Alone in the Night

by Richard Tongue

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I know he killed a senior Admiral…”

  “There was a lot more to the story than that,” she said. “Again, I can’t talk about it. I’m sure it’ll all come out once the war is over. Suffice that I trust him, and leave it at that.”

  “Fine, then, what sort of commander is he?”

  She paused, then said, “Unorthodox, cunning. A good leader.”

  “I got that from the battle,” Mathis said with a smile. “He really ran rings around Ajax, at least for the first phase. They caught him cold later, though. That’s a tough ship to beat. Though Avenger’s got some pretty sharp teeth to crack that hide with, from what I can tell.” He paused, then said, “You played a pretty crazy stunt yourself. Your idea, or Rojek’s?”

  “Mine,” she said. “There wasn’t time to play by the rules. I had to improvise. It worked, anyway. What do you think would have happened if those shuttles had reached you?”

  “We’d have fought them off, and a lot of good people would have died in the battle. I’m pretty sure we’d have won, but it would have hurt, and hurt badly, and we’ve got to keep this ship in top condition if we’re going to complete our mission. Everything’s riding on this.”

  “You want to know whether Commander Corrigan is up to it.”

  “That’s precisely right,” he replied. “I know it’s a hell of a thing to ask about your commanding officer, but if he’s not…”

  “He’s the best commanding officer I’ve ever had,” she replied.

  Cracking a smile, he said, “That’s not saying very much.”

  With a chuckle, she replied, “True, I guess, but you know what I mean. He’s good. Sharp. Quick. A great combat commander.”

  “I hope so,” Mathis said. “Because we’re going to need the best.” His communicator chirped, and he fished it out of his pocket to read the message on the display, a smile spreading across his face. “That’s more like it. We’re proceeding with the mission, just as planned.”

  “And that is?”

  “How much do you know about vintage orbital defense systems?”

  “I worked on the decommissioning crews for a few months after I left the Academy,” she replied. “When we took out some of the Nationalist-era kit. That’s dangerous stuff to play with.”

  “That’s right, I forgot about that,” Mathis said, nodding. “I’m glad we’re going to have an expert along for the ride, then, because we’re going to be retrieving and installing one over the next few days. Everything’s set on Atlantis for the revolution. We fly in there with the weapons, the network goes down, and every installation has a team of people ready to take over. Then we set up the satellites and Atlantis is free.”

  “Just like that?” she asked. “I think the Belt might have a few things to say about your plan, Claude. They’re not going to go down without a fight.”

  “That’s not a problem,” he replied. “We’ve got one of the best ships in the Fleet here to help us. Commander Corrigan’s going to take Avenger into the fire. As soon as we retrieve the equipment. All of this could be over in a matter of days, Cat!”

  “And then?” she asked.

  “Well, then we set up a standing garrison to help protect the planet until more help arrives from Earth. I know that might be a while…”

  “More likely never,” she replied. “Trust me, I know the condition our deep space fleet is in, and Atlantis is a very long way from home. Long enough that they aren’t going to take the risk. I’m not sure how long Avenger will be able to stay, either. We’ve got a mission to complete…”

  “And whatever that mission might be, Atlantis is more important,” he pressed. “Taking it out of the equation will hurt the enemy’s war effort, and it’ll be a rallying cry for a dozen other worlds to rise up in revolt. We might be able to bring this nightmare to an end right here, right now. If the Belters were smart, they’ll go right to the peace table, hold what they can.”

  “Claude…,” she began.

  “I know, I know we’re going to have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this work, but I also know that we can do it. Everything’s in place. The conditions are perfect. Assuming we can smash through Ajax on our way out of the system, but I’m sure Commander Corrigan can handle that.”

  “Probably,” she replied. “I’m sure something can be done.” She paused, then said, “This isn’t going to be any sort of panacea, Claude. You know that. And you also know that your first loyalty has to be to Earth, not Atlantis. Don’t get me wrong. I want to help them too. I want them to be free, and if that helps us win the war, so much the better. It’s what we’re fighting for, in a very real sense. I just don’t want you to put so much of yourself in this.”

  “How can I not?” he asked. “I’ve spent three months fighting alongside them. Fighting desperately, fighting for our lives, knowing that the odds were that I’d end up dead in a ditch somewhere, lost and forgotten. I was happy to take those risks. I knew what it meant.”

  “As did I,” she said. “Our missions haven’t been that different.”

  Nodding, he said, “I can guess as much. A ship like this, out on its own, alone in the dark. You’ve been fighting a resistance war yourself, just on a rather larger scale.” He cracked a smile, then added, “You should be in all in favor of this. We can end the war and go home as big damned heroes.”

  “And the cost?” she asked. “Just what is this victory going to cost, Claude? We’re not fighting in clean space this time. Or taking out military targets. This war is going to be fought on the streets, in houses, schools.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “If you talked to any Atlantean, they’d be the first to tell you why this has to be. Wait till you see it for yourself. Then you’ll get a real idea of just what we’re fighting for. Until then, we’ve got work to do.” He glanced at his watch, and added, “If we’re on schedule, we’ll be at the depot in ninety minutes. I’d better introduce you to the salvage team.”

  “More friends of yours?”

  “Damn right,” he replied. “You’ll love them. Trust me.”

  Chapter 7

  “Should we be having this conversation?” Rojek asked, lounging on the chair in Corrigan’s cabin. “After all, we’re talking about orders given to us by a flag officer, and you already as good as told him that your obedience had some big conditions on it.” Shaking his head, he said, “You realize that under normal circumstances, you’d be facing a court-martial right now for insubordination.”

  “If we get back to times like that,” Corrigan replied, “then it will mean that we did what we had to do to get there.” He looked at Rojek and Dixon, and said, “I want to hear this from the two of you. Can we pull this off? Can we really make this work?”

  “Not a chance in hell,” Dixon said, “and that isn’t just me playing Devil’s Advocate, either. I don’t know who dreamed up this crazy idea, but it just isn’t going to happen. As soon as the Belters realized that there was something in the works, they’ll have clamped down, hard. They probably have more forces on the way as we speak.”

  “That, and this whole plan is dependent on an obsolete orbital defense network that has been sitting in cold storage for fifty years and more. It’s a big reach to expect it to still be working.”

  “Do we have the manuals, the instructions?” Corrigan asked.

  “Sure, stored away in the database, and we’ve even got some detailed specifications from that mass dismantling they did ten years back. In theory, it’s beautiful, but that’s all it is. Theory.” Dixon shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry, sir, it’s a nice idea. It can’t work.”

  “Clyde?” Corrigan asked, turning to the agent.

  With a frown, Rojek replied, “For whatever it is worth, the Atlanteans believe it’ll work, and they’re committing everything they’ve got to the fight. I’m not sure how much significance we can put on that. They don’t have many tactical experts except Commodore McBride…”

 
“You know him, Bill,” Dixon said. “Better than any of us. Is he crazy?”

  A smile crept across Corrigan’s face, and he replied, “He’s a good commander, unconventional. A little bit of a Don Quixote type. Sometimes he has a tendency to pick the wrong hills to die on. Fights the wrong political battles. That’s how he went from commanding the Interstellar Squadron to a convoy command, I guess, though I had the impression that it had been intended as more of a temporary exile.”

  “Is this the wrong battle, then?” asked Rojek.

  “It’s possible,” Corrigan allowed. “I genuinely do not like the odds. They’re going to throw everything they possibly can at us.” He paused, then said, “First we’ve got to check out the orbital defense network. That’s the key to this whole operation. If we can’t make it work, then we give up the whole idea and go heading out into the black, no matter what Commodore McBride says. Without that, this plan fails.”

  “Agreed,” Rojek replied. “To be fair, I can’t see the Commodore having any way to argue with that. There’s no point at all in dying for a hopeless cause, and this ship is too important.” Leaning forward, he added, “Though even then, do you actually think they have a chance of pulling this off?”

  Shaking his head, Dixon said, “I could take that network down. Half a dozen warships at range, lobbing rocks at the satellites. It’d take a while, but unless they have some serious support, they can’t hold them back. Maybe a week. Maybe two. Then they’ll land troops and all hell will break loose.”

  “We couldn’t stop them,” Rojek said. “In theory, I suppose some ships could be sent out here, but the Senate isn’t going to authorize that to help some other world attempt to win its independence, not while we’re fighting for our lives back at Sol. I can’t blame them. Even under the best possible circumstances, it’s an awful lot to ask. The circumstances are far from good.”

  “Then your assessment…,” Corrigan asked.

  “I think they’re going to get a lot of people killed, Bill,” Rojek said. “I don’t know whether or not they’ll manage to overthrow the garrison. Even taking their word that they’ve got everything prepared to make that happen, that’s just the start of all of this. Even if they can free their world, they’ve got to hold it, and they just don’t have the resources to do it.”

  “I agree,” Dixon said.

  “As do I,” Corrigan added. “Nevertheless, we’re going to make the attempt, and assuming the orbital defense network works, we’re going to do everything we can to support them, right to the end.”

  “Are we having the same conversation?” Dixon asked.

  “Have you ever heard of Roger Bushell?” replied Corrigan.

  “Four-minute mile?” Rojek suggested.

  Corrigan smiled, then said, “That was Roger Bannister, but nice try. Roger Bushell was a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force during the Second Global War. He was taken prisoner near the onset of hostilities, and despite several attempts to escape, he was put in a prisoner of war camp and left to rot with hundreds of others.”

  “So?” Dixon asked.

  “He didn’t let it go. He didn’t just sit back and rot away in that camp. He kept on trying to escape, and finally he came up with a new plan, bigger and bolder than anything ever attempted before. Up to that point, they’d been breaking out in small groups. Two, three, four. Six at the outside.”

  “Smart enough,” Rojek replied. “You don’t want to attract attention.”

  “He attempted to break out two hundred and fifty prisoners at once.”

  Rojek’s eyes widened, and he replied, “Two hundred and…”

  “Did they pull it off?” Dixon asked.

  “Eighty-odd got away before they were detected.”

  “I bet they weren’t on the run for long,” Rojek replied.

  Shaking his head, Corrigan said, “Three of them got away, but that wasn’t the point. You see, it wasn’t about getting a few wayward pilots back home, back into the fight. It was taking the fight to the enemy, the only way they could. Breaking out that many people caused turmoil. Troops taken from the front, used in searching the countryside. Reinforced garrisons to protect other camps, to stop it happening again. It tied up the enemy, confused them, confounded them, totally disproportionate to the number of people involved.”

  “And the prisoners?” Rojek asked.

  “As I said, three got home. The rest were caught. Most of them were executed. As a warning to others, not to escape, though it didn’t work.”

  “What’s the moral of the story, then?”

  “Simply this. We’ve got a chance to do the same thing here, at Atlantis. I’m guessing that’s what McBride has in mind, though he’d never dare say so, not in front of the rebels. Not given the price they’re going to pay if it works.”

  “But…”

  “You said it yourself, Dix. They can’t win. But the Belt’s going to pay one hell of a price for their victory. Four ships pulled from the front, because no matter how old those satellites are, they’ll have to use warships, real warships, to bring them down. Then a new garrison. Larger than before. Hundreds of assault troops, maybe a thousand security types. Who have to be supplied, don’t forget, which means transports, freighters, escorts…”

  Nodding, Rojek said, “Not to mention that the cost of the victory will undoubtedly be the wreckage of all of the equipment on the surface. We can see to that, quietly. Meaning that any advantage they can get out of Atlantis will be lost. No raw materials. Their industrial base will suffer for the lack. Maybe not for a few months, not with their stockpiles, but it’s still going to hurt. And the disruption to their supply infrastructure…”

  “Is everything we came out here to inflict,” Corrigan interrupted.

  Shaking his head, Dixon said, “You realize what this will mean to the people of Atlantis, right? They’re going to pay for this, just like the Belters. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dead, and if things go wrong, it’s a closed ecology. That could turn into a big grave, very quickly.”

  Nodding, Corrigan replied, “If I thought there was any way I could stop the revolution from happening, I would. They’re committed. Even if we flew off into the metaphorical sunset right now, they’d make the attempt. Short of actually contacting the Belters ourselves and warning them, this is going to happen.” Dixon glared at him, and Corrigan added, “Yes, I thought about it.”

  “They’d probably start a massacre anyway, kill anyone they suspected of being part of the rebellion,” Rojek said. “Damn it all, if they want to hurt the Belters, there are better ways to do it. I can think of a hundred things they could do that would cause serious damage without placing their families at risk. They’re throwing their lives away.”

  With a resigned sigh, Corrigan replied, “I am reluctantly forced to agree. They’ve been sold a dream, and it’s very hard to counter that with cold, hard reality. I suppose that I can even sympathize with them, to an extent.”

  “They don’t have the resources for independence,” Rojek said. “Hell, Earth has its own sources of almost everything they have. That suggests that whoever wins, Atlantis loses. Those rare elements they’re prizing so highly now just won’t pay off in the long-term. And when they run out of easily accessible deposits, or another world with richer veins of ore shows up, it gets even worse.” He paused, looked down at the deck, and added, “Not that I expect it will ever get to that point, anyway.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dixon said. “One thing my life of semi-legality has taught me is that there is always an angle. There’s always a way to make something work out. The two of you have given up on them already. It’s a question of mitigation, right, of making the best of a hopeless situation.”

  “Which is precisely what this is,” Rojek replied. “You were there, at the meeting. Bill did everything he possibly could to talk them out of this, and they wouldn’t listen. Neither did the Commodore, who is still meant to be our commanding officer, technically, by the way.”

  “Fi
fty thousand lives at stake.”

  “We’re not the ones who decided to use them as chips in a poker game,” Corrigan replied. “If we’re stuck with this situation, then we’re going to make the best use of it we can, and I can think of eight billion reasons why we don’t have any other choice. Ultimately, we swore our oaths to Earth, not Atlantis, and it isn’t as if they’re working for our benefit.”

  “That’s not the point, damn it, and you know it.”

  “Fine,” Corrigan replied. “Then what would you have me do? Leave now? Sell them out to the Belters and hope for the best? Blow up the damn depot and let them work out the details later?”

  “Find a way to win, Commander,” Dixon said. “There’s got to be one, somewhere. There’s got to be some way to turn this whole mess around. I don’t accept that there isn’t, and if I know you as well as I think I do, neither do you. Somewhere in that tiny little mind of yours is the idea that could turn all of this around.”

  “Any suggestions?” Rojek asked. “You realize what you are asking, I hope? This isn’t a question of turning around a long con. Everything we’ve outlined is going to happen. They can’t win. We can’t stop them trying. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’d be failing in our duty if we didn’t at least attempt to make the best of it. We can still do a lot of damage to the Belters this way. Shorten the war. Save lives.”

  “He’s right,” Corrigan said, looking at Rojek. “He’s right, damn it, and you and I both should know that. We’re not talking about soldiers or resistance fighters. If I thought that the only ones to suffer were the ones with the guns, it’d be different. A version of the same choice we made ourselves when we put on the uniform. You pay your money, you take your chances. This is going to cost innocent lives, one way or another.”