Corcoran nodded. “I’ve considered it. Anything else?”
Downing shrugged. “No. I’ll be heading off to dinner, then. Coming, Nolan?”
The retired admiral did not look away from Riordan when he replied. “Thanks, Rich. I’m not hungry yet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Downing nodded. “Bright and early.” He entered the security code for the debriefing chamber’s exit. It hissed open.
But as Downing stepped into the corridor beyond, he heard a faint sound behind him: Corcoran had left the observer’s booth, was already next to Riordan’s gurney. And, just as the security door closed, Downing noticed that Nolan had abandoned his customary military bearing. He looked more like a troubled father standing beside the bed of a desperately ill child.
Chapter Two
ODYSSEUS
Annoyed, Caine glanced up at the training area’s control booth. “Do you have to keep distracting me while I try to memorize this circuitry?” He had frayed another wire end.
Downing nodded down at him. “It’s part of the training. If you ever need to jury-rig a command override, or cut a control circuit, you will probably be in a loud, chaotic, and dangerous environment.”
Caine looked around as buzzers shrieked and lights flashed erratically. “At least you left out the dangerous parts.”
“In this scenario, the hatch just to your left—the one you’re trying to bypass now—opens directly to space. And you are not wearing a spacesuit.”
“Well, that’s not a big deal, since the vacuum is just make-believe.”
“That’s a dangerous assumption, Caine.”
“But this is just training. You wouldn’t—”
“I suggest you work while we talk. A tight schedule such as ours means we have to train you using the fastest form of operant conditioning: negative reinforcement. So failures will have unpleasant consequences.”
Caine found that the hatchway seemed slightly ominous, now. He started stripping the next wire more vigorously. “Yeah, but this is a training exercise—”
“And, as I said, part of it is to train you to perform tasks while being distracted. So, as you work, I will continue answering the questions you asked about IRIS. To resume, the Institute’s primary mandate is to reduce our home system’s vulnerability to exosapient invasion.”
Caine twisted the exposed wires. “If the exosapients have a technological edge, you’d be winning a victory just to get them to land on Earth itself.”
Downing paused. “And how would that be a victory?”
“Hell, it’s better than having them exterminate us from orbit.” Caine looked for the green lead, found it snugged behind the red one: good thing I’m not color blind. “Look: if alien invaders beat us in space, they could stay in Earth orbit and play ‘drop the rock’ until they’ve battered us back into the Stone Age. Of course, if they’re genocidal, they’ll do that anyway—and none of this matters.”
“Wouldn’t mass landings be as bad as bombardment?”
“You won’t be facing mass landings.” Caine fumbled the multitool: it grazed across two leads, imparted a mild shock. “From what you told me earlier, FTL craft will almost certainly remain big, expensive, and therefore, rare. That means our adversary should have limited forces.”
“Very well—but I still don’t see how having them establish a beachhead is a victory for us.”
Caine looked up at the control booth. “Are you familiar with the Vietnam War?”
Downing stared down: there was a split second of uncertainty in his responding nod.
Caine shrugged. “The Vietnamese were utter underdogs: inferior tech, lack of air supremacy, unable to strike at their opponent’s homeland. But they won the war, despite losing every major battle.” Caine twisted two wires together, realized he had only half the job done but had used almost three-quarters of his available time. “They understood that when your enemy is large and technologically superior, you want him in your territory, because—if you are still the true master of your own countryside—his invasion force will become your hostage.”
“Not if their orbital fire reduces our cities to rubble first.”
Caine shook his head. “If they intend to rule us rather than exterminate us, they’ll want to avoid a ‘final solution.’ So you dangle the prospect of capitulation—or even collaboration—under their noses while preparing to strike at them.”
“And with their superior technology, how do you propose to get close enough to strike at them?”
Caine glanced up. “By getting—or prepositioning—forces inside their beachhead. And don’t give me that doubting-Thomas look: there are always methods of infiltrating forces through ‘secure perimeters’ or ‘impassable’ borders.”