Ian Douglas - Deep Space

“‘Foreign government’? Sir, this is the Confederation we’re talking about! Earth’s government!”

“The relationship of the USNA to the Confederation is still … let’s just say it’s still being tested. What I’m saying is that interfering with a nation’s choice of its own government violates the provisions of the Confederation Charter.”

“We’ve been part of the Confederation for three hundred years! We were one of the founding states of the Pax!”

“Yes, and the original constitution stated that each nation within the Pax was sovereign, that it would determine its own form of government and that it would retain control of its own military forces. This First Right thing is something new … an abridgement, an erosion of our rights under that charter.”

“Sometimes, rights must be surrendered for the good of the whole,” Valcourt said. “An individual doesn’t have the right to kill another person, where a national government can wage war and kill millions.”

Koenig gave a mental shrug. “I know we don’t agree on this, Madam Speaker. Just how did you reply to the question?”

“About how our citizens would respond to Geneva taking control of our military? I told them to take a look at the celebrations going on outside in the Freedom Concourse,” she said. “It would appear that the citizenry approves of less interference from Geneva, not more.”

“And their response?”

“They said that things change, situations change … and that the people can be led. That, after all, is the whole purpose of government.”

“I would say that government is supposed to express the will of the people, and to secure and protect that people’s rights. ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ remember?”

“I would suggest, Mr. President, that you are a few centuries out of date. Those words were destroyed when the Chinese dropped Wormwood into the Atlantic Ocean.”

Koenig sighed. Sometimes he did feel out of date. “Shall we agree to disagree, Madam Speaker? Once again?”

“My apologies, sir. I didn’t intend that to sound impertinent.”

“Not at all.” He hesitated. “I’m curious, though. What were these … Europeans, you say? What did they want from you? Why did they approach you?”

“I think they genuinely wanted to know how we Americans would react to the invoking of the Military Rights Act. They approached me because I am the Speaker of the House … which means, technically at least, that I speak for the American people.” Her image gave a wan smile. “After this past election, I doubt that that will be so for much longer.”

Koenig nodded. Valcourt represented an uneasy alliance within the House—Unionists, Progressives, and a half dozen smaller parties, including the Reclamationists, the New Order Socialists, and the Popular Neodemocrats—and as such she’d been the face and the voice of the loyal opposition throughout most of his first term as president.

The term loyal opposition had just taken on a new, stronger meaning for Koenig. Valcourt had come to him with the warning, rather than seeking political advantage for herself or her party through some kind of alliance with Geneva. He was impressed. He’d not known Julie Valcourt was capable of passing up a political opportunity.

“I don’t know about that, Madam Speaker,” he told her. “There’s nothing like a threat from outside to pull a people together, and let them know they’re all working for the same goal.”

“We’ll have to see about that, Mr. President. For now, though … I must ask you. What are you going to do about this … this power grab? Will you risk a civil war?”

“I don’t know, Madam Speaker. Like I said, I only heard about it a few hours ago.”

“A delicate situation, sir.”

“Delicate doesn’t tell the half of it. If I give in, I set a precedent, and it’ll be all but impossible to reverse it. If I refuse, even if we don’t end up in a civil war, Earth will end up divided and scattered, unable to agree on a common front against the Sh’daar.”

“‘Who speaks for Earth?’” Valcourt quoted.

“You mentioned the Europeans. Do you think there’s a faction within the Confederation? A split we could use?”

“I’m not sure. I think Brazil has sided with the EU. Russia may be undecided. Ukraine is with the Europeans. I think North India and the EAS are sitting on the fence, waiting to see how it all shakes out.”

“Pretty much business as usual,” Koenig said. “China and the Theocracy will be watching closely too, but I suspect they’ll be siding with us.”

Neither China nor the Islamist Theocracy were members of the Confederation … the gulfs left by several world wars continued to exclude them from a world government.

Which, of course, meant that the Confederation wasn’t truly a world government, did not, in fact, represent a united Earth.

“I’m terrified, Mr. President, that this is going to end in world war. Humankind may not survive. If it does, it will not be able to resist the Sh’daar when they finally come.”

“On that, Madam Speaker, you and I are in complete agreement,” Koenig told her. “I just wish I could see a third alternative …”

TC/USNA CVS America

USNA Naval Base

Quito Synchorbital

1315 hours, TFT

“Here they come, Captain,” Connie Fletcher told him. “They’re making the most of it, aren’t they?”

“You think that display is just to impress us?” Gray replied.

“Maybe they just want to impress themselves,” Admiral Steiger observed. “Kind of like team spirit, y’know?”

The Confederation flotilla was decelerating into synchronous orbit, inbound from Mars after a two-hour passage. Those warships, Gray knew, had been assembled from all across the Sol System, and several had arrived over the past few days from the nearer extrasolar colonies—Chiron, Hel, New Earth, Bifrost Orbital, Santo Iago, and Thoth.

In the van were four star carriers—the British Illustrious , the North Indian Kali , the European Union’s Klemens von Metternich , and the EAS Simon Bolivar —light carriers measuring from 600 to 850 meters from their mushroom caps to the ends of their drive stems.

In a loose swarm of vessels moving astern and on the flanks were fifty-one additional Confederation warships, from fleet gunboats and light bombardment vessels to Admiral Delattre’s flagship, the massive railgun cruiser Napoleon . With tightly controlled bursts from their plasma maneuvering thrusters, the Confederation fleet began edging toward the open gantries of the synchorbital military docking complex.

“Fifty-five warships,” Gray observed. “That’s a hell of a lot of team spirit. They outnumber us, that’s for sure.”

The America battlegroup currently numbered just twenty-four vessels, though eight more USNA warships were docked at the Quito Synchorbital, undergoing repairs or refits. The Confederation fleet was trying deliberately to overawe the North-American squadron, of that Gray was certain. He wondered if Steiger was going to roll over and play dead on this one. Steiger had commanded a number of vessels before his appointment as CO CBG-40, but it had been a long time since he’d seen combat. Word was he’d been a lieutenant commander in the CAG office on board America during Crown Arrow twenty years ago. He might be pretty rusty.

But then, it had been twenty years since Gray had seen combat, and he was rusty as well. The Sh’daar Truce had been two decades of quiet … no raids, no planetary assaults, and even potential human enemies—the Islamists and the Chinese Hegemony, for instance—had been keeping a non-confrontational profile.