As I thought about it, I’d seldom seen Ray Freeman verbally threatening victims. He didn’t need to make threats; his eyes did it for him. Not anymore. Only a week had passed since we left Solomon; but in that time, much of the menace had evaporated from his gaze.
Now he looked tired, worn down by the universe and ready to call it quits. Freeman was a giant, a killer for hire, and an outcast; but what I saw when I stepped onto the observation deck was a man who needed a rest. Once, Freeman fell asleep where he sat. He looked like a man who might not ever wake up.
On this day, he had the deck to himself and did not turn to look at me as I entered. He sat staring out into space or possibly at his own reflection in the glass. I couldn’t tell.
“Is Wallace any better than Liotta?” Freeman asked, still not looking in my direction.
“He’s decided to resign his commission,” I said.
“Smart choice. From what I heard, he was even more of an asshole than Liotta. You would have sent me to retire him by the end of the week,” Freeman said.
Freeman did not use profanity very often. He seldom did anything that exposed his emotions.
“I’m going to ask Jim Holman to take over,” I said.
Freeman did not exactly smile, but the muscles around his mouth relaxed slightly. He said, “Holman? Good man.”
“Ray, what’s bothering you?” I asked.
He did not answer.
I knew the answer. Since learning that his sister and nephew had died on New Copenhagen, Freeman thought about nothing but saving lives. He’d become obsessed with rescuing the masses, not caring what sins he might commit along the way. He’d developed a messiah complex and would have happily laid down his life saving the people on Solomon; instead, he’d had to turn his back on them, and he couldn’t live with it.
“I have some recon I need to run,” I said.
No response. Did he blame me for Solomon ... for what would happen on Solomon? The attack had not happened yet and probably would not happen for another few hours.
No, he didn’t blame me. If he’d thought it was my fault, he probably would have killed me along with Liotta. Freeman did not hesitate when it came to killing. At least the old Ray Freeman didn’t.
This Freeman-shaped cadaver took in my words and said nothing. His silences used to scare me; now they had a moping quality about them.
“Look, the Unifieds are watching everything we do. They want their barges back and they’re going to keep harassing our ships until we run out of Navy.”
Freeman just sat there, staring at me, his face devoid of emotion. Did he agree or disagree? Did he care?
“We can’t keep sending people to Providence Kri. I want to start relocating refugees to Terraneau, but I can’t do that until I know it has a breathable atmosphere.”
“You want me to take you to Terraneau?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“No?” he asked.
“No. I want to send Sweetwater and Breeze to Terraneau.”
Anyone else might have pointed out that they only existed in a Unified Authority computer, a sharper wit might have offered to upload a map of the planet for them; but Freeman shrugged his shoulders, and asked, “How do you plan to get them there?”
“We’ll work out the details later,” I said. “Just get them on the two-way.”
He nodded.
“Within the hour,” I added. I was pushing him, testing him, seeing if he would put me in my place.
The old Freeman did not take orders from me or anybody. Tell him what to do, and he decided for himself if he wanted to do it. This new Freeman reminded me of a whale: huge, powerful, and docile. He spent a second considering what I said and agreed.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I returned to the bridge to have a word with Holman.
The bridge of the Bolivar bristled with activity. Holman stood at the hub with Tom Mackay, who was captain of the ship. Holman and Mackay had the same face and build, but I could tell them apart. Mackay kept his hair its natural brown. Holman’s dye job was starting to fade, but his hair and beard still had that copper-colored tint.
As I approached, Holman spun, saw me, and smiled. “General, I was just going to send someone to find you. Are we going to Terraneau?” he asked.
I tried to maintain a casual expression. I wanted to give off a relaxed vibe. “Captain Holman, how much do you know about ancient Rome?” I asked.
“I know about the Praetorian Guard,” he said.
“Really? Are you a fan of the classical age?” I asked.
“Not until recently,” he said. “Am I looking down the barrel of a promotion?”
“A big one,” I said.
“Does Admiral Wallace know?”
“He won’t stand in your way.”
“Is he standing at all?” Holman asked.
Apparently news of the other “demotions” had gotten around. Maybe that was for the best. I didn’t want officer candidates running scared, but I needed them to step out of the way once they proved unfit for command.
I gave an obtuse response. “What do you mean by ‘standing’?”
“Did you kill Wallace?”
“I haven’t killed anybody,” I said.
“What about Admiral Jolly?”
“Shot by a looter,” I said. “That was on Gobi. You saw the report.”
“And Admiral Liotta?”
“I was as surprised as anybody.”
Holman’s voice dropped a note when he asked, “Is Wallace dead?”
“He’s alive and planning his retirement.”
“Isn’t he next in line?” asked Holman.
“He was, but he didn’t feel up to running the show. Frankly, I think that was an excellent decision.”
“And now you’re placing me in charge?” Holman asked. He wanted the promotion; I could see it in his smile.
“I think you’re the man for the job,” I said.
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
“I’m sure it will work out. I have every confidence in you.”
“Did you have every confidence in Admiral Jolly?”
“He was a formality. I was obligated to give him a shot because of his seniority.”
“You killed him.”
“Not me. It was the looter.”
“The looter you did not capture. The one you left on Gobi to die?” asked Holman. “Was Liotta killed by a looter?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there,” I said. “Do you accept your new post?”
“Are you going to kill me if I screw up?”
“You’ll do fine,” I said.
“What if I run into trouble?”
“I need a commander. Are you in or out?”
“I’m in,” he said.
“Glad to hear it. You couldn’t have taken this post at a better time. We’re about to launch a sensitive operation.”
I really was glad he’d accepted. The three previous candidates were little more than stuffed suits with unearned stars. Holman was different. He’d shown judgment, talent, and initiative.
“I hate to start off on the wrong foot, General, but moving refugees to Terraneau is a bad idea. General Hill will see it coming,” he said. General George “Nickel” Hill was the head of the Joint Chiefs. “He knows our situation.
“He’ll expect us to move refugees someplace with large bodies of water, that means Terraneau or Olympus Kri.”
“Those are the planets with the best chance of sustaining life,” I said.
“What about New Copenhagen? It has oceans?” asked Holman.
I remembered something the late Curtis Liotta had mentioned, something about an attack on three Unified Authority ships. If they were patrolling the area, entering it would be a bad idea. It sounded like something happened there, someone had rolled through with enough firepower to sink three U.A. ships. It must have been the Avatari using some new weapon. No one else had that kind of firepower.
“I’ve put some though
t into this,” I told Holman. “I think we can draw their navy away.”
“How do you suggest we draw them away?”
“By invading Earth,” I said. “It’s time we went on the attack.”
Both Sweetwater and Breeze took the call. They had the lab to themselves.
“You want us to send a team to Terraneau to survey the planet? That could present a problem,” said Sweetwater. He looked tired. His face, which generally had a ruddy complexion, now had a grayish pallor. The bags under his eyes had darkened so that they looked like bruises. “We could probably get away with running remote tests from a satellite, but a certain Mr. Andropov is going to ask questions if we send an explorer.”
The dwarf was right, but I did not see any other options. “What can you get from your satellites?”
“We won’t be able to determine sustainability,” Sweetwater admitted. “We’d need soil samples for that. We can certainly determine oxygen and radiation levels. You probably already have those.”
“We need to know about drinking water and farms,” I said.
“You will need filtration equipment for potable water,” said Sweetwater. “The ash in the atmosphere is a pollutant. The lakes are contaminated, but they’re not especially toxic.”
“We have enough food to last six months. After that, the colonists will starve if they can’t raise their own food,” I said.
Sweetwater shook his head. “We’d suggest taking them to Earth, but we’ll need to evacuate Earth soon.”
“You can worry about that next month; right now, let’s talk about Terraneau,” I said.
“There is no way to test the water without landing a team,” said Breeze.
“Even if we authorized the work, we’d never persuade the U.A. Academy to land a team out there,” Sweetwater said, still referring to himself as “we.” “Andropov doesn’t trust us. The Linear Committee just sent a team of auditors to check our work.”
“That’s a problem,” I said.
“You have a spy ship, maybe you could gather samples,” Breeze suggested.
I shook my head. “The Unifieds would spot our transports.”
Breeze, tall and skinny and alien in appearance with bugeyed glasses, stared into the camera as I spoke, desperation showing in his magnified eyes.
“If they don’t trust you, they may be listening in on us now,” said Freeman.
“Not on our side, they aren’t,” Sweetwater said. “We devised a secure communications console.”
How does that work? I wondered. William Sweetwater, the virtual person, could only build a virtual communications console using virtual parts provided to him by the Unified Authority. One way or another, this communication had to loop through real hardware. Outside his virtual satellite station, Sweetwater would have no control.
“We could send explorers to all of the planets,” said Breeze.
“What?” asked Sweetwater.
“They might suspect something if we tested sustainability on Terraneau, but what if we sent teams to New Copenhagen, Olympus Kri, Gobi, Solomon, Nebraska Kri, and Bangalore.”
Funny thing. When Breeze mentioned Solomon, a shock ran through me. I became dizzy and fell back in my chair.
“Solomon is a confirmed kill?” I asked, though I should have known.
Sweetwater stared into the camera, no emotion on his face, and said, “That is affirmative.”
I did not ask about survivors, I knew the answer.
“We can say we are running tests on all seven planets,” said Breeze. “We can tell them we need to start searching for a suitable place.” He meant a suitable place for the population of Earth.
I played with the idea in my head, looking at it from every direction to see if I could poke holes in it. The idea held water. “They haven’t started searching?” I asked.
“We think they have,” said Sweetwater, “but they haven’t informed us about their progress.”
“How will they react if you suggest a survey?” I asked.
Sweetwater considered the idea for several seconds. The plan was not without its risks. If Tobias Andropov already suspected Sweetwater and Breeze of collusion, he might see the tests as absolute proof.
Sweetwater sat on his tall stool, staring into the camera. One moment his face flushed with anger. He might have been more worried about his own arguable existence than the millions of lives spread out across our last remaining worlds. Then he smiled, and said, “Brilliant. Even an idiot like Andropov will recognize the importance of creating an evacuation plan.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Location: Sol System
Galactic Position: Orion Arm
Astronomic Location: Milky Way
We were running reconnaissance. For the mission, we took the spy ship.
I asked Don Cutter to captain the ship. He had time on his hands. Mars and his Corps of Engineers had not even begun working on the Churchill; and, now that Holman was running the Navy, he did not have time to play chauffeur.
If we’d broadcasted in behind Jupiter or Saturn, we might have come in undetected; but Jupiter was four hundred million miles from Earth and Saturn was eight hundred million miles away. Even flying balls-out, at thirty-nine million miles per hour, it would have taken twenty hours to cover that distance, and we did not have a day to spare.
We broadcasted in behind Mars, knowing that the Unifieds had figured out that trick. They might detect our entrance, but that did not necessarily translate into their tracking our route. The moment we entered the Sol System, Cutter engaged the stealth generator, and our spy ship became invisible . . . we hoped.
In the old moon-shot and satellite days, navigators planned trajectories that curved around the sun as they plotted routes from Earth to Mars. Back in that day, spaceships traveled only twenty-four thousand miles in an hour. At fifteen hundred times that speed, we took a more direct approach, pausing to add the occasional curve to make our route less predictable.
I stood on the bridge beside Captain Cutter, staring out the viewport. I’d known this man for only a month, but we had the familiarity of the battlefield. We’d faced death together. In military circles, that made us family.
“Do you think they’ve figured out a way of peeking through our cloak?” I asked.
“They probably don’t even know we have a stealth cruiser,” said Cutter.
I thought about the day Holman and I had attacked their Solomon patrol, and said, “I think they’ve figured that out.”
Cutter looked at me, and said, “General, has anybody ever mentioned that you’re a pessimistic man? You go through life a lot happier if you’re an optimist.”
“I’m not pessimistic,” I said, though I knew he was right. I hadn’t always been a pessimist. How had I changed? Was it fatigue? Was I worn-out from fighting wars on two fronts? Maybe it was the drugs? For the last few weeks, I’d been taking stimulants so I could work around the clock. The medics warned me that the drugs could have side effects—rollercoaster emotions, the sensation of feeling hyperalert, paranoia. Light hurt my eyes. Sounds made me jumpy. Looking around the little bridge of the spy ship, I felt closed in.
“Do they have ships out there?” I asked.
Sounding more calm than he reasonably should have, Cutter said, “Dozens of them. They’re searching everywhere, but they can’t see us. We came to look at their fleet, right? You wanted a peek at their forces; here they are.”
I nodded.
“So let’s look,” he said as he led me to his tactical display. The holographic display showed a chunk of space that included Earth and its moon. A rainbow of different-colored threads, each as thin as a strand of a spider’s web, traced the paths of ships as they circled the planet in search of the intruder. The scene fit Cutter’s description precisely. The Unifieds were everywhere. We had kicked the hornets’ nest.
Cutter pointed to the legend at the bottom. Red lines marked courses traveled by the new generation fighter carriers. There were only two of them. Gold
threads marked the paths of three new generation battleships. The computer tracked five Perseus-class battleships and three Perseus-class carriers. Even throwing in cruisers, dreadnaughts, destroyers, and frigates, the Unifieds only had fifty-eight capital ships.
“Ah, look, here comes the cavalry,” Cutter said. He did not sound worried.
The tactical display marked broadcast anomalies with Xs. Seven of them appeared. Three of them dissolved into the red lines that marked new generation fighter carriers. The other four resolved into the gold of new generation battleships.
The U.A. ships concentrated their search on an area close to Earth. Hidden by a stealth shield, we watched the U.A. ships from a half million miles away. They never came near us.
Clearly, Cutter enjoyed spying on the enemy with impunity. He laughed when ships searched in the wrong direction, tracing their flight paths with his finger and making lame jokes.
“Sixty-five ships? Do you think that’s all they have?” I asked.
“They’d have a lot more if you hadn’t stranded them at Olympus Kri,” said Cutter.
We spent another half hour watching their movements. No new ships appeared on the scene though a few ships broadcasted out. “Do you have what you need?” Cutter asked. He almost never addressed me as “sir.” From anyone else I might have taken that as a sign of disrespect but not from him.
“How close can we get to Earth without their spotting us?” I asked.
“They’re already on alert,” Cutter said, a crooked smile forming across his lips. In the time that we had been standing by the tactical display, the multicolored threads representing the various ships had knitted themselves into a fabric. “We’d be taking a risk.”
“How big a risk?” I asked.
“Those ships are traveling at thousands of miles per hour,” he said, pressing a button to expand the ledger. Now it showed single-line readouts on every ship. The battleships and destroyers traveled at a uniform fifty thousand miles per hour.
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