Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet Read online

  "Better that, than to let our supposed allies start managing us," Lee assured him grimly. "As to expense, we have the entire fifteen percent take on the leases and development rights and outright sales of the best class A planet to hit the economy in over a decade, personal income equal to something over five percent of your Gross World Product right now and accelerating. In addition we have unusually large private land holdings for a prize crew and could sell mineral leases or tracts of land to raise considerable capital. So we can carry our crews indefinitely without it being any particular burden."

  "You know Fargone has always followed a course of slow and cautious development," the Admiral reminded them, steepling his hands below his chin. "We don't mean to get into a pissing contest with outside powers, especially fast growing ones, but we have only seen public releases about what your intention is in mounting this expedition. We have legitimate concerns about how you will be representing three species and many cultures, including Fargone, to anyone you meet."

  "We hadn't intended to storm through the Beyond like Cortez through the Americas," Gordon assured him. "We are in it for the loot, but only what is laying about unclaimed. If we run into any intelligences you may assume we'll treat them with respect. Pillage and burn, or bombard and subjugate, wasn't on our play card. It is Lee's opinion that our spherical expansion geometry by its nature gets far too slow as its surface area increases. If there is another more aggressive star-faring culture out there, they may meet us far closer than half way, rightfully claim all the territory they bypassed in detail, and hold it reserved for their own exploitation."

  "But how shall you present yourselves if you must negotiate with a new civilization, particularly a technological one?"

  "As what we are, a family business," Lee asserted. "If we meet someone who desires political entities with which to seek treaties and relationships, then they will have to seek them out or request they send an emissary. We can offer trade, but we are not in the treaty business."

  "These theoretical aliens may not believe an armed fleet represents a family enterprise."

  "I think you are the one having trouble believing we are a commercial venture. There is always the possibility these aliens may not have much more use for governments than I do," Lee said. "We shall be there and they may not see any pressing need to deal with you at such a great distance."

  "If you mean you will only supply us if we put an official government commander in charge of our expedition, so it is not a private enterprise, then let me make it clear. Over my dead body," Gordon said. "Go outfit and recruit and send your own expedition if that's what you want. I won't do it for you."

  "No, no. I can see where you'd think that was the direction I was headed. Actually what we had in mind was far more moderate. We'd like to send a ship along with you."

  Gordon and Lee looked at each other. This wasn't anything they'd anticipated at all.

  "Not in a command oversight position?" Gordon asked.

  "As an observer, subject to your overall command and use, except as any commander is responsible for his vessel both as to its survival and to refuse any orders he finds illegal or morally reprehensible. But if someone you meet does want to treat with a government they'll have a spox aboard available with limited power to speak for us or carry messages home."

  "Can your active duty military legally draw crew shares on discoveries?" Lee asked.

  "That is something I have the power to regulate in ten minutes with my signature. Do you want them to have shares, or depend completely on Fargone to supply and compensate them?"

  "I think it unreasonable to ask them, even if they are genuine volunteers, to serve elbow by elbow with others who may end up billionaires, or trillionaires, risking their lives and being gone from civilization for years possibly, without equal compensation. If we find even one class A world, it hardly matters if the bonus is split two-hundred fifty ways or three-hundred."

  "I agree," Gordon jumped in. "If there is not resentment going in, it may grow as they think upon the matter and feel the burden of the voyage. I don't want partners with conflicted feelings, who may decide they are being used badly."

  "So this is something you'd consider?" Serendipity asked.

  "What kind of ship?" Lee asked, suspiciously.

  "What would you have us send?" Serendipity asked her.

  "The biggest baddest heavy cruiser you have in service, give the commander authority to pick his volunteers from your whole navy and set anybody he doesn't want on the beach, without explanation. A fast courier grappled externally would be welcome too. I rode one of those and was impressed, but we will need to modify it. I'll buy one from you if altering it bothers you," she offered.

  Gordon was surprised. The man didn't twitch at her casual offer to buy a fast courier. "And send one civilian official of your government as a contingency and so it isn't strictly military oriented," Gordon agreed. "That should satisfy the statists... that is... the civic minded, I mean."

  "This is all we wanted and more," Serendipity assured them. "Given such easy agreement, I'll see to it you immediately have access to anything you wish to buy."

  "Next time, you'd get less suspicion and easier cooperation, if you go straight to asking that we talk, before laying out what we saw as threats and obstruction," Lee told him.

  "All this originated far above me, but I'll pass that thought on to the architects of our government," Serendipity promised.

  Chapter 2

  The Hinth proved a real challenge to recruit. Until recently there were only a few hundred having off-world experience who were not political sorts. The Human administrator over Hin had actually reduced the number allowed off world steadily instead of increasing them. Indeed, few Humans or Derf had ever seen a live Hinth. The few Hinth who were off their home world had received early exit permits as working spacers had been afraid until recently to even return home to visit Hin because they might never be allowed to leave again. If Hinth currently had off-world positions they were reluctant to leave those secure postings. That might change now that the Hinth had declared the Human treaty void and repudiated it, but any sizable number of Hinth leaving the planet would take months at a minimum to happen and the fleet was leaving in a few days.

  The Hinth didn't do well alone. Ha-bob-bob-brie, who Lee had met on Derfhome station, isolated himself away from his kind after a catastrophe wiped out his shipmates and family in an exploration gone bad. He'd offered his name and bared his face to Lee, in camaraderie, after hearing of her own loss of family. However other Hinth regarded him as insane to be able to live years without other Hinth companionship. In fact, the first Hinth Gordon and Lee had interviewed had visibly shivered and almost lost the ability to speak of it, trying to describe how abnormal his isolation was to proper sane Hinth. They'd had no idea when they met him that he was so unusual.

  The explorers had to amend their recruiting ads to allow signing Hinth as a group. They simply were not going to get any responses for individuals. Not unless, as Lee joked, they could advertize for crew in Hinth psychiatric hospitals. Thor didn't find that funny.

  Ha-bob-bob-brie they did hire, sane or not, as crew on the High Hopes. Their recruiters hadn't insisted on sanity for the other races after all. He seemed perfectly functional to them. He was a planetary landing specialist and as a bonus brought his own pressure suit and surface gear he already owned and had in storage. No few of the planet bound thought they were all crazy to go off so far into the unknown. The best they could do on short notice for other Hinth to take along was one family group of three, who would all remain together on the Retribution. The Hinth threesome seems relieved they would not be with Ha-bob-bob-brie. The idea the Hinth group would be close associates to the other crewmen and not wear the mask as they would have at home on Hin took a bit to work through. It said a lot about how hard set the custom was, that they still continued to wear the mask, but hanging lowered to their breast, like a Fargoer's medallion of rank. All the marks and writi
ng on their masks were important to them, as it spoke to what and who they were and they had no other way to show it to. It didn't seem to matter to them that not one Human or Derf in a thousand had any idea what the symbols on the mask meant.

  If the fleet found aliens they wanted be able to transmit video of three races working together in a peaceful association. Their ability to get along should suggest they would also be able to get along with other strangers too. Or that was Gordon's theory. The aliens of course might instead find such a thing an abhorrent mixing, but if that was the case then establishing good relations was probably a lost cause anyway.

  The military ships were all short crewed on purpose. In case of loss to mechanical failure or hostile action they wished to be able to double up a crew and leave a vessel behind. If such a tragedy happened, they would also destroy the abandoned ship to prevent its capture and examination. The Fargoers had a very hard time being persuaded to reduce their crew to the required level. They agreed in principle, just not in particular. Every position seemed to find a reason to be exempt from being cut. The deep space explorers of necessity were over staffed from their usual level. The High Hopes for example, had been run before by three crew members. That wouldn't work now as an armed command vessel.

  The ships being short crewed worked better on a long voyage for another reason. The volume of food and other perishables they laid to supply the crews was much larger than for a conventional voyage. The average commercial freighter might be away a month and carry supplies for a family crew from their home port where it was usually cheaper. An armed military ship might stretch that to two months with a steadily degrading menu, and perhaps a third month using emergency ration bars if it was a survival situation. They planned to carry more water too, for a safety margin, although they would have to mine and distil some eventually. To plan for two years for three different species with limited overlap in what they could share was difficult.

  They used spaces never intended for perishables and even grappled some food storage containers externally. But there was already both combat and conventional shuttles grappled externally. New weapons systems and the added fuel mining drones cluttering the hull. They also needed extra room internally for perishable items like filters and spares for just about any machinery having moving parts. There wasn't room for a full military crew with redundancy in critical jobs and all the supplies for two years. They were even going to try some very compact accelerated hydroponics for fresh salad things, which no ship in living memory had used, but they were trying it again in both DSEs and the Retribution to help morale. The Sharp Claws had no room for gardens, even short crewed, and Murphy's Law was still run as a Fargone military ship. They didn't intend to experiment or change their operations more than what was absolutely necessary.

  All but a half dozen of the ground attack were removed, and their slots filled with ship to ship X-head missiles. The X-heads were so expensive they took a sizeable chunk of Lee's cash to buy, even trading in the ship to ground missiles for their nuclear kernels. But the newly minted Fargone models had both better guidance packages and warheads that could be altered in the last seconds before detonation to emit their x-ray beams in a tight shotgun pattern, or set at specific angles to track up to six targets. Each now has a primary and five secondary beams. USNA warheads had a set geometry and needed to be oriented exactly to put their single very powerful beam on target. The back portion of the main beam destroyed the carrier missile even before the fireball.

  Unless the USNA had made some recent advances they had carefully kept secret, these new missiles would give a slight advantage between two ships of the same size and throw weight to the Fargone equipped ship. Any edge could mean life or death however.

  Gordon also had a secret weapon he'd ordered developed after his unpleasant fight with a USNA fleet on the edge of the Fargone system. He'd aborted his run out system knowing a fleet was waiting to ambush him and fired blind at their potential emergent point before he'd diverted his course to another system on a jump that was far too risky.

  He'd had a Fargoer weapons developer, but working in New Japan, make him a jump drone carrying an X-head. The same man who designed their peashooter. Gordon could now fire blind down a jump track he was certain had an ambush waiting on the far side, or fire it after a fleeing vessel he had no chance of catching in a straight chase before it jumped out. It was an ugly weapon, with the potential risk of killing an innocent ship sight unseen if you guessed wrong. A political entity would never risk making them given the potential for error and the resulting public condemnation. But war is messy and survival sometimes costly. He only had two made and put them on the Retribution. He didn't publicize the drone's existence, being somewhat ambivalent about them himself.

  The considerable computing power to allow the drone to act autonomously and pick a target or search and continue a pursuit after making a jump, cost much more than the nuclear explosive part of the warhead. To the point it seemed an extravagant waste to treat that much computer as a perishable asset, but unleashing a stupid weapon on the far side of a jump line was even less defensible morally. The hardest but most important instructions to write were those that made the expensive weapon abort a pursuit and self destruct if there was any uncertainty about its target.

  With a planned absence of several years the crew could not be left to choose their own kit. Cotton underwear and socks, popular and low cost, wore out too fast. Crew were required to buy extra longer lasting hemp, bamboo or synthetics. Shoes had to be durable, and one or two back-up pairs necessary depending on the person's duty stations. The shoes a fabricator made always seemed to draw complaints about comfort, even though they fit perfectly. Personal drugs and other consumables also had to be stockpiled for the crewmen.

  A generous personal mass allowance for recreational items, including video, music and even recreational intoxicants was an acknowledgement of how long they'd be gone. Fargoers all seemed to bring at least a half case of their excellent rum. The Purser assured Gordon from personal experience that the cure is worse than the disease when trying to control booze and drugs in a ship. Denied any outlet crew would raid food supplies to make alcohol, grow various weeds, mushrooms and even assemble entire synthesis labs from spare parts and shop supplies.

  Some of the crew brought small trade items in their mass allowance, hoping they'd meet an alien race who would appreciate them. The expedition itself carried little, thinking it a very hard matter to predict. They could dip into stores to a certain extent if they needed trade goods.

  Almost all the human supplies loaded at Fargone. Derf specific items came from Red Tree. Much of the Derf food came directly out of Red Tree clan stores, with the bonus that some was safe for Humans. The ships rotated to Derfhome to load stores and back to Fargone as their refit and weapons loads became available. There was such a shortage of Hinth related items outside their system that a fast courier had to be dispatched to acquire more food, medical supplies and personal weapons for the bird-like aliens. A different courier, because theirs was being fitted with a fuel scoop.

  The usual ship's web package for entertainment and instruction was five to ten percent of the English web. The fleet needed a much larger resource if they dealt with aliens. In the end each ship loaded near half of the English web with special attention for Derf and Hinth elements. They also had obscure texts and references for language and translation, including dead languages, cuneiform, runes and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Studies on stellar formation and planetology were made up to date and added. The history of mankind was fleshed out in some detail, no matter how unpleasant the truth was.

  Given the difficulty of picking and packing bulky trade goods a limited amount of coinage in standard weights was brought along in copper, silver, gold, platinum and palladium. They welded the safe for the money right into the center of the flight deck. It wasn't that much volume, but it was a significant mass item. The ship machine shops had extra cutting bits and the 3D machines extra st
ocks of exotics like tungsten and beryllium since they'd be far from any world offering services.

  One point on which Gordon drew the line, was the inclusion of a ship's cat in addition to the regular testing animals. Gordon had personal experience that cats got into trouble on ship. Sometimes in inaccessible areas. He did allow a full cubic meter stuffed with seeds of every plant that might be an item for trade since it massed so little and packed so compactly.

  Gordon went over the manifests personally. He was horrified to find there was no shared supply of brandy laid in, neither was there sufficient small arms ammunition in his estimation. There was the usual moon-hut and tent in the deep space explorers, but no common tenting or camp cots and such, if they wanted to bring the crew of the other two war ships down to a planetary surface. All that was corrected.

  Thor, his second in command and weapons officer, insisted the cruisers bring a couple hard suits with support gear and parts, such as shipyard workers wore for long shifts doing exterior repair. If they had some major damage to deal with along the way soft suits were neither as safe or comfortable as hard shell suits for heavy labor in high vacuum. They had better maneuvering jets and offered better radiation protection too. In the end the master manifest was so large it seemed a miracle it could all fit inside six hulls.

  Both the Sharp Claws and the Retribution were armed with the newer interceptor missiles in the ready tubes. Their older stock of missiles held for reloads. The deep space explorers were doing a minor refit so that the three short range defensive missiles they usually carried would be replaced with the full military versions. The actual tube needed to be longer so it was extended beyond the hull since lengthening it internally would have been far too complicated. Neither ship carried the sophisticated fire control software of a military ship but much of the critical controls resided in the missile itself.