Kris Longknife's Successor Page 7

  All were within one percent of each other.

  Inwardly, Sandy groaned. This did not bode well for her fight with the alien raiders. If their “Enlightened Ones” could get their act together, they could give the humans a run for their money. The question was, could they get their act in order?

  For a hundred thousand years, they hadn’t been in a real fight. You had to wonder if the laser design they’d hit the humans with five years ago had changed any in all that time. So far, the humans had changed a whole lot faster than the aliens.

  Were the kids raised as hunters with the rebel gene more flexible than the ship-borne “Enlightened Ones?” Were the ship lords willing to learn? Were they able to learn?

  The bos’n announced it was time to motor away from the pier. Sandy boarded the longboat and quickly strapped in. She mulled her problem over as she did so.

  In the end, she found there was no real answer. The aliens were out there and they’d likely make her fight them again and again.

  The human race would have to keep adapting faster than they did. It was either that, or die.

  8

  Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago, Viceroy to Alwa and Minister with Full Portfolio to Aliens didn’t relax until her fleet jumped into the cats’ star system.

  Since the trip out had been made at high speeds, it was not possible to tiptoe up to a jump and put the periscope through to get a look at what was waiting on the other side. Instead, the battlecruiser Steadfast stayed a good ten minutes ahead of the main fleet. It would go through the jump and send back a near instantaneous messenger rocket with a report on what was within a million klicks of the jump.

  Fortunately, all the reports were negative. The aliens did not show their face this voyage.

  For that, Sandy was grateful.

  Now, she looked down on a system she was getting to know all too well. She had Comm send off a query to Admiral Drago for a status report on the cat situation. Her last report had been a month ago and had not mentioned that the cats were refusing to send more workers to Alwa.

  The first message from Admiral Drago arrived several hours later.

  The main screen lit up with his smiling face. “I’m glad to see you, Admiral Santiago, but to what do I owe the honor of such a huge battle fleet? It can’t be good.”

  A few minutes later, a reply came in to her first query.

  This one showed him shaking his head, ruefully. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think these bloody felines were related to the common house cat. They never seem happy with anything. Well, most things. They’re always happy when we sell them some new tech. It’s just that they keep complaining that we’re charging too much. They whine that we’re taking money out of their economy that they need to grow. I hope you brought Amanda Kutter back with you. I need some advice on what monetary policy helps an economy grow. At the moment, we are taking in a lot more money than we can spend on the fleet.”

  The admiral who had to ride herd on the cats paused for a moment before going on. “As for their refusal to let us tap their labor force, I think it’s a try at renegotiating our royalty system. I’ve tried to explain that I don’t have the authority to revise a treaty you signed, but I’ve gotten nowhere. I’m glad you’re here. I hope you’ll have Jacques La Duke at your elbow. I swear, the social practices of this cat house is driving me crazy. Sorry to be such a wet blanket.”

  Drago’s gaze then took on a hard glint. “You still haven’t told me why you brought such a huge fleet. It’s not that I won’t be able to feed you all. The cats will be glad to sell you damn near anything to get their money back, but I can’t believe you brought a couple of fleets out here just to negotiate a labor agreement.”

  Sandy’s reply advised Drago that she did, indeed, have Jacques and Amanda at her elbow for negotiations, but the fleet was there for a more sanguine purpose. “We have a report of alien raiders sniffing around your perimeter.” That said, she went on to brief him on what she knew. She also sent him a full report on the battles she’d fought around the Alien home system.

  “You have been busy,” was Drago’s later reply. “I’ll try to stretch Kiel Station out to handle a few more battlecruisers, but we won’t be able to dock your entire fleet here.”

  Sandy let him know she had four hundred thousand tons of Smart MetalTM, some of which he could use to enlarge his station.

  A lot of planning and preparation was done on the voyage in from the jump point. While the Victory and her squadron mates docked immediately, four of the fast transports docked right next to them. While Sandy prepared to meet with Admiral Drago and his staff, Smart MetalTM streamed from three of the frigates into the station. It was quickly spun out into an extra couple of kilometers of A Deck with piers attached.

  Cameras on A Deck showed Sandy the weird process of the aft of the space station distancing itself farther and farther from the camera as stairs, elevators, and escalators sprouted to take people up and down to the docked ships.

  “Ain’t Smart Metal wonderful?” Admiral Drago drawled as he reported to Sandy’s day cabin. He brought several of his staff, along with four civilians. They greeted Jacques and Amanda as if they’d just found water in the desert.

  “Is it that bad?” Jacques asked the two that seemed intent on wrapping him in a bear hug.

  “Those cats are crazy like foxes,” a young woman said, stepping back under the glower from Amanda. “I think they all need ten years in therapy before we come back here.”

  “And the economy?” Amanda asked the two that had been only a bit more reticent in their greetings to her.

  “It’s tearing itself apart,” a young woman answered before an older male could organize his thoughts.

  “I think we should settle in for a formal briefing,” Sandy suggested, and under her watchful gaze they gathered around a conference table that had suddenly appeared in her day quarters as the right bulkhead, the one between her day and night quarters retreated, squishing down her bed and furnishings to make more room for her guests.

  It was a reality of how much Smart MetalTM was becoming normal that no one batted an eye at the magic.

  Sandy sat at one end, Amanda and Jacques at her elbow, Penny next to Amanda. Admiral Drago took the foot of the table with his intel officer at his elbow. The economic team settled on the side of the table across from Amanda. The sociologists took the other side.

  “Would anyone care for tea?” Sandy asked. When no one objected, she had Penny order up service.

  “Now,” she said, eyeing four-star admiral Bret Drago, “What’s going on below our feet?”

  “The planet is in turmoil,” Bret said, and eyed the economists.

  “Actually, it’s hard to say whether the cause of the uproar is the economy, or the sociology and psychology of the cats,” the young woman economist said. The other three civilians leaned back in their chairs, apparently ready to let her run with it. She glanced at them, then launched into her report.

  “All of the feline governments have to walk a careful balance between a lot of competing demands. They have the usual forms of government. There are strong woman dictators ruling over a few countries. To maintain a grip on things, there is the usual amount of graft being passed around and a lot of full prisons. The other two options, oligarchies and democracies, try to harness the factions and bring them into the government in one fashion or another. Still with me?”

  Sandy nodded.

  “Then we arrived and change hit them like a run-away space ship. Just the sight of us was enough to get all sorts of things going. You saw a few of those splinter factions last time you were here, Admiral. One of them kidnapped you.”

  Sandy scowled. She still had nightmares of standing sans pants in front of her command team.

  “Amanda, Jacques, you were still here as the governments fell and reformed around the approval or disapproval of letting their bright youngsters come work for us. It got easier to swallow that deal when we started sharing our technology that was an
cient to us, but cutting edge to them. We thought that would keep them happy for a while.”

  “I gather that it didn’t,” Sandy said.

  The young woman nodded. “Not for much more than a week after you shipped out. Our technology was a lot more disruptive than we thought. Maybe some of us were a bit too helpful, but it seemed like they needed some assistance figuring out how to make the new electronic gizmos, and set up the infrastructure for cell phones, computers, and nets.”

  “Some of our people were way too helpful,” Admiral Drago growled.

  “How so, Bret?”

  “They’re crafty, these cats. The more they played dumb, the more some folks wanted to help the poor little pussies.”

  “They suckered us, Admiral,” the economist admitted. The other three civilians nodded guiltily.

  “At least we got payment contracts signed for the extra tech we delivered,” the guy economist said.

  “Which caused the money drain,” the gal said.

  “Well, yes,” he admitted.

  “Okay, let me interrupt this tale of folly to check on a few things close to my heart,” Sandy said. “Are the cats involved in a world war?”

  “No, Admiral,” Bret shot back. “Actually, they’ve closed down several of their long-running wars. We embargoed tech to both sides that had a war going on. If they’d held out, they might have managed to steal some of it, but all of them caved real fast when they saw the way the tech was helping the countries we gave it to. It didn’t take the little buggers long to figure out how to use computers and better commlinks in their military. No one dared being left behind. Also, I offered to set up tribunals to hear the claims that were at the root of most of the wars. I think we managed to settle most of them in a fair and even-handed manner.”

  “Even-handed?” Sandy said. “No one got taken advantage of? No one was occupied by us?” Sandy well remembered how the British Empire ‘accidentally’ ended up owning most of the Indian sub-continent back in Earth’s history.

  “Ma’am, none of us want to spend too much time dirtside,” Bret said. “It’s way too easy to piss off one of those cats, and we don’t have the claws for one of their little cat fights.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said, going on, “So they got more technology fed into their economies faster than we intended, and they got stuck paying a lot more money to us than they felt like they were making? How’d that go?”

  “We ended up with lots of paper money and not a lot we wanted to spend it on. Hell, beyond food, clothes, and minor personal items, we were pretty much banking the money.”

  “Hold it,” Sandy said, puzzled. “If they’re using fiat money, and we’re taking a lot of it out of circulation, why don’t they just print up some more to replace what we’re hoarding?”

  “Nothing is stopping them, ma’am, and they did,” one of the sociologists, the older fellow, said. “However, the howl went up that we were wrecking the economy, which was just a smoke screen to cover the disruptions tech was causing. Every new technology has some winners and some losers. You start selling cars and suddenly blacksmiths aren’t shoeing horses and buggy whip manufacturers and workers are out on the street. What we’re seeing below is a major economic reorganization being done at breakneck speeds. It’s been a lot more than their culture or society can handle.”

  “And we space aliens are right here to take the fall for all the problems,” Sandy growled.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bret said. “I’ve been tempted to pack up, leave, and let them stew in their juices for a few years. Now I understand that is not an option.”

  “Oh, it’s an option, just not one I want to take,” Sandy said. She turned to Jacques and Amanda. “How much trouble would I cause if I asked the cats to launch into a major military buildup? We may have the cash on hand to start buying stuff, but what would we need to keep it going without making things worse?”

  “What’s their labor market?” Amanda asked two resident economists.

  “The larger, industrialized nations are suffering a bit of a recession, what with all the new stuff coming on-line and the old jobs evaporating. They are at something like six or seven percent unemployment.”

  “Resources?” Amanda asked.

  “Some of the shifts in the economy are causing shortages. Steel is in short supply as they build new factories. The whole idea of pure silicon wafer chips has them starting up an entirely new technology and industry that has never been thought of. Their quality control is poor, but getting better. They had just stumbled on a large supply of rare earths before we got here and weren’t quite sure what to do with it. They’re digging like mad right now. It all depends on what you want.”

  “Doesn’t it always,” Amanda said to herself.

  “Okay, you can continue your briefing in a moment, but first I need to organize a dinner in the honor of a whole lot of boss cats. Bret, can you send Penny a list of who leads the top thirty or forty countries and invite them up here for a black-tie affair?”

  “Yes,” and the admiral tapped his commlink.

  “I got it, Admiral,” Penny said.

  “Call them and put them on screen.”

  The wall to Sandy’s left turned into one huge screen, divided into some forty windows. Most showed minor functionaries, very panicked and busy making apologies for their leader being unavailable at this moment.

  “Penny, get me a direct line.”

  Admiral Drago’s intel guy shot Penny a different list of commlinks. A moment later, the windows began to fill in. Some showed cat leaders sitting at their desks or around tables. One was just getting out of the shower. At least four were sitting up in bed. Behind two, male cats were fleeing the frame.

  “I apologize for barging in on you so indecorously. However, I have just arrived at our space station.”

  “We notice that you have a very large fleet,” the President of Columm Almar interrupted.

  “We will likely discuss that at our dinner that we are holding in your honor,” Sandy said.

  “Is this an honor we will be able to walk away from?” the Prime Minister of the Bizalt Kingdom asked, dryly.

  “I assure you, all of you will be sleeping in your own beds tonight. That is, assuming you are able to sleep after our post-dinner discussion.”

  “So, you’re here to discuss the labor treaty?” the President asked.

  “I bring assurance that the failure to meet your obligations to send some of your subjects and citizens to work with our technologies is a minor matter to me right now.”

  “Then what is the major issue?” the Prime Minister asked.

  “For that, you will have to come and see. Will you please advise Admiral Drago’s staff of where you wish to be picked up? We will have a longboat at those coordinates in eight hours. Again, I apologize for disturbing you, and I wish you a pleasant day.”

  Sandy paused for a moment. The screen went blank. “Penny, is the commlink broken?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve transferred it to Admiral Drago’s Operations Officer.”

  “Good,” Sandy said.

  Now Bret about split a gut as he laughed. “Wishing them a pleasant day. After you dropped that bomb on them, and dropped it after showing them that you can get through to their very personal commlink . . .” The old admiral had to pause to guffaw and then catch his breath.

  “No doubt,” Sandy agreed, dryly. “Okay, folks, we’ve got a formal dinner to plan, a major revision to the cats’ economy and culture to sketch out, and only eight hours to do it in. Bret, can your people arrange for the necessary cat food as well as human food?”

  “How do you want your steak, Admiral?”

  “Bloody rare,” Sandy snapped back.

  “We will have dinner arranged for fifty, eighty, or five hundred, ma’am.”

  “Good. The guest list did grow last time,” Sandy admitted.

  The easiest thing settled, Sandy sat back to listen to a whole lot of talk. Some of it was actually helpful.

  9
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  Sandy gave herself just enough time to shower and dress carefully in her formal dinner jacket. Tonight, she settled for a skirt. After all, among the cats, it was the women who made the rules and it was better that she distinguish herself from her male subordinates. She sent word to all the women attending the dinner to do the same.

  After some thought, she switched to a skirt that was as short as the regs allowed. These cats wore nothing but coats, jackets, or harnesses. It would be better to show some leg, just not as much as she’d ended up showing upon her last visit while needing rescue.

  The Victory had no Forward Lounge like Kris Longknife’s ships had, and it was still dry. Still, Sandy was able, through the magic of Smart MetalTM, to create a large ballroom just off the landing bay. The cat leaders would walk straight from their barge or longboat directly into the banquet hall.

  Sandy did not want to parade the cats past a lot of high-level human technology. Just knowing that a room like the ballroom could be created in eight hours was enough shock and awe for one night.

  Clearly, the night would hold enough shock for them.

  A quarterdeck had been established at the doors from the docking bay to the ballroom. As usual, it was marked off by ancient artillery shells and a fine, complex macramé. There, Admirals Santiago and Drago awaited their guests.

  The bosons on the barges and longboats worked with the landing control team on the Victory to do a fine job of landing the guests. No lander missed a hook and had to go around. Thus, Sandy was presented with a long and continuous line of dignitaries and their associates.

  Admiral Drago’s intel officer sifted through the national leaders and those accompanying them to separate out those who were the most important; they, their deputies, and leaders of their opposition parties were introduced to Sandy and Bret.

  Lesser officials were shifted to a receiving line made up of Sandy’s three fleet commanders. Those lower down were sent directly into the Banquet Hall through two doors on either side of the quarterdeck that magically appeared when it became clear that, once again, the cats had brought quite an entourage.