by Ian Douglas
“Tell me about it.” He realized Cara would take his words literally, and hastily added, “Belay that. Don’t tell me. The question is whether or not we’re going to have to go to war with the PanEuropean Republic in order to force them to help us against the Xul.”
“Would their cooperation be worth the effort?” Cara asked.
“Good question. They have a large fleet, and we’re going to need warships, both to protect the home front, and to carry out 1MIEF’s long-range mission. Their ground forces aren’t as good as ours, though.” He didn’t add that PE planetary assault units in particular didn’t measure up to U.S. Marine standards. “But the stargates they control could be the key to hurting the Xul. Especially the Puller Gate…and Starwall. There’s also the alert flashed from Tomanaga’s LP. That, I imagine, is what General McCulloch is going to want to discuss.”
“I have an incoming data feed from his EA, which I’ve been processing as we speak,” Cara told him. “It includes intelligence reports concerning PanEuropean fleet elements and activities within the Puller 659 system, which supports your supposition.” There was a brief hesitation. “Channel opening from General McCulloch.”
And General Vinton McCulloch appeared, his icon bright with his official corona flammae, his full-dress uniform bright with luminous decorations and awards. “Good morning, General,” McCulloch said, voice gravel-rough. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all, sir.” In fact, Alexander suspected that the higher the rank, the more you needed to keep subordinates waiting, just to keep them aware of who they were dealing with.
“We have a final go from the Senate,” McCulloch said. “It was damned close, but Operation Lafayette has been approved.”
“Lafayette?”
“Obscure historical reference, I’m told—‘Lafayette, we are here.’ Don’t ask me. I just work here.”
“But we’re going in to get our people.”
“Ay-firmative.”
“When?”
“Riki-damned-tick. As soon as you can get an assault team together.”
“I’ve tapped the 55th MARS,” Alexander told him. “They’re only just back from Alighan, but that means they haven’t scattered to the four corners yet. The platoon COs are authorizing liberty, but no leave.”
“Tough break for them.”
Alexander shrugged. “They’re Marines. They’re squared away and set to boost. We just need to load their AT with fresh supplies and expendables. We have some more data, though, that you should see. I’m uploading to you now.”
He waited as General McCulloch assimilated the data. “It seems Puller 659 has become doubly important,” the older man said after a moment.
“Yes, sir. A bit of serendipity, actually. It gives us a choice from the same Stargate…Starwall, which appears to be a major Xul base, or the Nova Aquila region.” He briefly outlined his ideas about the Aquilae novae, and why they might be important. “I was recommending Starwall,” he concluded. “I need to study this data from the AI research team, but right now my inclination is to try that route instead.”
“Have you considered both options?”
“Not yet. I will. Of course, we’re so badly outnumbered and outgunned as it is. Splitting my force in the face of the enemy might not be the brightest of ideas.”
“Well, it’s going to be your call,” McCulloch told him, “pending Senate approval, of course. Just keep me in the loop.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“I actually came down here to see what you could tell me about the Puller situation. What’s the latest on that front?”
Alexander lifted his eyebrows. “I’d think you would know more about the situation out there than me.”
“Hell, son, no one tells me anything. By the time the EAs finish filtering out the news they think I shouldn’t be burdened with, there’s not enough left to let me ask intelligent questions. I just know the PEs have some of our people at Puller in custody, but that some of them are still loose and lying low.”
“That’s right, sir.” Alexander thought-clicked an animation into view, showing the tiny, red Puller sun, the orbit of the system’s lone gas giant, and the wider orbit of the stargate. “Our covert base in that system consisted of two facilities. The larger, main base is dug into the surface of an ice-covered moon of this gas giant, here. The giant’s radiation belts mask any electronic leakage. The smaller facility is out here, dug into the interior of a 10-kilometer asteroid that’s in orbit around the stargate itself.
“Lieutenant Lee reemerged from the Gate on 2410. One month later, on 1911, a PanEuropean battlefleet arrived in-system—we think from the base at Aurore. Assault troops landed on the gas giant moon and took over our facility there. The LP commander, Major Tomanaga, reported PE troops inside the base, and then all communication with the unit was lost.
“Our best guess is that the PEs had a small, probably robotic probe in the Puller system, and that it detected and tracked the ships Tomanaga sent out to pick up Lieutenant Lee when her Night Owl reemerged from the Gate. It would take about a month for Republic ships to get out there.
“Apparently, however, the Republican forces did not detect the asteroid LP near the Gate. There are still five Marines there, under the command of a Lieutenant Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick has been sending us regular updates via QCC.”
QCC, Quantum-Coupled Communications, possessed two singular advantages over any other form of long-range communication. It was instantaneous, and there was no way an enemy could tap into the transmission because there was no beam or wave to tap. A message spoken or typed at one console simply appeared at the designated receiver without passing through the intervening space, a satisfyingly practical application of what the long-dead Einstein had called “spooky action at a distance.”
“So Fitzpatrick and his people are still undetected?” McCulloch asked.
“As of their last report, yes, sir. He was able to tell us that the PE squadron consisted of twelve ships, including the fast cruiser Aurore, a heavy monitor identified as Rommel, and a fleet carrier, Le Guerrier.”
“I saw the list,” McCulloch said. “They came loaded for bear, didn’t they?”
“I’m not sure what ‘bear’ is, but, yeah. They came in with their heavies. Our best guess is that Tomanaga, Lee, and thirty-five other Marines and naval personnel are now being held on board the Aurore. She will be our chief target.”
McCulloch nodded. “I just had some intel passed down from I-squared. You’re going to have help when you get there.”
Alexander felt an internal twist of hard suspicion. “What kind of help?”
“You’re aware of the religious problems in the French sectors?”
Alexander nodded. “Somewhat. I don’t understand them….”
“The Republic’s French sectors are officially Reformed Catholic. But there’s a strong Traditionalist Catholic element in their fleet. DCI2 tells us that the T.C. is set to mutiny if and when our forces appear. If they can take over the French warships before we can deploy, they will…and they’ve promised to try to protect our people.”
Alexander groaned. “Gods….”
“What’s the matter?”
“That complicates things, General. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“We’re going to need to go in hot and hard. We do not need a bunch of friendlies running around, getting in our way and maybe taking friendly fire. That could get real nasty, real fast.”
“Affirmative. But we work with what we’ve got.”
“Ooh-rah.” Alexander looked at the animation of the Puller star system for a moment. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the PE fleet will pull out before we get our act together.”
“Don’t count on that, General. So far, they haven’t admitted that they have our people…and we haven’t admitted that we know they have our people. Their safest bet is to sit tight at the Puller system, especially since they’re probably questioning our people on e
xactly what Lee saw on the other side of the Gate.”
“Starwall. Right. Okay, General. We’ll take them down and we’ll get our people out. But…”
“‘But?’”
“Nothing. But when we go in, those so-called friendlies in the PE fleet had better stay the hell out of our way. Our Marines are going to be moving fast and kicking ass, and they will not have the time to find out what church their targets attend.”
“Understood. Just do your best.”
Damn, Alexander thought. It’s going to be a cluster-fuck.
And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
14
2611.1102
Suit Locker
UCS Samar
Dock 27, Earth Ring 7
1315 hrs GMT
“So? How does it feel?” PFC Sandre Kenyon asked him.
Garroway blinked, testing the mental currents. “It feels…empty. Kind of like back in boot camp. When we didn’t have our implants activated, y’know?”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what it’s like. Because that’s what it is, at least up to a point. You still have Net access, comm access—”
“But we can get Achilles back?”
“Oh, sure! He’s still there,” she reassured him. She laughed and nudged Garroway in the ribs with an elbow. “He just doesn’t know what he’s missing!”
They were sitting side by side on one of the benches in the locker, surrounded by the silent, hanging shapes of emergency pressure suits. All of his attention, however, was focused inward as he took a self-inventory of his electronic systems. His implant software was still running. Achilles, however, the platoon AI, did not appear to be on-line.
He shook his head, partly in confusion, partly in admiration. “How the hell did you learn this, Sandre?”
She shrugged. “I’m a vir-simmer, remember? Back in my misspent civilian youth, I programmed the micro-AIs in sensory helms. I knew there had to be a back door. I just needed to find it.”
“It’s still amazing.”
Garroway continued testing the feel of his internal hardware. In a way, it was like that horrible stretch of time in boot camp, the empty time, when he’d been deprived of any cereblink hardware at all. He still had most of his connections for communication, for linking into other computers, or for downloading data off the Net. What was missing was Achilles, the AI Electronic Assistant that served both as guide through the military cyberworld and as an unofficial tattletale and voice of authority.
“Yeah, well, I had some expert help, too,” Sandre told him. “Did a favor for Vince, down in the 660 maintenance shack back at RTC Mars. He uploaded some secure code for me, gave me a head start.”
“Vince? Staff Sergeant Gamble?”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t think that old son-of-a-bitch ever had a helpful thing to say to anyone!” He made a face, and imitated Gamble’s acid tones. “Especially puke-recruits.”
She laughed. “You never tried, um, feminine wiles on the poor dear. Besides, we’re not recruits any more. We’re Marines.”
“Ooh-rah.” He said it automatically, almost sarcastically, but he still felt a small, sharp chill of excitement as he spoke. Boot camp was over, the initiation complete, the metamorphosis from civilian to Marine accomplished.
Even so, he’d been feeling a bit of anticlimax. For almost two weeks after their graduation ceremony on the tenth of November, Garroway and the rest of the newly minted Marines had sat around in a temporary barracks at Noctis Labyrinthus. The forty survivors of Recruit Company 4102 had expected to be shipped out to different units almost immediately, but when their orders didn’t come, speculation and rumor—“scuttlebutt” in ancient Marine and naval parlance—had fast become their primary, if highly unreliable, source of intel. Day after day, they’d stood watch, held practice drills, and carried out field days in various buildings across the compound, scrubbing, mopping, waxing, and polishing, “doing the bright work” until, as Ami Danvers had put it, the rising albedo of the base threatened them all with blindness. Robots and nanocleaning aerosol fumigants, Garroway had observed, could have done the job with far greater, microscopic precision; all of the hard manual labor, it was patently obvious, was make-work, designed to keep them busy and out of trouble.
They’d still had plenty of free time, though, and a lot of the conversation in the squad bay had turned naturally enough to their new life as Marines, in addition to the more traditional topics like sex, liberty ports, and more sex. The fact that they all now housed an artificial intelligence—Achilles—griped a lot of them. Achilles was, in effect, the eyes and ears of their superiors, always watching, always listening. When they were busy, Achilles’ presence didn’t bother them much; when they were practicing a combat evolution, he was treated as a part of the company, linking them, all together and guiding their movements, warning them of danger, and linking them into the larger combat net.
But when they were just sitting around the squad bay talking, Achilles’ presence became a constant stressor, invisible, not discussed, but always there.
And morale had plummeted.
But Sandre, evidently, had decided to do something about it. She’d struck up a friendly acquaintance with one of the base personnel, and learned how to switch Achilles off.
A few days later, Company 4102 had been loaded on board a tiny military intersystem transport and shuttled to Earth Ring, where they’d been hustled across to their new duty station, a titanic assault transport named Samar. The word around the squad bay was that Samar had just returned from Alighan with the 55th Marine Aerospace Regimental Strikeforce on board, or what was left of it, and that the forty new Marines were destined to fill out the 55th’s combat-depleted ranks.
But their orders still hadn’t arrived.
A short time before, Sandre had approached Garroway on the mess deck, with the suggestion that he accompany her down to the emergency suit locker after chow. He’d readily agreed; the two of them had snuck some playtime several times during the long stretch in the holding barracks at Noctis, and he’d been hoping to pursue the relationship.
With Achilles blocked, he would be able to continue his trysts with Sandre. Not that the AI had caused them any trouble at Noctis. Their platoon commander had probably been informed of all of their meetings up until he’d received the software that let him disconnect from the AI, but had chosen not to intervene—quite probably because morale had been so bad, and disciplining a couple of Marines because they’d been having sex after hours would have made things a whole lot worse.
Still, so far as Garroway was concerned, it would be a lot better if Achilles was out of the picture entirely, at least once in a while. After sixteen weeks of boot camp, he valued his privacy more than ever, and grated under the knowledge that anything he did, from scratching his balls in the head to just thinking about how he hated Gunny Warhurst could be recorded and fed up the chain of command. And almost everyone else in Company 4102 he’d talked to felt the same way.
“You’re sure Achilles doesn’t know he’s being cut out?” Garroway asked. He was trying to imagine the AI’s point of view. Wouldn’t he know that he wasn’t getting data from certain members of the company, and become suspicious?
“The way it was explained to me,” Sandre told him, “is that he’s only programmed to respond to certain situations, thoughts, or words. We don’t know what those triggers are, of course, but as long as he doesn’t receive them, he’s content. Artificial intelligences aren’t curious unless they’re programmed to be curious.”
“Or suspicious, I guess.”
“Exactly.”
“So,” Garroway said, with just a trace of hesitation in his voice, “this means you and I could?…”
“Of course. Why do you think I did it?”
“Just checking.” He slipped his arm over her shoulders, drawing her closer.
And the next hour or so was the most pleasant and unfettered hour Garroway had yet enjo
yed in the Marine Corps.
The Comet Fall
Terraview Plaza, Earth Ring 7
2226 hrs GMT
“So, did y’hear the latest scuttlebutt?” Staff Sergeant Shari Colver asked.
“About what?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah,” Sergeant Vesco Aquinas said. “The rumor mill’s been grinding overtime lately. Everything from peace with the Xul to war with the PEzzles.”
“It’d damned well be better than your last butt-load of scuttlebutt,” Sergeant Richard Chu said. “I didn’t like that one at all.”
“Roger that,” Ramsey said. “They fucking gave it away….”
The entire platoon had been grumbling since their arrival back in the Sol system, with morale at absolute rock-bottom. The word was—still unconfirmed but apparently solid—that the Commonwealth was giving back Alighan. Two hundred five Marines hit, Ramsey thought with dark emotion, over half of them irries…and they fucking go and give that shit hole back to the Muzzies….
Colver leaned forward at the table in approved conspiratorial fashion. “It’s war with the PanEuropeans,” she said in a throaty half-whisper. “They’re shipping us out next week.”
“And how do you happen to be privy to that little tidbit?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah,” Sergeant Ela Vallida added. “You been talking with the commandant lately?”
“No, but I have been talking with Bill Walsh.” Walsh was a staff sergeant over in Ops Planning. “He says it’s already decided. They’re pulling together the battlefleet now. And the 55th is on the ship-out list.”
“Aw, shit!” Corporal Franklo Gonzales said.
Chu shook his head. “Well, our luck’s true to form, isn’t it?”
“Shit,” Ramsey said. “Can’t be. We just freakin’ got back from Alighan!” Even as he spoke the words, though, he knew how hollow they were. The Corps could do anything it damned well wanted.