"You're drunk, old buddy," David said. And laughed. "And so am I. How about that! We need to get ol' Pollywog or whatever his name is to get drunk with the president. What is his name? Pollywog."
Qonits eyes opened. He giggled. That's what it is, David thought. Giggling. "I don' remember," Qonits said. "Tooley Rooley." He frowned, trying to get it right. "Toolarog. Thass it."
His eyes closed again. David wobbled to his bed and flopped down on it. It promptly began to rotate on its axis. He knew it was the alcohol, not the bed, but nonetheless tried physically to hold it still until the sensation stopped. Then he nested his cheek in his pillow. "David," he mumbled, "you juss did something no human ever did before. You know that? You got drunk with an alien."
It was the last thing he thought before sleeping.
Marine Lance Corporal Artemis Shaughnessy looked at the two sleepers. What a story to tell his children and grandchildren, when he had some. Surely the security restrictions would be off by then.
It seemed to him he knew more about the aliens now than even the president did.
He didn't, of course. The suite was bugged, and the two leaders had all of it on cube. Including David waking later from a dream of Yukiko, to soak his pillow with tears.
It was the last time he would grieve for her. It was done.
Chapter 62
The Battle of Epsilon Eridani
Abruptly, Alvaro Soong's command screen registered 221 radio sources, twittering code. He'd been expecting them: a corvette herding 220 spook drones, newly arrived in the Eridani System from Sol. They'd emerged sufficiently nearby that their emergence waves preceded their electromagnetic signature by only a few seconds. The corvette's captain, a lieutenant, had done an excellent job of delivering his herd.
A similar herd had arrived from the Indi System four days earlier and six days late, badly scattered, sixteen spooks short-and on the wrong side of the system. Far enough that the guide ship's signal lag was more then thirteen hours! What a mess. Gathering the spooks had been slow and frustrating, and the fifty-seven hours wasted would be time lost later from steel drills. As for the sixteen spooks lost in hyperspace-an admiral hates losing even unmanned ships.
The Indi guide ship had been a long-range scout, and her commander a mere ensign! Policy required a board of review, which took less than four hours to absolve the young officer of malfeasance. He'd had only introductory training in hyperspace radio-not nearly enough to reliably monitor and control the drones in hyperspace. As for gathering them for the closing jump-that accounted for most of the six-day delay.
The review board concluded he'd done well to lose so few.
Soong savanted a strongly worded message to War House, criticizing Indi Command for appointing someone so unqualified. It was Admiralty Chief Fedor Tischendorf himself who replied, very mildly. Ensign Fahzi had been at the head of his class when Indi Command had pulled him out of training, bestowed a premature commission, and with Kunming's blessing had given him the job. On Indi Prime, everyone of certified competence-short of Command and training staff-had already been sent with the 1st Indi Battle Wing. All they had left were midshipmen.
"Consider yourself well served, Alvaro," Tischendorf had finished. "Ensign Fahzi was the best available, and whatever spooks arrived are ships you wouldn't otherwise have. If he'd lost half of them, you'd still be better off than if they hadn't been sent. And if they hadn't been sent, they'd be meaningless. Because if you don't severely blunt the Wyzhnyny advance at Eridani-and I stress severely-we're lost. All of us."
Soong had listened with chagrin. He'd popped his cork-rare for him-and the indignation that sprayed out had turned to rue. He didn't counter that Indi Command should have held back a qualified officer from the 1st Indi Battle Wing, then transferred him back to it on arrival. Fahzi had done the job. And historically, war was notorious for erroneous planning assumptions, pressure situations, decisions made under severe stress, and the need to use unqualified personnel. In fact, Soong told himself, a perspective review of this war would probably discover fewer and less critical foul-ups than in most historical wars. Because regardless of its other shortages, War House was rich in resourceful ingenuity. Not to mention long centuries of contingency planning and simulation testing.
And no one in War House had joined the military for prestige or benefits.
Now Soong's fleet was fully gathered. Since Shakti, it hadn't grown much in manned fighting ships: his losses had been made up, but he had only a single new battle wing. War House had decided to concentrate on drone production; he had nearly twice as many maces as before.
And now spooks, drones of quite another type. With the 220 from Sol, he totalled 404. Named "Ball Spooks" (for a fabled 21st century gamer and writer), they carried opaque-image generators which could disguise them as battleships, maces or cruisers. Spooks had long been part of science-fiction gaming, and a War House budget proposal for their development had been rejected by the government centuries earlier. Then the Wyzhnyny had come, and industrial and research resources became the limiting factors, with maces and improved shield generators the Admiralty's top development priorities.
And properly so. Maces could kill enemy warships, layered shields could save ships and lives, and definitive research and development had already been done on them. But there was a role for sacrificial lambs-spook ships-that looked enough like lions to fool the enemy and occupy his efforts. So a project was also begun, small and exploratory at first, then more intensive.
When a spook-field generator had been successfully demonstrated, production began, because spooks could be produced quickly in quantities. Prospector hulls would serve, and could be mass-produced cheaply.
Prospector hulls had limited capacity, of course. And while spooks needed no crew facilities, they required lots of hardware, particularly generators of several kinds. Spook-field generators not only required hull space, they made serious energy demands, because ordinary holos were not enough. And of course there could be no skimping on strange-space generators; without them they couldn't travel. But limits could be set for other equipment. A spook without an energy shield would not fool enemy sensors, but their shield generators could be single-layer models, and needn't produce modified topologies.
As for "weapons"… Wyzhnyny shipsminds would be dealing with great volumes of urgent sensory intake, thus spook "war beams" needed only to fluouresce a battleship's shield convincingly. They required far less hull space, and drew far less power than a cruiser's guns, for example. And they carried no torpedoes at all.
Soong had gotten the necessary performance and operating specs in advance, and Charley Gordon had considered them in reprogramming the battlecomps. The Wyzhnyny would face a whole new set of Commonwealth Fleet tactics; the Commos had been sim drilling them for days. Now the Altai's shipsmind uploaded them to the newly arrived spooks from the Sol System.
Extrapolating, shipsmind had provided a probabilistic window of Wyzhnyny arrival. It left only four days for steel drills, then Soong would have to order ready formations, and wait. Wait for the final and decisive fight. If they lost, snooze ships on Terra, Indi Prime, Luneburger's World and Masada, there to load liberation forces, would instead embark women, children, and chosen specialists. None of whom knew yet the great and terrible secret. While cargo ships-so-called colony resettlement ships-loaded selected colonization equipment. They would rendezvous, then seek a new home, half a dozen hyperspace years distant.