by John Lumpkin
“When the colonel called for us to gather here, she did so because she perceived a weakness in the Hans. They think we’re defeated and have spread their forces around the continent to mop us up. Instead, our strength is growing. Soon, we’ll able to face them head-on, liberate the civilians in Sycamore, and –”
A stout, broad-shouldered woman in an Army uniform, wearing the bronze oak leaves of a major and a key-and-sword quartermaster’s patch, raised her hands in protest. “Hold on. We need to settle some things.”
DiMarco peered at her. “What is it, Major Cruz?”
“Well, the first item on my agenda is you. Why are you suddenly in charge here?”
The Navy man stiffened. “Major, my date of rank precedes yours by three months. I’m the senior American line officer at this facility and almost certainly the most senior one on this planet still fighting. Command passed to me as soon as Colonel Foster died.”
Cruz sat back, crossed her arms. “So you say. But this is an Army operation, an Army base, and, frankly, the sort of thing the Army is good at. Not squids. You need to step aside and let us handle things. We’ll be sure and listen to your advice, particularly when it pertains to water. I’ve been running this base for more than a year, and I don’t think you’ll help us win.”
“Oh, and a glorified truck driver will, Major?” DiMarco shot back. “You’re dangerously close to insubordination. The regs – actually, United States law – are clear who is in command. I was one of Colonel Foster’s senior advisers. I’ve been out on raids, shot at the Hans, same as you. Along with most of the officers who had been fighting with her, seven members of my crew died under her command when the Hans burned our train on the way here. So back down, Major, right now.”
Cruz looked around the table. Rand tried not to let his expression betray anything, but he guessed the truck driver line had cost DiMarco much of whatever support he may have had among the other officers.
The commander said, “Arguing like this will only help the Chinese. Now, I will fulfill Colonel Foster’s plans and vision. I will expect everyone’s unwavering support as we do so. If you don’t like it, we’ll build a brig to hold you in.”
Rand found himself wondering if the MPs would back the commander up. This is not a good situation.
Violet Kelley, sitting next to Rand, slapped her palms on the table, one-two, and drummed her fingers. “How many effectives do you have in the Sycamore area?”
Heads turned toward her. DiMarco looked annoyed.
Major Cruz said, “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Violet,” she said, using the same sardonic inflection she had with the dying Colonel Foster, two nights before.
At least DiMarco had been informed. “Ms. Kelley is a former Marine and now a civilian who has significant expertise in the kind of work we are doing. She’s outside our chain of command, but she will be afforded every opportunity to advise us on our operations.”
Eyes narrowed. The captain sitting next to Cruz said, “Do we really need one of her kind here?” Her namebadge read “C. Gant.”
Kelley met Captain C. Gant’s stare, and she smiled a grim, predatory smile. “Really? You’re going there, gringa?”
The captain wasn’t fazed. “You know what I mean. You’re NSS.”
Kelley didn’t deny it. “Will someone answer my question? How many fighting women and men?”
DiMarco glanced at Cruz.
He doesn’t know, Rand thought. I know he’s new here, but that’s so fundamental.
Cruz sighed harshly and said, “We have six hundred fifty combat personnel at this base. We have another three hundred between a half-dozen outlying positions, smaller supply caches set up before the war, like this one.”
“Not even two battalions. Against, what, a division of Chinese troops?”
“More like five brigades, two at Cottonwood, one at Cypress and two at Sycamore.”
Rand said quietly, “We saw some of the Cottonwood forces on our way to this base. They are moving to Sycamore.”
Kelley said, “With those numbers, even a civilian like me can tell you, you won’t win.”
“Those numbers change nothing,” DiMarco said. “There are tens of thousands of Americans waiting for us to lead them in Sycamore, including thousands of our troops who were taken prisoner. We have weapons for them.”
“A division’s worth?”
“That’s irrelevant. Colonel Foster had a plan to arm them, a plan to lead them. They know the terrain.”
Kelley shook her head. “Are they aware of this?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You can’t confront them head-on, even bolstered by a bunch of half-fed POWs and untrained civilians. And here’s another question. Why haven’t the Hans hit this site yet?”
Major Cruz said, “Because they don’t know where it is.”
“Bullshit. This is a huge concentration of people. This many humans always make a detectable mess.”
Cruz snorted. “We’re better at this than you think.”
“I tell you, your best option is to disperse, as quickly as you can. Keep conducting small operations independent of each other. Coordinate only through the Vincennes, not a terrestrial chain-of-command. Kill individual Han soldiers, demoralize them, and keep laying the groundwork for when Space Force returns with an invasion.”
“We all know that may be a while. They may pick us off during that time. One solid blow –”
“ – will do less damage and leave you just as dead, but quicker,” Kelley finished. “If you don’t want to wait, you’ve really got only one other option.”
“Which is?”
“Kill their civilians.”
Captain Gant held out her hands, palms to the heavens, and looked around at the other officers. “See what I mean? Five minutes and she’s proposing war crimes,” she said.
Kelley snorted. “I seem to recall the Army has taken part in its share of those.”
“The people who are caught doing that get punished … ”
“For Dresden? Your dear Colonel Foster told Captain Castillo and me that we were fighting for Americans’ homes, Americans’ land, isn’t that right?”
“Yep,” Rand said, too loudly.
“These Chinese civilians, they aren’t innocent,” Kelley said. “They’re colonizers. They’re part of the war machine that China is using to annex American territory, right here on Kuan Yin. They’re complicit in all the violence that’s taken place since the invasion.”
Gant said, “You know as well as I do that they may have come here against their will.”
“And you know that some certainly volunteered. All this free land, plus individual homes that are a hell of a lot nicer than what the Han colonial authorities build across the ocean. And the rest of them, well, they could have resisted taking part.”
“And been arrested or worse! Chinese aren’t allowed to question foreign policy or national security matters in any meaningful fashion.”
“Not my fault,” Kelley said. “If they want to change their system, they should fight to do so. It would certainly help our efforts. Instead, they’re here, in your houses. As far as I’m concerned, they deserve what’s coming to them.”
Gant sat back and crossed her arms. “I won’t take part. It would be an illegal order.” Several other officers nodded assent.
Kelley said, “I’m not proposing we start killing babies. But we can attack civilian infrastructure, burn some farms, and go after civilian authorities, not just purely military targets. These are low-risk operations for our personnel, and the colonists will scream for protection, forcing the Chinese to react in ways we can predict and exploit. Yes, some colonists might die, but it would make your average Han think twice about moving in on our territory.”
Another officer said, “You have already pointed out that those roads and farms you want to blow up are, in fact, ours.”
“You can accomplish your objective, or you can be secure in your ethics, and be dead and defeated,” K
elley shot back. “Let me know what you pick.” She stood up and left.
Cruz and DiMarco tried to speak at the same time. Cruz was louder, and DiMarco actually backed down. The major said, “Captain Castillo, did you participate in any attacks on civilians during your resistance near Cottonwood?”
“No, ma’am. Our targets were strictly PLA forces. And the occasional Second Bureau torturer. Violet has never mentioned anything like this before.”
Cruz smirked. “Perhaps she was just trying to get our attention.”
“I’m not sure, ma’am,” Rand said. “She usually means what she says.”
“Unlike the rest of the NSS.”
DiMarco chose this moment to attempt to regain control. “Attacks on civilians aren’t part of Colonel Foster’s plan, and that will not change. I’m going to be meeting with each of you individually in the next few days to map out a proper separation of responsibilities. Everyone except Castillo, dismissed.”
Most of the officers filed out, but Cruz and the female captain remained behind. DiMarco said, “I said dismissed, Major Cruz, Captain Gant.”
Gant looked at Cruz. Cruz said, “Nope. You may have technical authority here, but this is my base and most of these people are my people. You haven’t given me reasons to trust you to employ them in a way that will maximize their effectiveness and minimize their losses. If you want to run things, you’re going to really need my support. You’re not going to have it unless I get some indication that you’re going to listen to me rather than repeatedly asserting your authority to satisfy your ego.”
DiMarco’s jaw clenched. “So you want to argue now, or can I have a conversation with Captain Castillo here first?”
“I’m not here to argue further. I’m staying. I’m going to be in on the conversations you are having with the other officers, offering input and correcting the mistakes you are going to make.”
“And Captain Gant?” DiMarco said.
“She’s been the closest thing I have had to a chief of staff, so she’s going to usually be with me.”
DiMarco rubbed his chin. “All right. But you understand me, I’m senior here. If I give an order, you and your people better follow it, or I’ll call you out for mutiny in front of everyone, and whatever happens after that will be on your head, Major. You got me?”
Cruz stared at him, unblinking, and didn’t respond.
DiMarco leaned forward and shook his head before turning his gaze to Rand. “Now, Castillo, you were surface-to-space artillery, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, you’re our official astronomer. We’ve got a high-end hobbyist telescope around here, somewhere. I want you to get outside from time to time and see what’s in our skies.”
Cruz interjected, “Shouldn’t Vincennes have that information?”
DiMarco paused. “The Hans are getting better at jamming our comms with Vincennes; in the last month we’ve only been able to make contact three times. But we may not have her helping us much longer. The Hans sent three destroyers toward the wormhole, apparently to drive her back through, and I’m not sure what she’ll do. Vincennes never told us who else is with her on the other side, but the Hans must think three destroyers can handle it.”
“It doesn’t matter much, with what you guys are planning,” Rand said.
Everyone looked at him.
“What does that mean?” DiMarco said.
“You want realtime information about enemy warship positions, right? Well, the Golf-Juliet-Eleven-Nineteen keyhole is pretty close right now; make it about point three AU. That’s almost two-and-a-half light minutes. So it takes data from Kuan Yin orbit that long to get to the Vincennes, and then another two-and-a-half minutes for them to transmit information to you. And that doesn’t count any human-in-the-loop decisions on the ship. So your data from them is going to be at least five minutes out of date. An orbiting ship can cover a lot of ground in that time, and not in a predictable fashion if it’s thrusting. The delay will get worse as the wormhole moves further away in its orbit. So Vincennes might be useful for providing general warning about ships overhead, as long as we’re not on the wrong side of the planet, but if you’re after anything close to realtime information about who is targeting us, it’s of no use.”
“All the more reason to get you watching the sky. And Castillo, sorry for the poor welcome. You’re dismissed.”
Chapter 8
WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Tuesday to send a $68 billion interior security bill to President Delgado, who lauded the measure as “vital to protecting our shores and mechanisms of commerce from our enemies.” The bill would fund new armoring for West Coast seawalls and desalinization plants, expand federal drone surveillance over coastal cities, and allow information security investigators unprecedented access to international communications originating in the United States.
San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente
You are born to serve. When Kao Tai was 13, her older brother Xun hacked into their profiles at the academy and showed her what he found. It had been a revelation for young Tai; for the first time she had a sense that the instruction and feedback they had been receiving was in fact a performance on the part of the instructors, not entirely true in some ways. What they were learning was being carefully constructed to influence how they thought and acted. She accepted the reality immediately; the performance must be necessary for their learning.
But it still was so interesting! Her hands shook as she read what the instructors wrote about her. Excels in math, logic and strategic thinking. Mastery of small arms and remote-drone operation. Loyalty is absolute; she has complete faith in lessons from authorities. Perhaps we should present some challenges to doctrine to encourage critical thinking skills.
Deeper in the document was an assessment of the way her mind worked. It was filled with the sort of words doctors used. Tai painstakingly researched each one, but she hit a wall when looking up the meaning of “at-will dissociative fugue state;” the computers must have been instructed to prevent her from learning the meaning of the phrase. Her brother found the same words in his profile, but he quickly got bored reading it. For him the pleasure was in beating the computer security systems, not in the content of what he gained access to.
Over time, she managed to work out the definition, asking sly questions of her instructors and finding workarounds in the academy computers. The moment of realization was stunning: not of what she and her brother could do, but that other people couldn’t do it. How did they live?
It wasn’t hard. When things grew too stressful to bear, or the pain was too great, she simply … let go. Whatever was essentially Kao Tai could separate herself from her body and wait out the difficulty. She might have physical injuries on her return, but she could decide ahead of time whether to fight or endure.
As she and her brother grew, left the academy and entered service to the state, Kao Tai and Kao Xun employed this ability more than once. Often it was in providing sexual service to those who desired it; the siblings had been engineered to be remarkably attractive; they were tall and lithe, with symmetrical features and an easy charisma. At times, Kao Tai wouldn’t leave herself, when she found the man or woman she was with particularly attractive and attentive, but often the people she serviced were not pleasant to be with. Her superiors would target her and/or her brother at those with darker tastes, perhaps to set them up for blackmail, or to simply give her access to their inner sanctums. But the ability was useful in other forums; they could endure all manner of torture, for example, as long as it didn’t threaten lasting damage.
Her assignment on the miserable little island of Tecolote wasn’t as bad as that. While her brother went to the outback to coordinate supplies of food and weapons arriving on board submarines from Huashan, she stayed in San José, where she first had to subvert more than one person to acquire genetic material from the main target. With that accomplished, she settled into her primary mission, weakening the government’s abil
ity to defend itself against the rebels.
You are born to serve, her instructors had told her, time and time again. It was a deep, abiding joy for her to do so.
Astana, Kazakhstan, Earth
“This place reminds me of Dallas.”
American accents were uncommon here, so Donovan turned toward the speaker and saw the confident, patrician visage of Gardiner Fairchild.
Fairchild said, “Think about it. Big city out on the prairie built by oil money but sustained by modern commerce, and a sprawling spaceport that’s too damn far from the center of town.”
Donovan tried to remember his one visit to Dallas that took him outside the spaceport. “Good Mexican food, too?”
“No. You got me there. But they do some stuff with lamb here that you wouldn’t believe. Too bad there isn’t time to go into town.”
They walked toward a crowded restaurant in the concourse. A number of spaceport patrons displayed a fair amount of wealth – such was current style here; Kazakhstan had done well for itself, particularly relative to its southern neighbors. The blue-and-gold, eagle-and-sunburst national flag was also on frequent display; the country was celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, and the politicians were trying to milk nationalist spirit for all its worth. In reality, however, Kazakhstan’s independence was somewhat less than total; the current ruling political party was bankrolled by Russia, the primary opposition party by China; the country had swung back-and-forth between them, but never was the upheaval so great during transitions that either major power intervened violently.
Once Donovan and Fairchild were seated, they relaxed a little. It would be harder for intelligence officers, whether they were Russian, Chinese, or Kazakh, to monitor their conversation in the middle of the bustling restaurant. They fell into a pattern of speaking vaguely about things anyway – not a formal code, just an exchange that wouldn’t mean much without the context only they shared.
“This place going to change ownership?” Donovan asked. Are the Chinese planning to mount a coup d’etat?
“No. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.” China and Russia are desperately trying to avoid antagonizing each other.