by P. R. Adams
For the most part the two analyses were the same. Brigston had played a defensive strategy, hoping to minimize his losses while developing a sense of the attacker’s tactics, objectives, and capabilities. While the computer felt key opportunities were missed when enemy ships were damaged or exposed, Brigston characterized those opportunities as risky, potentially lures meant to divide his force and expose the task force to concentrated attacks.
Rimes was no space tactician, but he did get the sense based off the computer’s analysis that the mercenaries were more reckless and bold than Brigston was giving them credit for. The gunships—larger and more heavily armed than the task force’s scout ships—presented a challenge for the task force, but there was a definite pattern to their attacks and a style that spoke of dangerous cockiness born of the remote piloting. It was consistent with what he’d seen with the planetary forces.
Is it the result of having the element of surprise and superior numbers? The lack of fear of dying? Or does it run deeper?
His door chimed. Rimes shut the playback off and stood, stretching slightly as he walked to the hatch. He opened it, found Coop waiting there and waved him in. Rimes sealed the hatch as Coop began pacing in the cabin.
Coop looked uncomfortable. His heavy brow glistened with sweat. He stood at attention for a moment, his thick chest thrown forward and broad shoulders pushed back. He was flushed, his ruddy complexion darkened, his pencil-thin eyebrows all but rendered invisible. Smoldering brown eyes glared from the deep recesses of a face gone pudgier over the last few years.
Like Brigston and Meyers, Coop was one of Rimes’s poker buddies and more. He’d confided a great deal in Rimes: health issues, relationship woes, career decisions. Rimes considered him a friend. He knew Coop’s inner conflict over military service, his opposition to violence, and his uncanny expertise at inflicting it with the Valdez’s weapons systems. Rimes waved at the chair he’d just stood up from, and Coop settled into it. Rimes dropped onto his bunk. They silently stared at each other for a moment.
“I don’t have a clue how you did it,” Coop said after a long silence. His voice was an octave higher than normal, as it always was when he was annoyed. “Brigston approved three nukes. I’ve worked up the design. They aren’t going to amount to much.”
“Coop, I know you’re not behind the idea right now, but I’m telling you, this is war like…” Rimes paused, debating whether to share the footage from the shelter with Coop or not. “For decades everything has been small scale. Some despot goes too far, and the UN sends forces in to clean things up, or some piss pot country’s civil war escalates and threatens innocent neighbors, or maybe the genies kill a few thousand people and steal billions of dollars’ worth of spacecraft.”
“You can’t call that small.” Coop dug his thumbs into the mass of wrinkles that formed around his eyes when he squinted hard.
“It is small. Compared to what we’re up against now, it’s nothing. And that’s my point. We have to shift our way of thinking. There are more than forty million people on Plymouth. For the first time ever, we’re probably outgunned and outmanned. As a fighting force, we’re the weaker side.”
“You’re basing that off what happened on Sahara? They killed a couple dozen scientists, and you want to take things nuclear?”
Rimes sighed. “They butchered those people—”
“A handful of rogue mercenaries.” Coop angrily waved a beefy hand. “You’re talking about using weapons that could unleash radiation capable of killing the same millions of people you want to protect.”
“I told you we wouldn’t use the nukes on-planet,” Rimes said evenly. “I’m not like them. Our people are down there. We need these weapons to even the odds. A few critical EMPs, and everything changes. Knocking out communications—”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe they have good enough shielding to handle anything we throw at them.”
“Not their proxies. And you said those gunships weren’t shielded.” Rimes held his hands up to calm Coop down. “We only need to disrupt communications on-planet long enough to get past whatever defenses they’ve put into place. If we get lucky, and their big ships can’t handle the EMP, that improves the task force’s odds of success against their fleet.”
“Assuming they even have a fleet,” Coop said with an exasperated sigh. He brushed back his thinning hair. “You’re going off the word of a captured mercenary. No one’s found evidence of any larger attack from any of the gear we recovered.”
“Coop, if you can’t get behind this, I understand. I can get Lonny to work on it, but he doesn’t have your experience with missile systems.” Rimes steepled his fingers. “I need you on this.”
Coop leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his thighs and covering his face with his hands. “It’s a leap of faith. An awfully big one. We don’t use nukes. Lunatics use nukes. We don’t want to become like them. Right? We’ve always said that we wouldn’t become like the enemy, right?”
Rimes nodded, his thoughts momentarily on the scar every American carried from the loss of their own capital. “I know. These wouldn’t be used on civilians. I swear to you.” We’ll never stoop to that level.
Cooper looked into Rimes’s eyes. For a moment the two men stared at each other, old friends searching for reassurances.
“I’ll have them ready by the time we reach Plymouth,” Coop finally said. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” He let himself out without another word.
So do I.
11
12 December, 2173. CFN Valdez.
* * *
Space distorted beyond the Valdez’s pale-blue gravitic field, stretching and warping until distant stars seemed infinitely long streaks of pale light. They were still decelerating, their velocity dropping fast enough that even in the gravitic field a disorienting sensation affected everyone.
Rimes stood at his familiar station at the rear of the bridge, leaning on the console to keep his balance. Meyers stood in front of him, mesmerized by the transformed void flashing past. It was hypnotizing, a beautiful, alluring escape from the horrific reality they faced.
Brigston prowled the bridge as if he couldn’t be bothered by the peculiarities of gravity bent to the will of some alien device now commanded by humans.
“How much longer, Commander Fuqua?” Brigston sounded calm, despite his pacing. His eyes never left the majestic display of space.
“Fifteen minutes, twenty-six seconds, sir.”
“I’ll want every system checked when we’ve come out.” Brigston slowly turned on a heel. He casually caught himself on a console. If anyone else noticed, they didn’t react. “Short range scan, listen for any message buoys. Sharp eyes, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.”
Brigston slowly walked the rest of the bridge before coming to a stop next to Rimes. A slow turn back to the front of the bridge, and then Brigston sighed quietly. He looked from Rimes to Meyers.
“Fifteen minutes,” Brigston said. “Are we ready?”
“We’re ready,” Meyers said. He drummed his fingers on the console; Rimes recognized it as one of Meyers’s few signals of nerves.
“Coming in below the orbital plane carries some small risk.” Brigston’s voice was almost a whisper as he spoke. “It’s not our normal route, so what we expect is based off distant scans rather than recently logged travel.”
“You still feel it’s the safer approach?” Rimes was every bit as worried as everyone else. His stomach gurgled and clenched, and he had to swallow before speaking.
“Oh, without a doubt.” Brigston surveyed the deck, then nodded. “If they arrived three weeks ago, and their force is anything like what we saw at Sahara, they’ve had time to set out mines and the like. I think the odds are extremely high they’ve done just that along our normal route. Maybe they’ve done the same here, but mining space is an expensive proposition, with low odds of success. I’d think even metacorporations would balk at the low return on investment.”
“They’ve already thrown hundreds of billions into this operation. I can’t imagine they’d have a limit at this point.” The amount of waste was nauseating to Rimes. When they were forced off Earth, the metacorporations left tens of millions unemployed.
“Everyone has limits.” Brigston sounded more confident than he could have possibly been. “They still have to answer to shareholders at some point. Something we’re not thinking of is driving these attacks: planetary resources, regaining access to these markets, maybe simply toppling the UN. No CEO is going to authorize action against the military without assurances there’s profit in it.”
Meyers stopped drumming suddenly. “Where did this all go so wrong? Corporate armies? That was a platoon-strength force on Sahara, most of them mercenaries. If they’re throwing a platoon at a remote research station…”
“We’re ready for the numbers,” Rimes said. Although he meant to sound reassuring it didn’t feel like he pulled it off. “Khalil said this force is largely comprised of proxies. Coop’s nukes are going to give us an edge.”
Meyers answered with a skeptical glare. “They had to know our strength on Plymouth. If they sent a platoon to take out thirty civilians protected by a handful of security specialists, what would they send to attack a battalion of commandos?”
“We usually have half of the unit deployed.” Rimes received another glare for his efforts. “Lonny, we can’t just give up.”
Brigston scanned the bridge once more. “We haven’t given up. Not yet. But, Jack, people are uneasy.”
“This has to go our way early. And I agree. We’ve tried to frame things advantageously as much as possible. We’re dealing with a lot of unknowns, more than normal. If we catch a break…if they aren’t watching this route, if their task force is smaller than we expect, if they’re not ready for us in orbit or on the ground, whatever, we press it to the fullest. I think we all see it the same way.”
“And if we don’t catch a break?”
When Rimes raised an eyebrow, Meyers continued, “If they’re watching our route, and the task force is larger than expected, and they’re ready for us?”
Rimes wasn’t good at dealing with the hopeless or impossible. He always embraced the idea that there was a solution, no matter how ugly it might be, to every problem. Even so, he was one to acknowledge reality, and the reality was they were quite possibly outmatched. “You saw what they did to Gleason and the others. There’s no surrendering here.”
The three of them exchanged glances for a moment before Brigston and Meyers nodded. It was settled, except for discovering what was waiting for them. Without another word, they watched the universe outside slowly resolve into something more familiar.
When it happened, it seemed to accelerate time. One moment the void was a blurry streak of distant stars with barely perceptible flaring origin points, and the next they were looking upon unimaginably distant pinprick lights floating in darkness that was otherwise absolute. Their deceleration continued, but now it was at more conventional speeds that allowed their senses to process their surroundings more accurately.
Seconds after they slowed Commander Fuqua turned. The olive skin of his scalp glistened, and his dark eyes blinked rapidly. “Sensors indicate a buoy, Captain.”
“Overload it,” Brigston said impatiently. He bristled at the same types of formalities that Fripp, his predecessor, had seemed to relish. Brigston walked to the center of the bridge, hands locked behind his back, struggling not to pace. “Don’t wait for results. Launch every countermeasure we have at it. If we can’t take it down with an electronic assault, destroy it.”
Fuqua leaned over his team’s shoulders, watching their console readouts intently. Rimes nodded toward the aft hatch, and Meyers exited the bridge. When Brigston turned, Rimes waved and followed Meyers out. Rimes and Meyers were jogging then, communications channels opened to their squad leaders and to the shuttle pilots.
Ten minutes passed as Rimes and Meyers settled in to separate shuttles, Rimes riding with Morant’s squad, Meyers with Honig’s. The shuttles were ready to launch, awaiting only the clearance. Rimes kept a channel open with Meyers, the squad leaders, and the pilots. Rimes tried to keep the mood as relaxed as he could, at one point getting caught up in some inter-squad rivalry.
“Sergeant Honig?” Rimes asked after a quiet stretch. “How’s your new trooper?”
Honig chuckled. “Mr. Brozek, Colonel?”
Honig was a broad-shouldered man, and he towered over most of his squad, so next to him, Brozek seemed tiny. His skinny legs straddled an unmarked, globe-shaped container. He patted the container and signaled back to Honig with two thumbs up, his face glowing. Brozek seemed excited, hopeful.
“He is ready, Colonel,” Honig said.
“You take care of Dariusz. We’re going to need him. Captain Meyers may be able to work miracles, but your squad now has one of the craziest engineers I’ve ever met.”
“Like our pilot, Colonel.” Honig laughed, but it seemed as if he was putting on a show for his squad.
During all the interplay, Rimes listened in on comms traffic between Coop and Brigston. Aside from ordering general quarters, the bridge had been silent. The silence ended suddenly with a message from Brigston.
“Colonel Rimes.” Brigston was necessarily formal. “We have a decision to make. The buoy has been disabled. By every indication, it didn’t sound an alert. That’s only likely to buy us a little time. Those buoys are usually configured to respond back to a signals ship or to a listening station at set intervals, so we may already be compromised or have a very short window.”
“Or we may have plenty of time,” Rimes said. “I understand, Captain. What’s the decision?”
“We can turn tail and run, hold back and play this defensively as we did over Sahara, or we can fully commit.” Brigston’s voice cracked as he spoke. He swallowed and licked his lips. “I don’t see the value in turning tail. If their fleet is big enough, fighting as we did over Sahara would just lead to a protracted engagement we couldn’t win, and we wouldn’t be able to retreat.”
“That makes the choice pretty obvious.” Rimes smiled, resigned to the inevitable. “We knew what we were up against. Let’s not squander our single best opportunity. All in.”
Brigston made an effort to return Rimes’s smile but couldn’t seem to muster one. “All in. Lieutenant Cooper has the special payload ready for delivery. We’ll launch the moment we think they have a chance of reaching their targets. We’ll run a long-range scan halfway to the orbital plane to give us a sense of optimal targeting and ship dispersion. That should minimize their opportunity to react. You’ll have two scout ships escorting you. That’s all we can spare.”
“Luck.”
“We’ll need it.” Brigston signed off, his anxiety showing through.
Rimes rejoined the open channel with his team. “Listen up. We’re going in. The task force is shifting to accelerate into the orbital plane. Halfway in, they’ll run a long-range scan. The special package will be launched the second it’s deemed to have a chance of success. We’ll launch after detonation or destruction. Captain Meyers will begin hacking their systems the second we’re within range and will hopefully identify their command and control positions. We’ve run this exercise a dozen times. The only difference is that this time the enemy is real, its composition is unknown, and the post is our home. Do not engage until we have some sense of them. This is going to be a soft probe. Remind your troops of that. Twice. Infiltrate, assess, harass, acquire, and exfiltrate. They can’t possibly know our rally points, and they can’t possibly know the planet. Take advantage of those facts. Pilots, the same applies to you. Drop us off and bug out to your designated landing points. If the opportunity for harassment arises, take it. We absolutely must have air mobility when the time comes. Low-risk, high-reward only. Any questions?”
The communications line was silent. Eager, anxious faces stared back at Rimes. They were ready to strike. Demol’s horr
ified face and the image of her butchered body invaded Rimes’s thoughts again. Then, her face and savaged body transformed into Molly. He closed his eyes and thought of his family. He thought of his soldiers and their loved ones, and of the locals who had slowly come to accept them all.
Sahara was an aberration, an operation gone awry, nothing more.
“Are we ready to bring some pain?” Meyers called over the channel.
“Bring some pain,” the others shouted in reply.
Bring some pain. Bring unimaginable pain.
12
12 December, 2173. CFN Valdez.
* * *
Rimes’s hands began to ache, and he realized he had clenched them into fists. They’d been that way since the fleet had accelerated toward the orbital plane thirty minutes earlier. The whole time he’d cycled on one scenario after another about the people on Plymouth. His battalion. His people. His sons.
Molly.
He unclenched his hands and shook them out. Then, he exhaled, long and slow, hearing the undeniable shiver in his throat and wincing at the fearful bile rising up the back of it. He had his helmet sealed, and his suit monitors showed everything in the green, but he felt like he was slowly cooking. Sweat was collecting at the small of his back, and he was having trouble focusing on the critical feeds playing across his helmet display. Across from him, Sergeant Morant looked up. Compact, powerfully built, dark brown curls pressed tight against a broad, wrinkled brow by his helmet. They exchanged anxious smiles, then Rimes forced himself to focus on the feeds coming in from the task force and its scout ships. The lead scout ship was close enough to the orbital plane—and to Plymouth—to get a decent long-range scan.
Rimes licked his lips as the imagery resolved: wireframes that quickly built out into ships and satellites.