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Thanks for editorial assistance go to deGaffer. Any errors that remain are my own.
Ray felt numb. The implications of what Joe had been telling him were staggering: on the other hand, it might all be a fabrication. Perhaps the “entertainment” might offer some kind of validation of what he had been hearing - but he hoped not.
Shortly after Joe left the room, Ray heard footsteps approaching, and was not surprised to hear the doctor’s voice.
“Hello again, General,” he said. “I trust that you are still comfortable?”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Ray responded, “but I am probably as comfortable as I can be under the circumstances.”
“Ah well,” the doctor smirked, as he came into view. “We must all make sacrifices in order to achieve our goals.”
“I don’t have any goals that would demand that I be confined this way!”
“I didn’t say that they were your goals,” the doctor grinned at him. “I said our goals! Under the circumstances, even you have to make sacrifices for them!”
Ray had to laugh in spite of himself. He was pretty much convinced that these people weren’t going to harm him, and they had promised to release him before his liberty was up. Things could be worse. Nevertheless, he was convinced that once he was free, sooner or later he would find them, and payback was going to be a bitch!
“Speaking of sacrifices,” the doctor went on, as he propelled the confinement chair out of the office, “there has been a change in plans. The Don has decided that we will be abandoning this base permanently, following your release.”
“Why would you do that?” queried Ray.
“Because we’ve decided that it is necessary to expose its location to you, in order to convince you of the truth of our assertions.”
“Why would that be necessary?”
“Well, the Don believes that for you to be convinced, we have to show you conclusively that you aren’t on Earth.”
“Why wouldn’t you just cut the gravity generators?” Ray asked, but then realized the fallacy of that line of reasoning.
The doctor, watching his facial expressions, nodded. “Yeah, anybody with the right equipment could fake low gravity, at least long enough to be convincing. No, the Don says you have to go outside and see for yourself.”
Ray’s heart almost leapt out of his chest, thinking that rescue might be only moments away… then the doctor dashed those hopes for him, as he was wheeled into an airlock.
“We’re moving you into a specially-constructed observation platform, shielded against the possibility of your nanites communicating with the Confederacy AI’s. It’s actually a sort of mini-spaceship, and one of our pilots will be taking you for a guided tour.”
“So why would that require that you abandon the base?” Ray asked again.
The doctor, who had just finished cycling the airlock, stopped for a moment, and gave him a look that plainly said How stupid do you think we are? He heaved a huge sigh and responded.
“Look General, we aren’t ignorant of the capabilities of the Confederacy AI’s. We know that if you get even a glance at the star patterns here, a little session of hypnosis, assisted by some of their drugs, will allow them to recover your memory of those patterns with great accuracy. We’ve concluded that when they get that information, their computational power will pinpoint this base within hours after we release you.
“The base was never intended for long-term occupancy. It was handy, because of its location, and its loss will be inconvenient but not incredibly so. The Don feels it will be worth the loss to have you know that he’s telling you the truth. Your conviction of his honesty in this matter, and cooperation in delivering our message to the Navy is incredibly important to him, and to the human race on Earth.
“And by the time your Navy gets here, all they will find is a pile of slag surrounded by asteroids.”
Ray was stunned by their willingness to scrap what was an obviously huge investment, just to prove a point. So much so, that he completely spaced out the transition from airlock to spacecraft. By the time he recovered his composure, the doctor had secured the chair to a set of dogs, set into the floor, and seemingly especially designed to hold the chair. He faced a large transparent port, looking out onto a field of asteroids.
He felt a bump, and then suddenly he was weightless. The platform drifted first one way, then another, as small jets controlled by the pilot shifted the attitude and location of the craft. The pilot turned the craft completely around, so that Ray could see where they had just been.
At first, it looked just like any of the other asteroids in the immediate vicinity, but upon longer inspection, he could see the hatch and coupling flange that had formerly connected the craft to the base. There was no denying the reports of his own senses. He was in space, and far enough away from earth to suggest that transport would require a much more advanced technology than he’d previously been led to believe existed there.
Of course, his observations only confirmed that the Don had advanced technology, not where he got it or how advanced it was. He still thought the Don’s story was farfetched, but he would bet his last credit that the mafiusu couldn’t have gotten past Confederacy security to steal any technology, and he couldn’t think of any other rational explanation. Eliminating the impossible demanded that he accept the Don’s explanation.
Another night passed, another day in captivity began. Ray was once again being carted to the office to meet with Joe. He accepted the fact that his hosts/captors couldn’t trust him – their reasoning that he would likely try to escape was perfectly valid. Hell, he wouldn’t have trusted him. At this point, he just wished that they would cut the chase and send him home.
Once again, Joe was already there, waiting for him. Before Joe could speak, Ray challenged him.
“Okay. I have to believe that you have the technology you say you have, so why not just give me the message and send me on my way now?”
Joe smiled and responded, “It’s not as simple as that.” As Ray’s face fell, he went on, “You haven’t heard enough of the story to know the extent of the technology we possess, and that knowledge will be critical to the credibility of the message we are going to give you. For you to believe in the necessity of that, we will probably have to give you another demonstration… but that will come later.”
Joe turned back to his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. Glancing briefly at them, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and resumed his tale…
La Cosa Nostra has been around for a very long time. That particular name for it is an artifact of publicity and highly visible, but less-than-effective, legal processes. Those processes were connected with efforts by the governments of the United States and of Italy to suppress the cosche. Whether or not those efforts were justified is, for the moment, beside the point.
To actually get to the point, you have to realize that, even while the prosecution/persecution was underway, and as well as well before and ever since then, members of La Cosa Nostra were embedded in the governments of both countries. Granted, our ability to maintain the embedded presence has been dramatically reduced since First Contact, but then, our need for it had already begun to fade by then.
You see, our ability to monitor and influence government activities, and thus our ability to take advantage of their inaction actually peaked during those years in which we were under observation by the Hwee! The paranoia of the US Military, during and following the war years, led them to fire upon and successfully disable a number of Hwee craft… actually many more than they realized! Nearly all of the disabled craft, however, were capable of only atmospheric flight. The US Military managed to recover a few of those, and actually did get a small technological advantage from studying them, but not one that put them on the road to spaceflight.
The cosche, recovered the rest; and as far as we’ve been able to determine, my cosca in particular recovered the only hyper drive-capable vessel that was lost here. Of course, we did not know how special it was, at the time.
Something that most people never consider is that the cosche respect and desire scientific knowledge as much as any educational institution or government research program. We have a tradition of funding research and “think tanks” that goes as far back in history as we can follow; thus we already had research staff in many locations, representing a broad cross-section of scientific disciplines, even before World War II.
It was a massive and expensive effort to unravel the secrets of the Hwee spaceship, but they were unraveled! All but one… the hyper drive itself. The recovered ship provided access to a knowledge base which was useful in gaining an understanding of their history and culture, but was short on technical knowledge. It was, after all, never intended to be more than a small cargo vessel, and a crew who was tied to either a fixed base, or a larger ship, maintained it.
It took years to map the physical layout of components and their connections, power sources, and controls. The danger of energizing the device was obvious, though, and until the Darjee made their appearance, there didn’t seem to be a hurry. News of the Sa’arm, however, changed everything. Many brave young men were lost to us, as a result of our efforts, following that event.
You have seen the evidence of our ability to travel extreme distances in short periods of time. I suspect that you no longer need to be convinced that we have the Hwee hyper drive, and that we are no longer confined to Earth – despite the best efforts of the Confederacy and your Navy to keep us there.
For a price, we have also enabled others, considered undesirable by Confederacy standards, to migrate off-planet, as well. This is how we have funded many of our ongoing activities, since our successful re-creation of the hyper drive.
The look of horror on Ray’s face made Joe pause to stop and grin.
“Relax,” he said, “those people pose no danger to you or your Confederacy, and they might even help insure the survival of our species!”
“How can you be so sure?” Ray demanded. “The Confederacy passed over those people because they were dangerous!”
“Simple,” Joe responded. “They pay a fee, and we transport them and their goods to an earthlike planet inhabited only by others like them. We promise them a location that is unlikely to get the attention of the Sa’arm, and has breathable air, drinkable water, and a temperature that they can survive with ordinary clothing.
“If they want or need anything beyond transport, they have to pack it in. They are put into hibernation before embarking, travel that way, and are revived on arrival. All their goods are dropped at their final location – always some distance from any other occupants of the planet - first, then they are revived and dropped, naked, at the same location. They never see the technology, nor do they have an opportunity to hijack it.
“We have found several such planets, but unfortunately," he grinned, "they all have a shortage of heavy elements. That, and other reasons, makes them less than desirable as targets for the Sa’arm, and there’s not much chance of them developing a significant industrial base.”
Joe could see that Ray was still unhappy about it, but time was running out.
“We need to finish this,” he said, returning to his story.
As might be inferred from their concern about stretching out ship’s stores, the Hwee did not have replication technology. Also, although far more advanced than anything available on Earth, their Artificial Intelligences had not evolved for millions of years, as had even the least of the Confederacy AI’s. Nanites are not even mentioned in the records that we’ve been able to recover.
After successfully getting off-Earth, gaining access to these other technologies became of paramount importance to the cosca. The Confederacy was, and remains, far too trusting of the Cosmos, and the Navy is infected with that trust as well. Neither entity tried to protect its communications, or hide any kind of information in those early years.
Although there appears to be no evidence to date that the Sa’arm is either interested or capable of surreptitiously gathering military intelligence, it is second nature to humans, like us. We’ve been listening to your transmissions and monitoring communications between your AI’s for years now. We know the size and composition of your Navy, where all your bases and colonies are, and where the fighting is going on right now.
We used that ability to find your junkyards; thus it was only after we had achieved space travel that we stole Confederacy technology! We salvaged damaged or obsolete equipment, even entire ships (small ones of course)! There is little that the Confederacy has trusted to you, that we don’t have ourselves, at this point. In fact, the differences in our capabilities, other than those attributable to size of our respective organizations, lie mostly in the fact that we have been able to acquire a little more of the Confederacy technology than you have!
We have also been following, with intense interest, the development of new weapons by your various units. We have been able to duplicate most of their successes. One in which we have a particular interest is the HSIT , and its potential use as a planet-buster.
Ray was beginning to look a little green again, so Joe decided to take a break from speaking.
“You know, Ray,” he began, “the largest problem your Navy seems to have is their reluctance do harm to the enemy. Tell me, did you ever read science fiction?”
“Yes,” Ray reluctantly admitted.
“Are you familiar with Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card?”
“Um… I don’t think so…”
“You really should read it, and I personally believe that it should be required reading for anyone who becomes an officer in your Navy.”
“Why is that? Does it have some good advice about battle tactics?”
“Yes and no,” Joe responded, “It’s more about having the proper attitude for winning a war. You see, as the protagonist in that work points out, if someone is hurting you, then you don’t just want to stop them from hurting you. You want to stop it with prejudice. That is to say, you want to make it impossible for them to ever hurt you again! In my mind, that is the only rational way to proceed in a war.”
“But that means….”
“It means, when you know you can’t scare the enemy into leaving you alone, you have to take whatever measures are required to disable his offensive capability! Even if that requires his utter and compete annihilation. Mr. Card did not invent this philosophy. It has always been the operating philosophy of the cosche.”
Ray’s heart froze in his chest, contemplating the potential for destruction such attitudes could present, with weaponry like HSIT.
“I think it’s time for another demonstration,” Joe observed. “I will be keeping you company for this one.” He signaled and the doctor whisked Ray off, trailing Joe behind.
Some hours later, aboard the observation platform, Ray found himself looking out the observation window onto a fairly nondescript star field. Near the window was a flat-panel screen, displaying a rocky-looking planetoid.
“That small planet is uninhabited,” Joe informed him. “In fact, there is not an inhabited planet within tens of light-years of it. Our current position is perpendicular to the star system’s ecliptic. The star itself is visible in the approximate center of the observation window, but for safety reasons, we are so far away from it that it doesn’t appear much different from other stars. First watch the screen. We are going to blow up that planetoid.”
Ray looked at him, unbelievingly, then looked at the screen. When he did, Joe said, “Proceed.”
As Ray watched, the planetoid disappeared in a bright flash, leaving behind empty space. Almost immediately, the screen went blank. Nothing visible was happening in the window, however. He looked at Joe in askance.
“The observation camera was destroyed. It was too close to recover before the wave front overtook it. We are far enough away, that the flash – traveling only at the speed of light - will take several minutes to arrive here. Fortunately, the shock wave travels much slower, so we will be able to vacate this position long before it arrives. Let’s have some refreshment while we’re waiting.” Joe waved his hand, and one of the bodyguards left the room.
Ray’s mind was racing. He had no doubt that Joe and his friends had used an HSIT to destroy the planetoid, but wondered how they could have gotten hold of one.
Joe began to speak again. “In a moment you will see proof that the image on the screen was live.” Soon the missing bodyguard returned, pushing a cart.
“I told you we had replicator technology,” Joe offered. “Here’s another little demonstration.” He removed the cloth covering the cart and its contents, exposing a coffee pot, a single cup, and a portable replicator of a design with which Ray was unfamiliar.
“Bear with me a moment, if you please,” Joe said, as he poured coffee into the cup. He then placed the cup into the replicator, and touched a button, marked SCAN. A tone sounded and he removed the cup from the replicator. “This is a new replicator, one we manufactured. It had no prior pattern for replicating anything until I just scanned the coffee cup.”
He closed the access door, and touched another button, marked REPLICATE. On the attached screen, he was presented with a menu, with only a single item. He selected that item with a touch, and then touched a button, marked FINISH. A short while later, another tone sounded, and he removed a second cup of steaming hot coffee from the replicator.
“I hope you like your coffee black and hot,” Joe said, offering the cup to the doctor. “Be careful and don’t burn him,” he added.
The doctor carefully placed the cup to Ray's lips, and allowed him to sip. It was very good coffee. Obviously a premium brand, and just as obviously created on the spot with the replicator.
While he was appreciating the coffee, Joe said “You should probably look out the window now. The flash should arrive at any moment.”
Ray no sooner turned back to the window than he was nearly blinded by a very bright flash of visible light. At the same time, he felt a lurch as the pilot began to move the platform away from the area, fast.
“I'm sorry we can’t wait around for the shock wave,” Joe apologized, “but my advisors don’t think we’d survive it here, even with shielding!”
On arrival at the base, Ray was again taken to his “guest quarters,” for a meal and an opportunity to exercise and sleep. Upon awakening, he ate breakfast, and following that he returned once again to the office where he and Joe had spent so much time together – still in the confinement chair, of course.
Joe greeted him with a warm smile, but Ray’s mood was anything but sunny.
“So when are you going to make your threat?” he demanded morosely.
Joe was genuinely surprised. “It is not my intention to threaten,” he asserted. “Why would I?”
“Well, why wouldn’t you? That’s something your kind has always done, in order to get what you want,” Ray asserted. “If your ‘message’ that you want me to deliver isn’t some kind of threat, then why all this demonstration of destructive power?”
At first, Joe reacted angrily, but he calmed himself before responding. “General, I am not a thug! I admit that some pretend mafiusi do behave as you suggest, but they have no honor, and are as much shunned and despised by the true mafiusi as they are by the world at large. The message my cosca will send with you represents no threat to you, nor to the Navy, nor even to the Confederation.
“It is however, information we would like for them to consider while formulating and revising their plans for how to deal with the Sa’arm. Please be patient. I must ensure that you have all of the necessary facts and proofs before I can give you our message.”
Joe ceased his constant pacing and stared tiredly at the floor in front of him. Moving around the desk, he seated himself for the first time in the brief history of Ray’s capture and confinement.
Looking up tiredly, at Ray, Joe said, “I need to speed things up a bit. I suppose you wonder if we used the only HSIT we had in performing this demonstration?”
Ray nodded, but did not speak.
“Remember the replicator with which I made your coffee?” Joe queried. Ray nodded again
“We use replicator technology extensively,” Joe said. “We even have industrial-sized replicators for turning out large equipment. In fact that very replicator you saw was created from a pattern in one of our industrial replicators.
“It seems that the only real factors limiting the size of objects that can be successfully replicated are the availability of mass to convert, and energy with which to achieve the conversion. Of course, we haven’t tried to replicate any living thing… to us, that just seems wrong!”
Nonplussed, Ray responded, “Some people have tried, but so far no one has succeeded.”
Joe grunted his disapproval, but resumed speaking. “The HSIT we used for the destruction of the planetoid was also created in an industrial replicator.”
Ray was stunned. “But how…”
Joe held up his hand. “That is coming,” he said.
“We have been shadowing your military operations for quite awhile. Never close enough to be involved in the actual combat, but close enough to observe.
“Your Navy has lost a few battles in space, but seems to win more often than losing. When you win, your people try to recover any damaged craft, and when you lose, you try to destroy them. In neither case are you consistently successful.
“The Sa’arm often try to recover them as well, if they win, but they often get so busy just trying to stay alive, that they seem to forget that those derelicts exist and go their merry way. When that happens, we mount a salvage operation.
“In one badly-damaged vessel, we found four intact HSIT’s, and training materials for how to arm and deploy them. It took months before we were able to reliably replicate one, but we did.
“Since that time, most of our expanded replication capacity, at least that over and above what is needed for supporting the cosca, has been dedicated to producing small, hyper drive-capable vessels and more HSIT’s.
“We now have sufficient numbers of vessels and HSIT’s to stop the Sa’arm expansion in its tracks – if one is willing to use them as planet-busters. We do not as yet, however, have sufficient numbers of trained pilots and crew to use these vessels and arms. We are getting there, though.
“We have established our own colonies – separate from those we use for our customers - trained our own combatants and support personnel, and created our own industrial and military bases, in a society structured according to the principles of the cosche. One way or another, we will prevail.” Joe finished his monologue, with a gesture of finality.