The three admirals in attendance chatted among themselves, occasionally pausing to glance back at me through the window. They were scattered across the galaxy as well. One of them was in the Perseus Arm, one was in the Sagittarius Arm, and the last was in the Norma Arm.
I came to the meeting thinking I would hand over the reins of the military to one of these men; but as I watched them, I had second thoughts. Looking through the confabulator, I saw an enclave of assholes.
I called the room to order by asking, “Have any of you heard from Warshaw?”
“Warshaw” was Admiral Gary Warshaw, the commander, chief, and architect of the Enlisted Man’s Empire. He was the officer who rebuilt the broadcast network, a man with a knack for finding options in hopeless situations.
Somewhere inside me, I still hoped that Warshaw had survived the ambush at Olympus Kri. The arrogant prick strutted like a peacock, and he wasn’t worth shit in combat situations, but Warshaw was a great organizer. He’d created an empire out of chaos.
All three of the admirals shook their heads.
“No one?”
I asked, “Have any of you heard back from your commanding officers?” They gave the same response. That didn’t surprise me. All of our top brass had been at Olympus Kri when the Unifieds caught us flat-footed.
Looking around the table, I noted how the three admirals looked similar but with unique features. They were all clones, all five-foot-ten, with brown hair and brown eyes. Two of them looked to be in their early thirties, the other in his fifties. He had rims of white hair around his ears. He was also fat as a whale.
I took a deep breath and launched into the bad news. “The Unifieds attacked our ships after we evacuated Olympus Kri. As far as I know, the Churchill is the only ship that escaped.”
“What about the Kamehameha? Do you think she survived?” asked Rear Admiral Steven Jolly. The Kamehameha was the flagship of the Enlisted Man’s Fleet, Warshaw’s ship.
I’d never met Jolly in person, but I’d heard stories about him. By reputation, he was a man of unlimited ambition who suffered from depression and self-doubt. Nobody respected Admiral Jolly, not even Jolly himself.
I shook my head, and said, “I was on the Kamehameha when the attack started.”
“Did you see her go down?” asked Jolly.
Cutter leaned forward, cleared his throat, and said in a loud whisper, “The Kamehameha was the first ship they destroyed.”
“What about Admiral Cloward? He was on the Clinton?”
“I didn’t see the Clinton go down,” said Cutter. “Admiral Warshaw ordered every ship to the broadcast zone. The Churchill was the closest ship to the zone, and we barely made it through. The last ship I saw was the Salah ad-Din. She was right behind us, but the Unifieds were closing in on her.”
I said, “If the Kamehameha went down, all of your commanding officers went with her. They were with Warshaw on the Kamehameha when the attack began.”
“What were they doing on the Kamehameha?” asked Rear Admiral Curtis Liotta.
“They were negotiating reunification with the Unifieds. The U.A. sent an ambassador.”
“Did Andropov attend?” asked Jolly.
“Martin Traynor came in his place,” I said.
“Traynor? Who the hell is he?” asked Liotta. I knew Liotta by reputation, too. He was a weasel. According to Cutter, people called Liotta “Curtis the Snake” behind his back.
Liotta was an outspoken critic of everyone and everything that did not suit him. He openly criticized other officers’ tactics and battle strategies despite having risen to the rank of rear admiral (lower half) without ever seeing combat.
“The only thing I know about Traynor is that the Linear Committee sent him,” said Cutter. “I think he’s secretary of galactic expansion or some odd thing.”
“And they sacrificed him?” asked Jolly.
Looking around the room, I watched the admirals to see how they would react to the news. Admiral Liotta looked shocked and scornful. Admiral Peter “Pete” Wallace of the Sagittarius Central Fleet looked angry enough to gouge somebody’s eyes out. Only Steven Jolly, the old man, hid his emotions. He sat still and slumped in his chair, staring down at the table, his face unreadable.
“He left the ship a few moments before the attack,” I said.
“The hell you say,” said Cutter. “No one made it off the Kamehameha.”
“I did,” I said. “I saw Traynor leaving the summit and followed him to a landing bay. That’s the only reason I made it off the ship, I was already near my shuttle when the attack began.”
If I ever saw Traynor again, I’d have to thank him for saving my life. I’d thank him, then I would shove a grenade so far up his ass his doctor would mistake it for a hemorrhoid.
The silence in the room was so heavy it felt like it was made of bricks. Wallace, the youngest of the one-stars, broke that silence when he said, “It’s time we annihilated those speckers once and for all.”
Wallace looked fit, but he had a disfigured face. Long, striping scars covered his forehead and cheeks and neck, making his head look like a misshapen map. He might have seen action or he might have been in a fire. I would not have trusted the surgeon who performed Wallace’s skin grafts to wrap a Christmas present.
“We can’t attack Earth,” Jolly said, dismissing the comment as if it had been made by a child.
“Why the hell not?” demanded Wallace.
“Because it’s Earth,” said Jolly.
Hearing Jolly speak, I was struck by how much these men did not know. They might have known that the aliens had returned to New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri, but they did not know about Terraneau. From what I could tell, their superiors had not informed them that the aliens would attack every one of our planets or that they would eventually attack Earth.
“Are you saying that because Earth is the gawddamnedspecking home of humanity, we have to let those Unified bastards get away with an ambush?” asked Wallace, venom oozing from his voice. “Bullshit, Jolly! That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“We cooperated with them, and they ambushed us,” said Cutter. “That can’t go unanswered. If we let them get away with it . . .” He was making one of those vague, fill-in-theblank-type threats, and he let the sentence go unfinished.
“I don’t get it,” said Admiral Liotta of the Cygnus Central Fleet. “How did they catch us with our pants down? I mean, what was going on?”
“The specking bastards set us up,” said Wallace.
“Looks that way,” Liotta agreed.
Jolly turned to me, and the room went silent as he asked, “What about Olympus Kri? The reason we went there in the first place was to evacuate the planet before the aliens attacked it. Was the whole thing a trick?”
Jolly was a fat, old clone with pockets of flesh sagging from his jowls. The skin hanging down his chin and jawline reminded me of an overstuffed hammock.
“It must have been,” said Liotta.
“The aliens attacked Olympus Kri,” I said. “They have attacked three planets so far: New Copenhagen, Olympus Kri, and Terraneau.”
“How the hell do we know that’s not more Unified Authority bullshit?” asked Wallace.
“I was on Olympus Kri when they attacked. I was on Terraneau as well. The Unifieds don’t have anything powerful enough to do what the aliens did to those planets. We’d be having this discussion in the afterlife if they did.”
The officers considered my words. Finally, Admiral Jolly asked, “What’s the matter with them? Wasn’t the alien attack enough?”
“Nothing will be enough for them,” said Wallace. “The bastards came under a flag of truce.”
I had come to this meeting hoping to find a worthy successor for Warshaw, but the prospects were dim. Jolly was next in line. He had more self-control than the other two, but he came across as weak. I asked myself if I really wanted to place the Enlisted Man’s Navy in that man’s trembling hands.
Liotta asked, “Were y
ou able to evacuate Terraneau?”
“No,” I said.
Admiral Wallace said, “I heard they wanted to join the specking Unifieds. It sounds to me like those assholes got what they deserved.”
I stared into the holographic window, but I did not focus on anyone in particular, taking in the entire scene instead of the details.
None of those officers was fit for command. Steven Jolly was weak. James Liotta was a bullshit artist. Pete Wallace was a big-talking kid. They were the rightful heirs to the throne; and if I did not choose one of them, the mutiny that would follow might spread across the fleet.
My mind wandered as the three admirals bickered among themselves. Maybe they knew this was an audition. The thought of one of these fools as my commanding officer left me depressed until I remembered a lesson from ancient Rome, the Praetorian Guard.
The Praetorian Guard protected the emperors of Rome. They also killed several of the emperors. When they did not like an emperor, they assassinated him and chose his replacement.
I hated the idea of placing Steven Jolly in charge; but if I looked at him the way the Praetorians viewed their emperors, as a disposable figurehead who got to make decisions until he proved his inability to make sound choices, then the prospects improved. The thought made me smile.
As I came back to the conversation, I heard Admiral Wallace say, “Who gives a shit about Terraneau? I’m glad those speckers died; the universe is better off without them.”
“I am not here to discuss the people of Terraneau or their place in the universe,” I said.
The look Wallace shot me could have set off a fire alarm. His face flushed red. As he glared at me, he clenched his teeth so hard that his chin quivered.
“The aliens are retaking the planets we liberated from them, and they’re not going to stop until they reach Earth,” I said. “They’re following our schedule. First we beat them on New Copenhagen, so they burned New Copenhagen first. The first planets we rescued were Olympus Kri and Terraneau. Does anybody know which planet came next?”
Some quiet discussion followed, holographic men whispering to the holographic shades beside them. Obviously, no one knew the answer. It didn’t matter, Sweetwater and Breeze would know ... assuming they were willing to divulge information to enemies of the state.
“It may not have occurred to you, General, but our hands are pretty well tied,” said Jolly. “I’m here in the Perseus Arm. Curtis is in Cygnus Central. Until we find some method to program our broadcast stations, we’re stuck where we are.”
He did not mention Admiral Wallace.
“You don’t have keys?” I should have known. The late Admiral Warshaw only gave the keys to control the broadcast system to his fleet commanders—the guys who died in the ambush.
“They weren’t exactly standard-issue,” said Admiral Liotta.
“Fleet commanders only,” said Jolly.
“And all of the fleet commanders were on the Kamehameha ,” I said, finishing the statement as I held up a little device for the officers to see. It was the size of a deck of playing cards and a quarter of an inch thick. It was all black, with a touch screen.
“Warshaw gave this to me right before the attack,” I said. “I needed it to get to Terraneau.”
“Why did he give a shit about Terraneau?” asked Wallace. I noticed a certain rhythm about his speech. He managed to work profanity into every sentence. If he were a religious man, his prayers would have been specking incredible.
“If you saw what happened on Olympus Kri, you’d understand,” I said.
“What exactly happened?” asked Admiral Jolly.
“They ignited the atmosphere ... lit the planet to nine thousand degrees and let it burn. By the time they got through, every living thing was incinerated.”
“And you think they’re going to do that to all of our planets?” asked Jolly.
“Not if we hit them first,” said Liotta.
Only an ass-wipe who’d never seen battle would talk like that, I thought; but I didn’t speak my mind. If things did not work out the way I hoped, I might need Liotta. Now that I had decided to turn my Marines into the new Praetorian Guard, I might need all three of these ass-wipes. The good news was that I’d only need them one at a time.
“We can’t hit them, Admiral,” I said. “It’s not like they’re flying to planets and attacking from ships. They’re hitting us from some other galaxy, a billion light-years away. We’ve already lost the war. We’re not fighting, we’re evacuating refugees.”
Silence.
“But we only have one broadcast key,” said Admiral Jolly.
“My engineers can make more,” I said.
“So we have our broadcast network back,” said Jolly.
“The way I see it, Admiral, we will be one big happy Navy in a couple of hours,” I said. Hiding my distaste for what I had to do next, I said, “Admiral Jolly, we’re going to need a supreme commander.”
“Are you placing me in charge?” asked Jolly.
“Yes, sir.”
“But you outrank Admiral Jolly,” said Liotta.
“Rank isn’t everything,” I said. “Have any of you ever heard of the Praetorian Guard?” When they shook their heads, I smiled, and said, “No? Maybe it’s for the best. They were the troops who guarded the emperors of Rome. Caesar, Caligula, Otho, they guarded all of them.”
“What’s your point?” asked Liotta, clearly unaware that the three emperors I had listed all died prematurely.
“I’m a Marine. I’m a combat officer, not the kind of man who runs empires,” I said. I gave them a crooked smile, and said, “I’m the kind of guy who guards the throne, not the kind who sits in it.”
They liked that. Admiral Jolly bobbed his head up and down, his real chin vanishing behind the folds of his jowls. He said, “Well done, General. That makes perfect sense.”
Liotta gave me a casual salute.
“But the bastard still has more stars than us?” said Wallace.
“You can have ’em if you want,” I offered. “As of this moment, Admiral Jolly, you are in charge.”
“You’ve just relinquished your command, General. You no longer have the authority to make that kind of decision,” said Admiral Liotta, waking from his revelry. He must have thought I would put him in charge.
“I still have three stars,” I said. I turned to Jolly, and added, “Unless you plan to strip me of command.” I knew he wouldn’t. If Liotta and Wallace conspired against him, he’d need a strong ally.
Jolly shook his head. “No, General, I think you should hold on to those stars.” He was weak, and no one values alliances more than the weak.
Before calling the summit, I had visited Engineering and shown the broadcast key to Lieutenant Mars. When he saw it, he laughed, and said, “Mary Mother of God, you have got to be kidding. A frequency-modulation transmitter?” He looked at me and saw that I had no idea what he was talking about, so he said, “It transmits FM radio waves. This is very old technology . . . ancient even. Kids build these things as history projects in grade school. These things came out between the Internet and smoke signals.”
“What is the Internet?” I asked.
He laughed, and said, “No wonder the Unifieds never cracked it; only a fool would use such a primitive technology to control a broadcast network. It’s inspired.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ava waited for me in my billet. What else could she do? As the only woman aboard the Churchill, she didn’t dare leave the protection of my quarters. Fighting the effects of a growing depression, she sat on my rack, watching a movie on a pair of mediaLink shades. When she heard me come in, she tore off the shades.
In better times, those shades could have provided news and editorial; now they only accessed preprogrammed materials—books, movies, and educational curricula that had been created a decade earlier.
“I was watching your movie,” she said.
“My movie?” I asked.
“The Battle for Lit
tle Man.”
The name did not register for a few seconds. Then it hit me. The Battle for Little Man, an old propaganda film released at the beginning of the Mogat Wars, depicted a battle in which a division of Marines was sent to an unsettled planet called Little Man. We went expecting to find a small detachment of Morgan Atkins Believers. What we found was an army that outnumbered us two to one. Outnumbered and cut off from help, we made our stand. I was one of only seven survivors.
The movie was made at a time when I was listed as MISSING IN ACTION AND PRESUMED DEAD, opening the door for the filmmakers to portray me as a natural-born.
“You don’t look a thing like Sean Gregory,” Ava said. Gregory was the square-jawed male model who played natural-born me.
“Really? I thought that was the most accurate part of the movie.”
“You’re much better-looking than Sean,” Ava said. She acted like she was in a playful mood, but I could see through the cracks. She didn’t call me “Honey.” That was a sure tipoff. She also sounded more sincere than brassy. When Ava was playful, she liked to sound tough.
“I knew that,” I said, trying to play along.
“I’m not kidding. You should see Sean in person.”
“He isn’t six feet tall and covered with muscles?” I asked.
Ava pretended to have to think that over, pausing, mulling over the words, scratching her chin, and finally saying, “Well, he is pretty tall.”
“And muscular?” I asked.
“He does have big arms ... and that chest . . .” Her olivine-colored eyes became dreamy. Had I dredged up old memories or fantasies?
It felt nice to flirt with Ava even though I could tell she was putting on an act. I wished things had worked out differently. I wished I could have given her what she wanted and that she had not left me for some other man. I wished the people in charge on Terraneau had listened to me, and the girls in Ava’s orphanage had not been incinerated.
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