Triumphant

by Jack Campbell

Carmen was woken from a restless sleep by a messenger who said headquarters wanted to talk to her. Trying to blink away drowsiness, she checked the time. Late afternoon. A call from headquarters wasn’t normal. This probably meant that Jayne Redman had already acted on her threats.

  She ran her hands through her hair to order it, hastily braided it back, straightened her camos, and after opening her comm pad clicked the callback link.

  It took a few minutes before the image of a worn-out-looking colonel appeared on her pad. “Citizen Ochoa,” he greeted her. “I hear you were out collecting intelligence last night.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carmen said.

  “General Edelman wants me to tell you he values your reporting,” the colonel continued, while Carmen wondered if the apparent praise was the lead-in to bad news. “Are you aware that your security clearances have been pulled?”

  “What?” Of course. She should have realized that Redman would do that. “What was the justification?”

  The colonel frowned slightly as he read something off to the side. “Unresolved questions regarding past activities in regions of extensive enemy recruitment.”

  Carmen gasped a derisive laugh. “Why didn’t they just say they were doing it because I’m from Mars?”

  “Because discrimination on the basis of place of origin is illegal under the laws of Kosatka,” the colonel said. “Yeah, that’s obviously what they mean and why they’re doing it, but they can’t say that. The message telling us your clearances had been yanked also directed us to send you back to Lodz by the first available means.”

  All of that was what she’d expected. “What is the general going to do?”

  “General Edelman doesn’t like getting directives from agencies that are supposed to be supporting him.” The colonel smiled. “And General Edelman is authorized to issue security clearances for anyone he thinks needs access. Normally, that’s for people on his staff. He directed me to issue you a new clearance. Your job description on the clearance is special intelligence support to the field commander, which means you officially work for the general now. Which in turn means he won’t be sending you back to Lodz, because he wants you here. Are you good with that?”

  “I’m very good with that.” Carmen let out a relieved breath. “Please thank the general for me.”

  “Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

  “Do I need to pay attention to directives from the Integrated Intelligence Service?”

  The colonel responded with an intrigued look. “Have you been paying attention to those directives up to now?”

  “No,” Carmen said.

  “Then I will repeat the general’s instructions. Keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

  Carmen grinned. “Thank you. I will.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A couple of hours later, as the sun dipped toward setting and the nocturnal defenders of Ani began rousing themselves for another night of cat and mouse against the invaders, Carmen checked her mail and saw another callback request.

  This one was from her former boss Loren Yeresh, so she clicked on it.

  Loren answered immediately. He gazed at her with such obvious worry that she shook her head defensively. “I’m fine,” Carmen said.

  “You’re fine.” Loren sighed, looking haggard. “Do you have any idea what the atmosphere was like at work today?”

  “Work? Did you get sucked into the Integrated Intelligence Service nonsense?”

  Loren nodded. He was seated at a desk, and paused to reach and take a drink of what looked like coffee but surely wasn’t. As far as Carmen knew there wasn’t any coffee left in Lodz. “Everybody is getting sucked into it, whether they like it or not.”

  “I’m not,” Carmen said.

  “No, because you’re Our Lady of Perpetual Chaos,” Loren said. “Have you thought about maybe changing your approach?”

  Carmen settled back, fighting her own instinctive resistance to such a question. “Why?”

  “Because the goal for all of us is a free and safe Kosatka. If you’re working at IIS, you can influence the analysis and make sure your viewpoints are heard.”

  “Are you also forgetting that I worked for Earth gov? That’s the oldest argument in the book,” Carmen said. “That’s how you get coopted. That’s how your voice gets silenced. Because they don’t listen, Loren. You know they don’t. People like Jayne Redman want the perks and the big offices and the ability to tell other people what to do. They don’t want disagreement or initiative or thinking outside the boundaries of the box they’ve built. Tell me I’m wrong, that your experience with this IIS is different than what I think.”

  Loren hesitated, frowning.

  “You never did lie to me,” Carmen said. “Don’t start now.”

  He sighed again. “You know what she’ll do, Carmen. Redman and her loyal followers. They’ll fight you every step of the way, try to discredit everything you say and do, and if you turn out to be right, which you probably are, they’ll then claim credit for that themselves.”

  That stung. But Carmen shook her head. “You’re right, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t make me angry, but the alternative is to let them silence me by editing out or changing everything that conflicts with their own, official view of things.”

  “Integrated,” Loren said. “It’s not the official view, which implies we’re being told what to say, it’s the integrated view.” He laughed scornfully and took another drink. “Which implies we have real input into the final product.”

  “You’re too good to end up like this,” Carmen said. “Has the IIS really sucked up every part of the intelligence collection and analysis biz on Kosatka?”

  “Either it already has or soon will,” Loren said.

  “Really?”

  Loren paused, eyeing her. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that if there’s only one source of intelligence collection and analysis on this world, that places a huge amount of power in the hands of whoever is in charge of that.”

  “Sure.” Loren nodded. “I’m sure Jayne Redman has thought of that.”

  “Has the First Minister? Has the House of the People’s Representatives?”

  This time Loren Yeresh paused for several seconds. “I don’t know. Carmen, people like me can’t just walk into the First Minister’s office and talk about stuff like that.”

  “I know First Minister Hofer,” Carmen said. “Remember?”

  “Are you . . . ?” Loren exhaled slowly. “Should I know anything more about what you’re going to do?”

  “Who said I’m going to do anything?”

  “That’s right, you didn’t. You just mentioned someone you knew from when you first arrived on Kosatka.” Loren gave her a level look. “Be careful.”

  “Loren, have you heard they might start sending soldiers with prosthetics back to the front?”

  He hesitated. “There are rumors.”

  “You don’t know anything else?”

  “Your clearance was pulled, Carmen.”

  “General Edelman gave me a new one,” she told him.

  “That’s right. I heard of some very loud, um, discussions about that going on in the IIS front office.” Loren grimaced as if in pain. “Someone in a position to know told me that preparations are being made for mobilizing the so-called combat-capable injured. Supposedly it’s just an emergency plan to be implemented if another invasion force lands. That’s what they’re being told, anyway.”

  “Does your someone in a position to know believe that?”

  “No, he doesn’t. The need already exists, and too many of the details seem focused on the near future, not on some future contingency.” Loren nodded to her. “Okay. I understand your personal motivation. This isn’t about you or getting credit or kicking Redman in the butt.”

 
“You know who it’s about,” Carmen said. “Dominic is not going to the front again with a prosthetic if I can stop it. And this single-source control for all intelligence and related activities is not a good idea. It gives too much power to whoever runs that agency. I need to get people to see that.”

  “I’m not stupid enough to get in your way,” Loren said, giving her another concerned look. “Be careful,” he repeated. “If you do anything. Which I don’t know anything about.”

  After the call ended, Carmen spent a while gazing at the screen of her comm pad, wondering if some of the things being done in the name of preserving Kosatka’s freedom would turn out to be as dangerous to that freedom as the invaders she and the other soldiers were fighting.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rob Geary had the destroyer Saber on an intercept with the three attacking ships. He didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the enemy commander made a mistake on his own. Hopefully the commander could be nudged into a mistake.

  The three enemy ships, the light cruiser, the destroyer, and the freighter, were moving through space at a crawl, only about a thousand meters per second. That was to accommodate the freighter carrying the invading troops, which couldn’t accelerate or brake at anything like the rate a warship could. Freighters were designed to move a lot of cargo at efficient speeds, and refitting them with life support in the cargo areas so they could carry a lot of soldiers instead of cargo didn’t change that. Fortunately for Rob and the people of Glenlyon Star System, Old Earth hadn’t yet sold to the aggressors out here any surplus military ships designed for moving troops quickly through space.

  Saber was approaching the three enemy ships from below and to the left as seen using the human conventions that allowed people to orient themselves in space, where no real up or down existed. Humans defined the plane in which a star’s planets orbited as a basis for “up” and “down,” and the star itself for deciding if something was to their left (away from the star) or right (toward the star). It was rough and simple, but it worked to give common references in space. Instead of coming in with a swift stroke befitting her name, Saber was moving at a moderate velocity for a warship, only point zero one light speed, or about three thousand kilometers per second. There had been plenty of time to accelerate up to point zero two light speed, but Rob hadn’t wanted to burn the fuel necessary to do that since he had no idea when he’d be able to refuel Saber, and the slower velocity allowed better accuracy. “If we get a shot,” Rob told his bridge crew, “I want to make sure we get as many hits as possible.”

  The officers on the bridge, all of them Earth Fleet veterans, understood how tough the situation was, how bad the odds were. But, because of how well things had gone during the fighting at Kosatka a few months ago, they had an amount of confidence in him that Rob found worrisome. Overconfidence could lose battles at least as surely as a lack of confidence. That’s what Mele Darcy had told him during one of her rambling discussions of military theory and history, and Rob had no reason to doubt her. Not on that matter, anyway. Some of Mele’s stories about her own experiences in life seemed a little . . . exaggerated, but then Mele was a Marine, and she never told stories about what she’d done in combat except to offer an occasional learning lesson.

  “Half an hour to intercept, Captain,” Lieutenant Cameron reported.

  “Very well,” Rob said. He magnified the image of the enemy ships on his own display, seeing they remained in the same triangular formation, the destroyer and light cruiser positioned so that they could hit Saber before Saber could get in any shots at the freighter carrying the enemy troops. Rob had lined up the intercept course to offer an apparent chance for the enemy to better concentrate fire on Saber by moving the light cruiser “down” and to one side, in hopes that the enemy commander would take advantage of that without noticing that it would offer a chance for Saber to make a last-minute change of course to hit the freighter, with lower odds of being hit herself. But so far the enemy hadn’t changed anything about their approach.

  Lieutenant Commander Vicki Shen, who was already in engineering in anticipation of the upcoming fight, called him. “He’s not going to bite, sir.”

  Rob nodded as much to himself as to her words. “He spotted the trick.”

  “No, I doubt that,” she replied. “I’ve gone back over every maneuver that guy in command of the enemy force has made since they arrived at this star system. Every single move, every single formation shift, has been by the book. Exactly by the book.”

  “We guessed he was an Earth Fleet veteran,” Rob said. “It’s not surprising that he’d still be using Earth Fleet procedures.”

  “I think this is more than that. I worked for a few people like this guy. They couldn’t even spell ‘imagination’ because they didn’t think they’d ever need it.” Shen shook her head. “I don’t think he saw the possible opportunity we offered. He’s not looking for that. He’s got his ships arranged by the book. Anything we do, he’ll counter by the book.”

  “Hell.” Rob leaned his head back, staring at the tangle of wiring and piping and ducts attached to the overhead of the bridge. “If we had superiority, or even odds, we’d be able to take him apart if he’s that predictable. But when he has this much superiority, we can’t use that predictability against him. We need him to make a mistake, and you’re telling me that he’s not going to do that.”

  “I don’t think so, no.” Shen paused. “The combat simulation system estimates that if we continue this intercept, we have a two percent chance of inflicting significant damage on the freighter, and a ninety percent chance of our own ship suffering serious damage when both enemy ships hit us. As second in command, I feel obligated to advise you against making this attack.”

  “Thank you,” Rob said, feeling as if acid were eating at his insides. “You’re right. Is there anything we can do? You know Earth Fleet procedures better than I do. Even if all we can do is force him to use more fuel, that’s something.”

  “I don’t think—” She paused, her brow lowering in thought. “Leader Class light cruisers have a single missile launcher. We don’t know if that ship has any missiles aboard. But if it does, Earth Fleet manuals spell out exactly when to fire.”

  “How are you thinking we can use that?”

  “Maybe we can trick him into using up some of his missiles by knowing when he’d fire and being ready to evade them.”

  He took a moment to think. His own, limited, experience had been in the small fleet that the Old Colony star system Alfar had maintained. If Vicki Shen saw something in the enemy commander’s actions that her Earth Fleet experience could identify, he’d be a fool to disregard that. “That’s not much, but it’s something. And lessening the threat from the missiles on that cruiser will help our odds when we do close to a fight.” Rob turned to look at the officers at their watch stations aligned along the back of the bridge, focusing on the weapons officer. “Ensign Reichert, what do you know about Earth Fleet parameters for firing missiles?”

  Reichert, concentrating on her weapons display, jerked with surprise at the question. “Missiles? I haven’t employed any, sir, but I’ve still got the manual loaded into the combat systems for reference. That was required by Earth Fleet regulations, but by your orders the combat system is no longer slaved to the manual to govern when to fire.”

  “Good. The executive officer tells me the enemy commander is doing everything exactly as Earth Fleet manuals dictate,” Rob said. “I want to know under what conditions he’ll fire a missile at us, and then I want to know how we can evade that missile.”

  Reichert nodded, her eyes intent. “It’ll be based on probability of a hit. I’m sure of that.”

  “Get me what I need to know, because I needed to know it five minutes ago.”

  “Yes, sir! Do I assume we continue on this approach vector to intercept?”

  “Yes. Lieutenant Cameron, work with Ensign Reichert on the evasive man
euvers.”

  “Yes, Captain. Uh . . . twenty-five minutes to intercept, sir,” Cameron added. “We should have an answer to you well before then.”

  Sitting, watching his display, and not interrupting proved to be one of the hardest things Rob had done. He had to keep fighting himself to avoid demanding progress updates from Reichert and Cameron, because he knew those disturbances in their work would slow them down. He’d seen enough of both Reichert and Cameron to be sure they’d get the job done, but it was still hard as hell to wait it out while they worked as the timer on his display kept counting down the seconds and minutes until the intercept.

  Twenty minutes prior to the intercept the general quarters alarm sounded, calling everyone aboard Saber to their battle stations. There wasn’t any rush of sailors through the ship in response to the alarm, which wasn’t a surprise. Rob wondered if there was anyone on the ship who wasn’t already in position, ready for battle.

  He pulled out the survival suit stored at his seat and put it on in case Saber took a hit bad enough to open this part of the ship to space. He kept the helmet unsealed to make it easier to talk with everyone else and to conserve the suit’s oxygen recirc system. The familiar routine momentarily took his mind off of the welter of worries about what to do if the answer couldn’t be found in time.

  “We’ve got it, Captain,” Ensign Reichert announced breathlessly. “The exact circumstances of when to fire are determined by the situation. Since we have the same Earth Fleet manuals as the enemy does, we know what they call for in this exact situation. If he follows the engagement rules in the manual, he’ll fire when the combat systems estimate a seventy-five percent chance of a hit regardless of whatever evasive maneuvers we carry out.”

  “We can determine exactly when that will be on our approach to intercept,” Lieutenant Cameron said.

  “Seventy-five percent?” Rob said. “No matter how we evade?” He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. How could he take that kind of risk?