Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 8
New Republic, PSK
Corey struggled to keep her expression calm as she followed Admiral Johnson out of the conference room. Her clunker kept flexing, and she had to consciously force it to remain still. She didn’t want to give away any hint of the fury she felt.
“I think that went well,” Cherie Abakhumova said. She was the liaison officer from the Embassy, a bright, happy person who looked at Corey apprehensively. “You didn’t rip anyone’s face off, despite being insulted repeatedly, and I count that as a positive.”
“That’s the only one I can see,” Admiral Johnson said. She gave a bitter laugh. “Personally, I would count it as a justified culling of the gene pool. Perhaps the officers of the Strategy Board should not be allowed to reproduce. Or if they have, their children should be deleted from the PSK Gene Registry.”
“They don’t have one,” Cherie said. “Their births are entirely unregulated. You’ll excuse me, Admiral, but I have another appointment. I’ll see everyone back at the Embassy.”
Corey was still thinking of the meeting. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. “In my opinion, every member of their Strategy Board should be removed from office for being terminally stupid. I handed them an Imperial retreat and massive redeployment, and they want to hand it back! They claim they can’t defend it! That was an Imperial incursion into the PSK. I shortened their supply lines, expanded their resource base by three planets, and freed up several dozen warships, and they claim they’ll have to abandon the whole area.”
“Oh, they’ll defend it,” Admiral Johnson said. “Just before the meeting I heard that their King has issued a direct order that they’re to do just that. He also issued a proclamation thanking the Navy for returning the people of those systems to the PSK.”
“They’ll do it incompetently,” Corey said. She ground her teeth in frustration. “Somehow they’ll contrive to lose everything I gained. They’ll assign only a handful of ships to that sector, and the Empire will sweep them back. I have faith in them.”
Admiral Johnson stopped, looking at the younger woman. “Corey, there are times when I’m not sure what upsets you more: that these men are too stupid to be allowed out in public, or that their Navy is throwing away victory after victory.”
“Both,” Corey said. “It just depends on what kind of mood I’m in.”
“You held your temper today, but only barely.”
“You weren’t doing much better, ma’am, though I could tell only because I know you.”
“Aye,” Admiral Johnson said. “You’re young and you’re still learning. There are times when you can’t let other people see your emotions. That’s one of the things that you learn as you climb the promotion ladder.”
“I didn’t exactly climb it, ma’am. I think I raced up it. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was just a Flight Lead.”
Admiral Johnson nodded. “Anyway, work on it. The other thing to work on is your word choice. This is something most officers learn when they’re Third and Second Officers. I realize you only spent a few months as a Third Officer, but I thought you would learn a few things from serving under Edith Matsuoko.”
“I mostly kept my mouth shut, ma’am,” Corey said. “It seemed the best thing to do.”
“That was probably the best thing to do. Now, before we get back to the Embassy, why don’t you do a little venting? It’ll do you a world of good.”
“And who do you vent to, ma’am?”
“My aide and my Chief of Staff. That’s something else you’ll have to learn.”
Corey scowled at the carpet as they resumed walking toward the transit station, their Marine escort joining them. “Everything the Strategy Board touches grinds to a halt. It’s like they’re fighting to hold the PSK Navy back, not furthering the war against the Empire. Even Captain Matsuoko was less dangerous than these fools. At least she only endangered one ship.”
A familiar face cut through the turmoil of her thoughts. Captain Pagadan was lounging against the wall near their exit, studying his fingernails and passersby with equal care.
He straightened as they approached. “Admiral,” he greeted them, nodding his head, “Captain. Could I beg a few minutes of your time?”
“Certainly, Captain,” Admiral Johnson said. Corey could hear the suppressed anger in the Admiral’s voice, and saw that Captain Pagadan noticed it as well. It was obvious Admiral Johnson wanted very much to give Captain Pagadan a few minutes of his time, but not in public. Captain Pagadan had not attended the Strategy Board meeting. Corey remembered seeing his balding head among the staffers in attendance outside the meeting room when she and Admiral Johnson had arrived. Corey suspected he had a good idea of what had happened.
They followed him to the shuttle stop. Captain Pagadan let several shuttle cars go by, finally picking one seemingly at random. He consulted his data viewer for a moment, then asked their destination and entered it for them. He pressed a series of buttons on his data viewer, and then relaxed.
As the car pulled out, he smiled apologetically. “Am I to assume, Admiral Johnson, that you have been meeting with our Strategy Board?”
“Those...” Admiral Johnson visibly stopped herself, reconsidered her words, and spoke again more calmly. “I am sure, Captain Pagadan, that the officers I met today are not typical of the senior officers of your Navy.”
“Sadly, ma’am, they are, at least the dirtside part of the Navy. Some of our Admirals have not had a worthwhile opinion in quite a few years, and they are, shall we say, firm in those opinions, especially the ones that are useless.” He gestured languidly. “However, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I wanted to see you about a more serious matter than the scintillating observations of our premiere strategic thinkers.”
“Why, Captain Pagadan,” Corey laughed. “I didn’t know you were such a master of sarcasm.”
Captain Pagadan nodded his thanks. “As you may imagine, it is a weapon that I keep honed but well out of sight. I only use it when it’s deserved, ma’am, and never against my superiors, at least where it will get back to them.” He stared at the walls of the tunnel, clearly weighing what he was about to say. “Captain Andersen,” he said without looking at her, “have you given any thought to the possibility of a ... a situational commonality in the most recent actions we have fought with the Imperial Fleet?”
“Not particularly, Captain,” Corey admitted after puzzling through his words. “I studied the individual reports, but that was all. It did not occur to me to explicitly compare them with each other. I have had other things on my mind lately.”
“Apology accepted, Captain. Perhaps we can make the time to review them together, or at least exchange notes. How is Captain Young? When I visited Alan recently, he was still sedated.”
“He was awake today. He appears to be well on the way to recovery. I expect he will be as much of a challenge to your doctors as I was to ours.”
“I am sure you were a model patient, Captain,” Captain Pagadan demurred, smiling. “Now regarding our last few actions, there is a pattern I believe I have identified, and I wanted to discuss it with you. Would you agree that it seems that we repeatedly find ourselves engaging greatly superior forces? I admit that we normally engage somewhat superior forces; after all, we do have the smaller navy. I am concerned that the Imperial forces we have engaged recently were much larger than intelligence reports led us to expect when we planned these operations. We have been consistently outnumbered two to one, three to one, and more. You’ve met our planners; you’ve just come from a conference with them. Would you consider them daring commanders who would knowingly send a Battle Group up against those odds?”
Corey and Admiral Johnson looked at each other. “Captain Pagadan,” Admiral Johnson said. “You are implying that someone is tampering with the intelligence reports your planners receive.”
Captain Pagadan nodded. “Disturbing thought, isn’t it? But the evidence is there, if you read the data right.”
“I did not find that conclusion in the reports I read,” Admiral Johnson said. “Was there an error in the translation?”
“I wish that were so,” Captain Pagadan answered. He hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully. “There is an unfortunate tendency in some of our senior officers to claim that everything went according to plan. Certainly, in the early years of this war, to claim otherwise often resulted in a quick transfer to a dirtside command. It requires a certain familiarity with our procedures to find a complete and accurate history of any action.”
“So how do you find out what actually happened?” Corey asked. “You must have a way of doing that.”
“We routinely perform a dump of all records when a ship docks,” he said. “It allows us to schedule replacement parts, order supplies, replace personnel who were lost or promoted, organize repairs, and obtain other items for that ship. Automating that was a great benefit to the line officers who were being grossly overworked when a ship returned.
“Most officers forget, however, that all of the tactical and scan records are also dumped at the same time and routed to the Fleet Tactical Simulator Department. One of the first things that Department does is combine all of the ship reports into a single account of the action that they make available for any senior officer to review. The purpose is to allow us to identify our mistakes and correct them before the next engagement.”
“I assume you have access to them,” Corey said.
“As a squadron commander, of course, I do. After I reviewed the actions and noticed the trend, I started tracing the intelligence reports we used to plan those actions. In three of the engagements we fought during the last two months, the industrial resources actually found in the contested systems did not match what was originally reported to be there, and neither did the ships we encountered.”
“Intelligence gets outdated,” Admiral Johnson said.
“It also gets compromised,” Captain Pagadan replied. “In two systems, the actual industrial resources were significantly less than what was originally reported. I could understand more resources; people build things. But less? I can’t buy a voluntary reduction in fueling resources, for instance, nor a similar reduction in mineral extraction and processing.”
“I read the original intelligence reports for those systems. Some of them are pretty good. Other reports I don’t trust at all. I was lucky to find a few people who were actually involved in the original analysis work. They denied ever seeing some of the data that wound up in reports to the Strategy Board, but they did note instances where certain data should have been in the final reports and was not.”
“What about the Incardine Sector?” Corey asked.
Captain Pagadan laughed. “According to the reports, that Sector was so heavily defended that it would be impossible to attack. The Empire has been pouring resources into Incardine, Ashtel, and the other systems in the area. There were supposed to be a minimum of 16 squadrons of warships defending that sector, with another 40 available 200 hours later.”
“And we went in with less than half that,” Corey said. “Why were we anywhere near that sector?”
“Perhaps we were meant to fail,” Captain Pagadan said. “You seemed blithely unconcerned with the odds.”
“I was relying upon our own intelligence estimates,” Corey said. She looked at Admiral Johnson, who nodded ever so slightly. “We had developed intelligence that suggested the forces covering that sector were fairly small.” The report she’d received had been so highly classified that she’d had to read it in the presence of the courier who’d delivered it, and return it to the girl. It had been a study of the flow of He3 in the sector, the fuel that every ship used. That had been something Captain Alexander had stressed over and over again in the strategy classes at Command & Staff School. Follow the fuel, and you’ll find the ships.
“We found 20 ships in the Incardine System,” Corey continued. “There were none in Ashtel, but Roggio had 16. Four survived the fight and got away.”
“That was typical,” Captain Pagadan said. “I can’t prove a consistent pattern of falsification. Whoever is orchestrating this scheme has had the sense to make changes to the original reports to cover later changes they made in planning reviews. Short of scouting those systems again, which would reveal our suspicions, there’s no way within the PSK to check our intelligence estimates.
“Of course, that leads me to wonder if there might be some way to check these reports outside of the PSK Intelligence system. Could I compare the reports I have to those of the Families?”
Admiral Johnson started to answer him, but stopped as she saw their shuttle station coming up. “I will bring this to the attention of the Eldest,” she said. “If she is agreeable, she will meet directly with you, and you may inform her of your suspicions.”
Captain Pagadan nodded. “I would be very appreciative if she agrees,” he said. “Until that time, Ladies, it has been a pleasure.” He stood politely as they left the shuttle car.
“He’s changed,” Admiral Johnson said a few minutes later when they were in their surface car.
“He has,” Corey said. “He’s grown with his responsibilities.”
“Do you think he is correct regarding the false intelligence reports?”
“Now that I think about it,” Corey answered, frowning, “he may be.”
“I’ll inform Eldest Debra immediately after we return to the Embassy. There are other implications to this, I’m certain. She will probably invite you to join our discussion.” Admiral Johnson stared out the window, her lips compressed in an angry slash.
“Corey, this is for your ears only. Speaking informally, I can barely imagine how you have managed to put up with these ... these fossils. I doubt I would have been as gentle with them as you were today.”
“Ma’am...” Corey started to say, and stopped as Admiral Johnson raised an admonishing finger. Corey bit her lip. It was a tradition in the Families Navy: two officers would get together for an informal talk. To overcome the differences in their ranks, they would use their first names only. It was one of the ways ideas could be kicked around without any rank or etiquette getting in the way.
“Petra,” she began again. “Captain Valentine gave me this advice when she told me about my posting to the PSK 2nd Cruiser Squadron. It was echoed by Eldest Debra the first time I attended a meeting of that collection of fools back there. They both told me to smile politely, speak in generalities, and then go ahead and do whatever I think needed to be done. I have found this advice makes it much easier to deal with senior PSK officers whose understanding of tactics would have been out of date when we first landed on Home. Of course, if they are still difficult, I invite them to prove their ideas in their Fleet Tactical Simulator.”
One of the Marines escorting them laughed.
“You have something to contribute, Trooper Wagner?” Admiral Johnson asked.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the Marine said, “but when Captain Andersen is running one of the sides in that simulator game, well, ma’am, nobody bets against her, not anymore. All anybody takes is bets on the final score. It was an expensive learning experience for some of them, ma’am, and one that I personally found quite profitable.”
“I’ll have to learn how to use that machine,” Petra said, a glint of malice in her eyes. “Is it easier than trying to hold the whole battle in your head, Corey?”
“Yes and no. It’s more mechanical. You have to push the right buttons at the right time to make it work. That means you have to keep yourself grounded on the bridge instead of in the fight. It has a number of limitations, too. Those are caused by certain underlying assumptions in the way the machine runs, and on the trip back from the attack on Rosefaire, I implied to Captain Pagadan that there were problems with the programming.”
“Implied?” The Admiral smiled. “So you’ve begun learning how to manipulate your opponents. That’s good.”
“Captain Pagadan was not an opponent.”
“No, but a large number of PSK officers are, whether they believe so or not. They have some cultural issues that keep them from taking our navy seriously.”
“Um, perhaps. Anyway, if I had to choose how to fight a battle, I would use our methods, and not just because they’re the ones I am familiar with. There were several times on our last cruise when I watched Captain Pagadan struggle to understand the tangle of information in his scan. His difficulty is not unique among his fellow officers. I suspect I have seen similar hesitations on the part of Imperial commanders.”
“What makes you suspect something was wrong with the PSK simulators?”
“They labeled some of the things I did during the fighting at Rosefaire as impossible. Their recommended solution to most tactical problems was to parallel the enemy course and fire.”
“Giving the other side a nice, easy, predictable target.” Petra shook her head. “And nobody questioned that nonsense?”
“The best PSK commanders don’t use their simulators except for strategic planning. They report that they do, however. If they did otherwise, apparently, they’d get in all sorts of trouble.”
“I’ll have to try one myself,” Petra repeated. “I want to know how it works.” She cleared her throat, and her expression settled into a semblance of calm. “Thank you for your advice on dealing with the PSK’s senior admirals, Captain Andersen.” She smiled. “Perhaps I will follow Captain Valentine’s suggestion myself. And don’t worry about briefing Eldest Debra. I’ll do that myself.”
When they reached the Embassy, Corey checked with Security. Alan’s sister had arrived and was waiting in a room next to the lobby. What could she find to talk about with Alan’s sister? She couldn’t think of anything herself, but there were Heather and Sonia’s letters. They had had plenty of questions about life in the PSK. She could bring those with her. In fact, she could add images to the words. She dug out the small album she’d put together of the holopics of her sibs and home. It even had holopics of Alan when he had been there. That could be a good way to keep the conversation going.
Alan’s sister Anna was wearing a white dressy thing with a lacy wrap around her shoulders, white shoes with those improbable heels, and a white hat with a large brim. A single red flower decorated the hat, and she wore a matching one on her breast. She was sitting on one of the couches, quietly clenching her hands together, a white bag covered with white beads resting on her lap. Sofia Andarushka was sitting on another couch, talking.
“Hello Anna,” Corey said, smiling as the two women stood. “Hi, Sofia, how is our guest?”
“Tired of all my questions, probably,” Sofia said. “I’ll have a lot to tell my sibs when I write to them next. How did it go with the Strategy Board?”
Corey tried to keep a smile on her face. “Admiral Johnson kept me from hurting them. They are men, after all. I imagine she’s sharing some of her observations with Eldest Debra.”
Sofia smiled. “I’ve heard her when she’s worked up about something. There are probably some bulkheads missing some steel.” She turned to Anna. “It was nice meeting you, ma’am. I would join you for dinner, but I have to get back to work.”
Anna offered her hand hesitantly, palm down. “It was nice meeting you, Captain Andarushka,” she said softly. “Perhaps we will have the pleasure again sometime.”
“What happened to her face?” Anna asked quietly after Sofia had left.
“Her face?” Corey had to think for a moment. She and Sofia had met in the hospital while they were both recovering from their wounds, and Sofia still had scar tissue covering part of the upper half of her face. The scarring was so much a part of her that Corey didn’t even notice it anymore. A lot of people in the Fleet carried visible reminders of the war.
“Sofia was hurt in a battle. We met in the hospital when we were both recovering. She has healed from that pretty well, don’t you think?”
“You were wounded?” Anna asked. She searched Corey’s face. “That’s right, you said you were. Alan did, too.”
“What did he say?” Corey asked. “I must admit I am curious.” She led the way down the hall to the elevator. Ordinarily, she took the stairs to help her stay in shape, but she didn’t think Anna could walk up the stairs, not with that dressy thing wrapped so tightly around her legs. Then, there were those shoes. Corey glanced at Anna’s feet. How did she manage to walk in those things? It looked like she was constantly in danger of toppling over. And getting up and down stairs had to be an adventure.
Anna smiled. “Oh, he described your sisters and he described you. His description doesn’t do you justice, though.”
“Justice?” Corey worried about that for a moment. Had she done something wrong? They might have laws regarding their Station or Status or something. Alan hadn’t mentioned anything about that. Maybe the laws only applied to women. She had once read that many cultures had crafted separate laws for women and men.
“Is there some law or something involved that I don’t know anything about?” she asked finally.
“Law?” Realization flared in Anna’s eyes. “Oh, no, that was an expression, a--a phrase. There is no law involved. What I should have said is you are much nicer looking than his description.”
“Oh.” Nice? He thought she looked nice? “I--I, well ... thank you.” She tried to think of something polite to say in response, but had no idea what was appropriate. Alan thought she looked nice? What did he mean by that? She forced her mind back to why she’d wanted to meet his sister. “Did he, uh, did he tell you much about, uh, how we met, things like that?”
“Oh, no, just that you met in a professional capacity. How did you two meet?”
“Oh, I helped save his ship in a battle.” She started to tell the story of Spatha’s engagement with the Idenux cruisers, but abbreviated it when she saw Anna’s eyes. The woman clearly wasn’t interested in hearing what had happened.
“Listen to me,” Corey said. “Boring you with stories like that.” The elevator opened. Around the corner she could hear muted conversation and the metallic clatter of utensils on porcelain. People were eating and something smelled delicious.
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Is it always so--is it always so--oh, I don’t know, so impersonal? What about the people in those ships?”
“You rescue them if they survive,” Corey responded with a shrug. “Before that, they’re trying to kill you, so you try to kill them first so they can’t do that.”
“It seems so--so inhuman.”
“War is,” Corey answered simply. She spotted an open table in a secluded nook on the far side of the dining hall. “We’re informal here,” Corey warned as she cut across the floor. A few people were staring curiously at Anna. Eldest Debra looked up from her dinner and nodded politely, then stabbed her fork in the air between her and Petra Johnson to emphasize some point in their discussion. Everybody else took their cue from her and went back to eating and talking.
Anna seemed nervous as they sat down. “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” she said, looking around.
“Oh?” Corey studied the woman’s face. She seemed worried about something. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel so out of place here.” She lowered her voice. “Is it true what I’ve heard, that you are all women?”
Corey nodded. “Yes, we are.”
“I mean back on your home planet.”
“That’s what I said.”
Anna seemed surprised. “I ... this may seem personal, Corey, but if you don’t have any men, how do you ... you know, babies?”
“Oh,” Corey said, understanding at last. “We do have some men.” She searched her memory for the last time she had heard of a male birth in the Family. “Let’s see, at least two of my cousins had boys that I remember. One of them was my cousin Janet.”
Corey laughed at that recollection. “Janet normally trains climbers and those who have to work on cliffs or in the trees, but when she got pregnant, and people found out it was a boy, it was like everyone wrapped her in cotton and feathers so she couldn’t bruise. There was no way anyone was going to let her get up on those rocks until after her baby was born.”
“Then most of you are women?”
Corey nodded. “Most of us are. My sib-sister--”
“Sib-sister. Alan tried to explain that. What does that mean?”
“I’ll answer that,” Corey promised, “but right now I’m hungry enough to eat a High Plains Splithoof, tail and all. Do you mind if we order our dinners first?”
Anna put her small bag down on one of their table’s unoccupied chairs. “I have an appetite as well,” she agreed. “Where do we go?”
“I checked with the kitchen staff,” Corey said. “They can get you any food you want. You don’t want to eat what we’re having.”
“Oh? Why?”
“It’s not that the food is bad--I don’t think we’re having standard Navy shipboard rations today. Our nutrition requirements differ from yours.” She picked up a piece of paper on their table, the day’s menu. “Today we’re having soup and either South Seas Bluefin or High Plains Splithoof. That’s no choice at all. Years ago I was on a cruise where all we had to eat was Navrats--that’s naval rations--and cultured Bluefin. We were out over 16 months. When we finally docked, we were all so desperate for anything other than Navrats and Bluefin that...” She laughed softly. “Maybe I’d better not finish that story. No, it’s Splithoof for me tonight.
Anna looked around the small table. “How do we order, or whatever we do?”
“I’ll order,” Corey said. She dropped her real hand on the shunt plate.
“Table 16.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Splithoof dinner. And I have a local with me. What do we have for her?”
“I’ll bring the list, ma’am.”
A few moments later a young rating showed up. “We’re ordering from this menu, ma’am,” the rating explained, handing a menu to Anna.
Anna took one look at the restaurant name at the top of the menu and shook her head. “Oh, no, this place is much too expensive.”
“You’re our guest,” Corey reminded her. “Order away.” She eyed the young rating. “Don’t tell me you lost again, Kadirah?”
“You think I’d learn, ma’am. I had Eldests backed with 9s, and I bet against a gal who had a straight flush showing. I was so sure that the three of Hearts was already discarded, but it wasn’t, and...” She shrugged apologetically.
“It won’t be long before you’ll be winning again,” Corey said. “What do we have for brew tonight?”
“Tropical Blend, Red Ridges Select, and Setosha Prime. We’re all out of Lowlands First Choice.”
“That’s a shame. I’d like the Red Ridges Select, please. It’ll be like a bit of home. What do you have for my guest?”
“Tea, I suppose,” Kadirah said. “We have some, but I don’t know what kind.”
“Tea for her, then.” Corey looked at Anna. “Have you decided yet?”
“I’ll have the Wildleg dinner,” Anna said. “Small, please, cooked with a pink middle.”
“Number 14, small,” the young tech said. “Aye, ma’am, I will call them right away.” She hurried towards the kitchen, returning in a moment with a steaming pot of brew and an empty mug for Corey. “I’ll have tea for you in just a minute, ma’am,” she added to Anna.
“You were asking me what a sib-sister is,” Corey reminded her.
“I was? Oh, yes, I was.” Anna nodded. “How is that different than a sister?”
Corey picked up the album she had brought and placed it so Anna could see the holopics. “These are my sib-sisters, Heather and Sonia,” she said proudly. “Heather is in the green, Sonia is in red. I’m the one in the middle, in the uniform.”
“You’re triplets,” Anna exclaimed.
“All girls are born in threes.” Corey smiled at the picture. The holopics had been on graduation day at Command & Staff. “Heather, Sonia, and I have the same mother, and we were born at the same time. That makes them my sib-sisters. My sisters would be any other daughters of my mother, if she had any, but that hardly ever happens.” She paused, remembering a message from Heather about how overworked the family eugenicist had been recently. “Well, it used to hardly ever happen. Things have changed since the war got bigger.”
“Are boys also born as triplets?”
Corey shook her head. “No, boys are single babies.”
“So the girls outnumber the boys 3 to 1?”
“No, more like 80 or 90 to 1. There are a lot more pregnancies with girl babies than with boys. When we first settled Home, we needed a lot of population, and that meant having more girls than boys.”
Anna studied the other holopics on the page. “You’re triplets, but you don’t dress alike.”
“Oh, everybody tries dressing alike when they’re young,” Corey laughed. “It’s something you outgrow pretty quickly.”
“You probably wanted to establish your own identity.”
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