it was home to a full two billion people and more than four hundred independent nations, the biggest manmade
object of all time, yet
Up Yours
could have torn the entire Aerie to pieces no more than a meter across in less than ten minutes.
Up Yours
was allowed to approach, not because there was no danger of war, but because, all thanks to Paj Nakasen’s Principles, war
was not the danger it had been. Humanity, after millennia of slaughter piled upon slaughter, had at last admitted to and studied
its own vicious and bloody nature, painstakingly worked out a few rules of war, and made them stick. Foremost of these were
Principle 174 of the Wager: “Every habitat must stay habitable,” and Principle 209: “When the common interest is survival,
individuals must gang up or be ganged up on.”
Wars were fought with little weapons where there were people, or big weapons where there were not, and to violate that principle
was to be hunted down like vermin. Any nation or corporation that seized or destroyed a neutral sun-clipper faced an immediate
and total embargo on food, water, power, and air; a nation attacked while taking its turn patrolling the approaches to Pluto
could count on thousands of allies, including the Rubahy themselves; tyrants and madmen could seek power by means as cruel
as ever, but if they took one step that might make any human habitat unfit for life, their own forces would turn to slay them.
Thus though war was endemic, a warship able to rip civilization off the face of a planet, or to reduce a planet-sized station
to rubble, could approach the solar system’s biggest population center, defended by an equally awesome set of weapons, with
no fear on either part. Such was the power of the Wager.
This was the lecture playing to the three CUPVs as they worked their way down the auxiliary accelerator tube, replacing panels
as they went. When
Up Yours
needed to sacrifice stealth for speed, it could gain about 10% more acceleration by recycling the stray quarks from the synthesizers
that drove the main jets. Here in the tubes, quark-plasma condensed into a demon’s-goulash of subatomic particles, whipped
around in opposing directions to collide at the foci of the auxiliary propulsion dishes, creating a powerful secondary thrust.
On merchant sunclippers, where Jak had worked before, a work crew selected music for its work area. On a battle-sphere, the
public address system ceaselessly broadcast political/philosophic/religious lectures, to keep crewies loyal—to the Wager,
to Nakasen’s vision, to the Hive, and to Nakasen’s vision of what the Wager meant to the Hive. Thus Jak, Myx, and Duj airswam
after their sprites (which looked like stage tinkerbells) through the tunnels, replacing panels as they went, in a constant
drone of lecture.
Jak had learned to tune it out; he had no idea whether Myxenna or Dujuv listened to it, because as CUPVs they were temporarily
members of the Spatial—subject to punishment for seditious remarks. On a battlesphere, microphones and cameras, like the political
officers who monitored them, were ubiquitous.
Jak had CUPVed on the sunclippers
Spirit of Singing Port
to Earth, and
Promeithia
back to the Hive, on his single mission two years ago, and spent most of his first Long Break the year before as a CUPV on
a short-hauler,
Lakshmi’s Singing Joy,
on a Hive-Mercury-Venus-Hive voyage. He was almost halfway to a full-fledged union card. His experience had mattered not
at all. The Spatial put CUPVs on any old job that had to be done but was normally a waste of a good crewie, and kept them
there till there was reason to move them.
Physically, Spatial ships were far more comfortable than sunclippers; there was more room and more energy available, so the
facilities were more extensive.
But socially, it was quite another matter. This voyage was helping Jak to realize that he’d rather take a sunclipper anytime
he wasn’t in a
object of all time, yet
Up Yours
could have torn the entire Aerie to pieces no more than a meter across in less than ten minutes.
Up Yours
was allowed to approach, not because there was no danger of war, but because, all thanks to Paj Nakasen’s Principles, war
was not the danger it had been. Humanity, after millennia of slaughter piled upon slaughter, had at last admitted to and studied
its own vicious and bloody nature, painstakingly worked out a few rules of war, and made them stick. Foremost of these were
Principle 174 of the Wager: “Every habitat must stay habitable,” and Principle 209: “When the common interest is survival,
individuals must gang up or be ganged up on.”
Wars were fought with little weapons where there were people, or big weapons where there were not, and to violate that principle
was to be hunted down like vermin. Any nation or corporation that seized or destroyed a neutral sun-clipper faced an immediate
and total embargo on food, water, power, and air; a nation attacked while taking its turn patrolling the approaches to Pluto
could count on thousands of allies, including the Rubahy themselves; tyrants and madmen could seek power by means as cruel
as ever, but if they took one step that might make any human habitat unfit for life, their own forces would turn to slay them.
Thus though war was endemic, a warship able to rip civilization off the face of a planet, or to reduce a planet-sized station
to rubble, could approach the solar system’s biggest population center, defended by an equally awesome set of weapons, with
no fear on either part. Such was the power of the Wager.
This was the lecture playing to the three CUPVs as they worked their way down the auxiliary accelerator tube, replacing panels
as they went. When
Up Yours
needed to sacrifice stealth for speed, it could gain about 10% more acceleration by recycling the stray quarks from the synthesizers
that drove the main jets. Here in the tubes, quark-plasma condensed into a demon’s-goulash of subatomic particles, whipped
around in opposing directions to collide at the foci of the auxiliary propulsion dishes, creating a powerful secondary thrust.
On merchant sunclippers, where Jak had worked before, a work crew selected music for its work area. On a battle-sphere, the
public address system ceaselessly broadcast political/philosophic/religious lectures, to keep crewies loyal—to the Wager,
to Nakasen’s vision, to the Hive, and to Nakasen’s vision of what the Wager meant to the Hive. Thus Jak, Myx, and Duj airswam
after their sprites (which looked like stage tinkerbells) through the tunnels, replacing panels as they went, in a constant
drone of lecture.
Jak had learned to tune it out; he had no idea whether Myxenna or Dujuv listened to it, because as CUPVs they were temporarily
members of the Spatial—subject to punishment for seditious remarks. On a battlesphere, microphones and cameras, like the political
officers who monitored them, were ubiquitous.
Jak had CUPVed on the sunclippers
Spirit of Singing Port
to Earth, and
Promeithia
back to the Hive, on his single mission two years ago, and spent most of his first Long Break the year before as a CUPV on
a short-hauler,
Lakshmi’s Singing Joy,
on a Hive-Mercury-Venus-Hive voyage. He was almost halfway to a full-fledged union card. His experience had mattered not
at all. The Spatial put CUPVs on any old job that had to be done but was normally a waste of a good crewie, and kept them
there till there was reason to move them.
Physically, Spatial ships were far more comfortable than sunclippers; there was more room and more energy available, so the
facilities were more extensive.
But socially, it was quite another matter. This voyage was helping Jak to realize that he’d rather take a sunclipper anytime
he wasn’t in a
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