She exchanged knowing glances with the other pilots while they changed into their flight suits. They were all experiencing the same thing, and they all knew better than to talk about it. Someone in higher would get scared and hold things up, and she didn’t want any more delays.
She wanted to fly.
* * *
Lieutenant Colonel Grant Jessup was another former Air Force officer and pre-Contact Ancient, which made him the oldest person in the room with eighty years to spare. He looked pretty good for someone pushing two hundred; his complexion was a bit rugged, but that was about it. The years hadn’t taken the edge off his skills or the casual arrogance with which he displayed them, either. The commander of Tenth Squadron had logged a little over a thousand hours on the War Eagle, which was three times as long as his pilots had. That amounted to over three hundred warp jumps inside the tiny craft. To a casual observer, he looked like a normal, gung-ho Marine officer.
To his fellow fighter pilots, he was like a living god.
The squadron leader looked over the briefing room, filled with the pilots and support personnel who had participated in the mission. Tenth Squadron had destroyed the Bull Run, performing six warp jumps per fighter in the process. Nobody had died or gone insane. The room’s central holotank had shown all the details of the combat action in full living color.
“In conclusion, you all did great,” he said after going over all the salient points of the sortie. “Perhaps a little too great.”
Some of the pilots chuckled; the rest traded uneasy glances. They knew what he was talking about: even as they performed their attack runs, each fighter separated from the others by thousands of miles, all the pilots had shared a sense of awareness of what the others were doing. And Colonel Jessup had been at the center of it all, like a spider in its web. It was impossible, but the mission results confirmed it; they’d been able to coordinate the attack even though they hadn’t communicated through conventional means. Nobody said so out loud, not with the ground crew officers in the room. They wouldn’t understand.
“In any case, your performance has been on par with the other squadrons in the task force,” he continued. “Confirmation of your new status is still pending, but unofficially, you are no longer trainees.”
We made it, Lisbeth thought. They’d launched two successful sorties, engaged a target, and destroyed it. They now were part of the Marine Spacefighter branch, the tenth formation to be inducted into it. A part of her was as elated as she’d expected, but the rest was wondering about the price she and her fellow pilots were paying. They were being changed by the multiple warp jumps, the Spice drug cocktail, or both. Everyone joked how warp navigators were all weird, and pretty spooky to boot. She wondered what they would make of fighter pilots once their quirks started to become apparent.
Crazy or not, they are going to use us. We’re going to be deployed, and soon. Ready or not, crazy or not, here we come.
And the funny part was, she didn’t mind one bit.
Seven
Parthenon-Four, 164 AFC
“I think that makes it official.”
Fromm nodded. “This sector is clear, and just in time for Christmas.”
Not to mention the last stage of the evacuation, he thought. The Big Furries had been stubborn, but the destruction of their food stores at another handful of villages had driven home the lesson. Bravery could not stave off starvation. The end result had been mass migration away from the American facilities, the despoiled tribes falling upon those in the hinterlands. The natives were now too busy fighting amongst themselves to consider hindering American operations in the area. Whatever high-tech toys they still had were being used to drive off some other Big Furries from their lands. From satellite and drone surveillance, the ensuing wars of invasion were turning nasty, and would get worse still when the planet entered its winter phase, some ninety days from now. By then, all humans would be off-planet, leaving the natives free to live or die as they chose.
The evacuation had taken longer than expected, mostly because orbital transport had been at a premium and moving the heavy equipment deemed valuable enough to bring along had taken a great deal of time and effort. Even so, it was almost over. The last civilians were due to be evacuated by the end of the month, New Year’s Eve in the Terran calendar. Fromm’s company would get a well-deserved Christmas break, and a few days later they and the rest of the 101st MEU would be the last humans to leave Parthenon-Four.
All the Viper SF teams had been allegedly accounted for. There hadn’t been many of them in the first place, a little under a hundred troops total, operating in small groups scattered around the planet. How they’d been inserted without anyone being the wiser remained something of a mystery, but a lot of trade passed through the system, including a great deal carried by alien-flagged ships. All from friendly polities, sure, but for the right price a tramp freighter’s crew could be convinced to smuggle in a team of Nasstah infiltrators and their equipment. The Intelligence weenies were trying to figure out who and when. They’d probably find a culprit sometime after the battle to hold the system was over and the information didn’t matter.
Fromm went over the take from the overheads one last time before leaving the command center. With the last group of insurgents in full retreat, he could afford to take some personal time off.
He read a new email from Heather he’d gotten that morning. From her account, Thanksgiving hadn’t been much fun. Listening to a bunch of civilians grouse about how hard their lives were never was. Fromm wondered just how much worse it’d been before First Contact, when the vast majority of Americans never spent even a day in uniform. Of course, for the vast majority of US citizens, their Obligatory Service years were only slightly tougher than civilian life; it all depended on where and when you did your time. The current class would not be enjoying their term, that was for sure. They’d be sent out into harm’s way as soon as their trainers were reasonably sure they weren’t a greater danger to their own side than to the enemy. The newbies would be used as replacements and sent into battle, where they’d suffer disproportionately-higher casualties. That was the way things worked.
Conscription made sure there were always warm bodies to throw into the fire, but no laws or regulations could build the ships and guns they would need to actually fight. Heather’s missive mentioned complaints of shortages in the civilian market, everything from car parts to grav-wave communication nodes. Ever since First Contact, the US had been desperately building up its industrial capacity, but most of it ended up supplying the military. Billions of man-hours and mountains of raw materials were spent to produce sophisticated devices that ended up shipped to remote parts of the galaxy and blown to pieces, with little to no benefit to the workers who’d made them – other than keeping alien ships from darkening Earth’s skies for a second and final time.
Survival was great, but Earth’s living standards were barely higher than they’d been before the ETs showed up; while his Marines relied on antri-gravity vehicles, most civvies made do with electric and internal combustion engines. And it was even worse in the exoplanetary territories and even some of the Star States; in many places ordinary people made do with imported horses or native beasts of burden. There just wasn’t enough production capacity to go around, and the current war was squeezing the civilian side very badly. Fromm’s sister had been complaining about that as well.
If the civvies had a clue of just how bad the situation was, though, they’d spend less time grousing and more praying. The news and even the Marines’ tactical briefings were doing their level best to paint a positive picture, but anybody who bothered to do the math knew what the odds were. The Tripartite Galactic Alliance had such an edge in numbers and industry that they could afford massive losses and keep coming. The US had next to zero margin of error: the war could be lost in one or two battles. The coming fight for Parthenon System, for example. Lose here and the next few years would be nothing but the kicking and screaming of the condem
ned on his way to the gallows.
“Merry Goddamn Christmas,” he muttered. He wrote Heather back, trying to be as cheerful as possible.
It wasn’t easy. Part of him didn’t think he’d make it to another Christmas.
* * *
“Your turn, Gonzo.”
Gonzaga was looking at the colorfully-wrapped gift just the way he’d stare at a piece of unexploded ordnance. Russell didn’t know what had possessed the private to bring the package to the Christmas party; a present from his latest ex-wife was something to be opened in private, if it was to be opened at all. Had Russell ever been married and gotten a package from an ex, he would have deep-sixed it without bothering to check what was inside.
Thing was, that had been Gonzo’s only care package this Christmas, and he didn’t want to be reduced to opening one of the generic gifts the battalion made available to grunts without personal gifts, at least the ones who hadn’t opted out of the holidays for religious or personal reasons. Russell had been happy with his random box, and he didn’t care what anybody thought of him. Gonzo didn’t, either, not really, but without a personal gift he couldn’t make fun of the troopers who didn’t get one.
The Christmas’ Eve gathering was something of a tradition for the Marines. Anybody who wasn’t on duty – most of the ones working that night were those who didn’t celebrate the holidays – gathered together at the company’s mess hall and everyone opened one of their presents after dinner. The ceremony was supposed to take the edge off being away from home. Sometimes it did.
“Here goes nothin’,” Gonzo said, tearing into the wrapping. The box was big enough for an old-school book or some electronic device, but Russell didn’t think it was anything Gonzo would enjoy. He’d met his buddy’s ex, a bartender at New Parris who’d been cute enough to fuck, but way too much of a bitch to marry. She’d promptly gone on to screw a Jody or three when Gonzo was away (he’d never found out, and Russell just didn’t have the heart to tell him). Later on, her eating habits had overcome even the metabolic enhancers that kept most people trim, and she’d turned into a proper dependapotamus, without even the excuse of producing a litter of Devil Pups for the unseemly weight gain. Without children, divorcing her had been painless enough, and Gonzaga hadn’t heard from her in years, until now.
As soon as the box opened, a life-sized hologram appeared over it. It was the ex, but sometime in the recent past she’d gotten back in shape: she looked at least as good as when Gonzo and every other grunt in the bar she worked at had tried to pick her up. Maybe even better; Russell couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t seen her naked until just now. The full-body hologram wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.
“Hola, mi amor,” the naked ex’s hologram said. “Just wanted to let you see what you’re missing.” She wiggled her hips and smacked her own ass, and damned if she didn’t look just fine.
Everybody burst out laughing. Even Gonzo.
All in all, it felt like Christmas. Russell’s real present had come in early, almost a month ago. Waking up after being sure he was a goner had been a damn good gift. Waking up with a pretty nurse and an even prettier doctor hovering over him had been nice, too, although both ladies had been married and neither had been inclined to stray. That was okay. By the time he was discharged from the clinic, after they’d grown him a new set of limbs, he’d had plenty of hazard pay saved up, more than enough to have a good time at a discreet brothel that hadn’t shut down for the evacuation. The establishment’s owner had figured there was plenty of coin to be made servicing the Marines’ needs. The ladies had finally left a few days ago, but it’d been fun until then.
He’d been lucky. Corporal Carson of Second Squad had bought it during the same fight. A good guy, and another veteran of Jasper-Five, which was still the toughest fight in Russell’s career. Mostly because his platoon had been on its own, the only jarheads on the planet. This last fight had been about as easy as those things went. The fact that he’d almost gotten killed didn’t change that. You could get killed during a complete cakewalk, or during a field-ex for that matter. The Viper operators had been tough, but they’d been outnumbered and outgunned, and their primmie puppets hadn’t added much to the mix.
They were headed for Parthenon-Three, just after New Year’s. That was going to be interesting. If the Vipers arrived in force, it was going to get a little too interesting.
Trade Nexus Eleven, 165 AFC
“Happy New Year,” Guillermo Hamilton said with false merriment.
“I guess so,” Heather said. She didn’t give a damn about the new year, which promised to bring no happiness to anybody.
“Admit it, you’re happy to be back in the field,” her fellow spy said.
“If you say so.” I went from being a low-grade intelligence officer to the reincarnation of Jane Bourne simply because I didn’t get killed during the Days of Infamy. She kept that thought to herself, though. True, staying in New Washington and working as an analyst did not appeal to her; she liked field work and she thought she was pretty good at it. On the other hand, most of her achievements had been of the violent kind, the sort of stuff vids and games assumed spies did all the time and which real life intelligence officers avoided at all costs. When you operated in enemy territory, completely outnumbered and outgunned, the last thing you wanted was to pick a fight. She certainly hadn’t enjoyed the times when circumstances had picked a fight with her.
Still, her survivor’s luck had greatly advanced her career, although her superiors seemed to delight in putting her in dangerous positions, perhaps thinking that her winning streak would continue indefinitely. Remfie rat bastards. And Hamilton was one of said rat bastards, although he was at least sharing the risks with her on this mission.
Granted, the two Americans weren’t in imminent danger, even though they were working undercover. Trade Nexus Eleven was neutral ground, under the control of the O-Vehel Commonwealth, which had assiduously stayed on the sidelines of the current galactic conflict and had enough muscle to make any of the belligerents think twice before antagonizing it. Heather had harbored some hopes the Vehelians would declare war on the Tripartite Galactic Alliance. After all, one of their embassies had been attacked and nearly destroyed during the Days of Infamy. Provocation or not, however, the Ovals weren’t interested in joining what promised to be the losing side of a galactic war.
On the other hand, they hadn’t joined the presumed winning side, either, and that was very helpful indeed. Among other things, it meant she and Hamilton could travel freely through Vehelian space. Humans were welcome to Trade Nexus Eleven, just like everyone else, as long as they behaved. All in all, her current posting was not a bad one. She and Hamilton were pretending to be private shipping sales reps, allegedly here to negotiate the services of a consortium of human-crewed merchant ships, a job that allowed them to interact with all kinds of potential sources of information. Even if they were caught, they would probably get off with a slap on the wrist, or at worst a few years in a minimum-security Vehelian prison, both of which were infinitely preferable to what awaited spies in Lamprey or Viper space. Or even the Imperium, which was nicer but not exactly forgiving towards enemy agents.
Heather was still glad for the hooded robes and face masks that concealed them from casual observation. Both the garments were necessities: although the titanic space station’s life support systems were calibrated to accommodate Class Two biologies, their default oxygen level and temperature were both below comfortable levels for humans. The face masks helped them breathe without needing special nanite treatments, and the robes kept them warm in the fifty-degree ambient temps that Ovals considered ideal. The need to cover up made it harder to identify their species: bipeds their size could belong to any of a dozen different species. All to the good, since humans weren’t exactly popular at the moment. It meant the two intelligence officers could wait for their contact in public without too many worries.
“She’s late,” Guillermo commented idly.
/> “She’ll show up,” Heather said with a shrug. To pass the time, she turned away from her fellow agent and checked the view from the station’s promenade, which was rather spectacular. The miles-long space station was in a stable orbit around a black hole, a small one as those things went but still an impressive sight, not of the hole itself, of course, but of the effect around it. At the moment, the singularity was feasting upon a nebula unlucky enough to cross its path, creating an impressive light show beyond its event horizon. The colorful swirling lights coming from further out than Pluto’s orbit around the sun were beautiful and almost hypnotic. The black hole’s effect on the fabric of spacetime had created fifteen ley lines connecting a good third of the known galaxy, which was the main reason the space station had been built there – and why the second largest Vehelian fleet in the Commonwealth made it its base of operations. A duo of dreadnoughts being refitted were floating not too far away; the five-mile-long cylinders, festooned with weapons and shields, were pretty impressive, easily three times the size of the equivalent American ships. Only the Imperium built bigger capital ships.
The view on the inside of the station was less awe-inspiring but just as colorful. The Ovals had gone for a bazaar-like atmosphere for the long promenade around its central hub. Open market squares, filled with vendors hawking their wares and haggling would-be buyers had been a common feature of thousands of civilizations during their pre-Starfaring days, and the faux-primitive ambiance was a tourist attraction. Spacers, soldiers on leave and travelers taking some time off between warp jumps mingled with hawkers from all over the galaxy, all doing their best to part visitors from their money. On their way to the meeting place, Heather had spotted a dozen distinct species, despite the fact that many of them were partially hidden by heavy clothing and breather masks. Most of them came from Class Two biospheres, with a smattering of Class Ones and odd Three or Four. Long-necked Wyrms growled at six-limbed Buggers; one stall over, a troupe of Puppy performers were in the middle of a complex sword-dance to the delight of a gaggle of Blue Men spectators. Food from hundreds of cultures was cooked over open braziers, making the stations’ life support systems work overtime to clear out the smoke rising from them: the primitive spectacle was belied by the imp warnings that indicated which kinds of meat and vegetables were edible to her species, and which would be nothing but poison.
No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2) Page 11