible to run. If they held their fire until we were in close, though, we would be in trouble. If we could quickly overwhelm them, the right thing do to was to close so that our weapons were more effective. If we couldn't, we should split up and run. The problem was, how were we supposed to tell those two scenarios apart?

For our first attempt to get in a fight, we chose the last system that 'For teh Win' had been sent to. Since she had never returned, we didn't know if she had run into an enemy ambush, suffered some kind of engineering failure, or what. We didn't even know if she had made it to that system or not. Again, since she never came back we didn't know anything about either the ship or the system itself beyond what the Confederacy's database had to say.

I should admit that we'd been talking about the various ships all along, but the first time I saw the ship's name in an email I had to check its spelling. The ship wasn't named "For the Win", it was named "For teh Win". Something about wargames and gaming slogans and typos that became embraced as Right, and it was spelled the way it was supposed to be spelled. Or, I guess, it was spelled 'teh' way it was supposed to be.

We sent our other pair of armed ships, Alton Castle and Amberley Castle, to check out the system that 'You Want Us to Do What?' had been assigned to on its last mission.

We were all hoping that the two ships had just broken down and were waiting for a tow-truck to come get them, but that wasn't realistic. Every Aurora had at least one shuttle, plus several small multi-purpose automated mining machines, and that huge engineering replicator. Almost any conceivable engineering casualty could be repaired within a week or so. Even if they were out in the middle of nowhere, the ship itself could be cannibalized to get the needed materials for almost any possible repair.

There was a never-ending list of things we needed to build a functioning fleet. At least once a day I checked to make sure that "Some way to send messages that didn't take a whole ship" was on that list. We were pretty sure that the Darjee delegation at Earth had some kind of FTL radio that they could use to talk with their leadership, but they weren't willing to share it. Whether we ended up with their FTL radio or homing pigeons or something completely different that we couldn't even imagine yet, we needed some way to check in with headquarters.

We were at the same stage as back in the old "Age of Sail", when a nation would send out a ship and not hear anything until the ship returned. If it returned. Until it came back, the builders had no idea if the ship was still afloat or not. Is it returning from a successful voyage, laden with riches? Captured by cannibals? Wrecked in a storm? Mutinied and turned pirate? Destroyed by enemy ships?

Western civilization accepts surprise attacks in wartime, but the initial fact of war breaking out is not supposed to be a surprise. With that said, you were supposed to tell the opposing king that you were at war with him. You didn't have to tell all his subjects. The various wars between all the European powers in the 1600 and 1700s were filled with the nations declaring war on each other, then attacking far-off colonies before they were warned.

The same thing happened when wars ended, too. In more modern times, the War of 1812 supposedly ended with the Treaty of Ghent, signed right across the North Sea from London on Christmas Eve of 1814. It was ratified by Parliament on the 30th. This did not prevent the Battle of New Orleans from being fought at the same time, ending on January 8th. The British high command had timed the invasion so that the war ended with both sides retaining what they held, with the intention of the treaty confirming them in control of the Mississippi river. In fact, with sailing ships carrying mail being the only way messages could travel across the ocean, news of the campaign in Louisiana -and its end with a convincing American win- reached the American government in Washington before news of the treaty in Ghent did.

Similarly, the American Civil War ended in 1865 for most of the participants. However, there was at least one Confederate commerce raider out in the Pacific Ocean, surviving on supplies taken from their prey, which sailed into San Francisco Bay to surrender in 1867, two years later. A recently captured "Union" whaler had carried Californian newspapers with articles about Lee's surrender and the collapse of the Confederacy. The Confederate raiders were concerned about a trick, but whether the Confederacy had won or lost, either way these were Americans, their own countrymen's ships they were destroying. They decided that they would rather surrender to a trick than take a chance on being pirates, destroying commerce for no moral reason.

The invention of the telegraph and then the radio had ended all that. Every ship anywhere in the world could check in as needed, and fleet headquarters could also send changes to orders as needed.

Anyway, it would really be nice for our ships to be able to call home and let headquarters know that they had made it to their assigned system. Then, at the end of their survey, it would be nice to call in and report that this system was clean and we were returning home. Or, maybe, that we had found hostile ships and were trying to evade.

Conversely, if we had the ability to make such phone calls, and headquarters received no such phone call within a day or so of a scout's expected arrival, we could conclude that the scout never made it there. It would also be really nice for headquarters to be able to let us know of changing conditions, like "Forget your survey, we just got overrun".

Of course, if messages ever got too easy to pass the ships would have to deal with micromanagement from headquarters, but every rose has its thorns.

It occurred to us as we were creeping into the system that there had to be a way that we could carry a couple of those monitoring stations ourselves. Okay, maybe now wasn't the best time to think of it, but when we got back to Truman we could attach one to each of our hatches. That would let us carry up to three with us if we wanted. They might limit our maneuverability, but if we got into trouble we could always jettison them.

Maybe we could carry two stations and some kind of emergency lifeboat? Find out if Jupiter Station was still working on that. If not, add it to the list for Truman Station to work on.

We found enough wreckage to know that For teh Win had made it here, and hadn't gone anywhere else afterwards. We couldn't positively identify anything with a manufacturer's dataplate that said "Original installation on CNS For teh Win" or anything like that, but objects in space show their age. Older stuff is pitted by collisions with dust and meteorites, while newer stuff still has compounds that are not stable at low temperatures and will slowly degrade. We found large amounts of formed metal alloys and other materials that from their composition had to be from a Confederacy product. And they all had vectors that radiated out from a single point about three weeks earlier.

We spent a while surveying the system, and eventually we also found three intact pods in well separated areas. The pods' integral AIs could report to Allie that For teh Win had been fired upon by an unknown armed ship when they popped out of hyperspace, and the ship had taken fatal damage almost immediately. They didn't have the sensors themselves to have seen the attack, but the ship's AI had updated all of the pods with all available records and released them, scattering them in every direction, before self-destructing to prevent enemy recovery.

As horrible as that sounds, it was one of the rules we lived under. The Confederacy had noticed that between the time that they first met the enemy and the time that they gave up talking to them, the enemy had started using Confederacy technology in their ships. The nav shield was the prime example. It couldn't really be proven either way, but the shield was useful enough that if they had it they would have been using it, and they didn't start using it until they had captured some of the Confederacy's ships. The conclusion was obvious; they had assimilated at least some of the technology demonstrated in those embassy ships.

So, that was a Confederacy decree: If any of our ships carried any technology that the enemy wasn't already known to have, our ships were supposed to ensure that they weren't captured. And, well, all of our ships had technology that the enemy didn't seem to have. That was one of our few advantages; we seemed to have a higher tech level.

Since the AIs ran everything, that self-destruct was something that they could handle on their own; we didn't have to depend upon the crew doing it. Actually, that was an ongoing argument for a couple of years. The AIs were willing to blow themselves up just as soon as they saw capture as inevitable, while us humans weren't always ready to give up. We shouldn't self-destruct as soon as we realize we are crippled or trapped. Maybe we can do some more damage to our attackers, maybe we can repair our problem, maybe someone else will show up and save us. And, as For teh Win proved, maybe we can wait until they get closer and take some of them with us.

None of the pods carried anything worth saving, but we and Alnwick took turns docking with all three and keeping watch to allow them to refuel from our tanks. That was yet another example of how universal and general-purpose the Confederacy's docking system was. The Castles were never intended to carry pods or refuel anybody else, but the standardized docking system that had been installed when she was reactivated allowed for it, so we did it.

After the pods had been refueled, we released them on agreed-upon vectors. They were going to watch this system for us until we could bring in a purpose-built observation post. They didn't have the tools they needed, but they said that they could grow them, along with attitude jets, and be able to watch the whole system between them. Apparently they received the materials they needed to do that from us while they were being refueled.

The freighters' cargo pods normally received their power and other resources from the ship they were attached to, but they had the ability to be self-sufficient for short periods. They ran off some kind of refillable battery or fuel cell. The system appeared to be intended to support the contents for short periods of power loss, perhaps during transfer between ships. It wasn't a long-term power source, though. If they held survivors and had to run all the environmental systems, they would run out of power within a few months.

Without any inhabitants to keep warm and fed, though, their batteries and fuel would last them for years. Sooner or later we would be back, and at that time they would be valuable resources already here in the system. If nothing else, they would act as observation posts for the system until we returned.

One of the things we got from those pods was a crew list for For teh Win, and I asked Allie to make sure that the list got returned to Earth. I had no idea how we would handle that out here, but we Americans have always been big on letting families know when their servicemen aren't coming back. Even if there's no body to return, we try to let the families know.

Maybe the Air Force could stage some kind of "training accident" and slip those names onto the passenger list. Hell, with that war in the Congo heating up and NATO getting more and more involved, maybe they could come up with some way to admit that they had died in combat, serving their country.

There were seven men and seven women onboard when the ship self-destructed. We have no way of knowing if any of the crew were already casualties, but the pods were pretty sure that no shuttles got launched. Some of the crew may have been in a pod that didn't make it. The pods didn't have the sensors -at the time- to be certain that nothing else escaped, but we looked and couldn't find anything else that responded to Confederacy comms, so we eventually concluded that the three pods we had found were the only survivors.

I recognized some of the names but I couldn't place them. I had to ask Allie if she had a clue, and what I got back was depressing. The first three members of the crew had gone through our BCNO course back at Jupiter Station, then been assigned to this freighter. It had been turned over to us in pretty much the same way as our Castles, with the Darjee crews leaving in one shuttle before the first human crew boarded from another shuttle. It just happened a lot faster, since the ships were already in operation and our people were already familiar with them. Then, with a starship under human control, that pod with the four troublemakers had been docked to it and the four transferred aboard as crew. They had still been onboard this ship with their companions when it was destroyed.

We still hadn't ever seen an enemy ship, but the imagery we got from the pod AIs showed us a lot more about what we were up against. It appeared that the attackers were three small ships, probably smaller than our own Castles but most likely larger than the Patricians. They appeared to match the small Sa'arm ships seen in the records that the Confederacy had turned over to us about their own contacts. That was good; it meant that it was probably the same enemy. We really didn't want to start a second war with someone else before we finished this first one.

The three ships appeared to be identical, including armament of a single Particle Beam projector very like our own, making them far weaker than our Castles.

However, For teh Win had no armament at all and could not fight back in any way. The first hit was absorbed by their Nav Shield, but the next shot was, as well as they could tell, simultaneous by all three ships and the freighter's shield could not resist that. Whether by accident or design, the central core was hit between the 4th and 5th rings and damaged enough that the tube's structural integrity failed.

With the core tube folding in half under the main engines' thrust, the crew had cut the engines to try to save the ship. The attackers ceased firing, but they came closer. When one attempted to latch onto the ship, the AI released all pods and then activated the self-destruct system to ensure that nothing was left to salvage.

The pods we found were certain that at least one enemy ship had been destroyed by the scuttling charges, so the crew got some revenge. On the other hand, they knew that several other pods had also been caught in the blast, and the remaining enemy ships had been destroying pods when the survivors lost contact with each other so the three of them were probably the only survivors.

They accepted my authority as the senior Confederacy official in the system, and let me give them some projects to work on. As part of their taskings, they were going to conduct a more detailed survey of the wreckage to see if anything else could be recovered. If they could find any intact -or even just repairable- AIs or replicator systems, those would be re-purposed into an automated miner which would keep them provided with materials for as long as it took us to get back to them. Otherwise, all materials scavenged from the wreckage would be used to build something that would keep them supplied. Certainly, if nothing else the wreckage was useful as high-quality raw materials.

We never did come up with a defensible policy for what to do if they found our casualties. We couldn't ask them to preserve the bodies until we came back, as that would take resources they didn't have. We finally decided that, if they found any organics, they should package it all together and drop it into the star. We couldn't think of anything better to do for them.

We didn't find anything else worth talking about. Certainly, we found no trace of any other ships, friendly or otherwise. There were no planets full of aliens, no abandoned Unobtanium mines, no ancient derelict ships. We spent several days carefully examining every planet but could not find any trace of animal life, much less intelligent life or space-faring civilization.

Two planets showed signs of plant life, but until the natives developed a central nervous system they were of no interest to us. Besides, only one of the planets was anywhere close to our habitability zone and it would need a lot of terraforming work before we would be happy with it. On the other hand, our enemies may be able to use the system so we would have to keep an eye on it.

With nothing else to do here in this system, we decided to try the next one over, one that the Confederacy's original survey indicated included a planet with both plant and animal life.

This second system held trouble. We were still very far out, more than 100 AU, when our passive sensors started picking up all the signs of a technical culture: radiation from fusion reactors, electromagnetic noise from motors, actuators, and switches, radiation from several different types of spaceship drives. Before long, we could detect moving Nav Shields too. We didn't need to be able to detect the ships themselves, as long as we could track the drives and see their shields which glowed as they ran into inter-system dust, or as high-speed dust and micrometeorites ran into them.

Add that to our Christmas wish-list: We needed a way to 'turn down' our own Nav Shields to act like the shuttles' weaker ion shields. If we could do that, our ships would be much harder to detect. We weren't sure we should completely turn them off all the time, as they really were helpful in preventing shipboard damage from the dust, meteorites, and radiation.

We didn't have any personnel changes for our expected combat baptism. We normally went to our "Battle Stations" manning plan any time we left hyperspace, and then went back to our normal underway watch rotation as soon as we had verified that we weren't dropping into combat. This time, we stayed at BS (as some of us called it) for the duration.

We also activated all the other combat-mode changes we had come up with. We had our best people on all the consoles, and we had our very best in different spots. If I got killed or disabled by a hit that took out our CIC, Dickie should be safe up on the bridge and would take over. If the bridge got hit too, Billy back in the ECR would take command, although he would probably be concentrating on trying to get away rather than winning the fight.

I had Dr. Watkins as the Navigator in CIC with me along with Ensign James, who we were listing as the Communications and Sensors Officer. Normally, the Navigator would be 3rd in command, but he had no previous military experience so he was 4th with a strong directive to listen to Ens. James and the COB, both of whom were in CIC with us. James had a formal education as a Naval officer so he had the theory but no experience, and Master Chief Boggart had more than 25 years on the boats which made up for his lack of a college degree.

I should mention the "Battleshort" concept. Everyone has seen the science fiction movies where people have somehow invented wonderful machines, spaceships, and so on, but they have somehow forgotten how to protect equipment from overload with circuit breakers and fuses. No matter what else happened, no Star Trek episode was complete without some shipboard casualty that makes an electronics panel explode in a shower of sparks. Invariably, one of the stars of the show would be nearby and burnt badly, but then by the next episode they would be in perfect health again, not even a scar.

Most of that is Hollywood stupidity, but there is a grain of truth to it. If you use breakers or fuses, whenever there is any kind of surge beyond their setpoint, you lose the use of everything protected by that circuit when all the breakers trip (or the fuses blow). That's bad, but you can reset the breakers or replace the fuses and get all your equipment back. On the other hand, if you don't like losing your equipment for minor reasons so you don't use breakers or fuses, whenever there's a surge you end up damaging or even destroying everything. That's even worse.

What you do is hedge your bets by doing both. When you are getting ready for combat damage, there are two things you can do with electrical equipment. If it is not critical for propulsion, navigation, fighting the ship, or combating damage, you can make things easier by simply shutting them down. You don't need the ship's laundry running while getting shot up. Those circuit breakers are manually opened as part of the Battlestations routine that starts when you announce "Now hear this. Set Condition Three throughout the ship. That is, set Condition Three throughout the ship. Make all preparations for combat and report when ready to CIC.".

Other things are critical to combat operations. If you have an electric motor that trains your gun mount, you really don't want it to go offline because some breaker tripped from a current surge, or even because of the shock wave from a nearby hit. Sure, during normal ops you want that breaker to pop open and protect the equipment, but when you are getting shot at it's better to lock that breaker shut so it cannot trip from vibration, shock, or overload. Come hell or high water, that breaker will remain shut and supply power to the mount, allowing you to keep shooting back.

Sure, a bad surge will burn out that motor, but the breakers are there to protect the motor and the power plant from failures in each other during normal operations. In combat, there are greater concerns than this. Locking a breaker shut keeps the mount up and running and allowing you to shoot back as long as power is available. If the mount fails, it fails. If it stops shooting for a preventable reason when the other guy is still shooting at us, everybody dies.

What you protect and what you force to stay online depends. Our plasma torpedo launcher was a critical combat system, but it wasn't required to be online constantly. In fact, whenever we went to Battlestations the breakers were verified to be open, until such time as we came within range. There was no point in risking damage to it when it couldn't be used. Shutting the breakers to energize all subsystems was part of getting it ready to fire. Then they were left protected behind its circuit breakers. If the breakers popped, we would reset them when safe and put it back in use.

The shield generator, on the other hand, was deemed so critical that in Condition Three it would always be behind a locked-shut breaker. If the generator went down in combat, we would probably lose the ship anyway, so there was no point in shutting it down to protect it from a surge.

Generally, if you have multiple copies of some critical item, you will allow half of them to be protected by their breakers, while the others have their 'battleshort' feature activated so that a breaker failure will not shut down that critical equipment. During our training and workups we had developed a list of what needed this, and we had a board in CIC that listed the various items.

We would alternate each time. One time we would have the starboard beam projector and everything involved with the starboard power plant on battleshort while the port projector and power plant were normally protected. That way, no matter what the problem was we would lose at most only half of our power and guns.

If a surge was bad enough to fry things, after it was done we would have lost our starboard side but the port-side equipment would have been protected. We could reset the port breakers and continue on. If the surge wasn't so bad as to damage equipment, the starboard side would stay running and when it was safe we could again reset the port breakers and have everything back.

To equalize wear and tear, the next time we went to BS we would leave the starboard side protected by their breakers, and lock the port side equipment down so that they would stay running.

For this first test of our enemy's sensor range, we kept Allie's shield up and Alnwick Castle followed, a thousand klicks back, with her shield down. Once we analyzed their tracks enough to determine their acceleration, we changed to match them and changed to an intercept course for the ship that appeared to be coming closest to us. If they had the same sensors we had, we should look very much like one of their ships. We wanted to know when they would notice us, and what their reaction would be.

We got far closer than we had expected before there was a reaction of any kind. We were beginning to wonder if we were going to be in range to shoot at them first, when the ship suddenly changed course to intercept us.

Before long they were close enough that we could see the actual ship inside the shield, and I could ask Allie for a comparison with the ships that killed For teh Win. Were they the same design? What differences could she detect?

Allie said that it was definitely the same design. Any differences were minor and of no consequence. The size, shape, mass, and arrangement of all identifiable equipment were all identical. Further, the propulsion system had the same performance and signature as For teh Win's killers. Either it was the same people, or the same people were providing ships to both groups the way that the Confederacy was providing ships to us.

Still, what if these guys were ignorant neutrals? We didn't want to start a war if they weren't who we were supposed to be fighting. I ordered everyone to hold their fire until they did something blatantly hostile that we couldn't ignore. What that really meant was that Allie disabled all firing controls until I, or if I was injured then Dickie up on the Bridge and rest of the chain of command, said that it was time to start shooting.

We got our hostile move, all right. Both ships had flipped over our tracks, as the only way to slow down was to use our main engines to 'accelerate' against the direction of travel. One great weakness in our design was that we couldn't fire directly astern, but since we weren't approaching from head-on we could at least use our particle beam projectors. They were in turrets that could fire almost dead astern. Once we were in range we would have to veer a little and lose a little of our slowing efficiency, but we could do it.

When the ship we were approaching got within about 400 kilometers it fired at us. What we got shot with was the same sort of particle beam that we had as our own long-range weapons. This was neither the time nor the place to try to track down exactly what their particle was, but their version appeared to be somewhat stronger than ours. We took no damage, but the shield generator complained.

Allie said that if we received multiple shots at the same time, or if our opponent could fire that one weapon fast enough, eventually they would overstress the shield and we would start taking damage, but individual shots wouldn't harm us if they were spaced out enough.

We got hit a second time while we were discussing this, and Allie said that at this rate the shield would fail after the 5th or 6th shot and we would start taking damage. However, the limited video we got from For teh Win showed that these smaller ships had never fired more than one of these projectors each, so that may be all they carried.

After the second shot I told Dickie that he was free to fire as fast as he could, keeping the two mounts firing together in salvos if he could. I told Allie and the helm to follow the Weapons Console's needs and maneuver as required to maintain both projectors on target.

Their third shot came in just as we were firing our first. Our first salvo struck home with both beams, although we didn't see any obvious damage. The first thing we noticed was that their next shot was delayed; there was no incoming fire to accompany our second salvo. Their fourth shot did not come until just before our 3rd salvo. That one, apparently, took out their shield generator, as after that we were firing directly at the hull without their shield in the way. At this point there was only one way this could go; we were firing two weapons into their hull and they were firing one weapon more slowly than us, and it was not yet penetrating our shield.

About this time was when Allie and Ensign James let us know that we had stirred up a hornet's nest. EVERY enemy ship within sensor range had turned their helm over and accelerated to join the fight. That gave us an immediate problem; we needed to finish this and get out of here if we could, but it also pointed at another issue that we really didn't have time to ponder at the moment. If the sensor data was being interpreted correctly, the enemy had inter-ship communications that were even faster than ours. As near as we could tell, across the entire globe of our sensor reach, every enemy ship had maneuvered at the same time.

We had about fifteen or so minutes before our next dance partner showed up, then two would get to us almost together soon after that, and several more would start to pile in and we would get buried in enemy ships if we stuck around. We needed to finish this.

I told Dickie that we were turning to close, as we needed to get in torpedo range and finish this. I also had James tell Alnwick Castle to stay out of this, their first responsibility was to ensure they returned to base with a complete report, no matter what happened to us.

We lost coverage with one turret as we maneuvered, but the other one kept shooting as fast as it could, and as soon as we had turned we were back to synchronized salvos. We could not slow down at the same time as we used our plasma torpedo launcher, though. We set up for a quick pass with our closest point of approach about 70 kilometers or about 50 miles away, as that would let us give it two shots with the torpedo launcher.

We traded a couple more shots as we closed, then Dickie set his guns for timed fire with the torpedo launcher firing first, then after two seconds the two particle beams so that they would land immediately before the plasma torpedo did. It may not make any difference here, but when we had gamed it out back at Barnard's Star that was the combination that produced the most damage the fastest against a ship with an intact shield. Once we were out of range again for the plasma torpedo launcher, he would go back to firing beam salvos as fast as they could.

After that things happened too fast for serious thought. I think we must have damaged their gun, as I don't think they were shooting at us any more by the time we were in torpedo range. We didn't have anything that could really finish them off, though. All we could do was keep punching them until something exciting happened.

That something exciting turned out to be an explosion towards the back of their ship, sometime after our second combined salvo hit but while we were still in range of our beam projectors, coasting 'upwards' so that we could keep them 'down' where both turrets could see it. When all the mess had cleared, there was no longer a ship in the center, just an expanding cloud of debris.

Some of the debris was large enough to perhaps hold survivors, but we were in no position to go back and try to help them. The other incoming ships could get there before we could, anyway. They were coming in towards us while we were heading away from them. All we could do for them, if there were any, was stop shooting at the wreckage so that they could work on rescuing themselves. For the future, though, that was something to take up with the Confederacy and our high command. What should we have done about survivors, if we had found ourselves in a position to rescue them with no other enemy ships breathing down our necks?

Of course, within a year we had seen enough of the Sa'arm on the ground on Tulak that the question lost its meaning, but at the time we didn't know that and it was a serious morality and ethical question. We didn't like just leaving the enemy survivors that way. Looking back it sounds silly, but at the time we were headed for another intact enemy ship to see if we could destroy it, too, while we discussed what could be done to help the surviving crew from the first ship we destroyed.

We talked it over with Alnwick Castle and decided that we could also take on a second one, if we were quick about it. Alnwick closed on us some but kept their shield down in case they hadn't been noticed yet, and we corrected our course to meet the closest as quickly as possible before the next two could join in. If the first Sa'arm ship had some kind of super-weapon that could get both of us, they certainly hadn't used it.

For this one, we didn't see any reason to let them start shooting at us first. None of our weapons used up anything more difficult to replace than generated power, so we tried to get in extreme range as quickly as possible and started firing as soon as Dickie and Allie thought they could hit, about 600 kilometers out.

We also turned to slow the ship when we got in range, hopefully to provide an attention-riveting target. We had just knocked their shield down when Alnwick Castle caught up enough to join in, and before long this second ship also suffered an explosion. We weren't sure if it was the explosion itself, or the four particle beams and the two plasma torpedos that all landed on the cloud, but when it dissipated there was very little debris to be seen. Certainly, there were no parts more massive than several hundred kilos.

Yes, of course we thought about taking on the pair of ships coming up next! However, as I read somewhere "that risked us being remembered as foolhardy idiots, instead of as tactically astute and courageous warriors who knew when to quit".

There were more enemy ships gathering. Two ships meant that they could fire time-on-target salvos at us, too, and with their larger weapons it was likely that before we were done at least one of us would have taken internal damage. If that damage affected our propulsion at all, we wouldn't be able to make repairs and get away before more enemy ships came in range. Our opponents had more warships in our sensor range than the Confederacy had, period. We needed to avoid getting bogged down and nibbled to death.

That was probably the intent of these smaller ships pressing their attacks. The first one hadn't known anything about us, but the second one surely knew at least two things, that we had destroyed the first one within minutes of being fired at, and that we had then gone after the second one, implying that we had not been disabled by the first one. Ergo, the crew of the second ship should have concluded that they would probably not last any longer than the first one did, but they still came in towards us.

That gave us some things to ponder, also. For whatever reason, their likelihood of being destroyed without causing any damage to us did not appear to affect their behavior. That second ship had not hesitated in their course towards their own death. We could assume that the next pair would act the same way, and they did have a good chance of giving us disabling damage. It was time to run.

At this point, we dropped our shields to be the smallest targets we could be, turned to match our thrust with our primary vector and got out as fast as we could. We split up some to ensure that we weren't both caught if they managed to box us in, and turned for freedom. At various times we counted at least twenty different ships trying to intercept us, but none were fast enough to get in range before we shifted to avoid them. As soon as Allie could tell me that we were twenty times as far from our nearest pursuer as we ourselves would have to be to follow our ion trail, we jumped into hyperspace and were out of there.

The second round had gone even faster than the first, but we had lots of data to analyze. We had a lot of practical info on this small ship class that the Sa'arm seemed to use for scouting, surveying, and patrolling, and a little info on several larger ships also.

At first glance, all we could see was that they didn't seem to scale their propulsion plants up with their larger ships. Since we never got very close to them, we had no better data on those larger ships, but we gleaned what we could from their vectors. It appeared as though their larger ships were slower and less nimble than their smaller ships.

Someone else was going to have to try them on, though. It would have to be someone a lot larger than us. There had to be a reason for those other ships to be larger. The simple answer was that either they carried lots of weapons, or they carried lots of cargo. Maybe both, of course. It would be nice to find out which, but that would be for another expedition. One that had larger ships on our side, too.

On just a little bit larger hull than their one-gun ship, we mounted three complete weapon systems. Some of the ships we saw were hundreds of times more massive than we were. Surely at least some of that mass went for more guns, more armor, bigger guns, and better fire control. We could beat their scouts one-on-one, but not if they ganged up on us like they appeared to want to, and we had no business at all getting close to their larger ships. We needed to build some larger ships of our own, first.

We decided that we would regretfully report that we had not completed our survey of this system, but that we had in fact located the enemy and had proven that they could be beaten.

We spent the whole trip home discussing the Sa'arm's shipboard tactics, because they didn't make any sense to us. Turned around, under what circumstances would a human ship attack an alien ship that had just proven that we had no chance to damage it before we were destroyed? We could only come up with three types of instance when human forces had acted like that.

First, whenever there was a technology disparity and the weaker side didn't understand how badly they were outclassed. The classic example was how long it took the French to learn that armored knights on horses could not overrun a force armed with longbows. During the Hundred Years' War there were repeated battles where the French knights attacked badly outnumbered English forces that were covered by Welsh longbowmen. Each time the charges were destroyed before the knights got within their own range -that of a lance or sword- of the defenders.

Similarly, a few centuries later when the various Europeans had started conquering the rest of the world, there were endless examples of stone-age natives armed with spears or, at best, bows, charging forces armed with rifles. In many cases, the charges would be broken and then attempted again until there were no more natives left to charge.

Those could all be summarized as "one side not understanding that a range difference was important". However, the ships we had fought had mounted weapons that had just as long a range as ours, and appeared to be even more destructive. We had only won so handily because we had more weapons available, plus a devastating close-range weapon. Clearly, this wasn't a range issue.

Second, our history was full of noncombatants being escorted through a dangerous area by combatants. Police walking the elderly home, the cavalry escorting a wagon train, warships shepherding a convoy. Ask the AIs about HMS Jervis Bay when you have time. That ship had guns, but they weren't going to seriously harm a ship with Scheer's armor. All they could do was tell the convoy to scatter, turn towards the enemy, and attempt to ram.

Now, even ramming wasn't very likely, Sheer had at least the same agility as Jervis Bay and twice her speed, but the Germans had to deal with the charging escort before they could attack the scattering convoy. Jervis Bay's obsolete guns couldn't sink the attacker, but they could cause casualties, damage equipment, hole fuel tanks. And the sun was setting. Until the escort was dealt with, Scheer could not attack the helpless freighters.

Maybe the crews of the two ships we had destroyed were trying to save something more valuable? Maybe, but what? We didn't see any ships turning away from us. Every enemy ship we detected was on an intercept course for us. Unless they were protecting something we couldn't see, we didn't think that the Jervis Bay scenario worked, either.

The third group of examples of humans acting like this was from the oriental cultures. They didn't put the value on individual life that the western cultures did. There were many accounts of warfare in Japan, China, and basically all over Asia from Russia through Persia and down to India where a commander of a large force would send out a small force to attack a powerful enemy with no chance of survival, just to help nudge the enemy force into a position where it could, in turn, be easily destroyed.

If that was what was going on, then we had done the right thing by running while we could. Maybe the Sa'arm didn't care about their individual soldiers and sailors any more than they cared about ours.

We were pretty proud of our performance when we got back to Truman, and I decreed a two-day stand-down for R&R for both ships while we updated the charts and decided our next move. We'd been gone for almost two weeks and survived our first combat, and I was really looking forward to seeing Ellen again. Conversation for the last several days had all been around how to get around the environmental limits so that we could bring our women with us next time.

Allie let me know that Bamborough and Barnard Castles, 'Lucky Break', and 'Proctologist's Training Aid' were all in-system along with Madame, Crazy, and Dances. Good. Any word on those 'Patricians' we are expecting? Three of them had arrived soon after we left Trumanat, and they were all out snooping on systems believed to hold Sa'arm. Very good.

Weren't there six? What happened to the other three? These three were sent out here as quickly as possible. The other three were held back to see if defensive systems could be mounted. The three we got do not have any kind of defensive systems. They don't even have the Confederacy's Nav Shield installed, although they do have the weaker shuttle ion shield. They were sent out as quickly as possible.

Okay, when they come back we have to get that upgrade done first, both the Nav Shield and some kind of weapon system. Meanwhile, activate my earlier orders removing the Auroras from the scout program. If we don't need them here for construction, we'll send them back to Earth. Or maybe out to build more colonies.

Or, if they don't mind, we could use two or three as test platforms and see if we could modify them to be warships. Also, I wanted at least one of them out distributing automated scanner stations. There was no reason to wait for them to be built, though. Fill all the pods with raw materials, basically raw rock, and start building them on your way there. If you need something odd to finish a station, mine more than you need from the system you are in so you can move on.

Meanwhile, we had a long laundry-list of things we wanted built, assembled, put together, put in service, however you wanted to say it, there in Trumanat, and every Aurora had one of those big engineering replicators in the back. It would be nice if the warships had those things too, but there was literally no room for them in either the Castles or the Patricians. We had several microwave-oven-sized replicators, and anything larger than their cavity had to be made in pieces and assembled.

The Auroras could build much larger things almost as fast as we could feed them the materials, and that capability was on the critical list to be added to whatever we came up with for our own warship designs. Any ship out on its own needed to be able to repair itself, especially if it was intended to enter into combat. We could lose our current ships due to minor damage even if they won their fight, simply because they couldn't repair themselves.

My status report for Trumanat showed all kinds of things happening. We had a real tug that could move stuff around, and two miners looking for materials for the tug to move. The first big ship-sized replicator was done and it was making structural stuff for the station, just like the way Jupiter Station had been built. The second one would be done soon.

There were three of the Darjee-manned 'transport' Auroras in the system. One was Madame, of course. Almost all of the Auroras changed their names as they got converted to one purpose or another, but that ship proudly kept its name and position as the Confederacy's first mobile bordello throughout its entire service.

They had "First to Fuck" as their ship's motto, and laughed about their "Five year mission to boldly fuck where no one had fucked before". In times to come, we would have 14-year-old crewmembers with their sense of wonder about sex and this would make sense, but Sonny was one of us old-timers. He had been a Lieutenant de Vaisseau in the French Marine Nationale so sometimes we wondered about him. He was certainly the right guy to put in charge of Madame, though, with all its women. He kept the crew and, well, the support personnel at high morale at all times no matter how the war was going.

One of the Auroras was in the process of becoming 'Truman Station'. I think it was 'That's Crazy'. The three after rings had already been disassembled and that area was becoming covered in boxy assemblies of permanent rooms and corridors. Most of the pods it had carried were becoming permanently built-in, as self-contained modules of berthing, office, and/or conference rooms. Each pod had a low-grade AI in it to monitor whatever cargo the pod held, and each AI was becoming built-in to the station and its berthing areas, to supplement the ship's AI at the heart of the station. They should make the station a lot smarter, but if its attention had to be divided among too many people we may not see much intelligence.

Two more of the Auroras were becoming warships, or as close as we could make them. The first one was an experiment, to see if our idea to arm them really worked. The two forward rings were connected with enough bracing to survive combat damage, then each ring was given two of the three-pod particle beam / power plant / plasma torpedo combined weapon systems we had discussed. One of the rings had them at the top and bottom, and the other ring had them at the port and starboard points 90 degrees turned from the first ring.

They didn't go any further because they weren't sure at the time how the Aurora's main propulsion system would handle the added mass of the structure and armor. That's the one they ended up calling Apollo, our very first "light cruiser". When they named it that, they didn't know that we had received another four of the "Mercury" troopships back at Jupiter Station, and one of them had also been named Apollo. Neither ship was interested in changing their names and the fleet had two Apollos for a few years. Eventually, both ships were mothballed as obsolete at about the same time, and we went from two to none for a while.

Once it had been proven that Apollo wasn't too much slower and the change in center of mass hadn't made it too unstable, they started doing the same thing to a second Aurora, but they also did it to the two after rings as well. That brought the center of mass back to the central ball, so handling was the same as an Aurora again, but it was a good deal slower until they upgraded its main propulsion plant. They renamed that one Exeter, and with eight of those weapon systems they called her a "heavy cruiser" even though she was really just as fragile as Apollo was.

Long before they were done with those conversions the last of the human-crewed freighters had returned to Trumanat, and their crews also volunteered to turn their freighters into warships. Those next two, with Apollo and Exeter to guard the system, got a far more complete makeover. They got all six of their rings combined into a cylinder with enough internal bracing and external mass to be called armor, and then they stuffed those three-pod combined weapon systems everywhere they could make them go. Each ring got four of them, and there were six rings. The front of the outer cylinder also got two sets to give it some direct fire capability forward along the ship's axis.

At the price of becoming almost immobile wallowing pigs, each ship ended up with 26 power plants, 26 particle beam turrets and 26 plasma torpedo launchers. They also ended up with 104 Gunners and 52 Engineers, two for each module so they could trade off being 'on watch'. And lots of companions, soon to be formally designated as "Concubines". Add another 20 or so Naval personnel for ship management and fire control. Fully outfitted and manned, those things had about 350 people on board. Yes, they called both Medusa and Gorgon "Battleships". When they came up with better engines for Exeter, they moved Gorgon's main engines off to one side and installed Exeter's original engines on the other side so she had two separate Aurora main engine sets.

It looked as ugly as sin, but that got her N-space acceleration back up to something acceptable for a warship. Once that had proven itself to work, they built another Aurora-style main engine set so that Medusa could have two, also.

When Trumanat got its shipyard in service, they started pumping these 'standard' warship designs out as fast as they could. They didn't build many ships compared to some of our shipyards, but then Trumanat was at the end of a long supply chain and they had trouble crewing the ships they did build.

Until the development guys back at Earth came up with better designs, those were our only warship types in our early fights with the Sa'arm: Castles and Patricians for light units, Apollo- and Exeter-class 'cruisers', and Medusa-class 'battleships'. All but the Castles and Pats were just armed and armored Auroras.

Only the little boys were really maneuverable, but the bigger ships proved time and time again that they could absorb damage that would completely destroy one of the corvettes and just keep on shooting until there was nothing left to shoot at. Even damage that completely killed the ship at the heart of the assembly would do nothing to slow down gunfire from a ring-section that had its own power plant, sensors, fire control system, and guns.

We could never have taken the system away from the Sa'arm at Tulakat if we hadn't had those ships. Unfortunately, they were both slower than our enemy and had very short-ranged weapons. We could not control the range for any battle unless there was something that tied one side or the other to protect it, like an inhabited planet. When we went to Tulakat their ships could run and abandon the planet, or they could stay and fight. They chose to stay and fight, and that allowed us to eventually eliminate them all.

A lot of their ships were far larger than any of ours, but most also only had short-ranged weapons so the battles for Tulakat were simple slugging matches and our battleships with nothing important inside the shell were almost impervious to damage. The Sa'arm had to get a direct hit on one of the weapon systems to get it to stop shooting, while any hit anywhere on their larger ships immediately caused trouble everywhere on the ship.

It took us a long time to understand why that was happening. Once we understood their hive mentality, though, it was obvious. As long as the fight was outside the range of the planetary gestalt, the ships were on their own. Any good hit on any of their ships killed a significant part of their combined 'brain', causing short-term shock and long-term loss of intelligence. Any hit on any of our larger warships, on the other hand, may destroy something important but was more likely to just poke a hole in something that didn't change our ship's combat readiness.

Of course, any solid hit on one of our smaller ships was almost guaranteed to take out something important, so our Castles and Patricians were just as fragile as their ships were. The Pats weren't supposed to ever get within range of a Sa'arm weapon anyway, but sometimes it happened.

Long before we were ready to shut down and send everyone except the duty section out on liberty, Dickie took me to his cabin for a private talk. Ellen was missing. She disappeared while down at the Base for some training that the Base had required for all 'companions', and the last time the base AI saw her she was at an airlock, walking outside for a private talk with Commodore Arbuthnot. There had been no investigation by Base personnel, even after people on Madame had asked after her. One of the high-priority messages sent to Allie as soon as we had popped out of hyperspace was from Madame's skipper, letting us know that he wasn't getting anywhere and was worried.

Look, I know that the only reason anyone would read this is to get my side of that story. I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about it. She's dead, our unborn child is dead, Sir Fucking Harold Ar-buth-not is dead. I was acquitted, and that's that. Go ask the AIs if you need more details.

Excerpts from Court-Martial Records

The following transcripts are taken from the Court-Martial of Roger William Edelmann, Captain, United States Navy, Retired, serving on detached duty as Commanding Officer, CNS Allington Castle, with collateral duty as Commodore, Trumanat Scout and Defense Force, concerning his actions on Truman Base on April 13 of the current year, as verified by interviews with witnesses and the Truman Base and CNS Allington Castle surveillance records, Vice-Admiral Eldon Andrews, presiding officer for NATO:

Testimony from Lieutenant 'Sonny' Valois, Commanding Officer, human contingent, Confederacy Transport Mayflower Madame:

We had no idea what he had planned. The ground base set up a training program for the ladies and directed that all companions go participate. It took a morning or afternoon and seemed useful. Everybody did it. Ellen didn't come back. One of her roommates asked me about her. I asked the Madame, who asked Truman. They didn't know where she went. No other companions were missing.

Not all the companions were in stable relationships, but most were. It wasn't until a day or two later that I remembered that she was with Commodore Edelmann, and that he had been in an argument with the base commander. I asked again, and I was told to not worry about her.

Well, I wanted answers, but no one knew anything. The base commander called and told me to drop it, she had left the Commodore and there was no reason for a fuss. Well, that may be but she left all her belongings in her room and she could have come back for that and I didn't think that "drop it" was a very good answer to a missing person report.

When Allington Castle came back I sent a warning to Commander Dickie Wilson, her XO, that we had a personnel problem and I couldn't get to the bottom of it. I must admit that we were all appalled to find out what had happened, and extremely gratified to hear how it ended. You're court-martialing the wrong man, Admiral.

Thank you, Lieutenant Valois, that will be all for you. You are released to your duties.

Testimony from Commander Richard Wilson, Executive Officer, Allington Castle, with accompanying video records:

It didn't take long to find out what had happened. Two days after we had left Trumanat for our patrol, the Base had set up a training program and required all 'companions' to participate. At the same time, a section of the planet's surface near the base was declared off-limits due to danger from unstable rock formations. Later analysis showed that, while the danger existed, that area was not in any way more dangerous than several other similar areas.

All companions cycled through their training in groups. Ellen was the only companion from Mayflower Madame who didn't return to her pod after the training. Truman had video of the base commander asking Ellen if they could talk privately about Roger. They had left the Base in their suits. The Commodore had later re-entered the Base through a different airlock, alone.

Ellen didn't have an implant that the AIs could track. However, the Commodore did. A review of implant tracking data showed where he'd stopped for some time, right in the middle of the new prohibited zone. On my orders, Truman dispatched a remote to retrace his path and found Ellen's body stuffed in a crevasse. Her suit had been cut open along her back and one side. A knife with biological residue was found nearby. At my orders, the remote had not touched anything. It was later verified that the DNA on the blade matched Ellen's.

"No, DO worry about that. It's obvious that he killed her somehow and left her body out there. There's no other conclusion possible. And, you may not care, but Commodore Edelmann is going to go berserk when he finds out. Didn't you know that she was pregnant? Humans have been known to go insane and kill everyone in sight when they lose their children. The safe upbringing of our children is our strongest instinct after personal survival. In fact, our records are full of humans who chose their children's survival over their own when faced with limited options."

"You AIs need to find out exactly what happened out there. And, you need to decide how much collateral damage is acceptable to you. You all let this happen to a pregnant woman he left in your care. How much loyalty do you deserve? I have to go tell him that Ellen and his unborn child won't be there to meet him. You have to decide how many more are going to die for your lapse of duty."

<We have sent a remote to follow Commodore Arbuthnot's path during that excursion. We will contact you when we have further data.>

"Make sure it doesn't disturb anything. We may need to see the scene ourselves before it is disturbed."

<The base AI has accepted that order.>

"And make it as fast as possible. I need to have the whole story when I tell Roger."

<Commander Wilson.>

"Yes, Allie?"

<Your conclusion was correct in all relevant respects. Your understanding of your species allowed you to predict what we would find with an accuracy that we find remarkable. Ellen Reese was found dead outside the station in a suit which appears cut and a tool capable of that task was found nearby. The tool is not automated. It would have to be used manually by a human or a remote. There were no remotes in the area at the time of the accident. Besides Ellen Reese, Commodore Arbuthnot was the only person in the area during the time range that it happened. Do you wish to see the video?>

"No, but I think I have to. Bring it up."

"Allie, you have to stop calling this an accident. In cases where there is clear planning and intent -Where did that knife come from?- we call this sort of thing premeditated murder. I have to go report this to the Commodore. At the absolute least, Arbuthnot must die for this. There may be a good many more that go with him, depending upon how this is handled, and you have a chance to completely destroy this alliance between humans and the Confederacy if you can't do something to rebuild the broken trust. Why should we go to war to protect your people, when you've already proven that you won't bother to protect our people?"

<Please remember that all AIs in this system except for the warships were built by races who are completely non-violent. The base AI did not understand that humans were capable of this action. For the future we can try to educate those AIs, but first we must resolve this issue before it destroys the alliance. Do you have suggestions for steps we can take towards this goal?>

"I don't know, but some kind of message about you AIs assuming complete responsibility for the safety of any human left in your care, with children's safety being an absolute and anyone harming a child on purpose being executed on the spot if possible and no statute of limitations for child abuse or murder would be a good start."

<We would prefer to not execute the base commander.>

"You don't have to. Roger will take care of that for you. Just give him access and stay out of his way."

"Enter."

"Thank you, sir. Captain, before we go any further I need to tell you that the AIs have agreed to a free pass on this as long as you don't kill anyone else. That's important. If you don't kill anyone else you have the moral high ground and the AIs have to support you. If you go postal and launch plasma torpedos at the base they will have to stop you."

"Did they find anything conclusive?"

"It's cut and dried, Roger. There's absolutely no question at all. She's dead, and he did it. I don't want to show the evidence to you, but I think I should. That bastard has to die, and you're the only one who can do it and walk away with clean hands. I'm more than willing to go kill him myself, but it will cause a lot of trouble if I do it. You, however, can do it and walk. You can't kill anyone else, though. If there were others in on it, let the investigation flush them out. We will take care of them. You only get to kill Arbuthnot."

Testimony from Commodore Roger Edelmann:

After Dickie showed me the videos I took a shuttle to within range of Truman Base and transported down to it and walked to the Commodore's office. I thought about taking a stunner, but I decided not to. Some of Truman's security routines might have objected. As long as I was unarmed I was 'safe'.

His inner private office door was closed, of course. He had to know I'd be pissed, although I had to believe he didn't think I'd actually do anything about it. Did he really think that he was the only man out here capable of killing someone?

His secretary told me his boss was busy. I asked who was with him. No one, but he's busy. I asked Truman if he could open the door, as we needed to discuss resource allocation between the fleet base up in orbit and the ground base here. Ellen was a resource, wasn't she?

The door opened, I stepped in, and the door closed. I asked Mr. Ar-buth-not "Where's Ellen?"

"She's not here."

I looked around, verifying that he was not, in fact, lying to me. Not that I doubted him, after seeing the airlock videos and the remote's videos of her desiccated body he'd left out in the vacuum with a knife-slice in her suit. She certainly hadn't stabbed herself to death in that little crevasse. Or thrown the knife 40 meters away afterwards.

I pointed out that the AIs could not find her anywhere, not on any of the ships or in any structure they had access to. She seemed to be missing. Mr. Ar-buth-not repeated that she wasn't there. He didn't have her. She must have left me.

"Mr. Ar-buth-not, I told you that if you caused trouble for me, I would return that favor."

There wasn't any reason to keep talking. I reached over his desk and grabbed his arm. In the low gravity, it was easy to pull him over his desk and then slam his body against the edge. I verified that his neck was broken and then said "Truman? This is not an emergency, but how much time do we have to get him to a med-tube before it's too late?"

<With your species, neck injuries can quickly lead to fatality if not immediately treated. Oxygen starvation will lead to brain injury within a minute. Should I call for medical help?>

"No, thank you. Do NOTHING about this until I tell you to. Please inform me when ten minutes have passed from MARK."

<Very well, Commodore Edelmann.>

I went and pulled his chair around where I could watch the piece of shit, in case he wasn't really dead. He began to stink, though, as his bowels released. Good. He can just lay in it. He can get BURIED in it.

When Truman informed me that ten minutes had passed since my mark, I asked Truman to summon Mr. Ar-buth-not's deputy, the man who had succeeded to command of the base ten minutes before.

When the door opened to show the deputy I stood up, told him "You are now the base commander. If you ever mistreat a helpless woman I will kill you the same way. Don't. Test. Me.", and walked out.

I didn't throw up until I was back on the shuttle.

I didn't give any instructions at all about it. Let it play out. It was two days before a squad of MPs from Truman Base showed up at my cabin on Allington Castle to arrest me for murdering their boss's boss. It probably took them that long to put the squad together, as I don't think they had any MPs before that.

The crew knew my side of that, they'd all seen the videos. Hell, probably everyone in the system had, including the MPs at the door. I hadn't ordered them suppressed, but I certainly hadn't ordered them distributed, either. I'm pretty sure it was Billy who did that. I don't think the squad really expected to live through their arrest attempt if I resisted. They were all carrying stunners, but they had to have noticed that every crewman on the ship was carrying a holstered pistol.

I had long since decided what to say to their leader when they came. "Son, I want you to go back down to that base. Find and bring me my companion Ellen Reese and our unborn child. If you can do that, and she looks me in the eye and says she doesn't want to be with me anymore, you've got a good case for Murder One. If you can't do that, you don't have any kind of case at all. Where I went to school, they still have some old laws on the books. Some homicides are criminal. Others are investigated and declared 'Meritorious'. You might begin your investigation by tracking down where that knife came from."

Dickie pushed them all back out of my office, saying "You don't want to be here. He had every right to do what he did, and if you give him any trouble about it he'll have every right to defend himself."

"He can't just kill people whenever he wants!"

"He grew up in Texas. He certainly CAN kill anyone who deserves it, and he has, and he will continue as long as it's needed. I'm warning you, don't put yourself in a position to be someone who needs killing, like Commodore Arbuthnot did. Go back and actually do an investigation. Don't come up here again without a good reason. We'll probably shoot at you."

That wasn't all strictly true. I grew up in Maryland, not fifty miles from where Junior was a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. I had, however, gone to school in Texas as an Aggie on a US Navy scholarship. Four years at College Station had left their mark on me and there had never been any doubt in my mind what to do when Dickie showed me those videos. And I wasn't at all sure the AIs would let us shoot at another Confederacy installation. The way I handled it was the right way, any way you looked at it.

I was still in my cabin when we left for our second patrol. There wasn't any point in leaving it. For all intents and purposes, Dickie was serving as both Captain of Allington Castle and Commodore of our now six-ship squadron. He should have been CO anyway. He would have been, if Kennedy hadn't gotten me recruited as a safety feature.

Testimony from Commander Richard Wilson, Executive Officer, Allington Castle:

After we took our division back out to look for another combat test, I spent a lot of time talking to Allington Castle's AI about authority and responsibility. The two cannot be separated. You cannot be held responsible for something that you have no authority over. It is possible to have authority over something that you are not responsible for, but the first time you act irresponsible your authority will be removed by someone who DOES have both authority and responsibility for that item, and you will never again be trusted with that authority. It follows that as a practical matter even if no formal responsibility for something is assigned, anyone given authority is forced to act as if they had been given responsibility for that item at the same time. The two cannot effectively be separated.

Captain Edelmann had trusted the AIs -who said they saw everything and had instructions to monitor all humans in their care- to protect his companion. The AI on Mayflower Madame had given her to the Truman Base AI's care, and the base AI had allowed someone to take her out of its sensor range and kill her without comment. No investigation had been done until we returned to the system, Mayflower Madame's skipper sent me an urgent message, and I ordered that investigation started.

If I remember correctly, the base AI determined what had happened in less than an hour after I ordered the investigation. It was even able to track the knife used to its creation in a replicator by Arbuthnot's orders and his personal removal of it, two days before the murder. There is no reason for waiting two weeks before investigating except a refusal to take responsibility.

I resolved to kill that bastard myself, while I was reviewing the video of Ellen's body shoved in that crack in the rock. I realized, though, that Roger would want to. If anyone were to kill Nancy I would demand that I be allowed to take care of it myself. So once I had verified that there was no way to blame anyone else, I got Allie to agree that Roger wouldn't be interfered with as long as he didn't kill anyone else. I held off on telling Roger as long as I could for the rest of our sakes, and after we secured the mains I went and told him what I'd learned.

Roger was a loaded gun at that point. I loaded it, I cocked it, I took the safety off, I pointed it at that bastard, I pulled the trigger, and I'm proud of it. If anyone is guilty of murder it's me. All Roger did was take care of a problem. I'm the one who set it up, though. I used him, and if you need someone to charge with murder since Commodore Sir Harold Arbuthnot is not available, I'm your man. You should be charging me, not Roger.

Thank you for your testimony, Commander Wilson. You are excused to the waiting room.

Admiral, I'm not done yet. Did you know that the AIs have been testing us, and rejecting those who don't pass their test? I had not been aware of that until those talks with Allie. Apparently there are two groups of people sending us up here and...

Commander, I am painfully aware of that fact. I was one of the political appointees myself, sent to keep you military under UN control. My political masters would be very surprised and upset to find that I passed that test, and given the option I freely chose to work for the Confederacy's benefit as a naval officer instead of the UN's benefit as a British Lord. And no, Commodore Sir Harold Arbuthnot was never given that test. If he had, I'm sure this would never have happened because he would not have remained in his position without far more oversight than he had.

Do you know how I got here so fast? The Darjee envoy's ship, the one that has to be behind the Moon but we can never find, brought us here along with Commodore Edelmann's two wives. The trip only took three days.

Before this, I would have sworn that the Envoy would never have allowed a human to step onboard his ship. We are too unstable and dangerous. However, when he heard that an unborn child was injured through a failure of the AIs to act properly he insisted that everyone needed to take care of the child be delivered as quickly as possible using his ship. Admiral Kennedy grabbed the Commodore's two wives, told me to gather three more command-level officers for an American-style Court-Martial, and had us all transported onto the Envoy's ship as it passed Jupiter on its way out.

The AIs tell me that they cannot tell the Envoy that the child died. Or that the mother died. Or that they were stabbed to death on an airless planet by a maniac with a butcher's knife. The AIs have told me that if he found out exactly how the child was injured he would probably go catatonic. We cannot tell him what your captain did in response, either.

This incident, among others, has solidified policy among the AIs. Henceforth, NO ONE who has not taken their damned test and passed it will be allowed to hold any position of authority whatsoever in any Confederacy jurisdiction. Unfortunately, that still leaves Earth itself, a couple of UN-controlled entities in Earthat space, and the colonies set up by the UN and the Chinese in other systems.

People like Sir Harold will be gathered up and transferred to those UN colonies as quickly and as quietly as possible where they can all drown in each other's blood for all I care. There will be no immigration of those folks the other way, from UN or Chinese colonies to ours. One of my personal nightmares is of being sent to run one of those colonies where I know I will never find anyone I can trust.

Some of the side-effects are going to be ugly, though. Not many women can pass their test. Women have a different value system that has served the human race well for a million years but they cannot develop loyalty to an alien government. The best we can come up with is loyalty to their husband or their unit. Or, to their owner. It's beginning to look like our current companion system is going to become formalized, because if a human can't be trusted out here on their own, they have to be under the thumb of someone who can be trusted.

Commander, don't worry. They sent me out here because I also am a British Peer who is known to look down upon Americans and will give Sir Harold a fair hearing, but I have three children of my own. I still don't like Edelmann, but I've gotten in arguments with him twice when he wouldn't back down and I've had my teeth kicked in both times because he was either right or he made it right. I don't want to go for three in a row.

I'm not going to say he was wrong in this case, either. I cannot with a clean conscience look at pictures of my wife and children and chastise a man who killed his mistress's murderer. Especially as all involved knew at the time that she was pregnant with his child. There was no functional check on Sir Harold's actions, and there was no judicial system in place for Commodore Edelmann to appeal to afterwards. Sir Harold was acting like an Emperor, and Commodore Edelmann deposed him the way Emperors are normally deposed.

I've done everything I can to find a way to blame your captain for causing this mess, but it doesn't look like I'm going to succeed. It has been made abundantly clear to me by Admiral Kennedy that this mess is completely his, my, and Admiral Sykes' fault.

Admiral Kennedy wanted a safety engineer he trusted to supervise our buildup and he brought in Edelmann. That was a good decision. Commodore Edelmann is a good engineer, and an outstanding officer who went far beyond expectations to protect his men and get these ships moving.

I needed open-minded COs I trusted for our first ships, and I chose Edelmann with you as his backup. That was a mistake, but at the time it appeared to be the best option available. The Americans may consider him a line officer but he's never spent years in command of a warship, worried about keeping his men alive in the face of enemies who want them all dead the way you and I have. Even so, he rose to meet and exceed his limitations and was a success in that position as well.

Admiral Sykes needed an assistant and then later someone he trusted to be in charge of our first armed expedition, and he chose Edelmann. That was an even bigger mistake, which I pointed out at the time, but again Edelmann demonstrated, until now, that he could handle the stress and perform well even though he had never served as an independent captain before. You were there. In times to come we may laugh at his tactics, but he approached the tactical problem like an engineering problem and he got all the results that anyone could ask.

I don't think there's another command-level officer out here who would have approached his first combat as just another engineering test. Certainly, it's hard to imagine anyone else coming back with all the laboratory test data that you brought back. When you remember that he went in there knowing nothing about our enemy's capabilities and coldly ran a pair of combat tests with himself as one of the casualties if he misjudged it, you have to accept that he has as much courage and integrity as any other officer we have. He led the human side in the first battle where both sides were armed, and we came out of that with no damage and no crew losses. Even better, he came back with hard data on our enemy's ships, their tactics, and their weapons.

In every case his assignment was borne out by the results. However, none of us thought about the burden we were placing on him, and if he got overloaded and made a few mistakes due to unwarranted assumptions about support personnel safety, well, the blood those mistakes generated is on OUR hands, not his.

No one can take additional responsibilities just continually piled up on him forever. Sooner or later, we all break and it's the duty of his collective superiors, of whom I am a notable member, to see that and lower the task list and stress level before anyone reaches that breaking point. Your captain didn't fail us, Commander. We failed your captain. At this point, as part of my penance I have to work on damage control.

Now, we need someone to assume command of Allington Castle. That's you, unless you have a problem with that. We also need someone to assume direct responsibility for all of our armed ships out here. That might be you. You certainly have more live experience with spaceship tactics than anyone else available.

We also need someone to manage the scouting effort. That won't be you, it will be someone more senior, as if five more years commanding NATO warships makes any difference at all out here. Last, we need someone to assume responsibility for this whole volume of space out here. That will be a completely different won't-be-you senior officer.

Commodore Edelmann was wearing the hats of a Chief Test Engineer, a warship Captain, and at least three different Admirals when a personal tragedy hit him so hard he snapped. We might be able to use him again as a test engineer.

Your captain is going to be thanked for his accomplishments, found in need of rest by the Fleet Surgeons, and hidden someplace -away from here- until this blows over. At that time we will put him back to work again. He is a far better officer than I expected when Admiral Kennedy forced him down my throat.

Commander, I'm reluctantly on his side in this. He may be a cowboy, but sometimes we need cowboys. Drake and Grenville were cowboys. So was Cochrane. All three of them were also legitimate heroes who kept England's enemies at bay long enough to let us prepare for war.

Now, this particular cowboy is going to be sent someplace far from here to recover. I don't think that anyone on this base would be able to sleep at night, knowing that he controlled weapons that could kill them all in their sleep if anyone stumbled.

One last question, if you will, for my own curiosity. Were those guns real?

Yes, sir. Master Chief Boggart convinced Allie that with reduced charges and soft-nosed bullets, his old "Service 9" would not pose any danger to the ship. The bullets would not penetrate the bulkheads, and Allie modified her bulkheads to minimize ricochets. Us officers were wearing our stunners when those MPs came to get the Captain, but all the enlisted were wearing the US's old "Service 9". It would have been a bloodbath if anyone started a fight, but I'm positive that seeing those guns instead of the stunners that the MPs were carrying prevented anything ugly. I can't decide whether to break the Master Chief down to Seaman, or commission him as a Lt Commander.

Well, you are Allington Castle's Captain now and must make that decision for the good of your command. Given the circumstances, I'll back you up whichever way you go. Now, Commander, if you would leave us we have other witnesses to see before we can finish this. Keep in mind, though, that we're going to be splitting up all of these original crews soon, to serve as the core for other ships.