The chief justice declined to receive the data chips; they were irrelevant. She took you by surprise on that one, Gil, he told himself. You're slowing down. "Denied again, Counselor," he replied. "If the court granted such privileges to accused felons, activists would commit crimes simply for the pulpit they provided."
"Your Honor," Stolz said unhappily, "except for the jury trial, you have denied every request I've made for my client."
"True. In fact, it seems to me you made those requests anticipating their denial. And I have no doubt you'll make good use of them after you leave this chamber."
He was right, of course. She spent half an hour standing before cameras in the plaza outside, speaking carefully, but airing all her complaints. The court would provide the media with recordings and transcripts of the proceedings, but meanwhile, she'd put her own spin on them.
Chapter 44
Battle Master
The CWS Altai, flagship of the 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force, was in hyperspace just seven days short of the Paraiso System. Its admiral, Alvaro Soong, lay propped on a pillow in his stateroom, hands cupped behind his head, reviewing. He was not a notable worrier. His usual style was to treat things matter-of-factly. But he'd made a decision-made and implemented it-that could wipe out whatever chance humanity had for survival. At least civilized survival.
His rationale was that the chance being risked was thin. And if his decision worked out, it could substantially improve.
If it worked out. He'd approached it on a gradient: "Just how good are you at battle games, Charley? Let me write a set of opening circumstances, and see what you can do with it."
Both men-the one who occupied 210 pounds of primate body, and the one who weighed only 58 pounds, most of it a "bottle" of metal and synthetics-both knew what lay in the back of the admiral's mind. Are you good enough to direct a real battle with real warships? Are you really? Because the odds are heavily against us. I may be better at directing a space battle than any other officer in this battle force. At the Academy, my cumulative battle game score set a record. But if you can beat me decisively enough…
Basically he was praying for a true genius in war gaming. And Charley had passed the test with ease, even flair. And a second, and a third…
Soong himself was the default choice, but after extensive testing, he'd chosen Charley. For a while the choice had been reversible. Now it wasn't. Not if they were to engage the armada in the Paraiso System. They'd programmed too many changes into the Altai's battlecomp, trying to take maximum advantage of Charley's talents.
Briefly the admiral turned his attention to his stateroom "window"-a large wall panel that in F-space usually gave a real-time view of the stars more clearly than an actual window could. But in hyperspace, the default view was of the F-space potentiality, as interpreted by the shipsmind, and it was neither esthetic nor ordinarily interesting. Usually it showed nothing at all. So he'd requested views of Terra. Terra, which he might never see again. Just now it showed the Swedish taiga-its trees sparse and stunted in the ever worsening climate. In the background was the great ice sheet of the Kjolen Range, intensely, painfully white in spring sunshine. It covered the fjelds as far north and south as the view permitted, and oozed slow white tongues of ice down the valleys toward the sea. A magnificent view, it also provided perspective. Many townsites and historical sites had been buried by the ice in this and many other valleys, leaving the region virtually abandoned. A few-a very few Sami had stayed, long since genetically more Swedish and Norwegian than Sami. They had relearned to herd reindeer, a valid lifestyle, given the climatic shift.
A thought surfaced: if the Wyzhnyny prevailed, would they undertake to root out such tiny, harmless enclaves? That was what some of the colonies had been-small harmless enclaves in planetary wilderness. And seemingly the Wyzhnyny had rooted them out. From the alien point of view, he supposed it made sense.
He pulled his attention away from the screen. In a week he'd emerge in the Paraiso System-the first inhabited system at which he could intercept the invader. How terrible, how overwhelming was that alien armada? How good were his Provos-his 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force? What chance did humanity have?
You'll be the first to know, Alvaro, he told himself.
He was not expected to win this battle, in the usual sense. Thank the Tao. He was to attack the enemy, cause as much damage as possible, then disappear into hyperspace before the invader could destroy him. And in the process learn as much as possible about enemy weaponry and tactics. Those were his orders. Engage, flee, and report.
The decisive part-the most dangerous moment-would be just before escape into strange-space. That moment after the shield generators had shut down, but before the shields had sufficiently decayed to allow generation of a carrier bubble.
War House deemed those waited-for reports so vital, they'd invested five of a seriously limited resource to make sure of them. In each battle group, the point battleship carried a savant communicator, and through that savant, a liaison officer was to give War House a running account of the fight. Then, when the fleet had escaped into hyperspace, the surviving commanders would debrief, again via savant.
Though War House didn't know it in advance, the Altai was the exception. Her savant would be far too busy directing battle actions to give a running account. And afterward he'd rest, as long as needed, before channeling Soong's debrief.
Soong hadn't told Kunming about his new battle master. War House might forbid following through on it. It seemed to him he would himself, if he were admiralty chief. Because War House hadn't personally tested Charley Gordon. And the battle would involve most of the battle-ready human warships and crews.
And if somehow Kunming found out before the fact, and forbade it? Probably he'd ignore them. He'd spent weeks as Charley's assistant, developing strategies and tactics, modifying and remodifying procedures. But in simulation tests, he'd been a spectator, while Charley interacted with the Altai and the rest of the battle force in ways no one had thought of before.
Early on, the admiral had been visited by anxiety, but the weeks of development and tests had left him quietly confident. Not of victory, but of Charley's genius and skills, and the wisdom of his own decision. The limitations of ships and weapons remained, along with the unknown abilities and resources of the Wyzhnyny.
And that two-edged sword known as Murphy's Law, which threatened both fleets. Soong wondered if the Wyzhnyny recognized Murphy's Law. It seemed to him they must. It was inaccurate, of course. Murphy's Law-"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"-had been predicated as humor. It was irony, not science. But by changing one word, you expressed a truth: "Whatever can go wrong may go wrong."
In any case you did what you could, and Charley could outdo anyone.
In normal gaming, a battle master gives the battlecomp a general strategy and a set of candidate tactics, via brief code words or phrases, very explicit. The battlecomp takes it from there, until that instruction is overridden by a new code word or phrase. Some gamers sometimes give a single such order. The secret to whatever success they have lies in evaluating the initial situation, and selecting or creating an effective strategy. The exercise itself is run entirely by the battlecomp.
Charley, however, had come to the job with major advantages. His response time was faster than any other human gamer's, perhaps because his responses were mediated by a shorter, faster neural system.
Charley knew the entire catalog of standard command codes, and had added numerous others of his own to make use of his special talents. And no one, to Soong's knowledge, was nearly so nimble with them. Charley could rattle off a sequence of appropriate commands, for a number of units, almost at the speed of thought. "Appropriate" involving the necessary allowances for unit momenta, signal time, equipment response times, and of course his own delivery rate in a command sequence.