Saturn Run

60.

The first round of discussions between the Chinese and Americans went as expected: not well.

Sun had confirmed from the ship’s logs what the AI told Cui at the alien station, that the Nixon had received eight data storage units of some kind from the alien station, and eight readers for the QSUs. The details were in the encrypted files they couldn’t access.

She also divined, from the considerable amount of high-bandwidth data that had been beamed to the Nixon from the station, that a substantial store of information on the aliens or their technology must exist in the Nixon’s own databanks. The details were also not evident in the unsecured files in the datastore.

Cui and Sun were waiting in the conference room when Fang-Castro and Crow arrived, escorted by two crew members who were also members of the Chinese special forces, the Zhōngguó tèzhong bùduì.

Cui gestured at the chairs, but Fang-Castro shook her head. “Naomi Fang-Castro, rear admiral, U.S. Navy, 756-487-8765.”

Cui shook her head: “Please. We need to talk this out. You are not a prisoner of war.”

“Naomi Fang-Castro, rear admiral, U.S. Navy, 756-487-8765.”

Crow said, “Admiral Fang-Castro would disagree about her status. She’s a prisoner of war, because your acts are certainly acts of war. That’s why she provides her name, rank, and serial number… in this case, her Social Security number. If you were not declaring war with your acts—”

“We were not,” Sun blurted.

“—then you’re pirates, for which the punishment in a critical situation like this, would certainly be death, for all the pirates.” He paused, to look at the two Chinese officers, then continued. “Admiral Fang-Castro’s reticence does not apply to me, of course, since I’m a civilian. I am willing to talk, and willing to report what you say to the President, although I warn you, it would be advisable for you to give this up right now. The admiral is a humane person and I doubt that she would order any executions. Once I speak to the President, then this is all on the record. You will have declared war on the United States. I don’t know if the chairman granted you the power to do that, but that’s where we are.”

Cui glanced involuntarily at Sun, then said, “Lieutenant Sun is our… new political officer. She would know more about the legalities than I do.”

Sun said, “We anticipate returning the ship to your control amicably and quickly. Before we can do that, however, we need to work out a way to share the alien data that you took from the planetoid, and which the aliens intended for all mankind, not for the exclusive use of the U.S.A. I am quite sure that all the regional blocs would agree with us.”

Crow smiled at her, shrugged.

“What?”

“We will give you what the President says we can. But I’m not going to do that on my own. If we’re in a state of war, then giving you that information would be treason, and I could be shot. I would not enjoy being shot by my own people. And you won’t get it from the admiral.”

Sun: “We will get it from somebody.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I would point out that we could simply take the memory modules, and ship them separately back to Earth.”

Crow shook his head. “No. You can’t.”

He told them about the burn box, and the secret switches.

The discussion went downhill from there. Cui made another appeal to Fang-Castro, who was still standing.

Fang-Castro: “Naomi Fang-Castro, rear admiral, U.S. Navy, 756-487-8765.”

Sun turned to Crow: “It’s time to talk to your president. You can establish a connection with that slate?”

“Yes, but not from here. There is a separately secured network in my quarters. It’s tempest-hardened. That’s the only way I can set up a line to the President. It wouldn’t be good if anyone on the ship could listen in to our communications.”

“Let me guess, you’re the only one who can operate that slate.”

Again, a smile: “It’s standard issue for high-level diplomacy. Biometrically linked to me. Nobody else can start it up, and it’ll shut down after three minutes if it doesn’t sense my thumb. Oh, and it requires a live thumb. It can tell.”

Cui looked at Fang-Castro, then at Crow, and sighed. She told the two special forces officers to escort the Americans back to their quarters. “Mr. Crow, Lieutenant Sun and I will confer, and then we will visit you, and perhaps speak to your president.”

“I would hurry,” Crow said. “You’ve cut the data stream to Earth and that will be noticed. We will have questions on the way back, by now. If they don’t get answers, we might get a war even if you give the ship back to us—because one way or another, our president and military people will understand what has happened.”

Cui nodded.

When they were alone, Cui asked Sun: “So, are we at war, or not?”

“Right now, we are Schrödinger’s cat,” she said. “We need to work on our talking points.”

Fifteen minutes later, with Fang-Castro still confined to her quarters, Cui and Sun visited Crow in his. Cui instructed the bridge to reactivate the network in Crow’s room and the adjacent corridor.

Crow could’ve done both, by himself, but wasn’t about to reveal that.

Cui instructed Crow to initiate a link to the White House. Once he’d started the process running, she took the slate from him and walked out of the room. She got barely a meter away from the door when an orange alert came up on the screen: “Authorized network no longer available—suspending link initialization.”

She stepped back into the room. The alert message was replaced by one stating that initialization had resumed. She stepped just outside the doorway and closed the door. The orange alert reappeared. The network was shielded and the slate locked to it, just as Crow had said. She stepped back into the room and returned the slate to him before the biometric authorization timed out.

Crow tipped his head: “You see?”

“I see.”

In another minute, the slate finished initializing the downlink. Had they been close to Earth, Crow would have waited for a response from the White House server confirming the link. With more than an hour of light-speed delay, that was infeasible.

Crow looked at Cui, who nodded, and Crow looked at the vid screen, with a still image of Santeros smiling from the Oval Office.

“President Santeros. I am calling to inform you of some extraordinary events this morning. The Nixon has been seized by military members of the Chinese ship Celestial Odyssey. Admiral Fang-Castro has refused any cooperation with the Chinese and has indicated by her actions that she considers herself a prisoner of war. Her legal status, of course, would be up to you and to Congress, since she can’t unilaterally declare war. At the moment, however, she is refusing the Chinese any cooperation.”

He told Santeros that the burn box had been activated. He told her that the Chinese wanted to examine the alien datastore in the Nixon’s computer memory, and that he’d informed them that he didn’t know the location, and that in any case, the files were fully encrypted and the only key to the encryption was on Earth, as the President knew.

When he finished, he nodded at Cui, who said, “Madam President, this is neither an act of war, nor of piracy. However, what the Nixon has done poses an existential threat to the Chinese people, more serious than any atomic bomb. You have, essentially, declared war on us by seizing all the memory modules from the alien planetoid, when they were clearly intended for all humans. There are eight QSUs. We want two of them. You may have two of them. The other four would go to the other major geopolitical blocs. If this is agreed, we will promptly turn control of the ship back to Admiral Fang-Castro.”

She nodded at Crow and said, “You may close the link.”

Crow said, “It’ll be at least a couple of hours before we hear back—probably more than that, especially if they have to fight a war first. What would you like me to do in the meantime?”

Cui looked at him soberly. “You might wish to think about ways to persuade her.”

Sun: “When I was going to graduate school at UCLA…”

Crow: “I would have guessed Berkeley…”

Sun: “…there was a saying. ‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission.’ If you deliver the QSU units to us—only two of the eight, along with two readers—you will present her with a fait accompli, and she will have to make the best of it. We return control of the ship to you, with certain safeguards, and there will be no war, no controversy, no piracy, no problem.”

“Only the admiral has the power to do that, and she won’t,” Crow said. “Perhaps I should give you a few more details on the switches.”

“Please…”

“You can’t disable the burn box. Try to force your way into it, you’ll trigger the devices. Remove the box from the strong room, they go off. Try to power them down without the release code, they’ll go off. I don’t know who has the switches: only Admiral Fang-Castro knows how they were distributed. If Fang-Castro is sequestered and you attempt to torture her for the information, the first trigger-holder to find out will burn the box. Really, over some long period of time, and with more of that gas you used on us—another, separate act of war, by the way—you might get some of the switches, but I doubt that you’ll get all of them.”

Sun looked at him, then said, “Shit.”

Two hours later, one of the Chinese special forces officers escorted Fang-Castro to Crow’s quarters.

“How’s it going?” Crow asked. Cui and Sun were not yet there.

“I’m frantically bored,” she said. “They’ve turned off everything inside my quarters. I can’t even watch Feeling Up Frankie.”

“So maybe there is an upside to this mess,” Crow said.

“How did they get away with that gas, or whatever it was?” Fang-Castro asked.

“I don’t want to think about that, because I might have to find a pistol and stick it in my ear,” Crow said. “My fault: I should have thought of it. It was some form of encapsulated LSD, I’m sure. It’s powerful stuff.”

“Do we have any?”

“I wish.”

There was a ping at the door, and then Cui and Sun stepped in. Fang-Castro stood up, turned her back on them.

Cui shook her head and asked Crow, “Anything?”

“No, but it won’t be long.”

Fang-Castro broke her silence after fifteen minutes. Addressing Cui, she asked, “Do I have permission to return to my quarters?”

Cui shook her head: “No. You must hear what the President has to say.”

Fang-Castro turned away again.

Santeros showed up five minutes later. She was seated at her desk, the pale greens of Washingtonian spring visible through the windows of the Oval Office. It had been a long time since any of them had seen trees.

With her hands clasped calmly in front of her on the desk, she said, “Good morning, Mr. Crow. I presume your Chinese visitors”—she paused very briefly at that word—“are listening in to this. If not, please let them know that I am glad we could offer them rescue and I have forwarded their proposal to my advisers for discussion. Convey my sincerest hope for a speedy resolution to this situation. Also, I’ve spoken to the chief of staff, who knows Admiral Fang-Castro quite well, and says that she can be quite the hard-ass. Inform the admiral that we do not consider her a prisoner of war at this point and that she can negotiate with the Chinese on behalf of the crew. She is not to negotiate the release of the QSUs or any other alien information. That is ours, and ours alone, pending discussions with the Chinese government. That’s all for now, and TTTFO.” Her hand reached over to click the off switch and the screen went blank.

Crow coughed, said, “Sorry, I’m a little nervous. You heard what we heard. Where does that leave us?”

Sun said, “Political doublespeak. I am familiar with it. They will discuss and stall for as long as they can. Eventually they will have to give in. We hold the ship. One thing I did not understand—this ‘TTTFO.’ Code of some sort, Mr. Crow?”

He smiled blandly. “Of a sort, Commander Cui. It’s diplomatic shorthand for the usual boilerplate formalities. Extend the other party the usual courtesies, try not to start a war, et cetera, et cetera.”

Fang-Castro joined the conversation. “So we have nothing of substance back. I didn’t expect we would. You are asking a lot of Washington, regardless of how much control you have over this vessel. Excuse my bluntness, but they are going to take some time over this.”

Sun said, “Double shit.”

“Yes. Now, as legal commander of this vessel, I need to talk in private with Mr. Crow. Regardless of what you may have effected, in the eyes of the U.S. government, I remain the only legitimate authority on this ship. I need to speak to Crow frankly about this situation, and through him, to the President. We can’t have those discussions in your presence. It would be like me expecting to sit in on the private policy discussions of your top party officials in Beijing. If we can’t have opportunities to talk in private, we can’t discuss anything of substance. It simply will not happen—Washington would never permit it.”

Crow did his best to look both sincere and harmless, and added, “I understand you’d consider this a risk. The admiral and I can meet here, and you can search my quarters again. You won’t find any weapons or equipment a diplomat in my position wouldn’t be expected to have. We have no arms, no means to communicate with the rest of the crew, and we will be locked in.”

Sun hated the idea. Who knew what mischief they might dream up? Realistically, though, they were right. If this impasse were to end, they’d have to do more than glare at each other. Reluctantly, she nodded to Cui. “This is getting us nowhere, and we have matters of our own to discuss.”

With curt nods, the Chinese left the room and the door snicked shut.

Fang-Castro turned to Crow. “David, I didn’t think you had it in you. You had me totally convinced.”

Crow raised an eyebrow. “Of what? That I could be diplomatic? It’s necessary at times.”

She chuckled. “No, it’s more that you can come off as so middle management.”

“Much of the time, I need to be not-noticed.”

She understood. “One question, though—that TTTFO? That seemed to catch you up for a second.”

“She surprised me with that,” he said. “It’s White House shorthand, usually applied to members of Congress. Means ‘Tell them to fuck off.’”