Ascendant

by Jack Campbell

  “I’ll stay on guard,” Lochan said.

  There wasn’t anyone in sight when they popped the hatch and struggled out, a bit stiff from the confinement inside. They were still working out the cramps as they walked when they encountered a member of the crew running along the passageway.

  The sailor snarled at them. “In your cabins! What are you doing out?” She ran on several steps, halted, and spun about to look at them again. “Who are you?”

  “Freya Morgan,” she answered as if unconcerned.

  “Lochan Nakamura,” he said.

  “But you’re . . . Don’t move!” the crew member shouted at them. “No! Come with me! Right now!”

  Word must have gotten around quickly about what had supposedly happened. Lochan saw people staring at him and Freya as if they were seeing ghosts. He tried to look puzzled as to what had happened, while also trying to spot any disappointment in the eyes of those watching at seeing him still alive, but if anyone aboard the Oarai Miho felt that particular emotion, they hid it very well.

  The captain, on the other hand, didn’t try to hide anything. When her gaze fell upon him it was so intense that Lochan felt physically threatened. The captain vented on them with an amount of rage that rivaled the output of the exploding fuel cell. The rage only multiplied as Freya and Lochan expressed confusion about what had happened.

  But, as Freya had said, there wasn’t any evidence that either she or Lochan had launched the lifeboat or caused the explosion. When the captain pressed her demands that they explain what they’d been doing when the lifeboat launched, Freya gave a lurid and graphic description of activity that Lochan wished he’d actually experienced. That apparent candor left the captain even less happy since it left no room for further questions.

  She turned on Lochan with a new line of attack. “Why did the lifeboat explode like that?”

  “It really exploded?” he asked, not giving away anything.

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t know much about lifeboats,” Lochan said, having long ago learned the importance of appearing to answer one question with a completely different piece of information.

  “What made it explode?” the captain demanded.

  “I’d guess the pirates must have done something to make it explode,” Lochan offered, which was true enough since they’d tripped the backup detonator system.

  “That lifeboat was an expensive piece of equipment!”

  “At least it looks like whatever caused the lifeboat to launch also took out the pirates,” Freya interjected, as if trying to mollify the captain.

  “Shut up! Both of you! You’ll stay in your cabins every moment until we reach our next stop, then you’ll be put off! If I catch either of you outside your cabins, or in each other’s company again, I’ll put you both in full body restraints and press charges for disobeying orders in an emergency situation! Get ’em out of my sight!”

  As they were led to their cabins, past the shocked gazes of the other passengers who still had little idea what was going on, Freya blew Lochan a kiss. “See you at Eire!”

  As he heard his cabin being locked from the outside, Lochan stretched out on the bunk, tired. He was still worried about what that mysterious agent aboard might do, but that was a possibility of trouble ahead. That didn’t come close to matching what had, until a short time ago, seemed the certainty of being taken by those so-called pirates.

  Sooner or later the crew of this ship would figure out a fuel cell was missing, but they shouldn’t be able to pin that on Lochan and Freya, either. It was always possible that the captain would try to press charges despite the lack of physical evidence tying them to the missing fuel cell or the launch and explosion of the lifeboat, but Lochan didn’t expect that. The captain would have to admit to violating a lot of important safety regulations if she tried to explain how two passengers could walk off with a fuel cell.

  His safe trip to escape the fight at Kosatka had turned out to be a little more dangerous than anticipated. He wished he could tell Carmen about all this.

  His elation vanished as Lochan thought about Kosatka again. The image of the invasion fleet approaching the planet, as it had been when the Oarai Miho entered jump space, haunted his memory. What was happening there? Was Carmen all right?

  * * *

  • • •

  Carmen, once again looking out a high window in the Central Coordination Building, narrowed her eyes as she studied the enemy-held buildings facing her. The sun was setting, painting the higher portions of the tallest structures in pink and gold, like some fairy city. If fairies fought wars that wrecked the buildings their ingenuity could construct.

  The enemy had launched one attack at midmorning, thrown back by defenders energized by the sight of invasion fleet shipping being blown apart in the space above the planet. Since then, the invaders had been quiet. Carmen didn’t trust that but also didn’t know what it portended.

  She leveled her rifle, using the scope to magnify the images as Carmen slowly panned across what she could see. There was motion, but not the sort of movement that spoke of troops moving up for another attack. She’d seen that often enough to know how it felt, the slow, erratic increase in detections of movement, the buildup in enemy communications, the sense of unseen pressure getting ready to unleash toward her. This felt different.

  Like . . . less pressure.

  She’d found a landline link in this room and plugged into it for communications that were mostly free of jamming. Setting her scope to download what it was seeing, she sent out a report. “I don’t know what’s going on opposite the Central Coordination Building, north side. It feels like the enemy may be pulling back.”

  Hearing Loren Yeresh’s voice respond was a pleasant surprise if also disorienting. Loren belonged to a different time, when this city had been a living thing instead of a war zone. “Carmen, we’re getting similar reports, but nothing solid. If they’re falling back to the north, you should be able to spot movement from their forces south of you through adjacent buildings as they try to join up with the others.”

  “I’ll go look,” Carmen said. “I might not be able to find a working landline connection on that side, so I’ll report as soon as I can.”

  “Sure. Be careful.”

  “What could happen?” Carmen unplugged her rifle from the landline and hastened through the deserted hallways toward the east side of the building. Many stretches of the hall were untouched by battle, creating the eerie illusion that nothing had really happened, that outside everything was normal, perhaps the very early close-to-dawn hours when this building was almost deserted and the lack of sound outside meant peaceful sleep instead of wary combatants for the moment lacking targets.

  Some executive had occupied a nice corner office with big windows that faced west and north. The desk had been left in perfect condition, everything lined up neatly. Everything about the office, in fact, carried the mark of someone who demanded an almost sterile level of perfection.

  Carmen reached out as she crawled toward the windows, shoving the perfectly aligned desk contents into a jumble.

  A landline link sat in the floor next to the desk. She pulled out the link wire from her scope and plugged in her rifle. Symbols appeared on the scope when Carmen looked through it, confirming that the landline link was active.

  Reaching the miraculously unbroken windows, she lay flat on her stomach and sighted through her rifle’s scope, scanning the buildings across the way.

  There. Something. Something else. There. Carmen waited, spotting more flickers of movement. “Are you guys copying this?”

  “Yeah,” Loren replied. “Getting some analysis done now. But our gut feeling is you’re seeing movement to the north, like you thought you saw at the other location.”

  “Are they concentrating their forces?” Carmen asked, her eye to her scope as she continued to track her view across
the windows of the facing building.

  “We’re trying to get someone in position to confirm, but we think they may be withdrawing everyone to the north.”

  “Withdrawing? You mean evacuating the city?”

  “Maybe,” Loren said, his voice cautious. “If they pulled out to the north, they could head for Ani and try to link up with the rebel forces there. That’s their only chance. They’re cut off here, isolated, without any way to get more food or ammunition. They can maintain power for a while using solar in places we can’t hit, but not at a level necessary for combat operations.”

  Carmen squinted, zooming in more with her scope as the setting sun sent its rays directly into the windows of the building opposite. “Did you see that? Clear as day. A half dozen soldiers running north through the building.”

  “Yeah. Got it. I’ll notify command.”

  “Are we going to let them go?” Carmen asked, feeling angry at the idea.

  “Oh, hell, no. I’ve heard the combatant commanders talking. They’ve been hoping this would happen. When the enemy tries to retreat across Centrum under cover of darkness, they’re going to find things a little difficult. Carmen, I need you there.”

  “Dominic is wounded. He’s in the basement of this building.”

  Loren took a moment to reply. “I need you there.”

  “I need to keep an eye on Dominic!”

  “If we take out the enemy forces in this city, Dominic will be safe. We need good tactical intelligence to take out the enemy. I need you at Centrum.”

  “Dammit, Loren, I’m a volunteer! You can’t order me to go there!”

  “I’m asking you to volunteer to go there.”

  Carmen lowered her face to the floor, gritting her teeth in anger. He was right. She knew he was. And she hated knowing that and knowing what she had to do. “Okay,” she muttered.

  “Thanks.” Loren was smart enough to leave it at that.

  Carmen unplugged her rifle and wriggled backward to ensure she wasn’t seen from the buildings opposite her, finally getting onto her feet in the hall and running. She wanted desperately to stop by and see Dominic, but the sun was setting and the enemy was moving and there was no time to waste and she hated this war and the people who’d started it.

  On the ground floor, strewn with the castoffs of battle and scarred by fighting, Carmen saw the remnants of Dominic’s unit gathering. “What’s going on?” one of the officers called as she ran by. “We got an alert to prepare for an advance.”

  “The invaders are withdrawing to the north to try to escape the city,” she called in reply. “We’re going to hit them as they try to cross Centrum.”

  The low cheer that answered her words sounded almost like the growls from a pack of wolves seeing their prey stumble.

  She had to run a few blocks to the west to get past the edge of the area to the north held by the invaders, dropping to a walk occasionally to catch her breath. Going past the edge of the defender’s perimeter on the southwest corner of the enemy enclave, she warned the soldiers there of the enemy withdrawal and turned north, heading for the area of the city known as Centrum.

  Urban architects had been enjoying a golden age as humanity spread out to the stars and new cities rose on new planets. The ones who had laid out Lodz had made it almost two cities, divided by a broad rectangle of mass transit lines, parks, plazas, and pathways called Centrum. Centrum ran straight from the east to the west between the north and south parts of Lodz as if a huge bulldozer had cut a path over half a kilometer wide through the middle of the city. Some residents of Lodz loved Centrum, others hated it, but in a few years it had already become an icon of the city.

  And now that open area was, paradoxically, a barrier to the enemy withdrawal to the north. In order to get out of Lodz and head for the region around Ani where they could find refuge, the invading troops would have to pass through Centrum. They were going to try at night, whose darkness offered far less cover than it once had but was still better than trying to cross that open space in daylight.

  By the time Carmen got to the edge of Centrum the sun had nearly set, dark shadows stealing across the plazas and parks. An open-air amphitheater was being turned into a hastily fortified strong point as Carmen reached it. She went a little farther, finding the piece of public sculpture most people called the Torch, a hand rising from the ground and holding aloft a torch in what Carmen had been told was a mimicry of a famous monument somewhere on Old Earth. The narrow ledge running around the base of the Torch’s “flame” offered Carmen an elevated view of the parts of Centrum east of her, which was where the invaders should try to cross.

  She settled down, grateful for the chance to lie there, feeling guilty about leaving Domi. After a moment, Carmen picked up her rifle and began trying to find a link.

  She locked in to the net surprisingly quickly. Enemy jamming was falling off as they abandoned equipment for which they could no longer supply power, and because with the loss of the invasion fleet in orbit and the destruction of their last shuttles and warbirds they no longer had means to jam broad areas from above.

  Carmen knew what it was like to feel trapped, without enough resources and too many enemies all around. She wondered what morale was like in the enemy ranks.

  “Carmen?”

  She perked up as Loren Yeresh’s voice came over her comm link. “Here. I’m in position.”

  “I see. That’s a beautiful observation spot, Carmen. Headquarters is going to want the best feed you can give us of what’s happening east of you.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Carmen said, lowering her eye to the scope and beginning to study the ground to the east. “Have we been able to confirm the withdrawal has been ordered?”

  “We’ve been able to confirm that enemy units are withdrawing, but it seems more like a mutual decision to run like hell than a coordinated operation under unified command,” Loren said. “Their high command tried to make it down to the surface. They were aiming for somewhere around Ani.”

  “Tried? Did any of them get down?”

  Loren laughed. “Oh, yeah, they all reached the surface. But they were going a lot faster than they should have been when they got there, courtesy of our warships in orbit. There are some new craters outside Ani where the enemy high command ‘landed.’”

  Carmen felt her lips draw back in a smile that had more snarl to it than anything else. “We’ve cut off the head of the dragon. The body can still do a lot of damage as it flails about.”

  “Let’s see how much of the body we can take down tonight. Am I seeing something?”

  “Yeah,” Carmen said, zooming in her scope. “Scouts, I think, checking to see if there’s a safe way across.”

  “The forces on the north side and to the east and west have been ordered to hold fire until the main body of the enemy starts across Centrum. We don’t want them holing up in the buildings facing Centrum instead of trying to cross. Our forces to the south are going to start moving forward to push the invaders into Centrum.”

  “Good.” Forces to the south. That would include the remnant of Domi’s unit. She felt guilty relief that he wouldn’t be among those attacking what must be an increasingly desperate enemy in the dark.

  She kept catching glimpses of the scouts moving forward, encountering no opposition as the defending forces melted away before them to avoid warning the enemy of the trap that Centrum already was. “Loren, I’m seeing a big surge of movement on the south side of Centrum. It looks like they’re starting across in strength.”

  Immediately after that gunfire and other sounds of battle erupted to the south, the sounds muffled and distorted by the buildings between the fighting and where Carmen was in Centrum. “More movement. The attacks to the south have spooked them, I think. They’re coming across, Loren!”

  He didn’t answer.

  The reply came in the form of a
sudden explosion of fire from the eastern and western sides of Centrum facing the enemy withdrawal. Carmen saw the shadowy shapes of enemy soldiers break into runs, abandoning attempts to sneak through the darkness, stampeding north to where they thought cover from attack awaited.

  Moments later the roar of battle sounded from the buildings to the north as the blocking force there opened up.

  The enemy kept running forward. They knew they couldn’t go back. She’d wondered if they had any chaff grenades left, but none popped, proving the enemy soldiers were out of concealment munitions and leaving them exposed.

  Mortars whomped in the distance. Flares appeared overhead, illuminating with harsh light the figures of the enemy caught in the open, increasingly frantic groups of invaders rushing in different directions as fire flayed them from every side. Other mortar rounds fell among them and exploded, cutting down attackers as they surged to and fro among the sidewalks and stumps of ornamental trees and broken benches and scarred pieces of public art.

  Carmen kept her scope moving to transmit as much of the situation as she could to those viewing the information back at headquarters. But every once in a while she paused to aim and fire at a figure who was clearly giving orders, clearly someone in authority. She felt no particular hate for the average enemy fighter, even a little regret when allowed time to think about having to kill them, but their officers, their leaders, were another matter. If they’d come from Mars, the officers had been drawn from the ranks of gang chiefs and associates, or jeds in the Thark and Warhoon mobs, or from executives and enforcers for oligarchs and dictators. Carmen had spent her youth fearing them and now pitied them not at all as they died.

  Where had the others come from? The unemployed masses of Old Earth and the Old Colonies? Men and women whose jobs and lives had become obsolete and unneeded? Or people with options, other ways to make it, who had chosen the one that had led them here to assist in trying to enslave the world of Kosatka?