“That’s right,” Delazlo added. “They came after us, not the other way around! Started hassling us. They started it!”
“I don’t give a shit who started it,” Jones said. “As it happens, I agree that hiring young thugs off the streets as peacekeepers is about as stupid an idea as I’ve seen yet. Politicians in action. However, the Ring Seven Authority has requested that you be turned over to the civil sector for trial. The charges are aggravated assault and battery.”
Shit. Ramsey swallowed, hard. In most cases, civil law took precedence over military law, at least within Commonwealth territory. They could be looking at bad conduct discharges, followed by their being turned over to the civilian authority.
No … wait a moment. That wasn’t right. ABCD was a punishment that a court-martial board could hand out, not a commanding officer.
“Before we go any further with this … do any of you want to ask for a full court?”
That was their right under regulations. They could accept whatever judgment—and punishment—Jones chose to give them under nonjudicial punishment, or they could demand a court-martial.
But there was absolutely no point in that. They’d all been caught absolutely dead to rights—AWOL and fighting with the civilian authorities. Better by far to take whatever Jones chose to throw at them; whatever it was, it wouldn’t be as bad as a general court, which could hand out BCDs or hard time.
“How about it? Ramsey?”
“Sir,” Ramsey said, “I accept nonjudicial punishment.”
“That go for the rest of you yahoos?”
There was a subdued chorus of agreement.
“Very well. You all are confined to the ship for … three days. Dismissed!”
Outside the lieutenant’s office, the six Marines looked at one another. “That,” Colver said, “was a close one!”
“She could have come down on us like an orbital barrage,” Chu added. “Three days?”
“I don’t get it,” Delalzlo said, shaking his head. “A slap on the wrists. What’s it mean, anyway?”
“What it means,” Ramsey told them, “is she’s keeping us out of worse trouble. Two days from now we’re shipping out.”
They’d learned that fact yesterday, shortly after coming back on board the Samar, but with other things on their minds, they’d not made the connection. The civil authorities might request that the six miscreants be turned over to them for trial, but unless and until they were handed over, they were part of Samar’s company. The needs of the ship and of the mission always came first; by restricting them to quarters, Lieutenant Jones was making sure that the civilian authorities didn’t get them.
Marines always took care of their own.
USMC Skybase
Dock 27, Earth Ring 7
1030 hrs GMT
General Alexander floated against the backdrop of the Galaxy, surrounded by the icons of the Defense Advisory Council. Despite the naggingly unpleasant presence of Marie Devereaux, it was actually a bit of a relief to be here. “Operation Lafayette,” he told them, “is on sched, with T-for-Translation Day now set for three days from now.”
For days, now, Alexander had been submerged in the minutiae of ops preparation. The actual strategic planning he tended to enjoy, with a sense of roll-up-the-sleeves and get things moving accomplishment. Going over the endless downloaded lists of logistical preparations and supply manifests, however, was sheer torture, and he found he was willing to endure even Devereaux’s acidly uninformed tongue to escape it, even if only for a little while.
“I don’t understand your use of the word ‘translation,’” Devereaux put in. “What does language have to do with it?”
“It has to do with a mathematical concept, Madam Devereaux, not with language,” he replied. “You can download the details here.” He paused, ordering his thoughts. How to explain the inconceivable? “Any point in space can be precisely defined in terms of its local gravitational matrix. If it can be so defined, it can be given a set of detailed spatial coordinates.
“Now, the paraspace plenum we call the Quantum Sea is co-existent with … or, rather, think of it as adjacent to every portion of four-dimensional space-time. Practically speaking, that’s where we draw vacuum energy from … the realm of quantum fluctuations and zero-point energy. If we know the precise special and gravitational coordinates of where we are, and the precise coordinates of where we want to go, we can translate one set of coordinates to another by rotating through paraspace.”
“General, that makes no sense whatsoever.”
He sighed. “In simple terms, Madam Devereaux, the Quantum Sea allows us direct, point to point access through paraspace to any place in the entire universe.”
“This is something naval vessels can do?”
“Not naval vessels, Madam, no. I don’t know the engineering specifics, but in essence the translation requires enormous amounts of energy. Skybase is large enough to accommodate the zero-point energy taps necessary to effect a translation … but nothing smaller could pull down that much power.
“So what we’ve worked out is a kind of shuttle plan. We take on board as many of the 1MIEF heavies as we can … the first load will consist of a Marine fleet strike carrier, a Marine assault transport, and either three destroyers or a destroyer and a light missile cruiser for fire support. We make the first translation from Sol to the Puller system, drop those four or five ships off, then translate immediately back to Sol to take on board the next load of ships, which will be queued up and waiting. It will take, we’re now estimating, a total of sixteen such transitions to get all eighty vessels of 1MIEF shifted out to Puller. Obviously, we can take on more light ships in one load, or fewer heavies. We’re only limited by the docking storage space on Skybase’s main hangar deck.”
“Essentially,” Admiral Orlan Morgan added, explaining, “they intend to use Skybase as an enormous fleet carrier.” His icon grinned. “In the case of a fleet strike carrier like the Chosin, Skybase becomes a carrier-carrier!”
“If you’ll recall,” Alexander continued, “Skybase was designed to reside in paraspace. It’s a fairly simple operation to move out of paraspace and into 4D space at any point of our choosing, if we have the proper field metrics and coordinates to make the transfer.”
“Why weren’t we told this before?” Senator Gannel put in. He sounded irritated. “It seems to me that this represents a significant strategic advantage, not only in war against other human stellar nations, but against the Xul.”
“That’s right,” Senator Kalin put in. “It also means we could send your battlefleet straight to Starwall or to Nova Aquila or wherever we want to go without having to pass through the Puller gate, without trespassing in PanEuropean territory!”
It was an effort not to lose patience with them. “To translate from one point to another,” he told them, “we need extremely exact coordinates for both points. We know the metric throughout Sol-space quite well, of course. We know the Puller system because we’ve had Marines out there for several years, now, and one of the things they’ve been doing, besides watching the Xul on the other side of the Stargate there, is taking gravitometric readings on local space … just in case. The stargates all put a considerable dimple into space-time, thanks to the pair of high-speed black holes each one has racing around inside its structural torus, and we take those measurements as a matter of course so that we can better understand the local matrix.
“We