by Ian Douglas
And behind it . . .
“Watch it! Damn it, watch it!”
Something slammed into Koenig’s chest, staggering him. It took him a dazed moment to recognize that he’d not been hit, but that a white-hot plasma bolt had slammed into Widner’s combat armor. Widner’s heart and respiration readouts went ragged, then dropped toward flatline. Koenig felt trapped, staring at the stone slabs of the corridor’s ceiling, unable to move, unable to do anything but lie there.
Widner died, and his armor began shutting him down for medevac and resuss. . . .
VFA-96, Black Demons
LEO
0014 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Megan Connor rolled her fresh-grown Starblade until Earth’s vast sweep hung suspended in sun-kissed splendor above her head. The sunrise terminator stretched across the sky ahead of her now, out over central Europe, a razor-thin crescent of light across the black. It was just past midnight on the east coast of the USNA, a few minutes past six in the morning over France and most of the European Union. The Black Demons were in low Earth orbit, drifting southeast two hundred kilometers above the west coast of Europe. Below, city lights illumined the broken clouds over England. Sunrise at Verdun had occurred less than thirty minutes ago . . . but at this altitude she could see considerably farther into the new day than the Marines on the ground.
She adjusted her in-head view, connecting more closely with her fighter’s long-range senses.
Gods this new fighter is a dream!
Theoretically, with nanufacturing processes that could grow a new fighter from raw materials provided by asteroids in a matter of hours, there should have been no problem with constantly updating the USNA fighter fleet, discarding older designs like the SG-92 Starhawks and SG-101 Velociraptors and replacing them with the latest technology—in this case the SG-420 Starblade. The problem was not in the materials nanufacturing, but in retraining human pilots whose wetware—the organic tissue beneath the cerebral electronic implants and software—had already been shaped to control older designs.
The SG-420s, though, incorporated uprated AI components that could embrace Starhawk or Velociraptor training and experience as iterations within the larger pilot program. Still, what the star carrier America lacked was people to sit inside these new fighters: the campaigns of the past eight months—Arianrhod and Osiris and Vulcan—had killed too many good pilots. Replacements were coming on board from the training center at Oceana, but too few and too slowly, to bring the carrier up to full strength.
And yet, as Connor felt the sensuous flow of data streaming in through her fighter’s sensors and AI, she suppressed an exultant urge to shout for pure joy. Beauty exploded around her as the sun rose beyond the horizon ahead; blue water, the green patchwork of agricultural land, and the sweep of dazzlingly white cloud drifted beneath her. With the new system, it was easy to forget that you were flesh-and-blood wired into a cockpit barely large enough to receive you. Quite literally, she was the fighter; she stretched out an arm, and performed a graceful roll, the crescent of Earth rotating in front of her.
“Careful there, Demon Five,” the voice of Commander Mackey said inside her mind. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Hard not to, Skipper,” she told the squadron’s CO. “This is incredible!”
“Maybe so, but stay focused on the mission. We’re coming up on Verdun and we don’t want to miss anything, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Not that they were likely to miss anything. VFA-96, the Black Demons, was actually at full squadron strength—twelve fighters—though only Connor, Mackey, and two others were in this flight. Aerospace control meant stretching your assets out across an entire orbit so that at any given moment there were at least some fighters positioned to respond to threats from below. The other Demons were spread out four thousand kilometers ahead and behind, and two more of America’s squadrons were covering the rest of the orbit. Adjustments were made from orbit to orbit so that four strike fighters were always passing over Verdun every ten minutes or so.
“So how’s the fight going down there anyway, Skipper?” That was Lieutenant Enrique Martinez, one of the squadron’s newbies fresh up from Oceana.
“According to plan,” Mackey replied. “The first LCs hit the fortress walls a few minutes ago. The big Choctaws are touching down now.”
“But when will we know?”
“When someone decides to tell us, Lieutenant. And until then, stay sharp and stay connected. The rebels aren’t going to take this lying down.”
The rebels. It sounded strange, the way Mackey used the term. Confusing, even. Until recently, the USNA had been the rebels, fighting for independence from the Earth Confederation. But since the Confederation government had fallen to the Starlighters, rebels now meant the holdouts in the original government—Korosi’s people.
“I’m not getting anyone down there but ’Pactors,” Connor said, reading her ship’s long-range scan. Six fighters from VFA-31, the Impactors, had deployed into the atmosphere over an hour ago, taking out the big planetary defense turrets mounted on the fort’s upper surfaces with high-velocity KK projectiles accelerated in from space. The strike had been the second phase of Operation Fallen Star, necessary to allow the transports to get in without being vaporized.
The first phase had been initiated by the Virtual Combat Center in Colorado Springs, an all-out electronic assault by former pilots linked in through the Confederation’s computer nets, opening backdoor channels and covert access feeds either discovered or, in many cases, created by the super-AI Konstantin from its base on the far side of Earth’s moon.
“Hang on a sec,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Chris Dobbs said. Another newbie, he’d been in the squadron less than seventy-two hours. “I’ve got multiple launches . . . dead ahead. Range, twenty-six hundred kilometers!”
Damn, the kid was right. The range put the launch site somewhere in central or southern Turkey, close to the Mediterranean . . . and Turkey was still part of the Confederation. Those fighters might well be rebels—pro-Korosi forces. They’d certainly timed their launch nicely . . . moments after the lead element of the Black Demons had passed overhead in their orbit.
Connor let the data flood through her. How many spacecraft . . . and what kind? Were they after the lead element, coming up on them from behind? Or were they going counter-orbit and closing with her?
“They’re firing!” Mackey warned.
Eight fighters—Confederation Todtadlers—and they were closing with Connor and her fellows at a very high acceleration. They’d just loosed a sand cloud, whose pellets were now hurtling toward the four fighters like the blast from an old-fashioned shotgun.
And in seconds, the battle was joined.
Emergency Presidential Command Post
Toronto
United States of North America
0016 hours, EST
Koenig thoughtclicked an in-head icon and emerged inside his own body, gasping for air, stretched out on a recliner in his own office in Toronto. Marcus Whitney, his chief of staff and senior aide, was leaning over him with a worried look on his face. “Mr. President?”
“I’m okay, Marcus.”
“Your vitals took a real jump just now.”
“Nothing like the vitals on Lieutenant Widner.”
As an admiral in command of a carrier battlegroup twenty years before, Koenig had had a lot of trouble giving the orders that sent young men and women to their deaths.
It wasn’t any easier now.
“I’m going back in,” Koenig said. “Link me in with . . . let’s see . . .” He ran through a mental list of the Marines in Alfa Platoon, the ones still on their feet. “Staff Sergeant Gerald Swayze.” He was Widner’s senior NCO, and would be commanding the platoon now.
“Sir,” Whitney said, “it’s not like you can affect the outcome of the fight. . . .” He sounde
d worried. “Damn it, you’re flirting with VRSD.”
The acronym was pronounced “ver-sid,” and stood for virtual reality stress disorder. What it really stood for was a whole spectrum of neurological injuries, addictions, and pathologies, including—most important—perceptual neural shock, or PNS. Though not common, some had suffered heart attacks, strokes, or slipped into comas when they “died,” even though their physical bodies were perfectly safe and healthy.
Koenig knew there was a risk, but he’d been in combat before, and experience tended to reduce the psychological impact of even the most traumatic experiences. Too, there were electronic safeguards designed to cut him from the circuit if monitors showed that his body back in the Emergency Presidential Command Post was reacting too strongly.
“I don’t think so,” Koenig told Whitney. He raised his voice slightly. “Health monitor? What say you?”
“Your heart rate peaked at one twenty-six,” the voice of the medical AI in the presidential complex told them. “Respiration peaked at thirty-five. Both are well within tolerable limits.”
“See, Marcus? I’m fine.”
“I still don’t like it, Mr. President. You could just let your intelligence people brief you after the fact, like a normal president.”
“Well, damn. Where’s the fun in that? I don’t think that—”
He stopped in mid-sentence. An alert was coming through from the suite of artificial intelligences overseeing the entire battle. It was data relayed from the star carrier America or, more specifically, from one of her squadrons. Eight Confed fighters had just boosted at high velocity from central Turkey and launched an attack on four of America’s fighters in low Earth orbit. The AI running the intelligence side of the operation was tagging the attackers as Korosi rebels.
Interesting. There was no way eight Todtadler fighters could seriously challenge three USNA strike fighter squadrons for space superiority, especially if they had to claw their way up out of Earth’s gravity well. Even if they got through the orbiting fighters, there were three USNA destroyers and four frigates farther out, providing in-depth support. Earth was bottled up tight right now against any attempt to break away.
What the hell were they trying to accomplish?
“Take them out,” Koenig ordered. “And keep me informed.”
A new icon had appeared within Koenig’s in-head a moment before, labeled with Staff Sergeant Swayze’s name. He thoughtclicked it . . . and opened his eyes, once again, in the shrieking, noisy hell of combat.
Chapter Two
29 June, 2425
Emergency Presidential Command Post
Toronto
United States of North America
0018 hours, EST
Koenig was back in that fire-swept passageway, the scene overlaid by flickering numbers giving ranges, angles, and power levels, and by a bright red targeting reticule slaved to Swayze’s laser rifle, centered on whatever the rifle happened to be pointed at. At the far end of the passageway, laser and plasma gunfire snapped and hissed from the makeshift barricades.
“Grossmann! Nobunaga!” Swayze was yelling. “Get that pig in action! Flame those bastards!”
Koenig recognized the term. The Marines had a PG-80 as a platoon heavy weapon—a semiportable plasma gun—nicknamed the “pig” and designed to burn through most armor.
Swayze was using his laser rifle, trying to force enemy troops back from the ambush barricade at the far end of the passageway. Two armored shapes moved up beside him, manhandling the bulky weapon’s tripod into place. One of the Marines was hit, his faceplate vaporized by a plasma bolt, so Swayze shoved Grossmann’s body aside and took up a position next to the gunner, snapping up the heavy fire shield and dragging back the charge lever. He slapped Nobunaga’s shoulder, signaling readiness to fire.
“Hit ’em!”
Blue-white fire exploded through the dark passageway, charring stone walls already black with age. The barricade at the end of the hall exploded, hurling chunks of molten debris as armored figures scattered . . . or collapsed and lay still.
The pig fired again, blasting a hole in the steel door beyond, and then Swayze was up and running down the stone corridor, firing from the hip, waving his men on. “Let’s go, Marines! Ooh-rah!”
“Ooh-rah!” The ancient Marine war cry rang out in answer from a dozen throats, raw sound and fury, meaningless except to announce that the USNA Marines were charging.
And the enemy troops began throwing down their weapons and raising their arms in surrender.
Koenig watched as two more Marines—Jamison and Arkwright—pushed past Swayze as he stopped to hand the prisoners over to another Marine. He then followed the pair, over the half-molten ruin of the barricade and through the gaping hole in the steel door. Swayze shouldered his way into the stone chamber beyond, arriving just behind the other two Marines, who’d come to a dead stop. A soldier in shifting black-and-gray nanoflage armor stood with his back to the far wall, clutching a tiny woman in civilian utilities in front of him like a shield.
Through Swayze’s helmet camera, Koenig recognized the woman. Ilse Roettgen, former Senate president for the Earth Confederation, struggled in the armored man’s one-arm grip, her arms zip-stripped behind her back. In his free hand, the man clutched a deadly little 5mm needler, which he kept pressed against the side of her throat.
“Stop!” the man yelled, his amplified voice booming off the stone walls. “If you value her life, stop now!”
Koenig recognized that voice instantly. It was General Korosi . . . the Butcher of Columbus.
Swayze ran a voice print ID through his suit’s AI, a process that took only a second or so, and came to the same conclusion. “Put the weapon down, General,” he said, his voice level, reasonable, and as cold as ice. “If you kill her, I promise you that you will die, right here, right now.”
“So . . . I should surrender, so you can put me on trial for war crimes?” Korosi laughed, an ugly sound. His English carried a thick Hungarian accent. “ ‘Crimes against humanity,’ I think is the phrase you Americans use? And then you execute me anyway? I don’t think so. . . .”
“Let her go, General. Hurt her, and you won’t believe how much worse you’ll make it for yourself.”
“There is nothing you can threaten me with worse than what will happen if I give myself up. You understand me?”
“I can promise you won’t be executed.”
“So that I can enjoy the effects of a neural net wipe? Ha! That’s worse than a clean death in battle! No! Here is how we play this, American. Ilse here, lovely lady that she is, will come with me, as a guarantee of your good behavior. You and your men will back off. You will clear these corridors! You will permit us to leave. No interference! You will arrange to have a flyer meet us at the surface, with an AI pilot slaved to my direct neural control, and with a range of at least ten thousand kilometers. The flyer will take me to a destination of my choosing . . . and I may release Roettgen there, if I am satisfied that you have not followed us. Now, put your weapons down and move back!”
A red targeting reticule was centered on Korosi’s faceplate, and Koenig wondered if the Marine was going to try for a head shot, firing from his hip. Had Korosi not been wearing combat armor, Koenig knew, Swayze might have tried it . . . but splash off the armor’s surface could burn the unarmored Roettgen quite badly.
Of course, Swayze might choose to accept the collateral damage, injuring the hostage in order to kill the hostage taker. He might even accept the hostage’s death. According to Fallen Star’s operational orders, finding and rescuing Ilse Roettgen was secondary to taking down Janos Korosi.
So the easy solution would be to burn Korosi down now, even if it meant the former Confederation president’s death. It would not have been Koenig’s personal choice, but then Koenig was not the one linked to Swayze’s laser rifle.
�
�Okay, okay,” Swayze said after a long and agonizing moment. “You win.” The targeting reticule winked off, and slowly the Marine lowered his rifle, placing it on the floor at his feet. “Don’t hurt her!”
“The rest of you! Put down your weapons!”
“Do as he says, Marines,” Swayze told the others. He shifted to the general tactical frequency. “Listen up, Marines! Clear the passageways. Korosi is coming up . . . with a hostage.”
“Transport, Staff Sergeant,” Korosi said. “Arrange for us a flight out of here.”
“Okay, okay,” Swayze said. “Meteor! This is Marine One-Five! I want a Chipper on the ground on top of this fort ASAP!”
Meteor was the code name for the battalion HQ running this op, while Chipper was military slang for a C-28 Chippewa robot transport. Definitely long-range enough for the ten-thousand-kilometer range Korosi specified. Koenig contemplated that requirement. Ten thousand klicks was enough to reach any of the three space elevators—in Ecuador, Kenya, or Singapore. But what then? Korosi had to know that he would be tracked. No doubt he had confederates waiting for him someplace.
Koenig turned the problem over in his mind. They wouldn’t be waiting for him off-world; the space elevators were too easily blocked, too easily powered down, isolating him. The likeliest scenario would be to touch down very briefly someplace on Earth along a direct line of flight to one of the elevators . . . and effectively disappear as the robotic transport continued its flight.
Damn it, it was imperative that Korosi not be allowed to escape. If he did, the war might grind on for years more, a guerilla action fought in jungles and villages and mountains from South America to Africa to Southeast Asia.
Koenig wasn’t linked in directly to Swayze’s thoughts, his internal monologue. That degree of electronic telepathy required more sophisticated equipment than was available here . . . and wasn’t desirable in any case. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the Marine had in mind. Clearly, the man was working toward an idea. . . .