Jack came in last. He plopped down on a seat and studied Rob.
The inside of the passenger car was simple: a few well-worn seats and a time-smudged display with route information flickering on it.
A voice told them to hold on, remain seated, and relax.
Rob sat and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m helping you, all of you,” he said with a wave of his hand, “because not all of us believe in what the Coalition is doing. And he’s my brother.”
“Yah, but your dad is kind of running the show upstairs,” Jack said. He dug out a calorie bar and tore it open with his teeth.
Gavin cleared his throat. “How did you know where to find us?”
“I checked the list and saw your name and area of operation. From that point, I waited at the facility until I got the DNA scan results. You should have been processed much earlier. I almost didn’t make it.”
“Wait,” Gavin said. “You were waiting for me at that plant? And what list?”
The capsule swung to the side and accelerated.
Rob looked up at Gavin. “Yes. And there is an insider providing us with information from orbit.”
“While they were shooting and shredding officers, you were just waiting?” Holly said. The large sergeant major cocked his head slightly when he spoke. He wore a smile that spoke of restrained violence.
“This isn’t a pleasant situation. I wasn’t going to risk my neck, not for those officers. I had a brother to wait for.”
Jack finished chewing. “Yes, but why?”
“They call it the liquidation. The TU has more of everything on the ground. This entire invasion is a trap,” Rob looked over at Gavin. “The goal is to deprive the TU of its best ground troops and officers. It’ll take you thirty years to replenish from this loss.”
“If we lose,” Holly said.
Rob shook his head. “You’ll lose. They will either force a peace or make it so you can’t beat us on the ground.”
Gavin squinted and thought. Could it be true? The TU had come in ready for a hell of a brawl. But he knew they hadn’t expected human defenders. How could his brother stand by and watch as they shot Terran Union officers, in cold blood, and then shredded the bodies?
“But you still didn’t answer my question,” Jack said. He waved the calorie bar in front of him. “Why did you save him?”
Rob looked at Jack and then at Gavin. “Because I know you’re both the key to stopping all of this.”
####
Claire climbed out of the submersible and passed through the security cordon.
A pair of human guards worked alongside the cyborg units the Qin used for personal defense. No one was quite sure what alien race the cyborgs originally were. The one thing they all knew was they were deadly on their own and completely useless in large-scale warfare. Slow, ponderous, overweight, and easily outmaneuvered. They’d failed in the first Qin invasions twenty years before.
She drew out her sidearm and held it out to one of the human guards.
“You may keep it.”
Claire holstered the pistol with a confused look on her face. Normally those about to be prosecuted handed over their weapons.
The cyborg stowed his railgun and stomped past. It pulled open the massive doors leading to the Qin sanctuary.
“Enter,” it said in a synthesized voice.
Claire stepped through the massive doors. The air inside of the sanctuary was thick and humid. It had an unfamiliar tang to it that she could never get used to. The Qin were used to a slightly different mixture of air, with much higher humidity than humans were used to. It was another reminder that the overlap in habitat between the two races was particularly thin.
No one came to escort her. It was silent as stone; not even the air moved.
She took a moment, straightened her uniform, and made her way down the hall. She passed a dozen squat doors and data consoles that all bore Qin writing. Finally, at the end, the hatch was open to the Conclave.
Claire stepped into the domed room and marched to the center of the room. She halted on the Coalition Seal and saluted.
Thirteen Qin sat in a half circle with holographic displays open before them.
“Commander,” V’kit, the Qin Master, said. “We welcome you.”
Welcome you? She hoped she didn’t look as surprised as she felt.
“I apologize for the loss of my sector. We adhered to the plan. I sought to adapt—“
P’Vet, the military leader, silenced her. “And you did well. Given the situation, you sought to restore balance.”
“And had no idea of the consequences,” W’Liinz, the lawgiver, said.
Claire looked at W’Liinz. He was the one she feared. The one who would hand down judgment and punishment. What is the penalty for the loss of a sector? she wondered?
P’Vet spoke. “Your heavy assets are being transferred to Commander Simi. Your air assets are being combined with those in Orbital Command.”
Claire’s heart sank. So they were stripping her command. What career did she have now? A button pusher? A career bureaucrat? Everything she’d fought so hard for was slipping away. Could she plead? No. Never. She’d earned whatever she received and knew it.
“However,” P’Vet said slowly, “your ground units will be reinforced and augmented with the D-21 load out.”
Claire swallowed hard. What was happening? They had stripped her armor and air assets but were giving her the most advanced infantry technology. Why? Her units were a shell of what they were.
“The situation is fluid,” P’Vet said.
W’Liinz said, “And we require an officer that can adapt. You humans have an uncanny ability to fight on the ground like we fight in the stars. It is why our coalition is so strong.”
“There’s a new variable, and we require you to deal with it before it spirals into a whirlwind,” V’kit said. “You are promoted to Over Commander.”
Claire was speechless.
P’vet engaged his holographic supply. “Your mission.” On it was a squat building with one entire quarter of it blown away.
Claire recognized it immediately, and her enthusiasm drifted away. It was the prison her brother had been in ever since his attempted coup.
“Your brother escaped forty-eight hours ago. In that time, he has engaged his cells, brought his organization back to life, and set events into motion. Three hours ago, he was recorded at a liquidation facility just outside your zone of control. He executed the garrison and escaped with the officers who are the orbital bombardment key.”
“What do I need to do?” Claire said. She already knew in her heart but needed to hear it from the Qin.
“Over Commander Claire McCloud, you are ordered to kill your brother Rob McCloud.”
“What of the prisoners? Are they to be recovered alive?”
W’liinz leaned through his holographic display. “We can accept alive or dead.”
Claire McCloud saluted the Qin. “Consider it done.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A pale-yellow arc illuminated the dark side of the asteroid. Spatters of hot metal drifted off into vacuum and glowed like cinders from a fire. Machinist’s Master Ernie Yang looked out into the black and smiled. He did love watching robots work.
Just in front of him, a single robotic miner etched away at an iron-nickel asteroid. It chomped away and cut slices and divots. Each fresh piece rolled back and bounced gently down a tube and right into the storage hopper. Farther off, other arcs glittered on the cluster of asteroids. It was odd to find a group so tight; Ernie assumed it was a big one that broke up.
He loved his job. It involved watching robots work and fixing them when they didn’t. No one bugged him. No one shot at him. And at the end of his month-long shift, he’d be a damn hero for bringing back a metric shitload of iron and nickel for the manufacturing guys to make into guns, tanks, and whatever else they needed.
A bell sounded and he plucked a vacuum flask out of a microwave. Coffee time.
The other thing he liked was being was being the boss.
From the back of the tender came the sounds of stirring crew. A clank of metal, a groan, the hissing of zippers.
“Check the status alarms, go back and ping the watcher, and then come get your coffee.” Ernie believed in the carrot method: show them the carrot and then make them earn it.
“Chrissakes, Mister Yang, it was your watch,” Machinist’s Mate Sai Baloo said. She slid past the command hatch and glided down the hallway.
Ernie yawned and sipped on the flask. Then he cursed. It was too hot. A vacuum flask just wasn’t like a proper mug.
“No alarms. Hopper three is 60 percent filled. Ugh, watcher’s got something, Christ, big. Hey, Ernie? You fucking with me?” Sai Baloo called. Her voice was shrill.
Ernie kicked away from his console and left the coffee flask hanging in midair. By the time he reached Sai, the watcher was just coming online.
The mining rig threw up so much dirt and debris that it wasn’t possible to keep a good watch. So a simple passive drone sat a few thousand kilometers away and listened. It simply scanned a range of electromagnetic bands and watched for changes in light and, most especially, for variances in gravity. And that is exactly what happened.
Ernie stared at the screen. It was a flat display, the old kind. It showed a fleet with hundreds of starships. Some were small, some very, very large. The watcher wasn’t sophisticated enough to do much more than determine velocity.
“Are they coming our way, Sai?”
Sai slid into the chair and locked her legs into the console. A dozen taps later, vector lines appeared. Every single one of them was bearing right down on New America.
Ernie let out a sigh. At least they weren’t coming for him. “Sai, full beam, 100 percent power. Set it on repeat and tell the watcher, too. Tell the fleet they’re gonna have company.”
####
The thin beam of data burst through a field of asteroids, scattered off a cloud of wispy methane, and finally passed through the radiation belts near the planet. Only then did the feeble radio beam strike off an antenna and propagate into a warning. After that, the entire fleet knew.
The heavy battle cruisers, Carthage class, were arrayed on the far side of the moon. One by one they powered up and set a course for low orbit. The light cruisers and destroyers still held in high orbit and screened the massive battleships.
It wasn’t fair to call them that, as they had nothing of the sleek lines like the battleships of old. Instead, they were an engineer’s dream. Solid edges, right angles, and enough fusion-powered railgun turrets to ensure anything was mauled. For close-up engagements, they wielded batteries of seeker missiles and high-powered arc cannons. For anyone talented enough to get through that, explosive flak would welcome them close.
But even they were dwarfed by the carriers. It had been discovered long before that a small ship, flying at a high velocity, could detonate a very powerful warhead and turn the tide of battle. And with that, the Terran Union poured everything into that one gamble. They couldn’t outmaneuver the Qin, but they could hammer them once they got close.
The last things that lumbered up were the troop transports: giant cryogenic storage units, sixteen total, each carrying over three million troops packed tighter than sardines. They’d put a decent share onto the planet. Now they frantically worked to deploy the rest. A steady stream of dropships ferried troops down into the secured zones, ten thousand at a time.
Even at that, it was likely men would die in cryo-storage without ever having fired a shot.
####
Sky Marshall Kane McCloud left his office and came onto the main command bridge. He nodded to the marine at his door, thankful that the sentry didn’t announce his arrival. Instead, he stood back and watched.
At one corner the naval cells, so quiet in the previous days, were alive with activity. Admiral Moss stood in one cell and barked at a screen. Other officers did the same as they struggled to wrangle a thousand ships into low planetary orbit.
He knew the plan. It was simple, really. The Qin could accelerate and decelerate much faster than any Terran ship. In deep space they could run, pick the engagement, and then get away. The lumbering Terran ships, regardless of how much armor they wore, were eventually destroyed. But in the shadow of a planet, the Qin had to slow down, and then that great velocity didn’t do them a damn thing.
“Get Admiral Hayabusa, if you please,” Kane said to a waiting orderly. “At his convenience,” he added. No need to toss one more iron into Hayabusa’s fire.
Kane walked down through the cells. He’d been watching the performance in his office. It was where he preferred to work now that things were different. It was tough at first with Gavin gone, or so he assumed. No one had ever found a body.
General Amit’s cell was a hurricane of activity. Officers and NCOs sprinted away with data tablets in hand. Those still in the midst took notes, studied plans, copied orders, and elbowed others for more room.
Standing in the eye of the storm, in the only quiet spot, was Amit herself. She still wore the New Israeli Defense Force uniform. Her eyes locked with Kane and she gave him a nod.
Kane watched with his hands behind his back. The other generals were complaining that she wasn’t using the messaging system, instead relaying orders by hand. By hand? She was eccentric, but this was becoming an emergency. He couldn’t understand how armies functioned long ago using just paper.
General Amit marched through the crowd. Her eyes glared up at Kane while her head was slightly bowed.
“General,” Kane said. He recognized the look. Time for a tantrum.
Amit looked sideways out of one eye. “We have a security leak.”
“Is that why you’re not using the internal order system?”
She jammed a finger at him. “Don’t patronize me, Sky Marshall, I know leaked info when I see it! Someone on the ground is reacting to my front quicker than they should be able to. I know it! I know!”
“What proof do you have?”
Amit threw her head back. Her strong chin jutted out. “Since I went to hand-transferred orders I’ve seen a 60 percent drop in intercepted attacks.”
“Coincidence?”
“Kane? Are you fucking hearing me, Kane?” Amit pointed back to her cell. “Look at that mess. Someone is leaking our information!”
Kane bit his lip. Every part of him wanted to snap back at her. Impossible. It’s impossible. They blanketed the areas around the command ships in a bath of EM signals. But who was listening on the ground for a stray signal? Or it could be a laser transmission or a tight-beam microwave. “Why didn’t you tell me when you had a suspicion?”
“It’s the navy,” Amit whispered. “I know it is.”
An orderly stepped up and halted a few meters away. He looked straight ahead and waited to be addressed.
“Get army internal affairs on it and separate the command channel for ground troops and orbital assets. Set up a coordinating cell to relay critical information between the army and naval forces.”
Amit’s face brightened and a hint of a smile cracked her lips. “Thank you, sir.”
“But if you find anything, come to me first. Understood?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“How goes the assault?”
Amit brightened even more. “They are evacuating units rapidly, but we are going to recapture Claymore within a few weeks. We almost captured an underground access, but they detonated the shaft before we could get down.”
“Is that how they’re moving assets so quickly?”
Amit shrugged. “It won’t matter eventually. Where can they hide?”
“Thank you, General. Keep me posted.”
Amit saluted and returned to her cell. The chaos quickly resumed, and in a few brief moments they were already tearing down a partition.
“Sir, Admiral Hayabusa is waiting on comms,” the orderly said.
Kane walked through the cells and back into his office. He shut the door gently and sat down at his desk. Hayabusa was waiting on his video set. It only took a split second for the admiral to notice him; the navy was almost into orbit.
Admiral Hiro Hayabusa had soft eyes and a completely bald head. Liver spots speckled his skull. A ragged scar, shiny and withered, ran down one cheek.
“Hiro, how does it look?” Kane said.
“We’re still bringing in the scans, Kane, but so far it’s about what we expected.”
“Spell it out,” Kane said.
Hiro looked down. The reflection of a screen flickered on his eyes.
Kane studied the admiral. They’d known each other for a very long time. He appreciated the fact that Hiro was digging into the data himself and not passing it along from a subordinate.
“Eight heavy raiders, forty-seven combat raiders, two hundred eleven heavy cruisers, fifty light cruisers, and a flotilla of ships comparable in size to frigates and destroyers.”
Kane closed his eyes and pictured the ships. The heavy raiders were comparable to battleships, while the combat raiders were in between a heavy cruiser and a battle cruiser. The heavy cruisers, though, those were an anomaly. “Only fifty lights?”
Hiro nodded. “The complement of heavy cruisers and light cruisers is swapped from what we expected.”
“They came for a brawl, it seems.”
Hiro looked straight at Kane. “And a brawl we’ll give them.”
The entire plan hinged on successfully engaging the Qin fleet near the planet. But they’d expected a standard Qin fleet, not this. They were sacrificing mobility, but the increased firepower would give them a distinct advantage against the TU fleet.
“Are you going to pare down those heavy cruisers?”
Hiro’s eyes twinkled, and his thin lips parted into a smile. “Oh yes. We’ve already got a wing of A-44s headed out.”
The A-44 was a drone torpedo bomber that was little more than reaction mass, an AI, and a bomb, though instead of a sophisticated fire system, it relied on incredible speed and even more incredible maneuverability. Unfortunately, it hadn’t had a chance to be tested in battle.
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