Wandering Storm

by Steven Anderson

  Published by Steven J. Anderson

  © 2018 Steven J. Anderson

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  RuComm352@gmail.com

  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100018307866833

  Cover by Fiona Jayde Media.

  Interior Formatting & Design by The Deliberate Page.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9991788-4-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9991788-5-0

  Contents

  THE ACADEMY

  HOME AGAIN

  THE PARTY

  THE KILL LIST

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  ESPRIT ORAGEUX

  COSTRANO’S REDOUBT

  STAYING SANE

  ATTACK

  COSTRANO

  HARD CHOICES

  CONSEQUENCES

  INFECTION

  HOOG SCHELDE

  SMOKE, PRAYER, FAITH, AND SWEAT

  SAM

  KASTANJE

  PANNENKOEKEN

  THE SHADOWS

  VOICES

  REUNIFICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  THE ACADEMY

  The RuComm Academy is 2,200 meters above sea level at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. It’s an old school, built in the mid-twentieth century, repurposed and expanded by the Reunification Commission. It snows all winter there, and winter lasts well into April.

  Dean of Cadets Bahrfeldt expected all of us to be up by 05:00 every morning, and to have our physical training completed before breakfast. Winona Killdeer and I always started with running the cross-country trails if the weather was good, and Susan Chao, our PT instructor, had never seen weather that wasn’t good. Early March meant trying to find trail markers buried by meter-high snowdrifts and risking frostbite.

  We did strength training in the gym afterward, where it was always too hot and the smell of sweat was a permanent part of every piece of equipment. We followed the same routine every day.

  “Holloman, are you just another privileged Dulcinean girl or are you a RuComm cadet?”

  I pushed harder, trying to bench press thirty-five kilos. “Seventy percent of my body weight, ma’am,” I managed to gasp.

  “Right. Just a little princess. You’ve been here four years with two more to go. You should be at ninety percent by now, one hundred percent by graduation. If you graduate.”

  Instructor Chao helped me place the bar back into the holders. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me; a weak little Dulcinean stick girl, overcome by the oppressive gravity you have here on Earth.”

  Her eyes narrowed, looking at the disrespect I was failing to hide. I already had more demerits than I could afford. Most of them were from her. Instructor Chao was an ex-Union Marine, although I couldn’t see anything ex about her. She’d lost both her legs in combat and I should have admired her as much as everyone else did. I despised her.

  “Hit the showers. Then run along to Professor Slade and your precious starship engineering studies. I’m sure he enjoys all the sucking up you do for him.”

  She raised her eyebrows and I blushed, taking the bait. “He’s a brilliant man. He designed ships for the Trade Guild of Venice before coming to the Academy. We’re working on something revolutionary, and I’ve learned more from him this year than I’ll ever learn from you.” I shifted to my sarcastic voice. “Oh, that’s right. You’re not interested in me learning anything other than how to grunt a little louder.”

  “Grunt? I’ll bet you’re good–” She closed her mouth, and I admit her self-control was better than mine. “How many merits do you have left, Cadet Mala Dusa Holloman?”

  “I have twelve out of my seventy-five, ma’am.” There was nothing but cruelty in her smile and I wondered if she’d take them all and force me to sit out the next semester.

  “Now you have one left. Run along, stick girl, before that’s gone too. Oh, and something else that I want to teach you. Those cute little starships you want to design? Out in the real world we call them ‘targets’, and they don’t last long.”

  I took too long a shower, trying to let go of my anger. No breakfast, and I had to run across the quad to be even close to on time for class. I tried to let go of the last of the anger as I walked into Professor Slade’s lab. He had been Principal Engineer on the team that designed the Trade Guild’s Doge-class freighters, ships that carried goods between the planets seventy thousand tonnes at a time. He knew more about engines and structures than anyone I’d ever met, he always made time for me, and he never thought my questions were stupid. When he smiled, his eyes looked just like my Grandpa Vandermeer’s, full of mischievous humor. I told him what Instructor Chao had done to me and apologized for being late.

  “You know why she didn’t take all of your merits, of course.”

  I stared back at him blankly as he waited for my brain to start working. “Right. If she’d taken them all, I’d have nothing left to lose. I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of the semester, at least when I wasn’t confined to my dorm or they threw me out.”

  “Exactly. Now she owns you.”

  I sighed. “Why can’t I learn to keep my mouth shut?”

  “It’s a hard lesson, harder for some. Why do you fight her?”

  “I want to build cute little starships, explore space, and discover new things.” I waved my hands grandly, imitating Instructor Chao’s voice. He smiled at me and I sighed. “I don’t want to blow stuff up. I don’t want to kill people.”

  “Those two things are very human. Sometimes…” he shrugged, “even necessary.”

  “I don’t have to like it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “She likes it.”

  He chuckled. “Even without her legs she still kicks your ass. Let’s get some engineering done and try not to think about what terrible creatures we humans are.”

  Terrible creatures. Monsters. That’s what we are. The Academy had changed since Winona and I had convinced my parents to let me come, not that they could have stopped me. They claimed to hate the Reunification Commission, but they didn’t. They were just afraid that I’d die on some planet far from home. They’d lost friends and lovers that way during their time with RuComm. But I knew I wouldn’t die. I had a destiny to fulfill.

  The Academy had once been a haven for scientists, researchers, and future leaders. The Reunification war had changed it into a school for producing soldiers, trained to fight and die keeping Earth’s Interstellar Union together. The Union Aerospace Force had taken over operations and implemented the same combat focused curriculum they used at their Military Institute at Dehradun.

  Earth had done nothing to stop the planets that wanted to leave when the First Union fell in 2218. Most worlds went dark, falling into brutality, war, and genocide. People turned inward, interstellar trade all but died, and one hundred-seven years passed before the citizens on Earth had an awakening and decided they cared enough to intervene.

  We did not stand idly by this time. Earth had invested two hundred thirty years of blood and treasure putting the Union back together, and we weren’t going to watch it all fall apart again. Earth and its closest allies would not allow it. The Trade Guild took the lead in building public support and government resolve for war, constantly reminding us that we must not allow a repetition of the barbarity of the past. They didn’t talk as loudly about the negative impact the independence movements were having on their ledger sheets, or the barbarity that would be required to hold the Union together. The final vote wasn’t
even close. The Interstellar Union went to war, and RuComm and its Academy changed to support the effort.

  Professor Slade had received messages from the Trade Guild of Venice the autumn of my fourth year, begging him to come back and work for them. Pirates sponsored by the secessionist government on Bridger were harassing commerce in and out of the system and the Guild needed a way to protect their cargos. Bridger was a waypoint in the Deep Space Hole network between Earth and the outlying planets, and they wanted the Guild to pay tribute for passing through their space.

  Professor Slade had proposed making it an independent study for his advanced ship design class, which that year consisted of three other students and myself, in exchange for a donation to the Academy’s endowment fund. He would provide the engineering rigor to the project and we’d learn something about working with real industrial requirements and processes. The members of the Guild would sell their own mothers for a tenth of a percent savings on operating costs, so to get design work done for the price of a corporate donation made them very happy.

  The Bridger pirates were using small Fast Attack Craft that could punch through a Doge-class freighter’s hull in less than ten seconds. Professor Slade showed us video on the first day of class of it happening. The FAC’s directed energy weapons turned the freighter’s hull to sparkly mist. The Doge-class ships were big and slow, but we almost had a solution by early March. Almost.

  Winona met me for lunch between classes. I was eating a salad of field greens and Dulcinean purple tubers with grilled fish on top. The fish looked and smelled like what my dad cooks, but it tasted only slightly better than the compostable plate under it.

  Winona, my best and only friend, clattered her tray onto the table and sat down across from me. “Bekka tells me that you’re down to one merit. Idiot. Why do you let Chao spool you up like that?” She took a bite of stew while she waited for me to answer, her nose over the bowl savoring the smell of carrots and potatoes.

  “I just need to hold on to it for ten more weeks, until the end of the spring semester. Then everything resets in the fall and I’ll be much more disciplined next term.” I grinned at her so she would know I was lying.

  She ignored me and took another bite of her stew. “So, how’s your project today?”

  I sighed. “Professor Slade finally convinced Cadet Braddock that hanging double plating all over the ship isn’t the answer. Every cubic meter of armor is one less of cargo, and the Guild’s profit margins are too thin to stand for that.”

  “You sound like a merchant.”

  “Thanks. I want to design ships and they’re the ones with the money. Warships are only needed while we’re at war, and wars don’t last forever.”

  Winona smiled a sad smile at me. “So the Professor accepted your honeycomb idea?”

  “Yep. My honeycomb of ablative and reactive armor is lighter and lasts longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  I took a bite of salad and made a face. The fish was even more terrible than usual. “Almost an hour under the right conditions. We spun the ship in the last simulation, and that helped. One hour of simulated attack by three FACs and then it breaks apart and everyone dies.” I speared a piece of fish and held my fork up so Winona could inspect it with me. “I think this must have been printed last week. Taste it. Maybe it was last year.”

  “No thanks. I don’t eat printed food when I can avoid it.”

  I think that’s what she said, but I wasn’t really listening. “Printed,” I said, turning my fork and watching chunks of fish fall on to the table. “That’s how we can do it, Winn. We can reprint the armor as it’s being ablated. The weight of the raw powdered composite will be less than half what Braddock’s extra plates would add.” I twirled the fork until all the fish was gone. “And the bunkers holding the powder can be any shape, reducing the cargo impact. This could work. The freighter should be able to survive two or three hours at least. Plenty of time for their escorts to intervene.”

  “Done with lunch?”

  I realized I was standing, fork still in my hand.

  “All done. Need to talk to Professor Slade.” I started walking away. “Can you take my tray for me? Please?” I didn’t wait for her answer before I started running.

  It took us weeks to perfect the solution, finding the right rate of spin, tailoring the composition of the armor, and then we had to design the mobile, high-speed sintering printers to rebuild the honeycomb during an attack.

  Professor Slade said it was brilliant for a fourth-year cadet. He gave it my name in the paper he wrote, and Holloman Armor went into production at the main Union shipyard on Bodens Gate. Professor Slade gave me an ‘A’ at the end of the semester, which balanced my ‘C-’ in physical training. The Trade Guild of Venice sent me a special pin shaped like a winged lion and an offer for a job, contingent on being alive when my Terms of Union Service contract was completed.

  I still had my one merit left at the end of the spring semester, thanks to Winona. Four years at the Academy completed, with two more to go. I had my full complement of seventy-five merits back at the start of the fall term in September. Just four semesters left. I could almost feel the Second Lieutenant’s bars on my shoulders.

  A few weeks into my fifth year at the Academy, the only number that mattered to me was six hundred-sixty. That’s how many men and women would never return home because of me. I think there were more, but the final accounting is classified, and Winona refused to help me find the truth. They called it the Battle of Bridger’s Quarter, but it wasn’t a battle. It was a slaughter.

  Winona stood with me at the back of the Common Room while the cadets from our dorm watched the near real-time video as it came in. Three Star-class Union cruisers escorted six freighters, all nine ships upgraded with my armor. They transited the Bridger Deep Space Hole together, already spinning and ready for a fight. Bridger’s FACs matched velocity and engaged at extreme close range, less than ten kilometers. Our cruisers tore twenty-two FACs apart in less than fifteen minutes. We lost the Pole Star, but that was to a suicide attack by a FAC captain who knew he was about to die anyway.

  I watched it all, unmoving, my hand covering my mouth. I’m not sure I even blinked. The other cadets cheered the death of each enemy ship. The debris field sparkled in the light of Bridger’s sun when it was over. I recognized engine frames, intake baffles, and other large pieces that had survived the impacts of our kinetic energy weapons, all floating among the jagged bits of outer hull and a fine mist of fuel, air, and water.

  They were good pictures, high-res. I stood and stumbled over feet and chairs to get close to the big display panel. I began counting the bodies.

  Winona came up behind me and whispered in my ear. “Mala Dusa, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “There’re so many of them. I need to count them all and I couldn’t see from the back of the room. We tore them apart, Winn. It’s hard with so many pieces. Maybe I should count the limbs. Would that work? Tally up the arms and the legs and divide by four? I think that will work.” I was whispering to myself, eyes squinting at the display. Winona probably couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care; I needed to keep counting.

  Winn shut off the feed. The other students yelled at her and she pushed me out of the room and toward the exit. The Dean of Cadets was blocking the door.

  “Great job, Cadet Holloman. That’s your work up on that display. You’ve made the entire Academy proud today.” He took my limp hand and shook it.

  “They’re all dead,” I told him.

  “That they are. You should celebrate tonight.”

  Winona shoved me past him toward the hall as the sound of the cheering started back up. “Thank you, Dean Bahrfeldt. I’ll make sure she enjoys herself.”

  Academy regulations do not allow Cadets to have alcohol in the dorms. I got drunk that night anyway, and Winn stayed with me, holding my hair while I
threw up in a trash can. I punished myself because the Academy and the Reunification Commission wouldn’t do it for me.

  There was a lot of drinking over the next year and a half, and a lot of waking up in the middle of the night to scream, my brain full of corpses in pressure suits, faces mummified by the cold vacuum that had killed them. No, that’s not true. I’d killed them.

  I would have died without Winona and the love of my life, my Samuel. They helped me cope well enough with the pain to make it through my fifth and sixth year and reach the final month before graduation.

  Winona was staring at me. “Just how much stuff are you planning on taking with you, Duse?”

  “Too much?” I glanced up at her from trying to cram an extra pair of pants into my bag. The seams were starting to bulge.

  “For three days at a house that’s already got a closet full of your clothes? Yeah, maybe.”

  I sighed and dumped everything back out. “I don’t know what I might need. Sam’s meeting us there and sometimes he has plans he doesn’t tell me about. I need to be prepared. And I want to take him up Humphrey’s Peak with us on Saturday, and I’m sure we’ll all go swimming…”

  “Tomorrow night we’re going to sit in your backyard and celebrate your dad’s fiftieth birthday. All his old friends will be there telling stories designed to embarrass him in front of Hannah and you. Everyone will drink too much. After that, you and Sam will sit by the fire and make sad love faces at each other the way you always do when you’re together. Then you’ll brush your teeth and go to bed.”

  “Then Saturday we’ll get up early and go hiking.”

  “You’ll be hung over again.”

  “Will not. You just watch me. I shall demonstrate superb self-control.”

  She didn’t reply, concentrating on packing her own bag while I sorted back through the pile on my bed. I put about half of it back in and shoved the remainder onto the floor with the rest of my clean clothes.