Things Fall Apart: Chapter 63

Robinson Station, Tau Ceti, 16.8.775 CW

21 megaseconds since the Catastrophe

Vadim Karenski's alarm sounded. He silenced it and rolled over. He did not rise immediately, the way he ordinarily would have, the way he had almost every wake-shift over two gigaseconds of his career.

Today, he was old. He was tired. And he just could not see any good reason to get out of bed.

He had given his life to the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet, to training its future officers. Now, after twenty-one megaseconds with no contact from outside, he was forced to conclude that fleet probably no longer existed.

The Organization behind the Fleet commanded less of his attention and loyalty. In truth, the TCTO was not enough of a government, of a nation, even of a federation to really command much loyalty in and of itself. Some people made more of it, some people less. Its main attraction, at least to him, was that it had been the mechanism by which multiple systems had pooled resources to build the Fleet.

Regardless, that organization was likely also gone, for all intents and purposes. The presidium rotated its "capital" every 150 megaseconds, and had been in the process of relocating to Ross 508. All its members—including much of the admiralty board of the fleet—had been en route to, or already arrived there when things went boom.

Even here in Tau Ceti itself, the station he now commanded almost by accident was the last known remnant of that organization in space. Tau Ceti Anchorage, which had formerly orbited out in the dust band, was gone. Dozens of smaller habitats, gone. The time compression relays that linked them to other systems, gone.

Downwell, Cherryh's World was fighting environmental calamity from power plants that had gone into meltdown. The bulk of Karenski's surviving inships, shuttles, and boats were tied up in relief operations, or in some cases simply sitting on the ground acting as power plants for cities that no longer had any. Solar and wind farms were going up at a prodigious rate, but it would still be a couple hundred megaseconds before there was anything like enough wattage to meet demand.

Solar and wind power had finally won their long argument with nuclear power the hard way. In the meantime, something needed to keep the lights on.

For the hundredth-or-so time since it all began, Karenski thanked a deity he didn't really believe in that the plants had merely melted down and had to be scrammed, and not actually exploded like so much else had.

He was equally thankful that none of the starships that had turned hostile had chosen to violently ground themselves. Even one of those ships, deliberately aimed at the planet at full burn, could have caused an extinction event.

Robinson Station survived—mostly—because he had chosen to believe the paranoid concerns of a handful of co-conspirators. He had used his considerable influence, if meagre authority, to maneuver things. He'd gotten bulwarks in place to ensure that an AI rampage could not get to the reactor, or to life support. He'd coached the station's Chef instance in what to do. He'd done all of it over the objections of the actual commandant of the station, and behind the backs of the Admiralty. On paper, he should have been facing a court martial.

In practice, after the catastrophe, the commandant who had objected resigned in tears, naming Karenski his successor. The admiralty, of course, weren't here to say otherwise. Neither they nor their ship had come back, which told him all he needed to know about how seriously they'd taken his concerns.

Thus it was that Vadim Karenski, retired admiral and semi-retired professor, was now the de facto Fleet Admiral for a fleet that no longer existed, representing an organization that only existed because he did. Cherryh went along with the fiction for the moment because Karenski was coordinating those relief efforts "on behalf of the organization," and they needed that coordination.

Meanwhile, at the system boundary were three freighters out of Thessaly. They had each broken jump within a couple megaseconds of the catastrophe, and had been stranded out there ever since by a combination of cultural stubbornness and genuine resource shortage.

With no anchorage to refuel from and no in-built ability to scoop for themselves, they couldn't go home. These freighters were antique technology—they might actually be antiques. Thessaly just kept sending them in endless rotation, bringing metals Tau Ceti was poor in for straight-barter exchange with goods and materials Tau Ceti was abundant in.

They had plenty of fuel to just orbit. Karenski had just enough in-system craft he could work loose from Cherryh to get them supplies. But he had no way to get them enough reaction mass for them to jump home. He had no tankers, and not enough construction staff at the surviving shipyard to build one. They were all downwell building solar-and-wind farms.

Despite the extremity, the freighters refused to come downwell, where he might have refueled them from Robinson's bunkers, and refused to abandon their ships and simply take refuge. Just eating the food he was sending them was apparently jeopardizing their chances of being allowed to set foot on their homeworld again.

Karenski did not even pretend to understand. He just despaired.

And now, their life support systems were starting to fail, their morale had failed ages ago, and Karenski could do nothing for more for them. They refused to give him necessary information he could have used to replicate them parts. Apparently, if they turned up at home with foreign parts in their ships, Thessaly Control would trigger their self destruct mechanisms.

Really, what the hell is wrong with those people?! he thought for the millionth time in a megasecond.

So Karenski lay in bed long past his alarm because he simply saw no point in getting out of it.

He was saved from wallowing in depression by the comm chiming. He almost didn't answer it, but he knew that would just send some earnest young lieutenant with an override card in to do a wellness check on the Old Man. Pride would not allow him to answer the call laying down even if he had no intention of turning on the camera, so his plan to simply stay in bed all day was thwarted entirely.

Getting up, he sat at his desk and tried not to sound too irritable as he said, "Karenski."

For all he wasn't sending video, his caller was. It was McCaffery, Robinson's head of traffic control. He'd been dealing with her a lot lately, and he found her competent in the extreme. Respect for his caller tempered his mood. McCaffery would not have called him before his shift just to be social.

"Admiral, a ship has just surfaced at the boundary."

Annoyance crept in anyway as he responded, "Please tell me it's not another Thessalian freighter. Lie if you have to."

She just looked at the camera, as if he were also on screen. It was the sort of look he'd given to any number of cadets waiting for their brains to wake up. He was quite certain she'd learned it from him.

She was rewarded a moment later when his brain finally did wake up. "You said surfaced; not broke jump."

She smiled the same smile he would have smiled in class, and he had the distinct impression he was being sassed. "I did, in fact, say that."

He waited a beat, then finally said, "Would the Tower care to share the details of this mysterious emergence?"

"Ship's login identifies her as Zephyr, out of Gliese 581; Elyah Singer, commanding."

Surprised, he responded without thought, "Singer?! Zephyr?! What the... Singer refused the command track. What's she doing in the hot seat of a ship that should still be in pieces in a drydock?"

"I couldn't tell you, sir. I did look her up, and you're right—she was last listed as a communications officer and a lieutenant aboard Bellerophon."

That ship's name sent Karenski's brain into full gear. Bellerophon. Maupassant's ship—well, the one he'd been XO of. He'd been the ringleader of their little counter-conspiracy, the one most certain something very bad was coming for them.

Unbidden, Karenski's brain was able to put together the chain of events. The ship, like Robinson Station, crippled but not killed. The command staff perhaps all dead in the catastrophe, but some core of officers and crew surviving, pulling together, limping home to Gliese, and its shipyards, and rock-based Fleet stations. New Norfolk was probably gone, but...

McCaffery said, "Sir?" He realized he must have been lost in thought for a hundred seconds or so.

"Sorry, Mac. Have they sent more account of themselves than a login?"

"It's in process now, sir. They didn't wait to be asked. Download should be complete in another three hundred seconds or so. It's voluminous. Also, we now have lock on a fresh relay beacon and a login from its Ernestine. The chain's still scant. It goes from here to David's Star to Gliese 581. David's Star Republic offers relay through its network as well though, which is intact. Whoever this Singer is, she's being thorough."

Well, that was no surprise to him, but McCaffery's turn through Command 301 had been six terms earlier. She had no reason to remember the brilliant cadet who had debated with him with no disrespect but also no fear of his rank and experience...and then refused the command track that he had believed her so aptly suited for.

So he just said, "She's definitely that. Do me a favor, Mac, and allow Zephyr to know the Fleet Admiral pro tempore will be with them in a short while. What's the comms delay, right now?"

"Maybe thirty kilos each way," she said, distaste at the delay plain on her face.

He sighed. There was no help for it. Physics was what it was. Not for the first time, Karenski cursed that Tau Ceti's was such a deep well, envying how comparatively easy things were for David's Star or even Gliese.

"All right. While you're at it, if their download doesn't already include it, ask them for a full ship's status. If you can do it without making it weird, try to find out what their reaction mass bunkering is like right now."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Admiral?"

"If you're thinking we might finally be able to get our Thessalian guests on their way home before they asphyxiate, then yes, you are."

On the screen, McCaffery allowed herself a small smile. "Very well, Admiral. You want things routed to your office?"

"Yes, thank you. I'll talk to you after I've gotten presentable. Karenski out."

"Tower out."

The screen went dark, but Karenski did not notice. He was practically dancing as he headed toward his delayed morning ablutions. Two hundred seconds ago, he could have gone back to bed, but now? He couldn't have laid down if you'd punched him.

There was a ship. An intact starship. A new, fast starship that would not have been in commission when the catastrophe hit and was probably in perfect shape.

A kilo ago he'd been an admiral with no fleet. Now, he at least had one ship, with an officer he knew to be competent at the helm. He had a network, of sorts, and at least one other TCTO system he could reach with it. The name of Gliese's senior officer came to his mind unbidden. Haraldsdottir. That by itself explained how Zephyr was now on his doorstep. Kel Haraldsottir would not have hesitated to take matters into her own hands in the emergency to finish the fastest ship the Fleet had ever built, once she had someone to crew it.

There were a great many questions, but that didn't matter. He was quite certain he was about to get a great many answers. Not all of them, of course. That would be too easy. The universe was not that easy.

But maybe enough to ask better questions.