Wandering Storm

by Steven Anderson

  “Pause.” My voice sounded surprised even to me, amazed that it had spoken out loud. I ignored everyone staring at me and the plea for caution coming from Winn. “How many are there like her?” I pointed at a girl of eleven or twelve pressed up against the wall with her eyes scrunched closed, trying to avoid colliding with the running man and the dogs pursuing him. “How many civilians? How many kids?”

  “No civilians,” the Captain’s voice was cold. “It’s a military fortification with about three hundred personnel. I have no information on the age distribution of those serving inside it.”

  “Huh.” I licked my lips, trying to get my voice back. “Where will we keep the prisoners? Is there room on board, or another ship…”

  “No prisoners. We can’t take chances inside this kind of labyrinth. Now, shall we continue to the end and see if our Union geologic surveyor survives?”

  I shook my head. “I already know that he did.”

  There was cruelty in her smile. “Yes, I suppose you do. Try to be more like him. He’s a good man.”

  Storm played the last minutes of his dramatic escape. He slid down one of the drifts into a chamber where there was a rock crusher and reclamation pit that offered him an opening to the outside. There was a small ship waiting on the surface of the hollowed out asteroid, it’s landing ramp sealed to the old ore loading dock. I couldn’t watch it. I knew he had survived, but the thought of the danger he’d let Mom put him in made my chest hurt. When it was over I had my eyes closed and I could smell Winona’s hair close to my face.

  “I hate my parents, Winn. I hate both of them so much right now.”

  “I love your parents and so do you. Come on. Breakfast time for you, and then we’ll talk.”

  Winona brought me a waffle because she loves me, and I forced myself to eat it because I love her. She sat next to Kal, which had become more than a habit for them. Colin sat next to me because he knows I’m a soft touch, and I gave him most of my first sausage. He had his head on my lap after we finished breakfast, brown eyes concerned, sensing my distress the way dogs do, wanting to make me better, but not sure how to do it.

  Kal tried to explain to me why murdering everyone in Costrano’s Redoubt was OK. “I understand why you’re upset, I was too my first time doing this. It’s war. It’s ugly and it’s brutal, and the only way to make it stop is to win, and to do that as quickly as we can. We didn’t put that girl in the Redoubt; her parents did. They’re the ones that will have killed her.”

  “How can you really believe that? Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night? There has to be a better way.” I was doing my best not to scream. This was all so normal to him and everyone else, just a routine op, no big deal. How could he not feel the horror I felt? “If we could eliminate the Tarakana colony that’s there…”

  Kal rolled his eyes and turned to Winona, shrugging, giving up on me.

  “OK, Duse, you find your other way. The plan we have now is mostly mine, and my goal was to destroy the Redoubt and not lose any of our people doing it. You find something better. We transit the last DSH tonight at 22:44. After that, we go dark and drift for six days, trying our best to avoid detection, us and the Esprit Vengeur and the Esprit Errant. You find something better and I’ll help you pitch it to the Captain. Just don’t try to convince her that the Tarakana are real. I haven’t even been able to persuade Kal of that yet.” She smiled that same smile at him. “But I will.”

  “I think you’re both nuts. I’m not sure which of you is worse, the engineer that designs warships, but is panicking about a small raid, or the woman–”

  He stopped there because Winona was doing something to him under the table that I couldn’t see, something that was making it hard for him to breathe.

  “Choose your next words carefully, Kal.”

  “Yeah, OK. I was going to say the brilliant tactician that I’m starting to fall in love with. The woman with the beautiful eyes and, I hope, the gentle hands of a goddess. The woman that is definitely not nuts.” His voice had risen almost to a squeak.

  “Nice recovery. No one has ever called me a goddess. You’ll have to explain that more fully to me later.”

  “That still leaves me being crazy.” I gave Colin my last bite of waffle. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a plan I have to go figure out.”

  Colin started to follow me when I walked away, so I knelt down and put my forehead up against his like I always did with Merrimac. There was nothing there, no mental connection, but the smell of dog and the warmth of him helped to calm me.

  Winona sighed. “She is a little bit crazy and very dangerous when she wants to be. I’m smarter, but she sees things that I miss, things that make no sense to me. I’m going to pray that she succeeds, because that girl in the passageway with her eyes closed? That face is going to haunt my dreams until the end of my life if we have to kill her.”

  I stopped by my cabin before going out to run my morning system checks. “What’s not working today, Storm?”

  “You hurt me. I am not always broken, you know.”

  I waited, drumming my fingers next to the input pad.

  “Starboard waste recycling is clogged. Again.”

  “Seriously, Storm? What happened to the bugs we dumped in there last week?”

  “I think they all must have flushed through and been eaten by the fish. They’re fully digestible.”

  “How long to print more?”

  “Already doing it. They should be ready in forty-six minutes.”

  “Inject them into the pipes as soon as they’re ready, and send a camera in to check the filter mesh. The bugs are supposed to be too big to fit through it, so it must be torn or something.”

  “Copy. Can we talk about recipes now?”

  “I’m sorry, there’s no time. We reach Kastanje in like one hundred fifty hours. I need to study the full profile for the Costrano’s Redoubt assault.”

  “Contact with the Redoubt will be in just over one hundred fifty-six hours. You will need to use the main sim tank to review the current profile. What about my new recipes?” There was a dangerous edge in her voice, like a child about to throw a tantrum.

  My eyes closed, trying to prioritize. “I promised you, didn’t I? And we have to be ready in case the Captain joins us for dinner. OK, let’s talk about how to make a cassoulet.”

  Somewhere ahead of us was an eleven-year-old girl with less than a week to live. We didn’t know her name or anything about her, but we were on our way to kill her anyway, her and her family, and her friends. I was the only chance she had for survival, and I had no idea where to start. So, I spent the first hour teaching my ship’s AI how to simmer cannellini beans properly, form chicken sausages, and how big to cut the carrot slices for a perfect country cassoulet.

  It was almost 10:30 by the time we finished and I could start analyzing Winona’s plan. Then all I needed to do was find a way to change it so that everyone didn’t die.

  Storm’s sim tank was fifteen meters on a side, a cube that could display anything from tactical simulations to interactive entertainment. The lights were low when I entered, and three identical ships hovered in miniature above my head, flagged with their specifications and names– Esprit Orageux, Esprit Vengeur and Esprit Errant. A warning glowed red near them, telling me that distances were not to scale. I reached up and touched the Vengeur, my fingers sparkling in the coherent light. “I miss you, my love.” I felt an answering touch, as if he was kissing me softly on the cheek.

  “I wish I could do that with Kal.” Winn got up from the corner where she had been sitting on the deck waiting for me. “I can see emotions in his eyes and feel it sometimes in the way his body responds to mine.” She shook her head. “Not the same.”

  “You’ll have to introduce him to Merrimac when we get back.”

  She nodded, a smile just touching her lips. “Come to see
the vectors and tactical plan for reducing Costrano’s Redoubt?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how I’m going to improve on one of your plans, though. I never was able to in class. You’re the best.”

  “I am. That’s why I’m not going to show it to you.”

  “I need it, Winn. We can’t kill all those people. I won’t do it.”

  “I love it when your face gets all stubborn like that.” She came close and touched my cheek, thought about it a moment and then kissed me. “That’s why I can’t let you see it.” She grabbed Orageux’s icon and stretched it to show weapons systems, engine performance and crew capabilities. “You can’t make my plan better, so you need to make something entirely your own. You have three Esprit-class ships and their crews. That dot at the end of the sim tank is Kastanje with Costrano’s Redoubt above it. Touch it and the sim will show you everything we know, other than that there’s a bad Tarakana colony living there. Make a plan, Duse. I’ll answer any technical questions I can, but Storm knows the technologies better than I do. Good luck.”

  “Good luck?” She walked out and the door slid shut behind her. “Good luck?” I heard a whimper and it took me a fraction of a second to realize it had come from me. There was no time for that. I pushed my hair back away from my face and touched the Errant and the Vengeur. “OK, Storm, tell me about your sisters. Are the three of you as identical as you appear?”

  “Not exactly. The Kalynda Yards upgraded my engines last year, the Errant has the new hydroponics suite and carries more personnel, and the Vengeur has a larger, more capable medical bay. Here’s a side-by-side of all of the differences that would be considered relevant to an assault of this type.”

  An overwhelmingly long list appeared in the air in front of me. “Storm, you do understand what I want to do, right?”

  “I think so. Based on your conversations with my Stellar Tactician, I believe you are trying to find a way to render Costrano’s Redoubt operationally ineffective without killing all of the people inside. N’est-ce pas?”

  “Correct. And without losing any of our own people. I also want to kill all of the Tarakana in the Redoubt and we can’t risk letting any of them onto our ships.”

  She didn’t respond, so I went back to scanning through the capability comparisons. After almost a minute, Storm spoke softly to me. “The Tarakana aren’t real, Mala Dusa. I’ve just been talking to my sisters. The only information any of us have about Tarakana is that your father made them up when he and your birth mother, Alice Vandermeer, were marooned together for several months. Hallucinations of that kind are not uncommon with humans in similar situations and are nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Almost exactly word for word what I’d heard all my life. “Thanks, Storm, I appreciate that. Do you have protocols to prevent hazardous organisms from coming on board when the assault teams come back after an operation?”

  “Of course. Just last month I prevented a thiophosphonate nerve agent from being introduced from one of my shuttles.”

  “Great. You should have no problem then with an organism that weighs forty kilos, can change colors and shapes, mess with your operating code, change your memories and make you not see things that are really there.”

  “I don’t know you well enough yet, ma râleuse. Are you making a joke with me?”

  “Wish I was.” I sighed. “OK, what’s a râleuse?”

  “It is a term of endearment.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “My little complainer.”

  I laughed. “OK, no more whining or complaining. Let’s find a way to save a few lives, even if they’re enemy lives.”

  I worked through lunch and had my first sim ready by late afternoon. All three of our ships would arrive undetected and inject a fentanyl-based gas into the Redoubt’s life support system, rendering the occupants unable to resist, but not reaching toxic levels. I hoped. Storm ran the sim one-hundred twenty-eight times. She determined that the odds of success were between eight and twelve percent and the odds of the Redoubt detecting and destroying the Union ships attacking it at between eighty-nine and ninety-five percent.

  I was sitting at the control station trying to tweak the parameters one more time before dinner when I felt Winona close by. “Storm, please display the Redoubt at the end of the current run, full zoom. Winona will want to see it.”

  The asteroid was filling the room when Winn came in. She paused in the doorway studying its pitted surface. “Any progress, Duse?”

  “Quite a bit,” I told her cheerfully. “Everyone in the Redoubt survived my last run.”

  “Really?” She took a few steps closer, looking at the bright sparkle of debris on the asteroid’s surface “And what about us? Are we…dead?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re all dead. But Costrano and the Tarakana are still alive.”

  “You may have some more work to do after dinner.”

  I glanced at my watch. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Your cassoulet. Remember? With the Captain.”

  I blinked at her. “Captain Rostron is coming to dinner?”

  “We’re joining her, not the other way around. You may want to change.”

  “Change?” I looked down at my coveralls. “Let me finish one more thing and I’ll print a mess dress uniform and meet you there.”

  “Just wear something without stains and don’t be late.”

  She left, and Storm asked me, “It was like you knew she was coming even though I didn’t warn you. How did you do that?”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  “I can tell when you lie to me, remember? All humans are terrible at telling lies, but you’re way below average.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Not really. Sometimes lies can be useful for not hurting someone’s feelings. And in wartime, like now, lies seem to be needed all the time to keep people safe, isn’t that true? I’m not sure you could lie convincingly even if your life depended on it.”

  “Maybe I don’t belong in a war.”

  “I suspect that’s true. I understand. Will you answer my question?”

  “About how I knew Winona was close? I’d rather not.”

  “I wish I had access to the Union network. Running dark like we are now makes it hard for me to do the research I’d like to do.”

  I sighed. “I know you’re going to pick at it until I tell you everything, so let’s just plan on having a nice chat about the Tarakana while we run sims all night tonight, OK?” She didn’t answer, so I tapped the controls to start a new run. “I just gave us a different ingress vector. Run one more cycle and let’s see how it goes, then I’d better go change.”

  There were six of us at the Captain’s table. Kal was looking uncomfortable even with Winn having her leg pressed up against his, or maybe because of it. Colin had not been invited. Major Alaoui was sitting next to the Captain, her eyes locking on to me from time to time, challenging my right to be there, or maybe to exist at all. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Esprit Orageux’s medical officer, Noam Deri, whether because he was oblivious to the tension around him, or because he had made a conscious decision to rise above it, I couldn’t tell.

  “So, Engineer,” the Captain asked me, “Storm tells me that you spent the afternoon playing in the sim tank.”

  Winn’s eyes widened slightly. “I asked Lieutenant Holloman to validate my plans and explore the possibility that they could be improved. I respect her ability to discover unconventional alternatives that I may have missed. I was hoping she could find a way to add to our probability of success or reduce projected casualties. Lieutenant Holloman has often been able to–”

  “I see.” Captain Rostron cut her off. “And what have you concluded, Engineer Holloman?” She emphasized my name, a sharp message to Winona to shut up.

  “I’ve not reached a final conclusio
n, ma’am. Lieutenant Killdeer’s plan is brilliant and I’ve no doubt it’s perfectly optimized for the given assumptions and directives. I’d like to work through several more scenarios before preparing my report.”

  “And which of my assumptions and directives have you chosen to disregard?”

  I could see Winona out of the corner of my eye. She was studying the condensation on her water glass, drawing intricate patterns in it with a fingernail, her emotions locked down tight. I was on my own; never a good thing.

  “That Costrano’s Redoubt needs to be destroyed along with everyone in it. I’m investigating non-lethal alternatives.”

  “Damn, girl, you can’t really be that stupid.” Major Alaoui had locked eyes with me again.

  “If wanting to save lives is stupid, then yes, I guess I’m an idiot.”

  “They’re the enemy. You seem to be having a hard time understanding that concept.”

  “They weren’t always, and Kastanje will rejoin the Union when this is over. Being a butcher now won’t make that any easier. Finding a way to show mercy just might.”

  “Butcher. Is that how you see us? You think I do this because I enjoy it?”

  “Yes, I do. You couldn’t be as good at it as you are if you didn’t love it, if you didn’t feel it right here.” I slammed my fist against my chest a little harder than I’d intended. I winced.

  She had a cruel smile slowly twisting her lips, but Doctor Deri saved me before she could finish getting out of her chair to come kill me. “She’s got you there, Amina, admit it. I’ve been with you on a couple of raids; it’s where you’re truly alive. There’s no one better at it, and no one our Marines would rather follow.”

  Major Alaoui settled herself back in her chair, giving me a look that said I should be grateful that she was allowing me to live. “My satisfaction comes from keeping my people alive while doing a dangerous, dirty job for the Union, that’s all. We’re not butchers; we’re Marines.”