by John Ringo
I see the data, Thomas replied. And more. This action on the part of the Darhel breaks their Compact.
They were not in the same room nor even in the same solar systems. But their method of telepathy was virtually instantaneous across any distance or dimension. The “virtually” being of interest only to particle physicists and mentats.
The Tir Dal Ron has already left Earth, Minnie noted. He is surely high on their list. And two Darhel have already died in what are being reported as “accidents.”
I am unsure of our action in this regard, Michelle admitted. The Corps is gone by now. We cannot undo that even if we wished. If my father has been incarcerated, should we act?
Have you an emotional attachment to this? Thomas asked. He was the oldest of them by barely a pair of years. Also the weakest. But he had been a leader among the “Lost Boys” from the beginning and still retained a vestige of that position.
I find myself torn, yes, Michelle admitted. However, it is less that he is my father and Clan Leader than that the Darhel are in breach of numerous contracts and obligations. If they are willing to become this high-handed, how can any of us trust the Contract. Most of us still labor under contract. If the Darhel have thrown off the Rules, what is to keep them from acting with complete arbitrariness?
Can we convince a Clan Leader to submit his appeal? Chan asked. This would both teach the Darhel the danger of breaking contracts and, potentially, save your father’s life. On a purely personal level, it would place the Darhel in a position of being unable to fulfill their part of our contracts, thus freeing us.
Unlikely, Koko replied. Any clan doing so would be Called in a moment. It would be suicide for the entire clan.
The vast majority of the first Fleet had been drawn from European and North American sources. Thus most of the children sent into exile had been from America, Britain and Germany. Koko Takawashi and Kang Chan were the only two mentats not from such countries. Indeed, all but two of the others were from the former United States. It had been debated, given the disparity, if Japanese and Chinese might make better Sohon adepts naturally. Thus far there was insufficient data. Given that the Race of Han had been severely reduced during the War, as had the Japanese, it might not ever be resolved.
I believe there may be one, Michelle thought, But the moment the Darhel heard of the appeal, they would terminate my father. I am unsure why they have not done so already.
I see the hand of Tir Dal Ron in that one, Thomas thought with just a note of emotion in his telepathic communication. He enjoys watching individuals suffer.
Being the mentat with the most experience of that particular Tir, he would know.
There is a concept, Ermintrude thought. The sole English mentat’s mind was clearly racing. The Darhel cannot kill him if he is not available to them.
* * *
“So you want our help again?” Cally said.
“It would be obvious if the Sohon acted directly,” Michelle replied. “And I, of course, must keep a very respectable distance. This is the last contact we shall have until resolution of this crisis. If you see Father and he asks of me tell him that I hold him as dead, as Galactic law decrees. I shall resolve this issue when I see him at last.”
“So what’s the plan?” Cally asked.
“The first part you will not care for,” Michelle said. “You must be patient.”
“I’m not good with patient,” Cally said. “How patient?”
“It will be nearly a year before we can act.”
“That’s okay,” Cally said. “I can spend the time killing Darhel.”
“And you must not do that.”
“Oh, we are so going to have to talk ‘when this issue is resolved.’ ”
* * *
Mike opened his eyes and blinked, gummily. His mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton. Damned Hiberzine.
Hiberzine was only one of a number of amazing drugs the Galactics had brought with them. One dose would put a person down for a half a year with no ill effects. They could even be in conditions of minimal oxygen for a few months. He’d once been damned near ripped in half and left under the sea for weeks. Between his suits undergel and Hiberzine he’d survived.
One dose was fine. But after a half a year even with the best nannites working their little biomechanical asses off you got sort of dehydrated. Push it any further and you got really dehydrated. He’d been down longer than half a year.
“Fuckers could have given me a damned IV,” he muttered.
He was manacled to the wall of a cell. Whoever had given him the antidote had apparently beat feet afterwards. All he had were four plasteel walls, a cot, a table and a sink/toilet combination. Oh, and a bottle of water. How thoughtful.
He drank the bottle of water in one go then dragged his chain to the sink and filled it again. Three drains and it was time to take a very long piss.
Grey walls, orange jump-suit. Not much to work with. He contemplated the steel chain and the plasteel wall. Plasteel was about ten times the strength of standard carbon steel. Oh, well, either the chain would get worn out or he’d cut his way into the next room. Which was probably another cell. He set to rubbing one link of the chain on the wall, over and over. Molecule by molecule the steel started to fleck away. At this rate he’d be into the next cell in about a century but nobody was quite sure how long a life rejuv gave you so what the hell.
He wasn’t sure how long it was till the door opened. Food had appeared out of an unexpected slot in the far wall at one point. He’d taken a dump and a couple of pisses, filled and drained his water bottle several times, taken a nap, worn one face of the steel link shiny and made an almost unnoticeable groove in the wall. Say a day or two. Hell, he’d once laid in his suit in total EMCON and underground for longer than that. If you couldn’t handle sensory deprivation and boredom, ACS was no place for you.
They’d sent six guards with stunners. For all he knew there were more in the corridor beyond. One of them was unarmed, he just held the shackles.
None of them were, individually, all that big. Fleet mostly drew from Indonesia and Southeast Asia; their personnel didn’t run to tall.
Mike wasn’t tall, either, but he was broad as a house. He’d been a work-out freak since before he’d ever heard of the Posleen and fifty years as an officer hadn’t changed anything. He might not be the biggest runner in the world, but he could lift an ACS suit with one hand, which was right at the strain gauge of the human muscles and bones involved. He figured that even with the stunners he could probably take down four or so, if he hadn’t been chained to the wall.
So he just held out his arms to be shackled.
* * *
He was lead down empty corridors to a room very much like the one he’d been sitting in. There were four differences. No toilet or sink, which wasn’t going to be good if this went on too long. There was a video monitor on the wall. The table was bigger and had two seats. And there was a Fleet Commander sitting in one of the chairs.
Mike was frog-marched to the far chair, seated in it and shackled down, hard. He could barely move his arms or legs.
“Michael Leonidas O’Neal,” the Commander said without preamble. “Lieutenant General, Fleet Strike. Serial Number 216-29-1145. Entered Fleet Strike from the state of Georgia in the nation of the United States, Earth. Is all of that correct?”
Mike just looked at him. The Commander had more of a Chinese look than Indonesian. But it was unlikely he was directly descended from the Mainland given what had happened there. His uniform had his rank tabs but no nametag.
“Mr. O’Neal I am your defense counsel in this matter,” the Commander said. “I am to present your defense in this court martial. It would be helpful if you at least answered my questions.”
“I can request other counsel,” Mike said. “I officially do so.”
“Unless the court is to meet in secret session,” the Commander replied. “Which this one will, due to the security aspects of the investigation
.”
“Big surprise there,” O’Neal said. “Given that part of my testimony would be that Fleet just destroyed an entire corps of ACS.”
“If you’re referring to the 11th Corps, you are mistaken,” the Commander replied. “It was virtually wiped out in the battles on R-1496 Delta. Due to your negligence and rejection of the input from your Darhel superiors.”
“Oh, so that’s what I’m being tried with?” Mike asked, laughing. “Do you have any survivors to testify? Because as far as I could tell the orbital strikes were pretty thorough. I’d love to know that even one of my boys survived your fucking massacre.”
“You are being tried on the charges of crimes against humanity,” the Commander replied. “Relating to new information about your actions in the first battles on Diess.”
“That was fifty fucking years ago,” Mike said, blinking. “I won my first Medal of Honor on Diess!”
“There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity,” the ‘counsellor’ said, pulling out his AID and setting it on the table. “Specifically, you are charged with the deaths of some three hundred thousand Indowy in the destruction of the Qualtren Megascraper. The destruction had been considered accidental, one of those unfortunate events that occur in war. But recently information has surfaced indicating that you ordered charges placed to destroy the building. I’m here to present your side of the action. So why don’t you tell me about it from your perspective. Where were you on the evening of May 18th, 2002 AD?”
“You’re asking if I can remember specific actions from over fifty years ago?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” the Commander replied.
“As a matter of fact,” Mike said, dropping into memory, “I can.”
* * *
Lt. O’Neal stripped the box magazine from his M-200 grav rifle and stared unseeing at the thousands of teardrop shaped pellets within. Then he reinserted the magazine and did the same with his grav pistol.
“Would you please quit doing that?” asked Lt. Eamons. Both of them waited by windows on the northwest corner of Qualtren. The angle was even greater than the FSO indicated and they had a clear view of the 1.145 miles to the next intersection. There the Naltrev megascraper cut back and blocked the view. Naltrev and its sister megascraper Naltren held the battalion scout platoon and the upper part of O’Neal’s vision systems were slaved to the view from the scout platoon leader’s.
“Where are your people, Tom?” Mike asked.
“Downstairs.”
“Are they tasked?” O’Neal continued to watch the view from the scout leader. It was unsettling because of the flicker of a Personal Area Force-screen (PAF) set up in the anticipated direction of attack and because Lt. Smith had a nasty tendency to occasionally toss his head like a horse throwing a fly. The movement would swing the viewpoint right and up. I doubt he even notices that he’s doing it, thought Mike, stripping out the magazine and reinserting it, but I wish he’d quit.
“Would you please quit doing that, Mike! And why do you want to know? No, they’re sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.”
“Quit what?” Mike asked, his attention focused like a medical laser on the view from his helmet. “Start having them emplace cratering charges across Anosimo and Sisalav at the Sal line and then start placing C-9 charges at the locations I’ll slave to their AIDs.”
“Whoa, Mike. You’re a nice guy and outrank me by a whole grade, but the hell if I’ll piss my career away for you. The colonel will have my bar if I do that.” The lieutenant tried to shake his head and stopped when he had to force it against the biotic gel filling the helmet.
“Lt. Colonel Youngman is currently busy and he won’t notice unless we detonate them. When we detonate them, you will be a hero for taking the initiative because it will be the only thing that saves the right flank of the Corp from being rolled up.”
“Is it that bad?” asked the engineer, wondering how much his friend’s moroseness was justified. Although he would have preferred to lay out a full reception for the Posleen, the firepower of the battalion was massive.
“Tom, we’re about to be corncobbed and there ain’t a fuckin’ thing I can do about it. After this day the name Youngman will be right up there with Custer, except George Armstrong had a brilliant career before he pissed it away. Now get rigging the charges. Make the cratering charges big ones. I want them to tear the faces right off the megascrapers; they’ve got forty minutes max.”
* * *
“So you did, in fact, order Lt. Eamons to emplace the charges that eventually destroyed the Qualtren Megascraper,” the Commander said. “I think we’ll try to argue situational stress disorder.”
“The order was later authorized by Lt. Colonel Youngman,” Mike said.
“Can you prove that?” the Commander asked.
“The AID net should have the entire conversation stored.”
“AIDs cannot be interrogated in court martials,” the Commander pointed out.
“Then I’d guess you’ve have to find a survivor,” Mike replied. “Besides me.” He paused and thought about the events of that night. “Good luck on that one.”
* * *
They were in a sub basement headed he knew not where running down one wall of a mammoth warehouse. The shelves were filled with green drums, like rubber oil barrels. As the lieutenant passed one of the aisles, both their AIDs screamed a belated warning. The group of fifty or so Posleen, accompanied by a God King, opened fire on Lt. O’Neal with everything they had.
There were six high density inertial compensators along the spine of the suit. They had been placed there to prevent severe inertial damage to the most vital portions of the user. Lt. O’Neal launched himself into the air and away from the threat, an instinct of hundreds of hours of simulations, while his AID dialed the inertial compensators as low as they would go. This had several effects, good and bad but the net effect was to make it less likely that the flechettes would penetrate his armor as they had the private’s; at this range their penetration ability was vastly improved.
The lack of inertia permitted the suit to move aside or be pushed away as if no more substantial than a hummingbird. Combined with the strength of the armor it successfully shed the first sleet of rounds, but it made him as unstable as a ping pong ball in a hurricane. He was picked up by the impacts, flipped repeatedly end for end, struck the warehouse wall and blown sideways.
Sgt. Reese screamed and fired on the target vector flashing in his display. The Posleen were masked by the barrels, but he figured with the power of the grav rifle he could saw through them quickly and take the Posleen under direct fire.
As it happened, actually hitting the Posleen became unnecessary. The barrels, indeed the entire warehouse, were filled with an oil processed from algae. It was used by the Indowy in cooking. Ubiquitous as corn oil, the 5 million Indowy of Qualtren used so much they needed a half kilometer square warehouse. Like corn oil, it had a fairly high flash point but, given certain conditions it could burn, even explode.
The depleted uranium pellets of the grav guns traveled at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light. The designers had carefully balanced maximum kinetic effect against the problem of relativistic ionization and its accompanying radiation. The result was a tiny teardrop that went so fast it defied description. It made any bullet ever made seem to stand still. Far faster than any meteor, rounds that did not impact left the planet’s orbit to become a spatial navigation hazard. It punched a hole through the atmosphere so fierce that it stripped the electrons from the atoms of gas and turned them into ions. The energy bled in its travel was so high it created a shock front of electro-magnetic pulse. Then, after it passed, the atoms and electrons recombined in a spectacular display of chemistry and physics. Photons of light were discharged, heat was released and free radicals, ozone and Bucky balls were produced. The major by-product was the tunnel of energetic ions indistinguishable from lightning. Just as hot, and just as energetic. A natural spark plug.
&
nbsp; In two seconds 1000 of these supremely destructive teardrops punched through 50 drums of fish oil. One pellet was enough to finely divide a drum of oil over two to three thousand cubic meters of air. The following rounds found only vapor and these excess pellets, following the immutable laws of physics, set out to find other drums to divide. The oil from thousands of drums suddenly flash blasted into gas then ignited from compression, rather like a diesel piston. The net effect was a fuel-air bomb, the next best thing to a nuclear weapon in Terran technology, and the basement warehouse became a gigantic diesel cylinder. For Sgt. Reese, in an instant the world flashed to fire.
The warehouse was two levels below ground. It had six levels below it and was 350 meters from Boulevard Sisalav, 150 meters from Avenue Qual. The fuel air explosion blasted a 200 meter diameter crater down to bedrock, gutted the building for a kilometer upward and set off all the charges planted for Plan Jericho. The shock-wave smashed structural members all the way to Sisalav and Qual and spit many of the remaining troopers on the ground floor out of the building like watermelon seeds. It killed every unarmored being in the mile cube structure: 326,000 Indowy and 8000 particularly quick and greedy Posleen. The Jericho charges worked as planned, shattering 120 critical mono-crystalline support members. With surprising grace, the mile high edifice leaned to the northwest and slowly, as if reverently kneeling, fell into Daltrev, blocking Sisalav and Qual and smashing the southeast quadrant of Daltrev. It crushed 4000+ more Posleen and completely blocked an enemy advance from the massif to Qualtrev.
* * *
“And subsequent to the explosion?” the Commander asked, emotionlessly.
“I tried to get in touch with the chain of command,” Mike said. “Colonel Youngman was dead. Captain Vero was unconscious. Captain Wright was trapped in something too solid to get through and Hiberzined himself to await recovery. I consolidated local survivors and contacted Major Pauley.”