Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  The clash and clang of falling heavy combat machines thundered through the hangar. The other Black Griffins were on the way out, firing their meta thrusters one after the other to boost their jumps up through the hole in the roof.

  Vaughn pushed through the guardrail on his own section of catwalk, snapping it, then dropped to the floor using a burst from his meta thrusters to control his fall. He landed, flexing his legs to absorb the shock, then positioned himself beneath the broad, circular opening overhead leading to the outside world. More Hoshi striders were spilling into the huge compartment, now. Several of his comrades were firing down through the opening, now, trying to hold back the flood.

  Vanderkamp was the only friendly strider left on the floor. Vaughn joined her, turning to open up on the advancing Hoshi machines. He selected a string of M-720 high explosive missiles—conventional warheads, not nukes—and sent three of them twisting through the close space of the compartment and into the doorway twenty meters distant.

  "Tad, you need to get out now!" Hallman shouted from overhead, and Vaughn triggered his thrusters as he flexed and jumped, going airborne as enemy fire snapped and hissed past him. Vanderkamp followed an instant later, as the other Griffins grabbed hold of the ascending striders and dragged them up through the hole.

  The missiles were detonating below, savage thumps that felt like slams through the fortress's upper deck. Smoke billowed from the opening at their feet.

  "Put more missiles down there!" Vanderkamp ordered, and several of the waiting machines began firing conventional warheads in rapid-fire bursts. A Hellbrand, Vaughn thought, would go a long way toward ending the mobile fort's career… but that might make the E&E—Escape and Evasion—a bit of a problem.

  "Random dispersion." Vanderkamp ordered. "Stay low, stay fast, and rendezvous at Point Alfa. Now kick it!"

  Vaughn moved to the edge of the fortress deck, taking in the magnificent Abundancian panorama, towering waterfalls, the sprawl of the city, the golden clouds piled high in a violet sky. Other warstriders were visible—lots of them, rebel machines deploying across the plains between the city and the cliffs.

  He plunged off the fortress, morphing his warstrider into its ascraft configuration and kicking on the main jets.

  Behind him, the fortress exploded in flame and fountaining pillars of smoke and debris.

  * * *

  "My God, people," Hallman bellowed, waving his drink, "we kicked some major Dai Nihon ass today!"

  They were in El Tambor Roto, a club, bar, and restaurant located on La Calle de Las Vertudes near the center of the city sprawl. Much of the establishment was actually underground, which meant it had been spared the worst of the bombardment from the Japanese mobile fortresses… but floor-to-ceiling viewalls inside displayed an aerial view of the Cataratas Cliffs, looking down into a sea of mist complete with a deeply red-shifted rainbow.

  Two days had passed since the wild battle at the mobile fortress, and the Black Griffins had earned a bit of down-time. The Japanese had pulled out, unable or unwilling to face the Confederation reinforcements that continued to stream down from orbit. The surviving mobile forts had been pulled back. The latest reports said they were under attack from orbit nearly fifty kilometers to the west.

  The city of Asunción was safe… at least for the moment.

  "We did okay," Laris Palmer said. She laughed. "Maybe that's why the scuttlebutt about them making us into officers!"

  "Gok it!" Vaughn said with considerable, alcohol-lubricated feeling. "I don't want to be an officer!"

  "It would mean more pay," Talmand said, looking into her drink as if to find answers there. "More prestige. What's not to like?" She didn't sound happy about it, however.

  "It puts us up there on the same level with Red One, for one thing," Hallman said. Red One was the squadron designation for Doreen Vanderkamp. "I don't think Tad likes that!"

  " 'S hysterical," Jackowicz said. He frowned, considered his words, then tried again. "I mean historical. Ever since ancient Rome, flight ossifers've been ossifers.…"

  Seven of them had had rendezvoused at the Tambor Roto that evening, all of them members of the Black Griffins—the survivors of Green flight, Vaughn, Talmand, Hallman, and Palmer, plus three from Red: Pardoe, Jackowicz, and Falcone. The manager of the place had greeted them effusively and grandly declared that their meals were en la casa—on the house. It seemed that the Griffins were heroes so far as the locals were concerned.

  Vaughn wasn't entirely sure they were going to make it as far as the free food, however. They'd started the drinking a couple of hours earlier at a different bar up the street, and since arriving here had been burning through the Tambor's hard stuff at a prodigious rate.

  "Jacko," Vaughn said carefully, considering Jackowicz's statement, "I really don't think the ancient Romans had flight officers."

  "Well, if they had, they all would've been ossi… off-i-cers. Am I right?"

  "And why do we have to do what the ancient Romans did?" Corporal Don Falcone said.

  "Well, when in Rome…" Pardoe began.

  Vaughn shook his head. "Uh-uh. We're not in Rome." He blinked, replaying the conversation, or at least as much as he could remember of it. He was having a little trouble keeping up. Damn, what did the locals put in these drinks? They called the stuff tequila, but to make it they fermented the juice of a local plant, a spiky, brown, scraggly looking thing with a carbon chemistry similar to Earth's, but which had never been within eighty light years of Mexico or the agave azul. The stuff had a kick like a Newbraskan gruffalo.

  "So what happens," Vaughn asked, "if they go to officer pilots, huh?"

  "One of two things," Hallman replied. "Either they make us into officers…"

  "Unacceptible," Pardoe put in.

  "…or they make us non-strider infantry with a battlefield life expectancy of roughly three minutes."

  "Y'know," Vaughn said slowly, "I don't think I like that."

  "Not a whole lot of good choices, there," Falcone said.

  "Man, I don't want to be an officer!" Hallman said.

  "Copy that," Vaughn said. "Some of us prefer to work for a living.…"

  In practice, and despite what the military propaganda said, the Confederation military was far from a unified whole. Different member worlds had different traditions, and different ways of organizing their armed forces. The Navy, always traditionalist in the extreme, still used officers exclusively to crew their air/space fighters. The army often—but not in every case—tended toward the more modern approach, which was to use enlisted personnel in their war striders, with an officer, usually a chu-i, or senior lieutenant, commanding each squadron. The old designation of officers as people who'd received advanced education—college or a military academy—had begun breaking down a couple of centuries earlier, as more and more people began picking up complex technical training through direct cerebral download rather than classwork.

  The Black Griffins had been made up of enlisted personnel since its inception ten years before, and the system had worked well. Now, according to scuttlebutt, the Griffin's parent unit, the 451st Aerospace Warstrider Brigade, was going to be switching to the older officer-and-a-gentleman nonsense. Vaughn had to admit that that the extra credits would be nice; officers received almost five times the pay of enlisted personnel. But the extra spit-and-polish, the added responsibility, the additional politics that wormed its way into everything officers did… it just wasn't worth it.

  Of course, no one had bothered to ask the personnel who'd be directly affected by the decision what they thought.

  "Choices," Jackowicz said with solemn dignity. "We need more gokking choices."

  "Well, we don't have to worry about it now," Talmand pointed out. "They wouldn't make a change like that while we're in the middle of a deployment, right? They'll wait until we're pulled back to New America."

  "Makes sense," Hallman said. He absently fingered the silver gunso rank device on his collar. "Officers, huh?"


  "Ah, look at the bright side," Vaughn said. "If they do make us officers, we'll be able to kick Vanderkamp's ass."

  Talmand giggled. "You're just still pissed that she reamed you a new one."

  " 'Ignoring accepted tactical doctrine,' " Vaughn recited, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes. " 'Disobedience to lawful orders during combat.' "

  "Ah, she won't be able to make that one stick," Hallman said.

  "Maybe not," Vaughn said, "but you gotta believe that I'm on Red One's shit list."

  Doreen Vanderkamp was an OCD micromanager with a long history of making the troops under her command miserable. She could be sarcastic, mean, and petty, individually or all at once, and scuttlebutt had it that she'd twice been reprimanded for the Black Griffins' low morale.

  But there wasn't much that could be done, at least from the enlisted perspective. The wing CO, Major Holcomb, didn't like interfering in squadron affairs, and generally let the troops sort out their problems themselves. Trying to go over Vanderkamp's head would just get the complaint bumped back to her desk… and land the complainer in some very hot water indeed.

  The manager of the Tambor herself and a couple of her human assistants brought their meals, rather than leaving it to the robotic servers. "Por los heroés," she said grandly, setting a plate of enchiladas in front of Palmer. "Y con mil gracias.…"

  But Vaughn wasn't feeling much like a hero. He kept remembering that bunch of civilians trapped in the church… and his paralyzed uncertainty about what to do. That whole incident had taken only seconds, but had felt like an eternity.

  He never did find out what had happened to those people. When he got back to the church, after the fighting was over, the church had been reduced to rubble. Had the civilians escaped, or had they been trapped inside? There was no way of knowing, though Vaughn feared they'd stayed put as he'd told them… and been buried.

  Damn, damn, damn…

  "¡Que lo paséis bien!" the manager exclaimed after their meals had been served, and she led her coterie off.

  "You know," Vaughn said with a quietly intense deliberation, "I really hate this war."

  He started eating. Like the tequila, his camarones Mexicanos had never been within light years of Mexico. The shrimp weren't shrimp at all, but a kind of mobile, segmented fungus native to Abundancia.

  "Who doesn't? It sucks." Talmand said. She took a bite of her own food. "Ooh. That's good."

  "Yeah," Hallman added. "The one hope we had of coming out on top in this thing got shit-canned at the Catarata Cliffs."

  Vaughn sagged a bit inside. For two days, no one in the squadron had been talking about that. It was as though the Hojo striders with Naga symbiosis were taboo, a matter strictly off-limits even for speculation.

  "I wasn't talking about that, actually," he said. "I'd just like to know… well… what the hell are we fighting for, anyway?"

  "Freedom, of course," Falcone said. He raised his glass. "Liberté, egalité, fraternité…"

  "Freedom from Dai Nihon," Pardoe added. "Down with Imperial Japan!"

  "So," Vaughn asked, "does it even matter to the Abunduncias whether their planet is part of the Confederation, or Dai Nihon?"

  "Heresy!" Palmer exclaimed, laughing.

  "Careful there, Buddy," Hallman said. "You don't want the BMOs to hear talk like that." The Battalion Morale Officers seemed to be everywhere lately, poking into what the troops were saying, what they were thinking.

  "You don't want Vanderkamp to hear you talk like that," Pardoe added.

  "Well gok 'em," Vaughn said. "Gok 'em all." He downed his glass of ersatz tequila, felt the harsh desert burn in his throat, shuddered once, and slammed the glass back on the table. "Gok 'em," he added once more, quietly, but with deadly emphasis.

  Vaughn tended to stay away from politics, especially in squadron bull sessions. Just discussing politics generally ended up as a lose-lose proposition, so far as he was concerned.

  He knew the military civics lectures well enough. The Confederation was a constitutional republic founded on principles arising from the former United States of America—in particular the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. He knew that, and even believed it.

  Unfortunately, though, it was also ruled by a very human government—by twenty-five distinct planetary governments, in fact, though Jefferson, the capital city of New America maintained a minor precedence. Like any human instrument, the Confederation was prone to corruption and to political malfeasance, to influence peddling, bribery, venality, greed, and good old-fashioned institutional stupidity.

  And the stupidity was key, here. The Confederation had blundered into this most recent war with the Empire like a drunken man falling into a hole. What had started as border raids had rapidly escalated to full-blown warfare with the Hoshikumiai, the Empire's Star Union allies.

  Abundancia had requested Confederation assistance and Jefferson had responded by sending a strike force and the Black Griffins. Unfortunately, the rebels were still completely outnumbered and in most ways outclassed by the far more powerful forces of Dai Nihon—Imperial Japan.

  And now, apparently, those forces had weighed in with the Star Union, and the Confederation now found itself locked in a struggle with a military force that outnumbered it ten to one. Worse still by far, the one advantage the rebels had possessed—the Naga symbiotes—was now being enjoyed by the Japanese as well. Not good.…

  "Maybe," Talmand suggested, "the intel we brought back from that fortress will turn out to be important. Maybe it will win the war."

  Hallman snorted. "Yeah, right."

  "Doesn't work that way, Koko," Vaughn told her. "Intelligence picks up a bit here, a whisper there… and maybe by the time G2 finishes piecing the whole thing together it's still relevant. Maybe."

  "So what did we learn?" Corporal Linda Meir asked. "What was in the data? Anybody hear?"

  "Nah," Hallman shrugged. "It wouldn't have been anything vital, that's for sure. They'd have any really important data firewalled six ways from Sunday, sequestered, and hidden away off-site, so evil characters like us can't sneak in, stick a probe in the Naga matrix, and slurp up the data."

  "Roger that," Palmer said.

  Jackowicz, Vaughn noticed, was at the point of nodding off. "Someone grab Jacko, there," he said, "or he's going to land face-down in his food."

  Hallman and Talmand moved Jackowic's plate and gently lowered his head to the table.

  "And now," Vaughn added, "if the rest of us can keep from falling face-down when the Empire comes after us.…"

  * * *

  "Has Jade Moon been compromised?" Hojo demanded. When there was no immediate reply, he slammed his fist down on the table. "Well? Has it?"

  Chu-i Isoru Tanaka's normally bland face twisted in what might have been discomfort… or even fear. "It… is very difficult to say," he replied. "We're still checking to see what files they might have accessed."

  "Either they had access to Jade Moon or they did not. Which is it?"

  Tanaka's discomfort grew. "They… yes, Lord. When they tapped in to the network in the hangar bay, they might have downloaded the briefing log that included the Jade Moon profile."

  "Baka…"

  "But there was nothing critical in that file, Lord! Nothing that would mean anything whatsoever to the gaijin!"

  "Indeed. And you have such keen insight into the enemy's plans, and such perfect understanding of their military intelligence that you can guarantee this to the High Command? To the Emperor?"

  Tanaka opened his mouth… then snapped it shut. "No, Lord," he said after a moment.

  "I will not have the enemy underestimated, Chu-i. And I will not risk our operation with overconfidence. "

  "Yes, Lord Chujo." Tamaka hesitated. "Lord, my life is yours.…"

  "Nonsense. I do not expect you to take your own life. What I expect is a clear and honest report. Understand?"

  "Wakarimase." Tanaka bowed, indicating both his understand
ing and his acceptance of Hojo's will.

  "Good," Hojo said, nodding his response. "We will assume that the enemy does know of Jade Moon… and prepare our forces accordingly. It would be disastrous if they made contact with even one of the star gods before we did."

  "Hai, Chujosama!"

  "You are dismissed."

  Tanaka saluted, turned crisply, and strode from the room. Hojo watched him go… and thought about the gods.…

  4

  "Once a technic civilization leaves the turmoil and boisterous confrontation of youth, however, it can be expected to enter a period of extreme stability and longevity. Cosmic events like cometary impacts or nearby gamma ray bursts no longer pose existential threats. Such civilizations would become essentially eternal, with lifetimes measured in gigayears.

  We estimate that since intelligence first appeared within the Galaxy, the number of such super-intelligent species has been steadily increasing, and that that number today may exceed eight to ten billion.

  —Alien Stargods Within Our Galaxy

  Dr. Akira Nakatani

  C.E. 2549

  "Ladies… gentlemen… as you were."

  The craggy features of Colonel Rudolph Hays Griffin scowled out at them from within a mental window open in Vaughn's mind. Physically, Griffin was somewhere up in orbit; his command post was on board the Confederation heavy cruiser Independence, but the entire regiment was jacked-in for this briefing, which had been called for 0900 hours on the third day after Cataratas.

  "During the battle on the mobile fortress," Griffin went on, "some of our personnel were able to secure certain records. Our analyses of those records now suggests that this intelligence could be of unparalleled importance."

  So Koko was right, Vaughn thought. Maybe the intel wasn't going to stop the war, but Griffin sounded convinced that whatever Green Flight had brought back, it had been good stuff. The interesting part was that scuttlebutt had been flying for a couple of days now, suggesting that G2 had picked up something vital.