Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  Named for a city that had once existed in the Nile Delta rather than the fertile crescent, Tanis was a domed community—a village, really—of about eighteen hundred inhabitants. Most settlements in the Euphrates Valley were agricultural combines of one sort or another; denigrass, a local plant that provided an easily dyed and woven fabric as soft and as pliable as synsilk, was the foundation of the valley's thriving textile industry. Tanis, however, was a mining community. A largely automated thoridite mine had been tunneled into the rocky slopes of the Sinai Heights. Most of the people in Tanis worked in the processing plant just outside of the village dome.

  Tanis lay just ahead, on A Company's line of march. Their exact mission still hadn't been transmitted to them yet, but the who-was had it that there were Xenophobes in the area. DSAs—the deep seismic anomalies that meant Xenophobe tunnelers were working below ground—had been tracked in the area for almost three months now. Ever since those two nuke depth charges had been used near Karnak, there'd been intense speculation about where the next ones might go down. This area was a good bet, and some were speculating that Tanis would soon be evacuated so the Impie marines could trot out their nukes.

  In any case, he'd been ordered to deploy his company into the Euphrates Valley east of Tanis, then stand by for further orders. Their warloads included anti-nano countermeasures and rockets with high-explosive warheads, so it didn't look like they would be gassing mincies this time around. Everyone in the regiment was convinced that another Xeno breakout was imminent and that they'd been positioned to make the first intercept.

  Dev had heard about the recent Xeno attack near Babel, of course, first as a furious round of who-was spreading through the regiment's maintenance personnel and enlisted troops, then as a terse announcement from HEMILCOM. He'd felt a sharp, mounting frustration at the news; if there'd just been a comel available . . . but HEMILCOM still insisted that the long-awaited comels from Earth had not yet arrived.

  At least, that was the official story. The who-was going around the Rangers' barracks carried a different tale, and Dev wasn't sure yet how to take it. Rumor had it that bandit raiders had intercepted a government monorail earlier that week somewhere in the Equatorial Mountains, killed several Imperial Marines, and made off with a classified piece of DalRiss bioengineering.

  The only DalRiss artifact Dev could think of that might be on Eridu was a comel, his comel. If the story was true—and Dev had the typical soldier's faith in any juicy who-was—then he'd been lied to.

  Just as mystifying was the question of what bandits wanted with a comel. From all of the reports he'd heard so far, the various bandit groups operating in some of Eridu's wilderness regions were a bloody, undisciplined lot, and it was unlikely that they'd know what to do with the thing once they had it. Possibly they intended to hold it for ransom.

  Well, none of that was Dev's concern now. He was back to fighting Xenos, and if his superiors saw fit to keep secret the comel's arrival, that was their affair. Still, the situation had left Dev depressed and disillusioned. The Hegemony's military bureaucracy was so vast it made him feel lost, vulnerable, and helpless all at once. It was hard to tell what to think, what to believe. Sometimes it was all he could do to just keep pushing ahead, following orders and taking each day as it came.

  The strider company reached the edge of the woods, where the trees and brush thinned away to nothing and an orange-yellow sward dropped away beneath them. A kilometer ahead, a cluster of domes nestled about the base of a low, rock-rugged hill. The broad gleam of the Euphrates shone in the sunlight beyond that. The twelve warstriders moved slowly into the open, straggling into an uneven line along the crest of the hill.

  Tanis. The nearest, largest dome was the town proper. The farther domes housed mineheads, separators, and processing plants. The silver thread of a monorail wove in from the northwest; the refined thoridite was loaded aboard freight monorails for shipment to Babel and loading aboard sky-el shuttles and transport to orbit.

  Time to check in.

  "HEMILCOM. HEMILCOM, this is Ranger Blue One. We have reached our objective. Awaiting orders."

  There was a long pause. "Ranger Blue One. Hegemony Military Command copies. Wait one."

  They stood there, the striders casting long, long shadows in the light of the horizon-skimming sun. Dev could sense movement visible through the transplas surface of the largest dome. He engaged his telescopic vision, zooming in for a closer look and enhancing the image.

  He could see color . . . and a throbbing, rippling movement. At first, he thought he might be looking at some sort of panic, and he felt a slick, hot flutter of fear. Xenophobes were able to sense large concentrations of metal from far beneath the surface, especially the ultrapure concentrations of cities and other high-tech assets. Had a Xeno surfaced inside Tanis?

  "Enhance again," he told his Ghostrider's AI. The image shimmered, then steadied. He could see . . . faces, yes, a sea of angry, chanting faces, clenched fists, signs, and banners. He could almost imagine he heard the mob's roar. A holoscreen four stories tall projected a vast and angry face above the crowd, silently mouthing passionate phrases.

  "God, Tai-i" his number two said. "It looks like another riot." Sho-i Wolef Helmann had replaced Charles Muirden in the Ghostrider's second slot.

  "See if you can pick up an audio channel that'll let us listen in," Dev told him. "I want to hear what they're saying."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Say, Tai-i'?" That was Martin Koenig's voice. "You don't think HEMILCOM's going to use us for mob-busting again, do you? We're not rigged for it!"

  "Don't anticipate them, Koenig. Iceworld until we get the word."

  But Koenig was right. They had rockets with HE and AP warheads, heavy machine guns with explosive rounds, and a deadly antipersonnel weapon called CM—canister monofilament—that promised to be effective against Xeno machines as well. They did not have gas or dispersal grenades—or sonic stunners either, for that matter. And this time they did not have infantry support.

  Had they been sent here to quell another riot? Or was the appearance of that mob down there pure coincidence?

  "I've got a broadcast channel, sir," Helmann said. "I think it's their speaker system from that big screen."

  "Let me hear."

  ". . . the foul poison of the Hegemony and its Imperial masters! I say, citizens of Eridu, that we must fight! Yes, fight to reclaim our world, our rights, our lives, our souls from this—"

  "Who the hell is that?" Schneider wanted to know.

  "Jamis Mattingly," Kleinst replied. "Local troublemaker."

  "An agitator?" Helmann wanted to know. "Who with, the NCs?"

  "They say he has Network connections."

  "Kill it," Dev said. He didn't know if that rally was being staged by Green dissies, New Constitutionalists, or old-fashioned anti-Imperial agitators, but he'd heard enough.

  "Ranger Blue One, this is HEMILCOM. Stand by for special direct feed. Unit CORAM only."

  If Dev had been in his human body, his eyebrows would have arced up high on his forehead. A special direct feed? That was reserved for extraordinarily secret orders, a transmission directly to the unit commander's personal RAM—CORAM, in military parlance—that bypassed normal communications systems.

  Dev pulled up the appropriate mental code. "Okay, HEMILCOM. This is Tai-i Cameron, CO of Company A. Standing by for direct feed."

  "Authenticate."

  Dev transmitted his personal code, in effect confirming that he was who he said he was.

  "Roger," the HEMILCOM voice said a moment later. "Authentication received and confirmed. Here it comes."

  Data flowed through Dev's cephlink, a short, hard cascade of data already packaged in a private RAM file. "Transmission complete," the voice of HEMILCOM said. "Execute immediate."

  "Affirmative."

  He broke the mental seal on his orders, and words spilled across his visual overlay.

  SECRET

  TO: COMMANDING OFFICER. COMPANY
A, 1ST BATTALION, 4TH TERRAN RANGERS

  FROM: HEMILCOM. ERIDU STATION, ERIDU SYNCHORBIT

  RE: OPERATIONAL ORDERS

  1. DANGEROUS REVOLUTIONARY FORCES HAVE SEIZED THE MAIN CITY DOME OF THE TOWN OF TANIS [MAPREF 243-LAT 87°15´32´´S/LON 02E]. THEY ARE ARMED WITH MINING LASERS AND WEAPONS STOLEN FROM LOCAL ARMORY. AND ARE BELIEVED TO HAVE A LARGE STOCKPILE OF ARMS HIDDEN IN THE CITY.

  2. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THIS INSURRECTION BE PUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY AND WITH THE UTMOST VIGOR. AS A DEMONSTRATION OF HEGEMONIC WILL AGAINST REVOLUTIONARY ELEMENTS.

  3. UPON RECEIPT OF THIS ORDER. YOU WILL DEPLOY YOUR COMPANY IN OPEN ORDER AGAINST THE TANIS TOWN DOME. YOU WILL USE ALL AVAILABLE MEANS TO BREACH SAID DOME, DISPERSE THE MOB, AND END THE INSURRECTION. YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE MAXIMUM FORCE.

  4. A SEARCH IS TO BE CONDUCTED FOR WEAPONS STOCKPILES. THESE SHOULD BE INVENTORIED AND PLACED UNDER GUARD FOR SURRENDER TO IMPERIAL FORCES.

  5. MINING AND ORE PROCESSING FACILITIES ARE TO BE PRESERVED IF POSSIBLE. THE MAIN HABITAT AREAS, HOWEVER, ARE TO BE DEMOLISHED. A HARSH DISPLAY WILL IMPRESS THE REBELLIOUS ELEMENTS AND CONVINCE THEM OF THE HEGEMONY'S DETERMINATION TO MAINTAIN CONTROL.

  6. THREE COMPANIES 1ST BATT, 3RD IMPERIAL MARINES HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED FROM LUXOR [MAPREF 243-LAT 86° 11´02´´S/LON 01E] AS BACKUP, AND WILL BE AVAILABLE AS ACTIVE RESERVES AND CLOSE SUPPORT. COORDINATE ACTION AND CLOSE SUPPORT LOGISTICS WITH TAI-I NAGA1 [VIRCOMCHAN 39874].

  —PREM

  Dev stared with his mind's eye at the orders, aghast. It couldn't be . . .

  Unexpectedly, the image of his father rose from somewhere in the back of his mind. At Lung Chi, Michal Cameron had been faced with a split-second, life-or-death decision, one that had him weighing the lives of some millions of civilians and military personnel already in synchorbit against the lives of half a million people still trapped on the surface of the planet with a surfacing horde of Xenophobes. The horror of that decision, Dev knew, had had more to do with his suicide than had the court-martial or the official disgrace.

  He thought of almost two thousand people as the air pressure relentlessly dropped, as their oxygen bled away until there was simply not enough left to sustain life. And it wasn't just the order to breach the dome, either, though that part of things demonstrated that HEMILCOM was determined that there would be no survivors. Turn lasers, monofilament rounds, and rockets on a crowd of civilians? Gods of humanity, there were children in there!

  Someone, cool and remote and with the analytical detachment that high-level command brings, had decided that the village of Tanis should be eliminated as a lesson to the rebels. Such Olympian detachment rarely took into account the human aspects of a situation. Dev didn't believe for a moment that the order had actually originated with Governor Prem.

  For all of his relatively brief military career, Dev had tried to be the good soldier, the faithful warrior, following each order given without question. He was realizing now that, sometimes, there were orders that could not be obeyed, not if he was to live with himself afterward. These were such orders. . . .

  And Dev refused to obey them.

  Chapter 23

  The Imperium, through the Hegemony, has blockaded our worlds, raped our industry, deprived our people of life and liberty, and denied us redress. Where then is justice? Where equality under law? The Imperial Peace is not our peace!

  —from a speech given on New America

  Travis Sinclair

  C.E. 2537

  Dev reread the RAM document, disbelieving, feeling like he'd somehow gotten caught up in an unusually realistic ViRdrama and needed only to break contact with a palm interface to lift the spell. The alphanumerics suspended in his mind remained stubbornly unchanged, reality, not virtual reality.

  A mistake? The name at the end suggested otherwise, though Dev wasn't sure he believed it. Prem was not HEMILCOM, though he technically commanded the Hegemony military forces on and over Eridu. Dev guessed that Omigato was a more likely source of those orders; if that was true, if the Emperor's representative was making the decisions now. Hegemony Military Command might even be out of the command loop entirely.

  What would Chusa Barton think about this? Apparently he didn't even know, since there was no copies-to tag line. The regiment's commander was at Babel, sorting things out after the battle with the Xenos. Possibly that was deliberate as well; Dev had the cold, ice-slick feeling that he personally had been maneuvered into this.

  Were the orders Omigato's? Or Prem's? It didn't matter. The orders themselves were . . . monstrous. Unthinkable. There had to be a mistake.

  "HEMILCOM, this is Ranger Blue One. Come in."

  "We read you. Go ahead, Blue One."

  "There's been a transmission error of some kind. You people can't mean this."

  "Ah, Ranger Blue One, please clarify. What are you talking about?"

  "These orders you just fed me! What the hell is going on up there?"

  He felt the feather-light touch of an ID check probing the upper layers of his RAM, checking once again his authentication codes. "I don't know the precise nature of your orders, Tai-i," the voice came back. "But I can tell you that they came through proper channels from a very high source and they have been verified. I suggest that you carry them out, immediately and without question."

  "Who am I talking to?"

  "This is Shosa Hector Sandoval, and I have just received confirmation of your orders from the transmitting authority. You are directed to carry out your orders."

  A shosa—the equivalent of an army major, and relatively low on the hierarchy of the HEMILCOM staff.

  "Shosa, these orders require us to breach the dome of an Eriduan town and attack the civilians inside. That is nothing less than murder! Anyone who survives the attack will die when their dome depressurizes!"

  "I suggest, Tai-i, that you not discuss these orders over communications channels. They are classified secret, which is why they were fed to you as coded RAM data. I also suggest that a company commander is not qualified to assess the nature or the military necessity of the orders he is—"

  "Gok military necessity, we're not carrying out these orders!"

  "Kuso, Tai-i!" Koenig's voice interrupted. "What's going on?"

  The rest of the company hadn't been told the content of the orders yet, but they must have picked up at least part of his exchange with HEMILCOM. Dev decided to bring them in at once, since his disobeying a direct order would certainly involve them as well.

  "We've been ordered to breach the Tanis dome and attack that demonstration," he said curtly. "They're telling us to kill everyone."

  The responses chorused through Dev's head. "My God!" "They can't do that!" "What?" "Someone's screwed up, right?"

  Dev was already considering alternatives . . . seizing the town's main airlock, say, and deploying into the city. But the orders specified that the hab areas be destroyed. Someone up in synchorbit wanted eighteen hundred civilians to die.

  Horror choked him; had he been in his body instead of linked to the Ghostrider he might have been physically ill, but the cephlinkage itself was damping down the most savage of his emotions. Anger flooded through his brain like a dark red tide, leaving him temporarily paralyzed, unable to activate a single circuit in the strider.

  There'd been a long moment's delay, but now another voice sounded in Dev's mind. "This is Omigato. There has been no error. Attack the town."

  He was speaking Inglic. Dev wondered if he was really speaking the language or if the AI was translating for him. The words were flat and without expression, but there was no way to tell one way or the other.

  This, at least, confirmed that Omigato was the source of the orders, and not Prem. Why was the Imperial representative hiding behind Prem's authorization? The answer seemed obvious. If records were checked later, Prem's codes would be on the transmission authorization. The monsters who'd destroyed a small town would be Prem and Cameron, not Yoshi Omigato.

  Was there a way to prove it? Dev checked his commun
ications circuits, verifying that all transmissions were being recorded, but at the same time he knew that the precaution was meaningless. Recordings could be rewritten as easily as ViRsimulations could be edited.

  "No, sir," Dev said. He found he could move again, think again, though horror lingered. "With respect . . . no. We won't do it."

  He'd cut the rest of his company in on the channel. "You tell 'em, Captain!" someone called in the background. Was that Barre? Shut up, you idiot, do you want to get court-martialed too?

  "Tanis is occupied by hostile rebel forces," Omigato said, the voice cold and implacable. "You are directed to attack the town."

  "No, sir! lyeh!" His resolve was stiffening. "There are women and kids in that town. My men are not murderers. We will not indiscriminately slaughter civilians!"

  "If it is atmosphere loss you are concerned about, you may rest assured that we have that covered. You can't possibly put a hole in that dome large enough to depressurize the entire dome in anything less than six hours. A marine unit has been detailed to follow up your assault. Their engineers will effect immediate repairs on the dome. There will also be medical units standing by to assist with civilian casualties. Now, will you carry out your orders?"

  Dev thought of the demonstration in Winchester. Where are the medics?

  "No, sir."

  The silence that followed was deadly.

  "You are relieved of command. Chu-i Paul DeVreis!"

  "Y-yes, sir."

  Dev held his mental breath. Was he going to order DeVreis to continue the mission, to wipe out the town? What would happen?

  "You are now in command of A Company. You will return your unit to base. Tai-i Cameron is to be placed under close arrest."

  "Uh . . . yes, sir." Dev heard the confusion, the pain in DeVreis's voice. "Captain . . ."

  "You'd better do it, Paul," he said gently. "Before they order you to do something worse."

  "Damn the bastards!"

  "Open circuit," Dev warned. "Lieutenant DeVreis, carry out your orders."