by Jay Allan
He flipped on his headset to give the order. He opened his mouth but paused for a few seconds. He didn’t think much of the Feds, but still, this was different than attacking Caliphate or CAC forces. They’d already exchanged fire at the armory, but that was spontaneous – no one even knew who had fired first. But now he was giving a deliberate order, commanding his troops to fire on Alliance personnel. Emotionally, he wanted revenge for the people of Weston. Intellectually, he knew what had to be done. But he still needed a few seconds to bring himself to give the order. But only a few seconds. “Fire.”
Anton’s troops had the Feds on the run. They were at the Winton house, a sprawling structure in the hills of southern Carlisle. Surrounded by carefully tended gardens, it looked as if it had been there for centuries, though it was less than ten years old. Now it was a battlezone, the exotic plants and flowers trampled by the boots of soldiers.
The Feds had come for Jack Winton. It was obvious he was part of the conspiracy – no one else in the area had the transports needed to haul away so many weapons. But Winton wasn’t home; he was commanding the rocket launchers on the bluffs, a kilometer to the south. Instead, Lucius Anton was there, having jogged down from the rocket positions to take tactical command of the forces hiding in the scrubby brush. He’d ordered everyone to hold fire until he gave the order, but he had mostly young and inexperienced recruits, not his veterans from Carson’s World. Someone panicked – he thought it was Troy Evans – and started shooting. Once the surprise was lost, Anton ordered everyone to open fire immediately.
The Feds were cut down all around their transports, but the shooting had started too early, and there were still police inside the vehicles. Anton swore under his breath and ran down the hillside, calling to the troops close to him to follow. Charging an armored transport wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but now there was no choice. The Feds caught outside were cut down, and the ones in the transports were disordered and trying to get their engines started so they could get away. Anton’s troops swarmed around the nearest two vehicles, most of them firing wildly. Fuck, he thought, watching his inexperienced soldiers, we’ll be lucky if they don’t shoot each other. “Control that fire! Pick your targets, and for fuck’s sake, make sure you aren’t shooting at friendlies!” He was shouting into the comlink, but he knew it was a waste of effort. They were running on adrenalin now, and without the discipline of trained troops he had little hope of re-imposing order. Not in the 30 seconds this fight would last.
Now that the original plan was out the window, it was time to finish this before things spiraled even more out of control. Anton fired on full auto, taking down four Feds who were standing just inside and right next to one of the transports. Then he dove forward rolling on his side and tossed a grenade into the open hatch. It wasn’t ideal; they wanted the things intact, not torn to shreds inside. But the grenades from the militia stores were fairly weak, designed to be thrown manually, unlike the ones made for use with powered armor with integral launchers. It would tear things up a bit, but probably nothing they couldn’t fix.
Two of his amateur troopers caught on quickly, and they raced up to the hatch and sprayed the inside with fire. The grenade hadn’t killed everyone in the transport, but the occupants were stunned and unable to respond quickly enough to evade or return fire.
At least ten of his people stormed the second craft, but the defenders inside were ready and they put up a fight. Anton was still busy with the first vehicle, and he only had a peripheral view of the fighting at the second. Still, he saw at least 3 of his people get hit before they wiped out the crew.
By the time they took the two hovercraft, the third was lifting off. Anton lunged toward it, a grenade in his hand, but he got caught in the backwash and thrown to the ground as the craft zipped away.
“Jack, we missed one.” Anton watched the fleeing hovercraft, getting a bearing on its trajectory. “Coming around the west coast.”
“On it.” Winton’s response was clipped, tense. They didn’t have much tracking equipment, so his people on the bluffs needed a visual before they could paint the target with lasers and take it down.
Several minutes went by, and Anton and his people began tending to the wounded. Finally, the comlink crackled to life. “Got him.” Winton let out a deep breath. “Just. He almost got away.”
Marek had been clear – he didn’t want any of these craft escaping. For one, he didn’t want them getting back with any intel on Carlisle’s defenses. But just as important was the message he wanted to send to the Planetary Governor – that he had one hell of a fight coming.
In the end, Winton’s crews had to shoot down two more craft, but nothing escaped. Marek’s troops had captured 7 of the hovercraft, perhaps 5 or 6 of them with light enough damage that they could quickly put them to use.
They had casualties – 12 wounded in all of the scattered fights. Only one was killed, one of Anton’s men…18 year old Troy Evans, shot in the head rushing a hovercraft after his hasty fire had compromised the plan. Yes, this is war, Anton thought. Even the taste of victory is bitter. He sighed and started walking alone down a rugged path, his boots scraping softly on the loose gravel. Evans’ mother lived just up the road, and she was going to hear the news from him, no one else. He wasn’t going to tell her – he wasn’t going to tell anyone – that the shot that killed Troy had come from one of his comrades. This is going to be a hard war, he thought sadly as he rounded the hillside and headed into the valley.
Chapter 11
Admiral’s Workroom
AS Bunker Hill
Approaching the Eta Cassiopeiae Warp Gate
Something was wrong. Terrance Compton had watched the transmission a dozen times, but it still didn’t make sense. “What’s up with you, old friend?” He was alone, talking quietly to himself.
It had been ten days since he’d gotten Garret’s orders, and while he’d followed them immediately, he’d had nagging doubts from the start. He thought a number of the directives coming from Garret’s office recently had been odd, personnel reassignments and other routine commands that seemed very unlike the Augustus Garret that Compton had known for forty years. But this last one had him really worried.
It was a Priority One communication, which meant that Garret had been identified by the computer through DNA scan of a fresh blood sample. It was a test that couldn’t be faked, so there was no doubt the message was genuine. But it just wasn’t something Augustus Garret would order; he was sure of that.
There hadn’t been a Priority One order issued since the war ended, and now Garret was using one to send Compton’s fleet to Columbia because of civil unrest? Priority One status compelled him to override peacetime safety procedures, and the fleet’s reactors had been running at 110% capacity since receiving the order. Four ships had already dropped out of the formation because of overloads or reactor failures. But that wasn’t what troubled him the most. He was expressly ordered to place himself under the command of the Planetary Governor, and to provide any support that official might request. Any support, without limitation. That was unprecedented.
Compton was uncomfortable conducting any operation that might involve action against an Alliance world, and he knew Garret well enough to be sure he would be as well. Now he was supposed to put the firepower of an entire fleet in the hands of this governor. He didn’t even know what a Planetary Governor was – he’d never heard of an Alliance colony having a federal official in charge before. Things must be bad on Columbia, he thought. Compton didn’t like the idea of taking action against Alliance civilians in any circumstances, but the thought of being ordered to do so by a federal bureaucrat with no direct confirmation from Garret? It was unthinkable.
But what could he do? The orders were right there on his screen, and he’d checked the security confirmation at least ten times. He’d sent a personal message to Garret, but the fleet was seven days from Earth on the interstellar network, so he wouldn’t have an answer yet no matter what.
> He sighed. There was nothing he could do right now. They were inbound to Columbia, and until and unless the governor ordered him to do something objectionable, there wasn’t a pressing problem. If that did happen, he’d have to decide what to do, and he himself wasn’t sure what that would be.
“Joker, it’s time I stopped stressing about this and did some actual work.” He was exhausted, but he wasn’t sleeping very well anyway, so there was no point in going to bed. Besides, there was a lot to do. “Display current orders and directives.” He shuddered to think of how much routine business had piled up.
“Displaying 364 items requiring your attention.” The AI’s voice was calm and businesslike, but it was hard for Compton not to hear it as mocking. At least hours and hours of boring routine would take his mind off Garret.
Personnel reassignments, fuel use reports, performance assessments. Well, he thought, yawning, this should help with my insomnia at least. He scrolled through the documents, giving most a cursory reading and a perfunctory approval. Not many of them were of any real importance.
He was just about to sign off on an advisory about fighter engines, a defect he had known about for some time, when Joker intervened. “Admiral, the message you are currently reviewing contains a heavily encrypted attachment. It was very difficult to detect, but when you opened the file I received a partial key.”
“Hidden message? Can you decode it?” Compton’s mind raced - what was an encrypted message doing on a routine report?
“I believe so, admiral.” The AI’s voice was calm as ever, but it was already using virtually all of its processing capacity to analyze the message. If Joker had been human he would have been out of breath or sweating. Or something. “The key is only a partial one, so it will take me some time to complete. I estimate six to thirty hours.”
“That’s quite a range there.” Compton was surprised; the AI was usually very precise.
“This is a non-standard file type. Without complete analysis of the data structure, there are too many variables for a more specific time estimate.”
“Well don’t waste time talking with me. Get going.”
“I have already begun, admiral. Conversing with you requires an infinitesimal portion of my processing power and will not meaningfully impact the time required for the decryption process.” The AI’s response was not intended to be sarcastic; the naval AIs didn’t have that capacity in their programming, though some of the Marine units were known to develop the ability to deliver mocking responses.
Compton frowned. Intentional or not, he didn’t like his computer making fun of him. Six to thirty hours, he thought, walking over to the small cot and lying down. Sleep was an impossibility, but at least he could close his eyes for a few minutes. Maybe the thundering headache would subside, at least a little.
Walter Harrigan had been watching Compton – that was why he was on Bunker Hill, after all. Harrigan was a legitimate naval officer, though he owed at least some of his current rank of commander to his sideline as an Alliance Intelligence operative. His post as chief communications officer on the fleet’s flagship gave him the perfect position to keep an eye on the admiral.
Harrigan had been alone on Bunker Hill – the navy was easier to infiltrate than the Marines, but it still wasn’t a simple task to get agents onto fleet flagships. However, the recent personnel reassignments brought eight other operatives onboard. He had no idea how Alliance Intelligence had suddenly managed to move personnel around so effectively, but he was glad for the support. The fleet was heading to Columbia to help put down a rebellion, and Harrigan had strict instructions in the event that Compton failed to obey his orders.
As a liaison to Compton’s staff, Harrigan was separate from the regular crew of Bunker Hill, but his new agents were all part of Flag Captain Arlington’s regular chain of command. It just wasn’t possible to make too many transfers into positions of direct contact with the admiral, not without raising suspicions.
The captain was a potential problem herself. He expected her to side with Compton no matter what. The admiral had been impressed with Elizabeth Arlington in the fighting at Epsilon Eridani, and after the war he’d arranged to have her transferred from Cambrai to serve as his flag captain. It was a move that took her from the command of the oldest capital ship in the fleet to the newest - and kept her in the top rank of ship captains. As part of the post-war demobilization, Cambrai was slated for transfer to the strategic reserve, so if Compton hadn’t grabbed her for Bunker Hill, she might have ended up commanding a cruiser, quite a step backwards from skippering a capital ship. There were fewer of the big battlewagons on active duty, and a lot of captains with more seniority were commanding smaller ships. Compton and Arlington had a close relationship and worked very well together; if the admiral hadn’t been such a duty-driven hardass, Harrigan might have even thought there was something going on between the two.
Harrigan was surprised that Garret had ordered Compton’s fleet to Columbia. He knew why Alliance Intelligence wanted it there, but from what he’d seen of Garret, he’d have expected the admiral to refuse. Of course it wasn’t actually Garret who’d issued those orders, but that was classified far above Harrigan’s level. As far as he knew, the actual Augustus Garret was still in command of the navy, and he figured someone high up in Alliance Intelligence had managed to blackmail the admiral or exert some external influence. However it had happened, they were en route to Columbia, and he had to be ready. He had finally managed to arrange a meeting with all of the new agents, and he was heading down the rendezvous point on deck 20.
Harrigan was sure Compton was nervous about the whole situation. Despite the admiral’s good poker face, that much had been obvious. There weren’t a lot of reasons to send a battlefleet to deal with planetary unrest, and none of the plausible ones would be very palatable to Compton. At the very least, they were going there to intimidate the colonists, which is not something Terrance Compton was likely to be comfortable doing. It was even possible they’d be ordered to bombard civilian targets. The fleet had enough firepower to lay waste to the entire planet, so the threat to the rebels was very real. Harrigan couldn’t quite imagine Compton attacking targets on the planet, but he couldn’t see him disobeying Garret’s orders either.
If Compton did disregard Garret’s directive and refused to obey the governor, that’s when Harrigan’s orders would come into play. Carrying them out might be difficult, and it would require careful planning - which was why he was risking this meeting. It was difficult to get all 8 of his co-conspirators together between duty periods, but he needed everyone to be well-briefed and fully onboard with the plan. There was no room for error. If they succeeded, Compton would be in the brig…or dead. If they failed he’d probably space them all as mutineers.
“Have a seat, Elizabeth.” Compton motioned to one of the chairs facing his desk. He forced a bit of a smile for her, but he doubted it hid his mood very well.
“I could tell it was important, so I rushed right up.” Compton hadn’t said what he wanted; he’d just asked her to stop by. He’d tried to sound normal and relaxed when he called…just in case anyone was listening. Elizabeth, at least, had heard right through it. He hoped someone who didn’t know him as well would have been better fooled. “I didn’t even take time to change. This is really no way to go see the admiral.” She had been off duty, about to go work out. She was wearing a pair of gray off-duty fatigues and a T-shirt with a small “Bunker Hill” patch. Her long brown hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.
“You’re very perceptive. I was trying to sound like business as usual.”
She flashed him back a smile; hers too was forced through a veneer of concern. If Terrance Compton was rattled about something, she figured it was probably worthy of being downright terrified. “Oh, I don’t think anyone else would have noticed. But I know you pretty well.”
There was a chemistry between the two, a close friendship at the very least, and definitely the potential for more. Ne
ither of them would explore that while they served together, but perhaps someday. For now, they made an excellent team.
“I think we have a serious problem.” All traces of a smile were gone now. “And worse, I’m not sure exactly what it is.”
“That’s suitably cryptic.” She wriggled around in the chair, trying to get comfortable. She’d been badly wounded early in the war, at the First Battle of Algol. The doctors had put her back together and they swore she was as good as new. Everything worked fine, but she still had some pain from time to time, especially in seats that were too rigid or upright. She loved her ship, every centimeter of it, but she’d be damned if it didn’t have some of the most uncomfortable chairs in the fleet. “Care to elaborate?”
He leaned back in his chair – which was a bit plusher than the guest chairs, but still not terribly comfortable – and exhaled slowly, trying to decide where to begin. “You know I have been concerned about these orders. We can say whatever we want, but there is no external threat to Columbia, no danger to any supply ships or convoys. The only reason for a battlefleet to go there is to threaten the population.” He paused, his expression turning sad. “Or actually attack civilian targets.”