Flash Fic: Ship of Fools

The air in the primary briefing room of the Terran Confederation's Executive Residence felt thick with fear. The Science Directorate's warning and preliminary analysis about the approaching threat had only finished a few minutes earlier. President McAuliffe slowly drummed her fingertips on the conference table, her expression a stone mask. The other Directorate leaders looked at each other, seemingly less afraid of the threat they'd just been briefed about than something else entirely. Finally, the Director of Defense cleared his throat. "What do we do about this, Madam President?"

"Do?" McAuliffe replied laconically. "I imagine the proper thing to 'do' about this is to sally forth and neutralize the threat with all possible force. Or do you think the fifteen billion people just in the Solar System deserve to suffer the same fate as the Entwhistle colony? To say nothing of the rest of the Confederation, along with our various neighbors."

"We don't have the forces or the firepower to counter them!" protested the Director of Economics.

"We most certainly do," said McAuliffe arctically. "You might not think so, Director Alvarado, but Directors Lal and Hecht are well aware of our actual military capabilities."

Alvarado looked at his two colleagues in puzzlement. Hecht was the Director of Defense, and his question of the Confederation's response was entirely within his purview to answer. Lal, on the other hand, was the Confederation's Director of Interstellar Affairs, the chief diplomat for almost half a trillion human beings and countless billions of non-humans living in the Confederation.

Lal took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for a high dive into a pool of uncertain depth. "Madam President, we cannot meet this threat as you are undoubtedly envisioning it. Give the Director Hecht a few days to come up with a war plan that makes the best possible use of our current deployments--"

McAuliffe's mask shifted, becoming a scornful gargoyle's visage. "Director Lal, there is a time for caution and prudence. And there is a time to pull out all the stops. And we are squarely in the latter. I could replay the footage we received from Entwhistle, if you like, to help refresh your memory of why we should do just that."

"But the Scaramouche Protocols absolutely forbid it!" Lal countered vehemently.

"The what?!" asked Alvarado, clearly confused.

Hecht winced visibly, then heaved a resigned sigh. "Cat's out of the bag, Madam President. May I?" McAuliffe nodded stonily and Hecht leaned back in his chair. "The Scaramouche Protocols were established around the first time humanity made contact with an intelligent alien species, specifically the Orotzin. The Confederation was less than forty years old at that point. And the leadership of the day had a burning desire to avoid replaying the histories of Cortez and Pizarro. At that time, we were significantly ahead of the Orotzin in a number of fields. They had enough to achieve long range spaceflight within their own star system, and they were clearly working on their first interstellar flights. The Protocols were intended to convince alien species that we weren't a threat to them, or that we weren't interested in being a threat to them."

"I can see that," Alvarado said slowly as he tried to process the information, "but I don't entirely buy it."

"Haven't you wondered why our military budgets take up such a large chunk of the Confederation's GDP?" Alvarado nodded. "Our R&D and logistics take up a stupendous amount of those budgets, mainly because we're trying to make things look wildly overengineered and inefficient. Half the fittings and fixtures on every one of our weapons and defensive systems, from small arms all the way to main batteries on our battle wagons are there to step things down, to hinder their relative effectiveness. All to avoid the appearance that we're these super-advanced murder machines unleashed on a hapless galaxy."

"And now," the Science Director said glumly, "there really is a super-advanced murder machine society unleashed on a hapless galaxy."

Alvarado looked over at the Science Director. "Director Szabo, did you know about these 'Scaramouche Protocols' before this?"

"Of course, I did, Gil," Szabo replied, a grim smile on his face. "You think anybody in Nirav or Alois' shops could have made those protocols stand up without our assistance? Believe me, there's a lot of smart folks who've gone to considerable lengths to look far less sophisticated than they are. And to make our tech as close to our neighbors as possible, to all appearances."

"Surely somebody has to have figured out that we've been playing dumb this whole time!

Lal nodded his head slowly. "There have. A great many of them over the last three centuries. And we've gone to equally considerable lengths to keep that fact from getting out. We've relied on patriotism, avarice, shame, and sometimes cold-blooded murder to keep the secret. Believe me, I'm quite certain I'm going to be facing a less-than-graceful retirement because I spilled the beans."

"Bottom line, Gil," Szabo said as gently as he could, "we have been holding on to this for a long time. It's almost habitual at this point. But we've always kept in mind the possibility that a scenario like this would come up, and that we'd need a rationalized plan to deal with it." He turned to McAuliffe. "Madam President, I had hoped to bring this up with you in private, but that's no longer possible. I believe this situation is precisely what was envisioned for Case Carcosa. I recommend its immediate implementation."

"Defense Directorate seconds the recommendation," Hecht said firmly.

"Does Interstellar Affairs concur?" McAuliffe asked quietly.

"I am trying to grapple with the possibility that our neighbors, friendly and otherwise, will draw the wrong conclusions if we do," replied Lal in an equally quiet register. "And the longer we've kept the secret from a given species, the worse it will be. Our relations with the Orotzin will almost certainly be irreparably destroyed. They'll wonder why we didn't trust them with the truth in the first place, or why we've sat on the secret for three hundred years. We might stop the immediate threat only to face an onslaught from everyone around us."

"They are free to hate us all they like, Director Lal," said McAuliffe in a hard tone of voice. "But they will still be alive to hate us for it. A point I trust you will make to them after the wreckage cools." 

(This piece originally appeared on r/humansarespaceorcs)