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Beyond Hope
- Chapter 46 - When you see me running…[]
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Career Paths Not Taken[]
Strana Mechty, Kerensky Cluster (Clan Space)
December 3061
Sarak was in his quarters with his favored coupling partner, his chief technician Sasha.
He admired her tall and toned form. Brushing her black bangs out of her face.
“You need a haircut, Technician,” Sarak stated.
“Aff, and you need to focus on your assignment.”
“I am focused. Roshak is as I had hoped. I may have to teach him very little indeed.”
“Good. Now roll over.” Sasha commanded.
As Sarak rolled over to put his stomach on his mattress, Sasha’s powerful, calloused hands worked his back expertly.
“I still believe there is an Elemental in your ancestry somewhere.” Sarak said as he felt the stress of the day melt from his body.
“Not in the genealogy records I have access to.” Sasha popped a vertebrae back into alignment.
Sarak grimaced at the pressure she put into his back.
“You should be a Medic subcaste, not Technician.” Sarak Yeh felt her dig into his back.
“I almost was. The tests said I had aptitude for either. But I ultimately became Technician instead. Still, I learned a few things before taking that path.”
“Clearly.”
Reviewing the Writing of Elizabeth Ngo-Steiner-Davion[]
DropShip FCS Hot Rod'
Unspecified System Jump Point, Federated Commonwealth (Lyran State)
3061
Her Grace was 'back in the box', cold storage and hibernating the rest of the trip to New Avalon.
"What are you working on?" Helena asked.
Arthur looked up. "Something Elizabeth is working on," he said neutrally. "Something we're both reluctant to publish."
"Publish or perish is usually what I hear from her. What is it?"
He cleared his throat "Advice to the First Lord on Governance" he shrugged. "The title's a rip on Machiavelli."
“Well, I’ve read Machiavelli, but I know Liz and you will have some interesting thoughts of your own.”
"It's mostly Elizabeth's. Her first rule is 'The Means decide what Ends you have to live with, or die from', that whole chapter is about the importance of choosing methods that actually result in achieving your goals, rather than doing what is immediately convenient while hoping. She uses Alessandro's reign, as well as several other Succession War examples, and the example of Richard's decrees that undermined his term as First Lord. She concludes with a comparison between Elbar and Kentares."
“I’ve also been reading up on my father’s reign. He wasn’t exactly Jocasta himself.”
"Your great-aunt would never have let Richard inherit." Arthur said confidently.
“She was the last truly loved Cameron from what I have read,” Helena nodded.
"I think most people would be more interested in Elizabeth's analysis of the Interstellar Economy. That's chapters two through ten. You're mentioned several times in chapter four-that is, your campaigns during the Amaris War, and how you handled financial and resource allocations versus Kerensky or DeChevalier." He grimaced, "Most of the things she notes as 'mistakes' are things my Father would have done without blinking."
“I broke a fair number of rules back then, bent even more. But yeah looking back, the Hegemony was done. Richard was just the final nail.”
He put the tablet down. "Liz thinks it could have been saved," he said. "She goes into depth on her reasons."
“Terra and maybe a few of the more productive worlds, maybe.”
"Funny you say that. Her first recommendation would be shedding 'Old Earth' like a moldy shoe, and focusing on Rigil Kentaurus and Epsilon Eridani."
“Too many industrial eggs were in the basket of Terra for that to have actually worked.”
"Which is why she recommends 'dis-investing' in it: factories without raw materials don't make goods. She goes on at length about how played out the Sol system is."
“What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Without the resources the industry of Terra was worthless, without the industry of Terra the resources could not be exploited.”
"Chapter Seven: And Gaia Devoured her Children'. She makes the assertion that it's the very size of Terra's industrial… 'mess' that makes it not worth keeping-there's no room for growth left, only cannibalization and a population too large to feed. Her recommendation is to spread that population out and keep a vestige to maintain the Sol system as a 'historical theme park'... some of my wife's ideas are… well, not good in the wrong company."
“She’s not entirely wrong, but she is missing that there was terribly little industry left in the Hegemony anywhere, and Earth was in the best shape because of that over-industrialization.”
Arthur listened intently, and made his own notes. Then, he brought up, "You DID see the condition Kowloon was in when she took over, right? Mom said they were behind on Tax-and-Tithe during the Regency years, and there was a whole push right after you arrived to 'get the people working again'. That's Chapter Eleven, by the way."
“And a not small part of that change was getting outside investment and development going.” "I'm not really defending Lizzie's conclusions, Helena… I'm editing her prose. English is her third language and a book written in Kowloon Viet will have NO readers outside the Kowloon system."
“I get that Arthur, and like I said, she’s not completely wrong. If the Member States weren’t actively gunning for Hegemony worlds before the blood on Terra was even dry, there might have been a chance to do what Elizabeth talks about.”
"I think she's more disappointed that after you were lost, Kerensky didn't even try."
“That still makes me angry too. Somehow he convinced eighty percent of the remaining SLDF to go with him. That’s ****** up.” Helena shook her head. “Lost or not, those people just spent a decade fighting for their homes and then somehow some crackpot plan makes them want to give that all up? I don’t buy it.”
"Yet the Clans exist," Arthur noted. "So the real question would be why? From Kerensky's post-exodus we only have secondary sources, mostly heavily edited and visibly altered."
“The only answer that makes a lick of sense is they lost hope after I disappeared.”
"Or, they weren't loyal to their nation, they were loyal to a man," Arthur said. "I’m thinking of units that fled to the periphery during the Succession Wars. Henrik Grimm was once one of the LCAF's shining lights, but he took his command into the periphery after a dispute, and became the 'father' of interstellar piracy in the anti-spinward regions. Liz chronicles her take on that, and compares it to Kerensky's exodus with some frankly frightening parallels. She goes on about the danger of having to trust personal charisma over professional conduct. It's practically an indictment of the Feudal system."
"How do you feel about that?" Helena inquired.
"She makes good points," Arthur said. "But… we're both beneficiaries of a system she sees as inherently flawed."
“I’ve studied a great deal of Terra’s history. Even during the periods of so called democracy and republics, names always had power. But we also see many times over, just because someone comes from a powerful family does not mean they are fit to rule either.”
Arthur picked up the document, and cleared his throat, "Let me preface by saying this is Elizabeth's wording, not my ideas…'...the true problem the SLDF had, was the power-exchange that McKenna's Coup, and the subsequent years under House Cameron, required in order to keep the Terran military, and later Star League Military, from engaging in copycat coups. Even junior officers, O-1s and O-2s, lived as Barons, far above the common citizens as we are from a famine-plagued dirt farmer. When they 'liberated' the Hegemony, the resources for that lifestyle were gone, and what remained, was a task of civil administration with a lack of civilian administrators. This is further underlined by what happened in the post-Exodus according to ALL of the Clan records. In our modern life, soldiers have the most stable employment, but a private in the AFFC does not live better than a carpenter or doctor with years of education and skills. The SLDF soldiers that deserted with Kerensky remained loyal until it was clear they would not enjoy the privileges they had been promised when they entered the service… the Exodus civil wars were the result…'." He met her eyes. "Was that true?"
“There’s no denying that the Mechwarrior became seen as this great and noble knight, that like ancient knights, there was this belief that they adhered to a code of conduct. But people never understood what that code of conduct was. I do sometimes wonder if Sol is really tapped out, but I can’t deny that more and more of the money and resources were coming from outside the Hegemony as a whole.”
"Helena… let me ask you an ARTHUR question," he said, setting aside his wife's manuscript.
“Sure, Arthur.” Helena met his gaze.
"You've enjoyed the advantages of what we developed, on this ship. Imagine back to the days before Amaris launched his coup… if someone like Elizabeth-someone not in the ruling family, developed this technology, what would have been done with it? Please think about your answer, and the world you grew up with. Who would get the inertial dampening technology?"
“The Royal Black Watch. They’d get it first as the bodyguards of the Cameron line.”
"And how long would it be classified, eyes-only technology?" he continued.
“Honestly, looking back, knowing what I know now? Probably decades. You have to remember I was pretty sheltered Arthur. Either because I was third in line, or because I was a ‘special guest of Richard and Amaris’, then my life was the ugliness of war. I never really got a lot of time to digest things as an adult back then.”
"Do you know who's getting it first in reality?" he asked. "Once it's proven out?"
“I imagine your brother has ideas about that.”
"Victor can have ideas. I've made a choice," he said. "I published the first paper before we left. I intend to see to it that the people who actually make Interstellar Nations possible get it first. The shippers, the yards, the merchant fleets and the various spacers, and we're going to be putting it into production soon. Do you know why?"
“You do know I actually agree with your stance, right? Maybe it’s because of everything I went through and how I saw hoarding such discoveries and prosperity turned everyone against the Hegemony and wanted a part of it for themselves.”
Arthur nodded his agreement, but then he said, "Felix Comstock, Theodore Grantz, Rebecca Majiers, Constance Pillery, Francois D'artagnan, Gary Fleed. They post date you, and pre-date me, and they're not household names. The reason is because their discoveries got brief coverage, then they died or vanished, and with them, their discoveries. Focht admitted to some of it, but not all of it. Secrecy is lethal to scientists."
“The Mother Doctrine. The version of that I was taught as a little girl made it seem so benign. Then Liz showed me the real version.”
"It's not JUST the 'mother doctrine', it's House Lords and local leaders who want an advantage for as long as they can hold it."
“The end result is the same.”
"Yes, it really is. Helena, 'the means you use, decides the ends you get'. Gary Fleed lived at the end of the 2990s. He developed a sensor that could potentially double the range of battlemech sensors. He was a Federated Suns citizen, and Uncle Ian classified his work. So when he was killed, and the lab site was hit by 'Death Commandos', it was gone, like it had never been."
“I know Arthur, it’s why I’m a supporter of the university and helped get many other worlds to institute similar programs. Your discovery is going to be next to impossible to suppress now.”
"That is our plan, Helena," he nodded.
“Even if our dream becomes perverted and twisted, humanity ended for it, I’d rather have done it this way than let things go on the way they were. The alternative was stagnation, mere survival. Not living. Even when I was at my worst, I needed more than mere survival.”
Almost unnoticed, the dropship Hot Rod docked to the next link in the chain to New Avalon.
Surprised Arrival[]
Zenith Point
New Avalon , Federated Commonwealth (Federated Suns State Capital)
December 12th, 3061
Vice Admiral Katherine Morgan Steiner-Davion floated to the airlock, then caught herself as gravity asserted itself.
"Arthur!! HOW??"
Arthur puffed his chest up, "Good too see you too, sis. Neat, huh?" His grin was infectious.
"We're not under thrust, the direction is wrong for spin… how? How are you doing this?"
"It's Magic," Arthur told her. "Or near enough, if you didn't spend years learning enough theoretical physics and doing empirical experiments for me to give you the real explanation."
“If it makes you feel any better, I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Engineering, and I still only understand like a third of the stuff at best and that’s the dumbed down version.” Helena offered as she was chasing after a crawling Jonathan.
"Yes, it does," Katherine said honestly, flexing her legs in the gravity field. "One half gee," she said. "Is it consistent?"
"It's adjustable, actually." Elizabeth had been awake since this morning, enduring the final jump into the New Avalon system so she would have her wits later. "It's also capable of being adjusted locally. Arthur published his first theoretical paper on it before we left Kowloon, the copy should be winding its way to NAIS sometime next month,depending on distribution issues and how much gets edited on the HPG net.."
“You still can’t bring yourself to believe Comstar has reformed?” Katherine asked.
"Powerful people don't give it up willingly or without a gun to their head," Liz commented. "Not normally. And if there's one thing about big bureaucracies, they'll let rot spread while they're 'reforming'. The people who really decide policy are the middle-management, and last time I was in a Comstar installation, they were still reciting prayers to make the generator run."
“And yea, did Blake press the reset button and the great machine came to life, and all was good throughout the land,” Helena mocked as she finally caught up to Jonathan. “Fast little bugger.”
"Thus, 'MAGIC'," Liz commented. "Which ignores that we blew up two moons and a mountain range figuring this out."
“Hmmm, acceptable losses,” Katherine was clearly enjoying the gravity. “You have no idea how badly I want to take more baths than I currently get to, and this tech finally makes it feasible to do while deployed.”
“Can confirm, it is glorious having an actual bath when before that was only something you could do while under thrust or on a big enough spin station,” Helena nodded as Jonathan squirmed in her grip.
“So where are my niece and nephew? They getting into trouble elsewhere in the ship?” Katherine asked.
“Sleeping,” Liz pulled up a nanny cam feed to show Katherine.
“Aw.” Helena cood.
“Okay, brother. Now that I’ve gotten my ‘aunt fix’ and you’ve dazed me with science, we’ve got a party to get to. So let’s land this thing!” Katherine smiled.
Waiting for Event to Begin[]
Mount Davion, Outskirts of Avalon City
New Avalon System, Federated Commonwealth
May 3061
The honor guard at the space port was almost routine now, as was the trip to the Royal Palace.
The scenery was certainly enjoyable, the mix of greenery, snow, and the traffic of Avalon City. But everyone was rather quiet and the trip basically slipped by.
The group readied themselves for the usual pomp and circumstance.
“Hauptman Sean MacIntyre, Swordbearer at your service. I’ve been assigned as your liaison for your stay. So please let me know if there’s anything you need.” The fiery red haired woman could easily have been a model but yet there was an air of menace about her.
“Swordbearer, I’m not familiar with that title.” Liz said.
“It means…” Arthur started.
“That I’m a noble without a world. More precisely, the world still technically exists but the Succession Wars mean no one lives there now. But because my family has served House Davion, and now House Steiner-Davion, faithfully and with distinction, our old title is still recognized, after a fashion,” Sean interrupted. “Apologies for interrupting you my Lord, but I’d rather it be out in the open and not hidden behind pleasantries. I’ll understand if you feel my assignment to you is an insult, or that I have been overly rude and wish to complain.”
“Loosen up a little Captain, and we’re fine,” Liz nodded.
“Ma'am? I'm not sure I understand… "?” Sean asked.
“To be honest I find all the formality off-putting and stuffy,” Liz shrugged.
“I can be less formal, let this be a proper vacation for you. Corporal Timmons and Corporal Gleeson are your room stewards, if they can’t get you what you want, they’ll find me and let me know. I’m at the end of the hall if you need me. Now I’ll let you get settled in.”
The vast majority of Elizabeth's baggage was for the children, her own personal kit fit into a two meter by one and a half meter space, and consisted of very little indeed, especially for a Lady of her station. This could be explained if Arthur's personal possessions were not also almost-Navally light… but then, he had possessions here on New Avalon as well, which accounted in the minds of the staff for his relative lack of personal baggage to unload.
"You'll be going shopping, Your Grace?"
"Ouch, that's right… be careful with the items in crate 11 and 12, will you? Those are gifts for the family and some are quite fragile."
“Yes, your Grace.” Sean glanced at the children. “Should I be making special arrangements for your children?”
“Jonathan and Hannah have a few medical conditions but nothing we can’t handle.” Elizabeth answered.
“Not quite what I meant. I mean should I post extra guards, ones who know how to keep an eye on precocious children? They seem quite energetic,” Sean shook her head.
"Simon!" she barked, and the toddler halted and looked back over his shoulder. "Kommen ze!!" she snapped her fingers as she barked the command like a dog-trainer.
The toddler wobbled over on toddler legs. "I think, experienced domestic staff can handle it, but if you feel that extra guard personnel might be of use? I will not disagree. After all, as children we are born savages, and must be trained to become civilized."
“I think I understand your Grace,” Sean smiled. “There anything you need before I leave you to settle in?”
“No, everything seems in order. We should be fine. What time is the next meal?”
“17:00 local. Enjoy your stay my Lord and your Grace.” Sean bowed and left.
How new way of traveling Explained[]
Davion Palace
New Avalon, Federated Commonwealth (Federated Suns State Capital)
December 3061
"...it's not true faster-than-light travel. What it has ended up being, is a means to bypass some aspects of Newtonian and Einsteinian motion. The inertia still exists, it's just handled…differently." Arthur cut his roast at the table. "We're still finding out things with it: there are some aspects Liz and I have noted since we assembled the first test models."
"What kind of things?"
"There's the attenuation of inertial forces, of course. That's a big one-it's not from what we can tell a 'severing'-the external universe still exerts influence, but the amount and fashion are…different. It's still hard for me to wrap my mind on how we're creating an electro-gravity field-those two forces have some connection in theoretical physics, but a thousand years or so of research and theory say the connection we've got shouldn't be happening."
"What?" Peter Steiner-Davion looked confused.
"He means we can do it directionality, and gravity isn't supposed to do that. But then, magnetic monopoles aren't supposed to exist either, and we've got a containment field full of them after the second lab accident… and figuring out how to do that is probably worth a dozen papers in specialized journals, only I haven't really had time, even after leaving the Naval Minister's post, to write them." Liz explains.
"So… what's next?" Victor asked.
"I can already see that Kate and Peter are going to want us to submit this stuff for radical classification," Liz stated. "Which is why we've already put out the basics in public. It's not enough to build another Hot Rod. But it's enough that someone else can work out where we went with it… I think."
"That's irresponsible!!"
"Compared to blowing up two moons and a mountain range to get this far? Maybe." Liz said. "Or, maybe it's the only responsible thing we can do. I have a list of Scientists and engineers going back three hundred years whose work went from 'classified' to 'nonexistent'-the secret labs they were sent to blown up, the scientists killed, their results deleted...and I bet if we broke into the Comstar Archives on Old Earth, we'd find thousands of names of people whose breakthroughs 'ended mysteriously' and whose work was erased. The generational equivalents of Einstein, or Newton. Discoveries that could've fundamentally advanced mankind so far we wouldn't be able to recognize it? All gone, over-and-over again."
"So what are you going to do with it?" Yvonne asked.
Elizabeth dug into her meal for a moment, chewed, swallowed. "I've got a meeting with Darren Knight of Knight-Lenovo here in the Federated Suns. I thought I'd give him the plans for the prototypes we've got on Hot Rod in exchange for a contract to do the tooling. He's got pals at Federated Boeing Galax and they could probably use the technology for a cargo or passenger dropship model. I mean, imagine getting your cargo ship from the Zenith to New Avalon in only a few hours without squishing the crew? Or being able to finally exploit some of those lovely, rich, untapped asteroid belts without needing a month to get there?"
"There are military applications for that technology, Liz." Katherine pointed out.
"And you'll find them all," Liz shrugged. "But it's easier to fix it when it breaks if you've got the components in mass production on the civilian side than if you have to wait for a top-secret security lab to custom build them."
“Also that there are military applications for this technology is why I supported it above the alternative. This way we’ll have the head start. We’ll know more about how to exploit it, how to defend against it, and what the long term implications are.” Helena added.
"What was the alternative?" Yvonne asked.
"Jump gates," Liz said. "The projections say we'd need between twelve and fourteen warship-grade power plants and around three trillion Kroner to build the first ones. But they'd make it back by removing something like eighty percent of the distance between sides of the Realm…" She paused. "I'm still doing the hypotheticals and theoreticals on developing those, we just didn't have the funding or manpower to do both."
“Which would be far more beneficial for civilian traffic and in a more ideal universe are what I would have preferred to support, but we don’t live in an ideal universe.” Helena nodded.
"Jump…GATES?"
"Opens a portal into a higher frequency range in hyperspace, you push an object through, it falls down the connection to the other end-which has a gate too. Based on what we've measured, it should be possible," Liz shrugged. "But it's a massive power-hog and requires some pretty… energetic… materials to create and maintain… and it's big." She toyed with the greens on her plate, "...You're going to ask 'how big', aren't you? The smallest one that might work, is over a kilometer in diameter, anything smaller and you can't get the frequency ranges right between the Selenium-doped Germanium and metallic-glass-phase Titanium alloy core, which has to be cooled by enough liquid helium to service a small fleet of Jumpships. But in theory, you won't need a KF core to go interstellar, just push an ordinary mass down the pipe the two ends create in Hyperspace."
“Just because each end is effectively a space station, it creates a defensible point if someone tries to get frisky using the gates. It’ll be interesting to see what we can do once we get both technologies matured.”
"For now, we're working on warp theory," Arthur asserted. "Mainly so my wife doesn't have to have a space-sickness bag every time she visits one third of her domestic population. My first intent is an order I placed with Sithers-Deen to build a replacement for the jump-ferries… excuse me, 'supplement' to the Jump Ferries."
“Jeez. This is all sorts of insane, you know that right? You’re talking about upsetting the economy in ways that will make a lot of people extremely unhappy,” Victor shook his head.
"Most of those people are going to be getting contracts for manufacturing, or discounts to purchase," Liz muttered. "Have to, to get it spread far enough it can't be erased. Cambiano, Iota, Lockheed, Boeing… If they're building it, they're not being driven into poverty BY it."
"What about your precious 'small operators?' What happens to them, Liz?" Yvonne had read Elizabeth's first and second books.
"They're going to get some of the action. It doesn't eliminate the need for jumpships-at least, the Warp doesn't. We still need those. It's just that they'll get better turnaround at jump points, faster deliveries, faster loading… I hope? I don't know, I'm still trying to work out the details."
“Lower insurance premiums, lower maintenance, and more predictable shipping routes all should be follow-on effects as well.”
"Have you considered what Gravity manipulation means to a Jumpship, Elizabeth?" Katherine asked.
"Uhm… what?" Liz seemed confused.
"What do you need to activate a jump drive, Elizabeth?" Katherine asked. "Keep in mind, I had to learn this when mother-" she nodded at Melissa, who was keeping her peace, "-informed me that my time as a civilian was at an end, and I chose Naval. I had to learn how jump navigation works. Being able to bend space-time means you can potentially create gravitic nulls virtually anywhere, with enough power. Jump points directly in orbit, for example."
Liz dropped her fork. "That… never occurred to me. Arthur?"
"Me either. We should take a look at that."
Katherine looked astonished, "You… Didn't even think of it??"
“Hell even I thought you two were just being cautious, seeing how it interacted with Dropships first before you tried to ramp it up and see what it could do for Jumpships,” Helena raised an eyebrow.
"Arthur, are you messing with me? You didn't even think of the single most obvious application??" Kate wouldn't let go of it.
"No, we really didn't," Arthur confessed. "I think we were both more worried that it would somehow interfere in KF field creation. But that went away when we jumped the first prototype to Kowloon. Interaction on purpose really didn't come up when we figured out accidental reactions weren't going to happen."
“You know I’m going to have to put even more MIIO people on you as protection detail right? This is too big not too.”
"And LIC," Melissa spoke up, finally, "Victor, you'll need people from both sides of the realm on this, it's that big."
“Of course. I’m just in shock that we’re even talking about something like this.”
“******!” Simon exclaimed then laughed as all the adults looked at him..
Elizabeth blushed and tried to hide her head.
"******! Damn!" Hannah chirped back, and giggled.
“Merde!” Jonathan joined in with his own laughter.
“Once our kids get into school we’re going to have oh so many interesting parent teacher conferences.” Helena blushed.
“Seems we might need to have a talk about appropriate language!” Melissa scowled.