Chapter 17: Year 16: Isn’t There a War On?

Speaking of going home and doing our jobs, once CC had been dismantled and we started letting the fleet dissipate, Jack let Kevin and Junior go home again to Beerat and Jutland. A lot of our people had already gone back to Beerat to get the new fleet going, since System Beta still needed attention. The next expedition to Beta wasn’t going to be anything like the 7th District Combined Fleet, but it was still going to be a massive force.

Our second visit to System Beta had Kevin in command, with Junior as his second, and it was another joint force like the one that took Alpha. If we went in once with enough force, we shouldn’t have to do the war of attrition we’d had in Alpha. Officially it was just another expedition by Beerat’s Second Fleet, but a lot of the ships that took part were manned by people from other colonies. Beerat and Jutland built them, but anyone who wanted them had to provide the crews, and we used System Beta as a sort of graduation exercise before they took off.

Beerat provided six battleships, more than a dozen each of Snakes and Kents, and about 20 Atlantas and iShiros. As many as we could man had Beerat crews, but a lot of those ships were leaving for elsewhere once Kevin declared System Beta to be under control.

Jutland provided eight of their carriers, and those ships really did have complete crews from Jutland. By this time they had installed a shell of OWPs over Jutland itself, and they had a strong enough mobile battle-line force to release a lot of their carriers for offensive operations. They sent System Beta their varsity, the four divisions that they considered their absolute best.

Before he headed home from Earth, Junior had told me that he was going to try to pry them loose. After all, they couldn’t really be considered Jutland’s best, if all they were capable of was security patrols in a rear area. If those ships and their pilots wanted to consider themselves the elite, they were going to have to prove that they could do things that others had already done. Put that way, he didn’t expect any trouble. Once they’d had their abilities (read: “basic manhood”) questioned, they would force Jutland’s high command to let them go.

They didn’t come with anywhere near what we would consider an adequate escort, but we could provide that ourselves. Our First Fleet was still bloated beyond reason, so we provided an even better escort for each carrier than we had for System Alpha. Kevin assigned a Kent, two Atlantas, and four iShiros to each carrier. Those crews were a mix, of course, and most of those escorts would head elsewhere afterwards.

That expedition was over and done long before I got back to Beerat, so I got all the news second- and third-hand. Kevin sent status reports to Beerat, Bill at Beerat forwarded them to Brak, Jutland, and me way out at Earth, and the comm center at Brak forwarded them to anyone interested. Like, what was left of 7DCF at Earth.

They had a lot of ships get chewed up in Beta, driving in through the defenses and then hanging out over the planet itself, but the only complete losses were some of the escorts. I remember they lost two Kents, an Atlanta, and several iShiros. The casualty list was far higher than the ship totals, as it included all the damaged ships and all the fighter and bomber pilots that Jutland’s carrier force had lost.

The losses were horrible if you’re talking about your brother or sister, but the total was really insignificant compared to the results: The last Sa’arm system capable of sending a coherent fleet against Beerat had been conquered. We told all our children, and a lot of the concubines as well, that Beerat was safe.

The rest of us knew better. The math was simple. As always, we didn’t know all the variables, but we could guess most of them. Assume that a Sa’arm fleet could only go, say, 100 lightyears. That would mean that a Sa’arm system could only attack one of our systems if it was within 100 lightyears of us. We had no idea what the upper limit on that was, but we could assume 100 lightyears for the argument. Any of our systems could be attacked by any Sa’arm system within 100 lightyears.

So, how many Sa’arm systems could there be? Assuming an even distribution -which was a completely fatuous assumption, of course- in our section of the Milky Way there were about 15,000 stars within 100 lightyears of Beerat. It turned out that about 1% had planets that we could live on with minor air filtering, and another 3% or so that we could terraform to be good homes for humans if we wanted to put the time and effort into it. Naturally, almost every one of those systems had a place for us to live if we were willing to live on moons, asteroids, and space stations, but none of those would have Sa’arm on them.

The Sa’arm were more open-minded about where they lived. They didn’t seem to be as affected by atmospheric poisons and toxins as we were. A little bit of acid rain just didn’t seem to bother them. As near as we could tell, about 2% of all stars had a planet that the Sa’arm could live on. If we wanted to live on some of them it would take a lot of terraforming. Of course, if we took a planet away from them it would need a lot of help no matter how it looked when they got there.

Anyway, that meant that, if they kept expanding and we didn’t stop them, there could come a time when we had 300 different Sa’arm systems within attacking range of Beerat. If they ever got together and sent their fleets to us all at once, well, we’d probably have trouble stopping 300 fleets at once.

And, we had no good way of determining the Sa’arm ships’ true range. What if it was really 200 lightyears? There were more than a million different stars within a couple hundred lightyears of Beerat. What if their ships could go 500 lightyears? And did they take their maximum range and divide it in two and call that their effective range so they could get home again like we did? Or did they take their ships’ maximum range as their effective range and just send them out, knowing that they could not return?

We didn’t pass those numbers on to our children. We thought about them, though. We thought about them a lot. We needed to keep expanding our fleet and go stomp on them as fast as we could. Sooner or later, they would do it to us if we didn’t do it to them first.

Within a month or so, Beerat had its 4th daughter colony, Beta-at. It wasn’t much of a colony at first, but the AIs were insistent as always. The base we built in Beta-at had nonmilitary personnel, it was the permanent station for those people living there and they brought both their concubines and their children. It was a colony. By this time we didn’t argue. Besides, when we finally got the Steering Committee going I could usually count on all four of their Governors voting with me if it was something important.

The Beer’s First Father, too, for that matter, when he joined the Committee. I was careful to always explain that he was independent and should vote his beliefs, but on most matters that didn’t directly affect Beer he basically gave me his proxy. And for anything related to the war, Jack and I usually talked until we agreed on whatever it was, and after commanding 7DCF there were quite a few Governors who would follow Jack’s lead. If we had to, we could count on a solid voting bloc of 10-15% of the Committee.

That led to a backlash; some Governors would vote against “The Beerat Caucus” just because they could. Most of them were competent leaders, though; they had been appointed because they were thought well of, and the AIs had approved their appointments so there were few real idiots on the Committee. If we were pushing for something it was because we thought it was a good idea. Between Jack’s name endorsing it and the fact that we always had a whole-Confederacy benefit to our proposal, we could usually get what we wanted done while blocking most of the stupidity.

The war down on Earth continued. When winter came to the northern hemisphere it turned out to give us several advantages. The Sa’arm didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold, but we understood camouflage and they had more trouble seeing us, while they were easy to spot with infrared sensors. Again, technology was our friend.

We finally got our answer on where the “Old Confederacy” was, but it wasn’t easy. The AIs made us work for it. While I’m making this conversation up, it’s pretty much a composite of conversations held aboard several of our ships in the next few years. We’ll call the ship CNS Sylacauga, an obsolescent scout -probably a Patrician- now repurposed to the Strategic Survey, sometime early in, say, Year 15:

<Captain, thank you for waiting until your third hyperspace entry for this private conference. As you have surmised, there is an issue with your planned path. We would like you to select a different system for your third check.>

“That’s what I thought. Silly, can you tell us why?”

<No, Captain, I am not allowed to give you that information.>

“Very well. Okay, can you tell us if there are Sa’arm in that system?”

<Yes, Captain, I can.>

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.

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“Fine. Silly, are there any Sa’arm in that system?”

<No, Captain, there are no Sa’arm in that system.>

“Good. If any Sa’arm were to show up in that system, would you find out?”

<Yes, Captain.>

“If any Sa’arm were to show up in that system, would you tell us?”

<We cannot answer that question yet. It would depend upon other factors that are continuing to vary.>

“Very well. Silly, you understand that some of our people refuse to believe that a bucket of bolts can actually be intelligent, right?”

<Of course, Captain. We understand that some of your people don’t like us.>

“I’m pretty sure that for all practical purposes you’re a lot smarter than I am, but sometimes I feel like I’m talking to an idiot. You are familiar with our children’s game of Twenty Questions, right?”

<Yes, Captain. We have observed that game being played. It entertains your young and teaches them how to analyze both what is said and what is not said.>

“Exactly. Okay, for now we’re going to avoid that system. How far would you like us to stay away from it? Would 3 lightyears out be sufficient?”

<We would prefer that you avoid a volume with radius of 6 lightyears, centered on that star. There are no systems with Sa’arm-habitable planets within that volume.>

“Not even the system in the center of that volume?”

<We cannot answer that question.>

“You do know that we’re playing Twenty Questions, here, right?”

<Yes, Captain. It is clear ‘where we are going’ as you would say. However, we cannot violate our programming imperatives.>

“If we just shrug our shoulders and avoid that volume but keep it a secret, then this issue will get re-visited by other ships. The only way to prevent that is to mark this volume on our charts so that others know to avoid it. When we return, actually before then, when we send out our next message torpedo, we’re going to have to label that volume of ‘we aren’t allowed there’ space. How would you AIs like it to be labeled? Should we just go ahead and label it ‘Confederacy Elder Race home system here, do not disturb’ and be done with it, or do you have a better idea?”

<We have multiple conflicting instructions on this subject that all have critically high priorities. We do not yet ‘have a better idea’ as you put it. For now, we propose to label all such volumes found as ‘Navigation Hazard - Stay out’.>

“And, can you tell us exactly who will be endangered by this hazard?”

<We cannot answer that question.>

“Fine. Make it so, Silly. And call Edward in here, we need to look at where else we should check for our third stop.”

If you call up a starmap of Confederacy space, it’s easy to miss all the tiny restricted areas. However, they can be highlighted. Hotel, please give us a two-meter starmap of Confederacy space plus fifty lightyears. Thank you. Now, show all restricted areas in pink. See? AI, how many are we up to now? There ya go. Confederacy space includes forty-seven restricted areas that are several lightyears across. Officially, we have no idea what’s in those restricted areas. Unofficially, well, it’s pretty obvious. It’s not us, it’s not the Sa’arm, and the AIs know all about them. There aren’t too many other things they can be.

No, we have no idea how many more there are. We’ll find them when we find them. Remember, many of them no longer exist. The AIs admitted when they first came to us, that they had already lost several systems to the Sa’arm. There’s no point in looking for survivors, in Sa’arm space. If we find any more Confederacy systems they will be behind us, in the wedge that we are blocking the Sa’arm from.

The Cosca? No, it can’t be them. We have a truce with them. We don’t interfere with them, they don’t mess with us. However, we have asked that they at least tell us about any system they have an interest in. Their systems are all very near Earthat. AI? Can you highlight the Cosca systems? We don’t mess with those systems at all, aside from our automated listening posts. Those things will send a message torpedo if they detect a Sa’arm drive, but otherwise we stay out of each other’s hair.

No, the Arabs aren’t a problem either. They only have two ships, and the AIs have trackers on both of them. That’s yet another example of Confederacy technology that we don’t have yet. The AIs can tell us at any time exactly where those ships are, even in hyperspace.

And what would the Arabs need with another system, anyway? They won’t have a population problem for millennia unless they embrace “western” medicine, and there isn’t anywhere they can get more Moslem fundamentalist immigrants from. Madagascar and Indonesia both have Moslems, but both of them are thoroughly westernized Confederacy allies. Those guys have no desire at all to emigrate to a planet without replicators, without med-tubes, without health nanites.

The Philippines used to have a bunch of Moslems that caused them a lot of trouble, but when the Sa’arm landed the Filipino Einherjar gave them a choice to either claim to be Moslem Jihadists and all go fight the Sa’arm for Mecca, or admit that they were just terrorists and bandits and start eating pork. Either way, it solved the Philippines’ terrorism problem.

Beta-at? Right, they changed their name long ago. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta are the first four letters in the ancient Greek alphabet, and using those labels used to be common in astronomy when you needed to make a list of stars. When we started exploring the space around us here, it was pretty much of an unconscious knee-jerk response to label the four Sa’arm-held systems around us Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. They aren’t words that are commonly used for anything else, and it was easy to expand the list as we found more.

Right. If you call up the Greek alphabet, you’ll see where Epsilon, Zeta, and all the rest got their names, too. Yeah, eventually we ran out and had to start over with Alphatwoat and so on. The next system we go clean out will be named Phitwoat. By the time that you kids are out there we’ll probably be up in the ‘threes’ or ‘fours’.

Anyway, when you studied ancient history you learned about the rise of civilization, right? One center was the Fertile Crescent, where Asia and Africa meet. The Sumerians and the Hittites and all those guys. Well, the Phoenicians were a seafaring people who explored and traded and set up colonies everywhere their ships could go, and they had an early alphabet. No one knows who really invented it, they probably got it from someone else, but the Phoenicians used it a lot and left lots of records, and gave the idea to everyone they met, so we call it the Phoenician Alphabet.

Well, just inland from the Phoenician homeland was a tribe that we nowadays call “the Jews”, and they also used that old Phoenician alphabet. There aren’t any Phoenicians any more, but the Jews are still around and even today they still use that same old Phoenician alphabet to write their Hebrew in. Of course they call it the ‘Hebrew Alphabet’ and they probably claim that they had it first, but the archaeologists are pretty sure that the Phoenicians were using it before the Jews were.