by John Mierau
CHAPTER FORTY
In-Fold
Alliance Intercept Fleet
Aboard Flagship Return
Airlock doors slid sideways as Fleet Admiral Ashlan Daku stormed into the Fleet Council room. The entire deck around this room had been removed from the original gravity-generating wheel that had sat atop Return, back when her name was Lucky Strike, and buried here in the guts of the reconfigured Flagship. Once an opulent sitting room designed to please the powerful, the surfaces of the room had long since been stripped of their trappings. No bookcases, no paintings, no sofas, chairs, or rugs remained. Glow squares and wall tracks provided clean, even light. The woman striding purposefully into the room was much changed as well: gone were the grandmotherly silks and robes. Once again, the Admiral wore a uniform, but now the word ‘ALLIANCE’ was fixed proudly in place of any one nation’s flag.
Now, ten crash couches surrounded the circular table—newly christened as the Fleet Command Council. Although the implants worn by everyone in the Fleet greatly reduced the utility of the roundtable, it remained a symbol of unity and equality between the colonies and Earth, in the face of their species’ greatest threat the Fleet was racing to face.
Everyone was on their feet, screaming across that table.
Seven uniforms and three suits turned their questions to her as she approached the table. Ashlan was the only representative from Ostrov, a colony famed for its neutrality in disputes between Earth and the colonies. Her reputation as the leader of convoys past, her military service —and the fact she hadn’t bombed Reach upon arrival—all worked to see her installed as Fleet admiral once again.
Former Earth-installed Governor of Reach Joseph Card sat as her Vice Admiral, and his fellow Earther Jacob Kagen served as Commodore and third in command.
The final Earther was Chief of Staff Benjamin Attah.
The Reach contingent included former IRC President and rebel leader Jaques Kapoor as Marine Commandant, former Mayor of North Reach and now head of Logistics and Manpower Emma Bindi, and Surgeon General Dr. Ellis Bay.
Three Draytons rounded out the Council, and provided the civilian contingent: Maxim Costa, in charge of Communications and Infrastructure; Finn Envers, in charge of Research & Development; and Idris Andawi, Fleet Inspector General.
All were on their feet now, and the air was charged with fear, despair, and hot-blooded rage.
“Vengeance deliberately rammed the Harrison, Colonel!” Chief Staff Attah spat the last word. “We didn’t answer that aggression, and now Cloke has launched a full-scale mutiny! Breaker, Revolver, and Namante have all followed Cloke’s lead with attacks of their own! Reacher ships across the Fleet are jamming communications! This is a coordinated attack!”
“We lost all hands on Vengeance!” Colonel Kapoor roared back. “Do you think 2,300 troops and crew signed a suicide pact?” The tall, olive-skinned man’s greying ponytail whipped over the shoulders of his Alliance Marine uniform as he poked his fingers at every member of the council. “Of course they’re defending themselves! Half the Reachers in the Fleet have been wiped out! What would you do if us dirty Sand Fleas killed thousands of Earthers?”
Vice Admiral Card threw up his hands and walked away from the table.
Not helpful.
Ashlan had never wanted Reach’s former Earth-installed Governor as her Fleet Number Two, but uniting Earth and Reach against an unknown alien threat demanded compromise and politics.
“Those ‘attacks’ look like suppression fire and airspace control to me,” Commodore Kagen, said, showing some of the hidden strength and fairness that made the Earther third from the top in the Fleet. “Yes, Cloke took out Whipp and Leonov’s turrets before she went, but her crew was scared shitless—and now they’re dead! We can’t punish them any harder!” The short, balding man took a deep breath. “We can’t rip this Fleet apart. Too much depends on us.”
His passion earned mere moments of consideration before the screams returned.
It took mere weeks for the Alliance to be chartered and recognized as the governing body of the human race. In the subsequent ten months, Ashlan had worked tirelessly to create a modicum of trust between Earth and Reach. Her nurturing kindness and tolerance was half the reason Fleet Command Council could govern what had entered the Fold as a military force of twenty thousand.
The other half, of course, being the revelation of an alien life form that had shattered Earths’ nations in a handful of hours, and was on its way to Reach to do the same.
Ashlan had committed every moment of her life to honing the Alliance Intercept Fleet. She gave endlessly of her time to settle disputes. She cajoled, teased, and wheedled the most ardent Earther and Reacher enemies to share meals with her. Slowly, slowly, her trust and openness bore fruit, and spread down the ranks.
In the months leading up to the Fold Event, Ashlan’s leadership built fresh hope in the people of the Fleet. As the Intercept plan took place, she soothed hatreds and cooled distrusts, treating them as the scar tissue she professed them to be. Acts of cruelty and malevolence she decried as a wound to the human spirit, and she cared for people suffering from them as such.
It worked. The Fleet began to knit together into something greater than itself.
The actual fighters, however, remained literally worlds apart. Officially, Jaques Kapoor was Marine Commandant, leading a brigade of six battalions. In actuality, Jacob Kagen guided the First through Fourth Battalions, Earth-only troops who refused to respect former resistance leader Jacques Kapoor as their leader, no matter what Ashlan and the Council decreed. Similarly, the Reacher-only Fifth and Sixth Battalions were loyal to Kapoor alone.
Ashlan had worked miracles integrating the nonmilitary component of the Fleet, but she couldn’t risk merging the battalions. She could heal the rift between civilians because their arguments, no matter how heated or deeply felt, had seldom led to bloodshed and death.
The hard-fought civil war had been bloody madness.
She remembered her despair, emerging from the last Fold eleven months ago, to find Reach in almost as bad shape as what had happened back on Earth.
No, the best she could do was to give Kagen and Kapoor all the support she could. They respected each other, at least, and both soldiers respected the value of human life too much to throw it away. There was no time to do more: they would meet the enemy too soon. Between Chief of Staff Attah’s Military Police and Inspector General Andawi’s Special Investigators, the peace held among civilians, and new bonds slowly formed.
Ashlan had negotiate truces, even friendships between the fiercest of enemies. Time was their friend in-Fold, and though Ashlan believed there could be time to bring even the soldiers together, before the Intercept, that would have to be negotiated between Kagen and Kapoor, not forced upon them by her.
She gave them that time, and that trust. In the meantime, she pursued and strengthened the unity and peace that was the mortar of the new Alliance of humanity with bottomless kindness, love, and faith in her fellow man.
Ignoring the storm of voices, Ashlan lifted her right arm high above the table. She triggered the cylinder in her hand and swung it down on the table, giving voice to a wordless fury.
Electricity crackled around her hand. Faster than any eye could see, a two-metre-long crysteel blade unfurled. Oblivious voices still blamed, and demanded, and tore at the trust Ashlan had slaved to build around this table or the good of the Fleet.
For the survival of the entire human race.
The screams changed when Ashlan’s blade shattered the tabletop. Glass sprayed into the air. The screens within the table flared white and died. The Council hid their faces and backed away from the explosion, then turned as one to face the murderous rage of their Admiral.
“Three ships…gone!” Ashlan’s deep, smoky voice choked with pain on that final word.
The Council remained silent, standing perfectly still. Ashlan left her blade embedded in the table and circled it, challenging every face s
he passed.
“The Churn, and now this? Eight thousand…dead!” She let her tears come. They didn’t salve the venom in her broken voice or the rage on her face.
Stunned silence finally reigned around the table.
Shipboard networks were limping along, while inter-ship transmissions were completely offline thanks to the Reacher ships scramblers. Laser and radio still worked, though. Return’s XO had personally chased Ashlan down only minutes ago, to share the message she now beamed into each council member’s head.
A static-filled recording flickered to life in all their interfaces. “I’m sending on all open channels. Our network access has been destroyed down, please record and share this recording. This is Communications Officer Pryor aboard Peter Cloke. We are under attack! This was not the Churn! I say again, not the Churn! Mines were floated into our drives. I’m sending sensor logs to corroborate. Someone killed us, Reachers.” He swallowed hard. “Watch your six. Don’t let them take you without a fight!”
The video lasted only 18 seconds. Ashlan triggered a replay inside everyone's heads. When it played out the second time, they stared at other with dumb, disbelieving eyes. “Verified by Maxim’s best tech,” Ashlan whispered in the newfound silence.
Councilman Costa, head of Information Division, darted his eyes to Vice-Admiral Card’s… and immediately, guiltily, away.
There it was. The telltale.
Ashlan started around the table toward the Vice-Admiral’s spot.
“Cloke was targeted. Intentionally destroyed!” Her eyes burned into Jacob Card’s. “Who did this?” she hissed. “I’m going to find out who before this Fleet tears itself apart!”
“You’re too late,” Card told her. “Look around. It already has.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“General Quarters, General Quarters!” The ship-wide alert boomed through the corridors of Return.
“Move your ass, CSM!” screamed Major Noelle Carson, Executive Officer of 1st Marine Battalion as she ducked under the bulkhead door rumbling towards the deck.
Heavy boots—the right one made of alloy and polymer, same as the leg it was attached to—skidded under the door, followed quickly by gray tactical pants and the bottom of an equipment vest.
Noelle grabbed the vest and yanked the heavy man the rest of the way clear of the door. The soldier rolled and sprang to his feet.
Command Sergeant Major Jake ‘Grunt’ Garner grinned at Noelle. “Present and accounted for, Major.”
“By a hair,” she agreed, as the door boomed down behind them. She unfocused and she looked again at the message floating in her implant’s sandbox.
PALADIN ALIVE.
INBOUND WITH ANGEL.
ALL HANDS.
SOUP SANDWICH HOT.
-ghost
The text-only message was followed by the compartment ID for a maintenance dock halfway up Return’s starboard side.
Jake had received the same message. He ran a hand over his freshly buzzed scalp. “You think it’s him, No?” he asked, hopeful.
‘No’ pursed her lips. How should she know? Would she even recognize Lee Zhang without a nametag?
On the other hand, Sameen Tenjin she did know. She and Jake had followed their commander’s lead and kept Noelle alive at the end of the shit in Government Row. The friendships that followed were frowned upon by Noelle’s fellow marines. Her appointment of a former Reacher soldier as her right hand at the top of the 1st Battalion had raised eyebrows and ire—not that Grunt Garner hadn’t eventually won them over with his rugged—and loud—charm.
Noelle Carson had been born and raised to be a Marine, but it was Lee Zhang who taught her the ultimate lesson in responsibility and command. He had willingly given his life to deliver that lesson.
Or so everybody had thought.
Was Lee Zhang alive? “Guess we’re going to find out.”
Jake’s always-ready, always-slightly-angry smile dimmed. “What messages are getting through to my implant all say there’s a mutiny, No. McQueen’s a good woman, but she won’t like you pissing off with a Reacher during a security lockdown. Especially if Earth and Reach are about to go another round with each other.”
Noelle shook her head. “You let me worry about the Lieutenant Colonel, CSM.” There were multiple layers of weirdness going on in the Fleet. A good marine would shut up, sit down, and wait for their bosses to figure it out.
Lee had shown her how to be a great soldier, not just a good one. She’d taken the lesson to heart, and would never follow rotten orders again.
“Things sound hairy out there. What the hell, No? Ships are trading fire?”
“And I want to know why.” Nothing was stopping her from answering Sameen’s hail. If Lee was alive, she was looking forward to meeting the man. If not, well…Sameen said all hands. All hands was what she was going to get, come hell, high water or a vacuum-sucking hole in the hull.
Noelle and Jake, former enemies and now tested, trusted friends, struck off at a jog to find access tube M-14.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Willard flipped the tender around and handed docking control off to Tee-Five’s onboard computers. He stared out the cockpit at the massive shape of the Alliance Flagship.
“Belly of the Beast,” he murmured, staring at the turret studded length of the Return.
As soon as the tender had clamped herself on, he slung his weapon and joined the others waiting by the dock. “Time to step!”
Food and water had Willard, Padalecki, even Lee feeling better. Bowen was napping with the three comatose wielder patients. The doctors would stay with them.
All except Mentel. She was coming with. There was no way Willard, Lee or Padalecki were letting that whacko out of their sight until she was under lock and key.
Willard put a hand under her armpit and yanked. “Upsy daisy, Doc.”
Mentel smiled. “You brought me to Return? Lovely. The accommodations are a step up from Ryson, and no one is trying to kill me here.”
Willard whipped her around to face the airlock at the back. “Don’t count on either, once we spill to Council that you didn’t shut down Overkill when they told you to.”
Dr. Mentel leaned in close and, in a singsong voice, whispered, ‘Pay grade!’”
Willard ignored her, looping two zip ties together and tightening them around her wrists.
The kid with glasses and the stab wound in his shoulder—Dr. Kincaid—was working hard to keep Tubby and Red’s minds off the furball the world had just coughed on them. They looked like shit but, thanks to Kincaid, at least they weren’t curled up in a ball.
He couldn't blame them for losing it. Willard remembered what it was like to be plain folk. He would have never put on a uniform if it wasn’t hadn’t been for Elena and Jake, and a little thing called civil war. He was as surprised as anyone that a uniform fit, and more surprised than most that the Alliance wanted him to keep flying for them.
Tubby and Red hadn't gone through a years of trial by fire. They were scared, and even if they’d gone along with mad Mentel’s mental shit…they weren’t monsters. Just confused and in need of protecting.
In other words, they were civilians.
Lee knelt beside Padalecki, murmuring words just for her. He’d always took time for his team before a mission. Zhang’s rule? The team would bleed for the mission, but there was no mission if command didn’t bleed for the team.
Yeah, that was Paladin—Phoenix, now. Willard had to admit it was a badass call sign. It fit a guy who came back from the dead.
Padalecki gave a ghost of a smile to Lee and they both stood. Padalecki walked to Tyler’s mech, placing her palm on it and bowing her head. Lee stepped next to Willard.
“Jake runs a Battalion now?” Lee asked again, still incredulous.
Willard nodded. “For Noelle Carter. You remember her?”
He remembered pulling Captain Carson’s body down behind his, a moment too late. He remembered blood spraying out of her chest a moment bef
ore the bullet entered the back of his head.
Lee nodded. “I remember.”
“She’s good people, Cap.” The tender pinged Willard’s implant. Docking was complete, pressure seal was good. “Ghost even likes her,” he said casually, reaching out and tapping both inner and outer airlock doors open.
“Ghost doesn’t like anybody,” Lee retorted.
“Sure I do,” deadpanned a familiar voice on the other side of the lock. Sameen limped up and smiled into the tender. “Just not you, asshole.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“This is mass murder!” Colonel Kapoor was visibly shaking. “The Cloke never had a chance!”
Gasps came from around the table, as more of the Council Members realized the truth.
“Can I trust Information Division to get to the bottom of this?” Ashlan taunted Maxim Costa.
All heads turned to him, and his eyes danced in his head. He forced his shoulders back and barked manic laughter. “There won’t be any investigation, Admiral. I think you can see that.”
“Not another word!” barked Vice-Admiral Card.
Max smirked at him. “Don’t worry, Joe, I just blasted the worm ship-wide. She’ll play ball, and if she doesn’t, we’ll just—”
The crack of Card’s pistol drew shouts from around the table, and blood from the hole in Maxim’s head.
On Card’s right, the Chief of Staff, Benjamin Attah, lunged for the gun. Two more cracks and Attah fell.
Ashlan was running toward Card before the last shot rang out. Her implant chimed with a system update. She ignored it and kept running.
Commodore Kagen got the gun away. Ashlan watched it spin across the table and returned her focus to the grappling men.
Ashlan staggered, momentarily dizzy. Her implant had accepted the new update without waiting for authorization. She couldn’t worry about that now, and got her head back in the fight.