Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(78)

Dabeet nodded. “You thought of the solution,” he said.

“I hung around in the hydroponics fields a lot because it was fresh air. I used to pretend I was on Earth and I was in a meadow. Only it was a meadow stacked up in ten layers under artificial sunlight.”

“So it was you.”

“In recognition of my valuable contribution, my parents’ corporation paid for my place here in Fleet School. This is my prize—meeting you and maybe getting blown to smithereens by the criminals who are manipulating you.”

“So it does matter who thinks up solutions.”

“I was also the person who screwed up the oxygen-delivery system in the first place,” said Monkey.

Dabeet digested that for a while.

“It was a clumsy accident but I immediately told my parents what I had done and they told the ship staff and that’s when everybody started brainstorming solutions.”

“So you were the idiot who caused it and the genius who solved it.”

“Happens that way a lot,” said Monkey. “But we were on a ship, and even though it was corporate we long since became like family to each other. Nobody condemned me for my mistake, because they all knew that everybody makes mistakes, and I hadn’t tried to hide it, so there was still maybe time enough to do something before we all died.”

“Did I tell anybody when there was still time?” asked Dabeet.

“Well, I’m the first student you told, so … we’ll find out if this leaves us enough time.”

“So maybe we should go tell everybody else on the wall squad,” said Dabeet.

“Are we through mapping this interior corridor?”

“No, but—”

“Let’s go to them with data. Actual knowledge. Maybe even some potential ideas for a plan.”

“Though we still don’t have any idea what the raiders will do, when and if they actually raid Fleet School.”

“Here’s what I think, based on what you’ve told me so far. I think that whoever is behind all the kidnappings, yours and everybody else’s, I think it’s somebody who hates Battle School and every kid who was ever in it.”

“But this isn’t—”

“It’s the same Lagrange-point station that used to be Battle School. Let’s say it was somebody who was up here and washed out. Somebody familiar with the layout of the station. And they hate this place. They—he or she—they want to punish everybody. What happens if that’s the motive behind all the kidnappings?”

“They aren’t coming here to hold us all hostage so the IF will intervene on Earth,” said Dabeet.

“They’re coming here to kill everybody,” said Monkey.

“So they don’t even have to come inside,” said Dabeet. “Just breach the hull and—”

“Too many hulls, so it isn’t feasible, and besides, they don’t just want to destroy Battle School or Fleet School or whatever we are. They want to punish the school and everybody who was ever in it.”

“They want the Fleet to find the bodies,” said Dabeet. “And not just dead from oxygen deprivation. Dead with blood and guts everywhere.”

“Dead so that when the bodies of children are shown on the nets back on Earth and out in space, it makes everybody so sick and angry, so insanely furious, that…”

When her voice trailed off, Dabeet prompted her. “So insanely furious that what?”

“I have no idea. And I hope I’m completely wrong. But I think we need to act as if that is their plan.”

“You mean, we should treat them as killers even before they’ve killed anybody,” said Dabeet.

“That’s what we need to discuss, don’t you think?”





14

Submission from Dabeet Ochoa in Basic Decision-Making 01.

The assignment is to explain the difference between the decision-making process in exploratory expeditions as opposed to military ones.

The only important differences are (1) the tools used and (2) the overall imperative not to harm the enemy.

In all other ways, the geology, atmospherics, and biota of a thitherto unknown planet are the enemy, in that they conceal the means they would use to destroy us, they cannot be trusted to act as they seem arrayed to act, and they adapt their tactics to our actions, including direct assault and passive reconnaissance. Also, it remains true that no plan we make will survive first contact with the enemy.

Instead of shuddering and pretending that our presence is not an assault on a planet whose systems are determined to resist us, let us simply admit that our entire program of exploration and colonization is designed to promote the dispersal and therefore survival of the human race regardless of the fact that this cannot possibly be accomplished in any case without extensive collateral damage to the enemy—the planets and ecosystems into which we obtrude ourselves.

We differ from the Formics’ assault on Earth only in that we are alert to the possibility of encountering intelligent life, and we are determined to abandon any world which contains it.

I do not believe that this noble self-restraint will survive the first encounter with such a sentient species. First, we will have every motive to find that they are not sentient, including redefining sentience upward until we ourselves do not meet the criteria.