“It would be,” the angry Dactari answered, “if the yards weren’t doing half their normal business.” He looked around quickly. “That quarantine at Weirfall was supposed to end years ago and it’s still off limits, and I mean way off limits. The last run I made out to O’aro’que, I had to go almost twice as far, just to stay out of the exclusion zone for Weirfall.”
“They’re just making sure they take no chances with the infection,” Tommy said on sudden inspiration. Where there’s quarantine… He was playing naïve cop to Kale’s jaded cop.
“Oh, don’t be such a grazer!” The Dactari glared at him. “They’re feeding us a load of failed circuits and no doubt. I tell you, something is going on out there and they don’t want us finding out. I know someone who had a contract to carry minerals out to Oaxes and it went on administrative hold just this morning.”
“Administrative hold?” Tommy tried to sound dismissive.
“Can you even tell me what that means?” The angry captain spread his hands, his tail twitching in frustration. “I checked the allocator file and every load for Oaxes and Tauhento are now under ‘administrative hold’.”
“All of them?” Kale stroked his chin as he nodded. “That’s sure as hells no coincidence.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “It’s no coincidence that Tauhento was originally an Oaxian colony either. I think it’s a few bad eggs from one of those worlds engaging in terrorist acts. Mass destruction kind of stuff. All those troops rotating back from Earth are being sent in to crack down on those worlds.”
“Pah.” Tommy managed to wave his tail in disgust. Years of travelling with Gelna was paying off now, and he was rather proud of his success in pulling off the gesture. “Next you’ll be telling us the Humans have invaded.”
“I’m being serious.” An angry twitch of his tail. “If you’re just going to spout nonsense, I see no reason to carry on with this.” True to his word, he spun on his heel and stalked off.
Tommy kept his look of disdain trained at the captain’s back until he was lost in a distant crowd. He turned to Gelna. “You see? Even a fellow like that, who makes his living by travelling between the worlds of the Republic, would never guess at the truth. If he doesn’t buy into the official lie, he concocts a new one that still goes down easier than the truth.”
“And what do you think the truth is?” Gelna demanded, his tail twitching angrily against the side of his torso.
“That our forces have taken Weirfall, probably years ago,” Tommy replied. “Now they’re up to something on Oaxes and …”
“Tauhento,” Gelna supplied sullenly. “Don’t you think that maybe you’re the one concocting a comforting fiction?”
Tommy shrugged. “Maybe,” he said reasonably, “but I do know one thing.”
“Yes?”
“There were no Dactari troops fighting outside of Moscow when we were there a few weeks ago.
The tail stopped twitching.
Hearts and Minds
The Salamis, En Route to Oaxes
Harry lay on one of the couches in his quarters. It was the same layout as Admiral Towers’ rooms on the Midway, right down to the furniture. The two-room suite had lain empty since leaving Earth. Every carrier in the fleet had command quarters like this one, sitting empty until the day when a flag officer would need them.
He was having a hard time shaking the feeling that his accommodations were only temporary. He had left the Navy years ago under a cloud. It had been a cover-up at his expense and Towers knew that, but it had been a black mark, all the same.
At the start of this war, he had been captain of the Völund, a commercial freighter, and now he was a commodore whose flag captain had five years seniority over him. It hardly made for a comfortable working relationship, but Harry was determined not to yield an inch of ground with his subordinates. If he gave Captain Prouse too free a hand, Harry would quickly lose his control of the squadron.
And he still had the Midgaard situation nagging at the back of his mind. His own forces might well grow due to the three Midgaard vessels under his command. If they were to seize any enemy vessels, then those ships would be a welcome addition to the Oaxes Squadron.
But they would be under the command of Midgaard captains.
He sat up as the tablet on his coffee table began to chime, announcing that someone was waiting outside his door. He touched a command to open the large hatch and looked up to see Captain Prouse standing outside with Colonel Adams. “Come in, gentlemen.” He waved them to the other couch.
“Another two days till Oaxes, sir,” Prouse commented as he dropped onto the proffered seat. It was a useless comment as the schedule was already well known. It was also known that an enemy force was expected to arrive in orbit a few hours ahead of them, thanks to a carefully-delayed departure from Tauhento.
How that was known, however, was a closely-guarded secret and neither Prouse nor Adams had any idea of the real source of Harry’s information. Only a small group of officers aboard the Leetayo had any idea why the bridge had suddenly been partitioned to keep the sensor coordinator’s station enclosed. Of that small group, only Mickey Willsen was allowed to enter.
Prouse is nervous around me, Harry realized suddenly. The captain’s stating of the obvious certainly seemed to indicate an unease in dealing with a new superior. I’ll take nervous over open disrespect. “You’ve both seen the analysis of Oaxes and its people?”
Both men nodded.
“It looks like they enjoy a good fight, sir,” Adams offered. “There may not be many security troops left for us to hunt down. I have a feeling my boys will end up on crowd control, backing up the local police. The fringe worlds are lightly garrisoned.” It was an understatement. The fringe planets had been stripped of more than three quarters of their troops in order to send the second invasion force to Earth. Few of those soldiers had ever come back.
“My thoughts as well, Colonel.” Harry propped his elbows on his knees and stared absently at the tablet in front of him. “Still, they’ll get some fresh air in the bargain, and a change from being stuck in the same ship, day in and day…” He stopped suddenly and stared at the two officers who sat to his right.
Prouse leaned forward in alarm. “Sir?”
“Captain, have you ever found that the solution to your problem was right in front of you the whole time?” Harry grinned ruefully at how the simplest solutions often take the longest to find. He held up a hand to indicate that an answer wasn’t needed.
“When we first met the Midgaard,” he explained, “they were packed to the gunnels with troops because they would land the whole ship on a planet, shoot the place up and then steal anything that wasn’t smashed in the process.” It wouldn’t hurt to remind these men that he had been dealing with the Midgaard longer than most.
“They didn’t care for boarding actions because they use linear acceleration in their assault weapons.” He treated them to an ironic grin. “Shoot someone on a ship and the round goes through them, then through some bulkheads, then out the side of the hull, making a hole big enough to climb out through.
“When we gave them our own, lower-velocity weapons, they started boarding ships and putting their own crews in control.” He mimicked an expanding sphere with his hands. “They’re getting stronger while we get weaker.”
“I thought I was the only one worried about that,” Prouse admitted. “Sir,” he hastily amended.
“And what’s the solution, sir?” Adams asked.
“You are, Adams. You and your men are the solution,” Harry said. “Marines have a long and distinguished tradition of boarding enemy ships. We just need to train them to operate those ships and we have our answer.” He looked back to Prouse. “How many training units do you have aboard?”
Prouse nodded his obvious approval. “We have an even hundred, sir. The Salamis was one of the more recent carriers so she has the reverse-engineered version of the training equipment. We can train a fair number of prize crews by the t
ime we reach Oaxes, assuming, of course, Colonel Adams here can give us the men.”
I’m part of that ‘us’, Harry realized with a glow of relief. Prouse seemed to be settling to the idea of having a jumped-up junior as his commanding officer. Is Adams part of that ‘us’ or will I need to note his objections in the log? “Colonel?”
Adams was already nodding. “I’ll have my staff draw up a new organization, taking into account the loss of the prize crews.” He looked at Harry. “The ships with Marine crews…”
“Will be under my command,” Harry insisted, “which means that Captain Prouse will command them if I’m on the surface.” He could see it wasn’t the answer that Adams was hoping for. “I can’t afford to have a fractured command structure for my combat vessels and you’re going to be far too busy to worry about ships,” he added. “I’m going to need you in command of the ground forces. I need someone with a level head to keep trouble from brewing up with the Oaxians.”
It was a responsible duty – pain in the ass though it may be – and Adams nodded solemnly. “I’m addressing my men at shift change this afternoon,” he said. “They need to understand exactly what the mission is. We only have two expeditionary forces with us, so we can only remain on Oaxes if we have the goodwill of its people.” He paused for a moment, glancing over at Harry. “Sir, I’d like to have some local currency signed over for public relations purposes.”
Not for the first time, Harry felt the restrictions of command. He could authorize funds, but money was in short supply after three years with no home economy to rely on. There would have to be a good reason for every single credit spent. “What exactly do you have in mind, Colonel?”
“Dactari security troops ‘live off the land’ for lack of a better phrase,” the colonel explained. “They eat at whatever restaurant happens to be nearby, but they carry no funds for payment. Proprietors are expected to indent to the republic exchequer for payment. The process is so byzantine that nobody ever indents.” Adams shrugged. “It usually costs more than the price of a meal to get your payment, so the owners simply eat the loss.”
“So if we put credit on every Marine’s implant…” Harry began.
Adams held up a hand. “Actually, sir, I was just thinking of a few hundred reliable individuals who could make up the core of a hearts-and-minds campaign. You know, visit the coffee shops and restaurants, get to know the locals…”
“I’m with you, Colonel,” Harry grinned, “but let’s broaden the scope a bit.” The plan was still coalescing for Harry as he spoke, but he knew, even as the last details were forming, that it was a good one. “Your troops need to eat. We can either bring in food and set up base kitchens, hire local catering operations to cook for them, or turn them loose to eat at local establishments for every meal.”
“I have almost forty thousand Marines on this ship.” Adams was so surprised that he forgot the ‘sir’ that, while not necessary in every sentence, still found its way into almost everything he said to Harry. “The locals might get annoyed if we start clogging up local businesses with Human troops.”
“They seem like a lot when they’re crammed into the Salamis.” Harry took a sip of coffee, giving himself time to refresh the numbers in his mind. “But the capital city, Presh, has over twenty-eight million citizens alone.” He set his mug down and ran a quick calculation on his tablet. “That’s just over a tenth of a percent, assuming we put all your troops in Presh.
“There’s eight other cities to garrison,” Harry continued. “Eight cities left over from the eight nations that existed before the old empire invaded. They cleared out the countryside so the rebels wouldn’t have anywhere to hide but the cities.”
“A rebellion that’s lasted for more than three thousand years,” Captain Prouse remarked with indecent cheer. “I like these folks; they don’t give up easily.”
“The Dactari patrol stations will be half empty, even with all of your troops deployed,” Harry went on. “Getting them out to eat with the locals three times a day will help our cause on Oaxes better than another ten divisions of troops.”
“It’ll cost a little more to feed them this way,” Adams shrugged. “But it’s well worth it.”
“And it helps justify the share of tax revenue that we’ll be taking from their economy,” Harry added. “The average citizen will never see our ships in orbit, but if they see our soldiers and get to know them, they might just feel like their money is being put to better use. Come to think of it…” He looked at Prouse. “You can train two hundred in an eight hour shift with your equipment – let’s make sure that each squad we send down to the surface has at least one man with military police patterns and Oaxian language implanted. No Dactari ever bothered to learn the local language.”
“The training room’s going to be busy.” Prouse took a deep breath. “Implanting ship operations and police work at the same time – we don’t have a moment to waste, sir.”
Harry nodded. “Let’s get to it gentlemen.”
Down Below
Alliance Consulate, Lychensee, Weirfall
Dwight stepped out the front door of the four-storey stone consulate building and looked up at the new city. A network of massive angled graphene supports held the modern city suspended above the structures of the old city. The supports, rising at a forty-five degree angle, intersected each other several times as they climbed toward the gleaming high-rises of modern Lychensee. An exuberant mix of homes and shops encrusted each support column like barnacles, haloed by the rising sun.
He had lain awake in his room all night, concentrating on the unfamiliar sounds of the alien city so he wouldn’t have to think about the events of the past few weeks. Now that the Angel of Death had done his duty, his usefulness was at an end, but there was no one to administer his transition. Nobody to give him the peace he craved.
The moment his room screen told him the commissary was serving breakfast, he went downstairs, ate, and headed for the front gate.
He needed as much distraction as he could find, and the tangled clusters of dark grey boxes that covered the gigantic columns looked promising enough. He stopped by the front gate of the walled compound. The consulate looked like an Aztec interpretation of a four-storey, twentieth century structure. The entire surface was covered with rows of weathered, iconographic relief sculptures glazed by the morning mist. Even the wall bordering the compound was decorated, but the symbols seemed more generic, to the point that you could spot the same patterns over and over.
The heavy concrete walls inside the gate were a more recent addition, placed by the Alliance to prevent bomb-laden surface vehicles from forcing their way into the compound. Surface-to-air missile batteries in the compound and on the roof handled the aerial threat.
Dwight threaded his way through the winding, concrete enclosed path to reach the front gate. The squad behind the sandbags was different from the one on duty when he had arrived the previous evening.
“Morning, Doc,” a young lance corporal greeted him with a non-committal sort of nod, his breath fogging the cool morning air.
It was always a guessing game for Dwight. Some recognized him from the vaccination teams and treated him with cool detachment or even hostility, but some were outrageously grateful for their extended lifespans. Then again, some had no idea who he was. His uniform proclaimed him as having arrived on the Pandora, because it was still in good condition. He was further identified as a doctor by the insignia on his collar. ‘Doc’ could mean the young man had glanced at his collar, but it could also mean he held a grudge over a dead buddy.
It was an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that some people hated him on sight. He always wondered if the person talking to him wanted him dead. The sooner he got away from his fellow man for a while, the better. He pointed up to the haphazard structures that encrusted the city supports. “Anything worth seeing up there?”
“There’s always something to see on one of the column districts,” the young man answered. “Each one i
s like a little city in its own right.” He nodded down the street. “There’s a cab stand just around the corner,” he said. “Grab an aerial unit and have him take you to the Kinzell.”
“What’s the Kinzell?”
“It’s a section of that column over there.” He pointed slightly to the right. “See that column that angles up toward us, just behind the two that cross each other?” He turned to Dwight. “It’s filled with small businesses of every conceivable description: electronics, experimental surgery, tattoos…” He pulled his sleeve back to reveal a bright pattern of intricate whorls and characters in Dheema.
“That’s amazing!” Dwight blurted. “How do they make it glow?”
“Bioluminescence,” the young soldier replied. “Caught seven kinds of hell from the brass when I showed up with this,” he admitted ruefully. “In retrospect, a glowing tattoo isn’t a good idea for combat personnel.”
“Still, I’d like to see how they do it,” Dwight mused. It would certainly make for a good distraction.
“Good place to go drinking too,” the young Marine added. You can get a room on the cheap, if you don’t feel like finding your way back here, and the bars up there stay open ten-ten.” Time had been set to the decimal system back in the Imperial days. Weeks were ten days long and days were ten hours. “The party never stops.”
“I suppose that explains Tipsy McStagger over there.” Dwight nodded down the street. “First thing in the morning and he’s already half in the bag.”
The lance corporal spun around, a look of alarm on his face. “Oh, shit!” He looked up to the raised concrete platform by the side of the gate. “McElroy! Get your head out of your ass and put crosshairs on the drunk at two o’clock!”
Dwight decided the best course of action was to follow the lance corporal into the raised platform, but he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Another Marine was inside, aiming a heavy-duty rifle down the street toward the local.
The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) Page 16