by Jeff Kirvin
“Aye, ma’am,” Wilcox said, already feeding the coordinates to the missiles.
“Fire in the hole,” Wilcox said as he launched two missiles, in different directions and at different speeds.
“Captain,” Ensign Perez said. “This Gold Channel call doesn’t want to wait.”
“Well they’re going to have to,” Amanda said. “I’m busy at the moment. Helm, reduce speed 10% and hold this course.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Amanda watched her tactical console. The first missile was on the tail of the pirate, and getting closer. It wouldn’t hit him, she was sure, but he’d be preoccupied trying to shake it.
The second missile detonated right on time. It exploded in empty space, but the force of the explosion altered the orbit of a largish chuck of nickel, sending it directly at the pirate ship.
Pay attention, now, Amanda thought to the pirate. I’m depending on you to be smarter than the average thug.
“Conn, Radar! Target is altering course,” said Beaumont. He thought for a second, and then said in a quieter voice, “He’s headed on an intersect course with our current heading. Time to target, two minutes.”
That should even the odds a bit, Amanda thought. She didn’t think the pirate would be dumb enough to hold that course, but by the time he was done dodging asteroids and missiles he would have brought himself much closer to the Hyperion.
“Captain, new orders,” said Ensign Perez. “We are to come about immediately and return to Io Station.”
Amanda twisted in her seat to look at Perez. “What?”
The ensign looked about twelve years old. He wasn’t much out of the academy to begin with, and no one on her boat wanted to annoy the Captain. “The orders come from the JCOS, ma’am.”
What in the bloody hell is this about? Amanda wondered. “It can’t wait? We have him.”
The poor ensign shrank into his seat. “The orders state we are to return with all due haste, ma’am. Someone’s in a hurry.”
“Gott Verdammt Stück Scheiße,” Amanda said. She had grown up in New Berlin and she always seemed to return to her mother tongue when she was mad. “Helm, come about, new course. Return to Io Station. Best speed.”
She felt the ship turn again until it had almost reversed direction, then kick in the engines again. She looked at the fading report on the radar screen and cursed. Someone had royally fucked up her day, and they’d pay for that.
***
“Hey, boss.”
Jack looked up from this bunk and saw Robyn standing at the bars of his cell. He stretched and stood up. “Lieutenant.”
Robyn leaned against the bars. “What’s the story?”
Jack looked up and down the central corridor of the brig. There was a guard about ten meters down, watching both of them with disinterest.
“I got railroaded, Robyn. Gosnell saw an opportunity to make me the goat for losing Envoy and he took it.”
Robyn nodded. “I thought so. I’ve been through questioning three times in the last two days. They keep asking about a coup. It’s taken this long for me to sweet talk my way down here.”
“What’s the official story topside?” Jack asked.
She shrugged. “Not much of one. So far the general public doesn’t even know Envoy returned. We’ve all been sworn to secrecy. I think somebody is running scared.”
An image of Gosnell’s fat form flashed into Jack’s mind. “After Mars, I don’t think they can afford more bad press. And having me involved each time gives them an excuse.”
“So what are you going to do?”
***
“I won’t stand for this, Thomas.”
James Staten sat in his office overlooking the mountains outside the Terran Republic capitol of Geneva. While Jack Killian was only a few blocks away—and many stories down—Staten was starting to wonder if he’d be able to free the Marine.
“Mister President, you don’t have a choice,” said Thomas Gosnell, sprawled across an easy chair on the other side of the desk as if he owned the place. Staten thought about that. Maybe Gosnell did have more right to the room than he did.
It wasn’t easy running a global government. To this day, Staten didn’t know how Daniel Cho had done it. But the result was that the president had very little power to actually make decisions. Mostly, his hands were tied by political arrangements, markers and favors held and given. And while Staten did a good job of looking the part of a strong leader, he couldn’t have done the job without Gosnell, who knew who owed what to whom.
“This dropped into our laps, Jim,” Gosnell continued, his Australian accent more noticeable away from the cameras. “When the voters hear about what happened to Envoy, they’re going to demand that someone pay for that. The goal of getting people off this rock has been the only thing holding our government together for two centuries. The public faith in that goal was shaken after Mars.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“I have to, Jim, because you don’t seem to get it. A lot of people connect Mars to you. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, that’s the way neural pathways work. They think Mars, they think you, they think disaster and no leaving Earth. We were able to get you re-elected on the promise that you’d make good on the other half of Cho’s plan. If we couldn’t colonize Mars, we’d leave the solar system entirely.
“Do you think they’ll forgive you if you botch that, too?”
“I had nothing to do with what happened out there and you know it!”
Gosnell got up and started to pace. “I know that and you know that. But the people … The people want accountability. They want a leader.
“Now both of us know they’re not going to get what they want, but they have to either think they’re getting it or they have to have someone to blame. They can blame you, or they can blame your pet jarhead. Both of you were on Mars when it blew, and both of you are connected, at least in the minds of the public, with Envoy.”
Gosnell stopped and leaned on Staten’s desk. “I know it’s not what you want, Jim. I know you feel like you owe this guy. But we have to look at the political realities here. It’s you or him, and thank God we have him in the first place or it’d just be you.
“Look at it this way. He’s a soldier, and you’re sacrificing him for the greater good. You can do more good for the people of the Terran Republic as President than he can as a Marine. So you sacrifice him. In a courtroom, on the battlefield, what’s the difference?”
Staten sat back in his chair and stared out over the mountains.
***
Amanda jumped out of the shuttle that brought her over from the Hyperion and found Jeremy waiting for her. “We had him, Jeremy.” She stepped around him. They were alone in the dark, dingy metal of the shuttle bay. Jeremy matched her step, again barring her way out.
Commander Jeremy Weaver was the senior officer of Io Station. He was also Amanda’s lover. Neither mattered to her all that much right now, and all she saw was that he was in her way. “Amanda, you’re going to want to calm down.”
She stopped. “Calm? You want me to be calm? We fucking had him. I’ve been after this prick for months and we had him before some VIP jackass changed our orders.”
Jeremy smiled in that smug, irritating way he had. Nothing ever seemed to upset him. “I’m to escort you to meet General Cheung. And just for a change,” Jeremy said as he ushered her through the door, “try not biting his head off.”
***
“Commander Vogel, so good to see you at last,” General Cheung said. “Please, come in and sit down.”
Amanda was standing at attention at the door to the guest quarters to which Cheung had been assigned. The room was the nicest accommodations Io Station had, but it still amounted to little more than metal walls, a cot and a desk.
“Commander?”
Amanda walked into the room and the door shut behind her, two MPs on the other side. They’d opened the door without speaking when she approached. Cheung was seated at the desk, busy
with something on the slate computer he had in front of him. “Please take a seat,” he said.
Amanda felt a surge of anger rise in her again, a little voice in her head saying he pulls me off an intercept but then makes me wait … but she controlled it. Frankly, she’d expected a vice admiral at best, not the highest ranking member of the TR military. Her curiosity trumped her anger and she had to find out what Cheung could want with her. She sat down on a small sofa facing him.
Cheung put down the slate and gave her his full attention. He wasn’t as old as she thought he’d be, mid-80s maybe. His predecessor had held the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs until he was 112. He was dressed in a utility uniform, not Class As.
“I’m sure you’re curious about a number of things, Commander. Why I’m here, what the hurry was, what this all has to do with you. So I’ll get right to the point. I’m here to give you a promotion.”
“A … promotion, sir?”
Cheung nodded. “Your name is spoken often back at headquarters, Commander. You have a way of getting results that has won you many admirers, myself included. You are a brilliant tactician and strategist. You have a way of getting more out of your crew than previous commanders. A ship with you commanding it seems to be more than the sum of its parts.
“Which is why we’re about to throw you straight into hell.”
“Sir?”
“What I’m about to tell you is classified, so high that we’ve had to bump up your security clearance just so you could hear it. Only a handful of people back home know what’s going on, and we’re going to try to keep it a secret for a long as we can.”
Cheung told her about the return of Envoy, and what had happened to it. He told her about aliens with starships far more advanced than anything she’d seen, and terrible weapons. Amanda was speechless. This had to be some kind of joke, there’s just no way it could be real. But Cheung looked deadly serious.
“Frankly, we’re lucky we know anything about the aliens at all. It looks like Envoy just barely made it back. Most of what we do know comes from Jack Killian, Envoy’s security chief.”
“Crap,” Amanda said. “I’d forgotten he was on board.”
“You have a problem with Major Killian?”
Amanda shook her head. “Not personally, sir. I’ve never met him. But from what I know of what happened on Mars with the President, and now this … Trouble seems to follow that guy. I wouldn’t want him on my ship.”
Cheung nodded. “I understand. Well, there’s more. Because of the way Killian tunneled back to Earth, we have reason to believe that the Saurians could know our location. We don’t know why they react so violently to us, but we can’t afford to wait.”
Cheung leaned over and handed her his slate. On it, she saw diagrams and sketches for a huge rectangular structure, full of angles and hard planes.
“Those are some of the plans we have for a new kind of starship, the first of the Ares class carriers. It’s the TRS Daniel Cho. It’s already being built at the shipyard in orbit where we built Envoy. Like Envoy, it’s powered by a tunnel drive, and like the Saurian ships, the main gun will be a mass driver.
“We’re promoting you to Captain and you will be the new skipper of the TRS Daniel Cho.”
Amanda looked up from the slate. “Me?”
Cheung nodded. “There are lots of captains more senior than you, but this isn’t a time for seniority. The fate of the human race might be at stake, and we’re not going risk that to avoid stepping on some egos. You’re the best officer for the job, and we think—I think—that you will bring innovative thinking to the job that more senior captains might not.
“I hate to do this to you, Captain. Frankly, you deserve better. But you’re the best we’ve got and I have to use you. Your mission will be to take the fight to the enemy, keep them distracted while we build up Earth’s defenses. We have to assume that you’ll be facing a superior force with very little intelligence about them. Your chances of survival aren’t very good. But that’s the hand we’re dealt.”
Amanda was near shock. This was a lot to take in. Had she really been ready to light into this guy because of a stupid ore pirate? That all seemed so distant now. Now the human race was at war. With aliens they knew almost nothing about.
Cheung got up and headed for the door. “I’m going to my shuttle. Grab what personal effects you’ll need for the next month and meet me there within the hour. You’re being reassigned to oversee the completion of the Cho. While you’re doing that, you’ll put together your crew.
“Oh, and one more thing, Captain. I know it’s tradition for a captain to have right of first refusal when it comes to members of the command staff, but I’m afraid we have to make an exception in your case. One member of your command staff is non-negotiable.”
***
“Marine! Ten hut!”
Jack scrambled off his bunk and snapped to attention. He was in his pants and undershirt, and his beard showed a scruffy two weeks of growth. He’d had little two do in the past two weeks but exercise and think about how he was going to get through to the politicos that they had bigger problems than what to do with him.
He heard sharp footfalls coming down the corridor, expensive dress shoes, not the combat boots the guards wore. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tall, white-haired man in a dark suit stop in front of his cell.
“At ease, Jack,” President Staten said. Jack dropped to parade rest while the president turned to the guard. “Open this up and bring me a chair.”
“Yes, sir!” The guard double-timed it down the corridor after opening the cell door.
Staten stepped into the room. “As you were, Jack, have a seat.”
“I prefer to stand, sir.”
The guard came back with a chair. Staten took it and sat down. “Sit down, Major. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack sat down on his bunk.
Staten turned to the guard, read his name tag. “Corporal Simmons, you’re dismissed.”
“Sir, I have orders not to leave the prisoner alone—”
“And I’m countermanding those orders. Go.”
Simmons nodded. “Yes, sir.”
After the guard was out of earshot, Staten turned back to Jack. “I’m sorry about all this, Jack, I really am.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I’m under a lot of pressure, Jack. Gosnell wants me to, as you say, throw you under the bus, and get on with dealing with what happened to Envoy. He tells me that it’s me or you, that one of us has to take the fall, and that you’re more expendable.”
“Mister President, that’s a mistake. The Saurians—”
“Are out there, yes, Jack. I believe you. We’ve done some more digging, questioned all the witnesses very thoroughly, and I’m convinced you’re telling the truth. I’ve always wanted to believe you, and had it been up to me, you wouldn’t be in here, but now we have enough to go on.
“Doctor Takemura has been thinking a lot about what you said in the hearing, and she believes that the way the Saurians reacted had more to do with the human form than anything we did. They were reacting to what we were, or what they thought we were, rather than what we were doing. I’m not sure I understand that, but I know she’ll explain it to you.
“But you see, Jack, Thomas also has a point. When word gets out about Envoy, the public is going to want to blame someone. They’re going to want revenge. They’re going to want a sense of closure. I can’t give them that, and frankly, I don’t think blaming you gives them that either. If I were to blame you, I’d still catch heat for insisting you be on Envoy in the first place. I’m sure Thomas knows that, so I think we both had better be on our guards.
“Because the unfortunate fact is, the Saurians are out there, they don’t like us, and they just might know where we live.”
Jack slumped a little at this. He knew it, and had been over it a hundred times in the last two weeks. But that didn’t make it better news.
“So here’
s what we’re going to do. I’m going to make public that we’ve lost contact with the Envoy, but not explain any more than that. We’re building a new fleet of tunnel-capable warships and we’re going to use those to keep the enemy occupied and distracted while we shore up defenses here on Earth.
“I’m also dropping all charges against you and promoting you to Lieutenant Colonel. You’re going to be in charge of the Marine contingent on those warships, and you’re going to spend the time between now and when they launch training your troops to fight the Saurians and working with Doctor Takemura to help us learn everything we can about the enemy. We are going to pick your brain clean, Jack, so be ready.
“I’ve also got to mend some fences with Thomas, so don’t piss him off. He’s not going to be happy about my ignoring his advice on this, and frankly I’m going to need his political savvy to sell this war.”
Staten stood, picked up Jack’s uniform shirt and threw it at him. “Let’s go, Colonel. We have work to do.”