The Ethos Effect

paused. “It won’t work in a fight against more than one, maybe two ships, because you’re basically limited to the power in the accumulators and mass tanks until you can deploy the nets again, and your shields are likely to fail before you can.”
“Oh…”
Commander Van Cassius Albert leaned back in the command couch. In less than an elapsed standard hour, he and the Fergus had gone from heading to a routine picket station in the quietest part of the Taran Republic into a battle in a pivot system. They’d been attacked by an unknown heavy cruiser, almost as if they’d been expected. The Fergus was headed inward to a system that its commander didn’t know for a purpose he also didn’t know, and orders he could only guess at. Van studied the detectors once more, then ran a check on all the ship systems once more, although he doubted he’d find more than the engineer and weapons officer had found.
Still…he’d have to draft a battle report and dispatch it by message torp back to RSF headquarters. He could do that in the twenty-odd hours it would take them to reach Gotland.
His lips curled into an ironic smile. After all the years in service, he still found it amusing that ships could jump between systems near-instantaneously, and yet getting to the jump corridors took hours, if not days. Then, jumps avoided the light-speed limits, which even the most powerful photon drive systems could not.
He took a slow and deep breath before beginning to use the shipnet to draft his report.

Chapter 2
While much has been written about so-called crises of faith in the life cycle of individuals, what is seldom recognized, and even when so recognized, usually dismissed, is that societies also undergo crises of faith.
A societal crisis of faith occurs when the values that produced a particular incarnation of a society no longer correspond to the values held by the individuals and organizations holding economic, political, and social power in that society. Paradoxically, these value changes seem to occur first on a social level. In reality the changes are already far advanced by the time they appear, because in most societies social standing and mobility lag behind economic and political power. Those with economic power seldom wish to flaunt values at variance with social norms, and those in the political arena prefer a protective coloration that in fact straddles the perceived range of values, while ostensibly preferring the most popular of values….
Although all stable societies rest firmly on a consensus of values, invariably the individuals in those societies prefer not to discuss those values, except in glittering generalities, not because they are unimportant, but because they are so important that to discuss them seriously might open them to question and reinterpretation. Thus, the very protections of a society’s values preclude any wide-scale and public reevaluation of those values and any recognition of a potential crisis of values.
Since “morality” is the sum total of those values, the first public symptom of a crisis of values is usually a series of comments about the growing immorality of society—almost always directed at the young of a society who have absorbed what their elders are in fact doing, rather than professing….
Values, Ethics, and Society
Exton Land
New Oisin, Tara
1117 S.E.


Chapter 3
The messroom was an oblong box, barely four meters in length and three in width, the bulkheads covered with a permaplast finish that was supposed to resemble walnut, with a table and benches that, in a pinch, might seat all of the crew. The overhead was an off-white that imitated plaster poorly and gave an impression of dinginess, no matter how often it was cleaned. The deck was covered with a permaplast supposed to resemble gray ceramic tile in a diamond pattern. All the furnishings were anchored firmly to the deck.
Van sat at the head of the table, in the sole chair, sipping the strong black café he favored from a dull black mug. On his right was Sub-commander Forgael, the executive officer and chief pilot, dark circles under her eyes. On Van’s left was Sub-major Driscoll, the engineer.
Driscoll had just finished reading the hard copy draft of the battle report, and he slid it back across the table. “It’s accurate, Commander.”
“But too blunt?”
“No, it’s not,” replied Forgael. “Everything in there is factual. HQ won’t like the fact that an unknown battle cruiser attacked a Taran ship, and they’ll send a raft of queries that will suggest that it can’t be unknown and that either you aren’t interpreting the systems data correctly, or that you’ve neglected updating the recognition parameters.”
“So I need to point out that I.S. updated both just before we left Sligo Station?” Van laughed. “Then they’ll find some other way to suggest I screwed up.”
“You did, ser,” Driscoll replied dryly. “The only thing worse than losing a ship to an attack is to destroy the attacker, especially with an older cruiser that shouldn’t win. It’s worse if we need repairs, because they’ll have to fund them.”
Forgael winced.
Van took another swallow of café and nodded. “The Home party will claim that it shows we don’t need more and newer ships, and the Liberals will insist that it demonstrates that RSF officers are blood-thirsty rock apes who torp innocents on sight. And the Marshal’s Council won’t be happy either way.” Especially not with Commander Van Cassius Albert.
“I don’t see who had anything to gain.” Forgael smiled. “I didn’t express that quite correctly. Who didn’t have something to gain, I meant.”
The three officers nodded, almost simultaneously, although none spoke.
Everyone would have gained something with the loss of the Fergus—except the commander and crew. The Taran Republic would have gotten rid of a near-obsolete ship and a difficult commander, as well as have obtained a demonstration of why newer and better ships were needed. Both the Argentis and the Revenants could have blamed each other for escalating border tensions,