by Jean Johnson
Flipping it open, she heard Harper’s voice the moment the link was established. “Captain, we have the vehicle and are on our way, sir. ETA twenty minutes.”
“Acknowledged, Commander. Ia out.”
“What’s a Ship’s Captain doing planet-side?” the colonist asked her next.
“My Company and I specialize in a lot more than just ship-to-ship combat, meioa. We’re here to help break the blockade. With luck, it’ll take a couple weeks. If not, two months tops.” She peered past him at the vehicles. “The energy dip was related to my arrival; I apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused, Meioa Quan. My transport has left the area now, so it won’t happen again.”
He narrowed his eyes, hands going to his hips. “How did you know my name?”
“I’m Special Forces?” she retorted blandly, biting her lower lip subtly to keep from laughing. Civilians would believe just about anything. Saying she was some sort of intelligence guru was easier than explaining she was a precognitive. At least, at this moment in time.
“. . . Right. So, you’re here to beat back the enemy? With you and what army?” he challenged her. “And don’t tell me the Terran Army. They dropped a whole Division on us and haven’t been able to do shova v’shakk against the frogtopods,” he added, spitting on the ground.
“Just myself, and the 160 members of my Special Forces Company. But, then, that’s all I’ll need.” Lifting her sword, she showed him the hemoglobin smeared on the blade. “The V’Dan know me as the Prophet of a Thousand Years. The Terrans call me Bloody Mary. The Salik tried to call me lunch, and I slaughtered them for it single-handedly, in the heart of their own stronghold on Sallha. A little dustup on Dabin with a full Company of the Space Force’s finest versus the Salik isn’t going to be that much harder.
“Now, the faster I meet up with my crew, the faster I’ll get around to getting rid of your little invasion problem. Are you going to give me a lift westward, or not?” she asked.
He snorted, hands going to his hips. “Hardly. Anyone who thinks a mere 160 idiots will be enough to turn the tide of this war is a gods-be-damned fool.”
That was the majority percentile for this encounter, and what Ia expected him to say. Shrugging, she turned back to the west. “Then I guess I’ll have to go for a little walk and prove you wrong in the days to come. Good night, meioas. Drive safely.”
Turning away, she started walking, following the road outlined by the lights of the three vehicles. Someone else called out behind her, “Hey, we just gonna leave ’er here?”
“She’s insane,” their spokesman stated, his words reaching her through the patter of droplets. “Start up the trucks. Let the night and the not-cats have ’er.”
Lights lit up behind her, illuminating the road ahead. Ia turned and squinted, walking backwards in time to see him waiting for the door of the ground truck to slide down out of his way. She could have said more, but Ia decided not to bother. She watched the door rise back up into place, cutting off whatever else he or his companions might have said. Raising her sword in salute as they left, Ia slashed it down, flicking off the not-cat’s blood even as she gave a little bow. The trio of vehicles rolled out and around, pointing back the way they had come. Leaving her in the rain.
Now that those beams weren’t aimed in her direction, her eyes were beginning to readapt to the darkness beyond the trucks’ headlights. Re-forming her sword into a thick bracelet on her right wrist, Ia faced west and picked up into a steady jog, the kind that would eat away at the kilometers between her and Harper’s oncoming car. The kind that would keep her warm, too, as the rain started to fall in earnest now.
At least the local gravity wouldn’t be a problem while she ran; she was used to jogging on a treadmill in her native pull of 3.21Gs, not this modest 1.85.
• • •
The torrent of drops falling from the sky splattered down onto the spark-snapping dome of the camp shield. Ia felt a little sorry for the sentries standing duty beyond the innermost perimeter since just opening the shield long enough to hard-scan their wrist idents had let in more than enough cold, damp air and splatting rain for her tastes. Sentries had ponchos, and the generator kept the rain out of the camp, but it did nothing for the constant, damp chill in the air.
What she wanted was to be warm and dry, preferably clad in clean clothes after a hot shower. What she got was a chilly dash when Harper shooed her out of the car and into the nexus of tents and portable, expandable facility pods that formed the command center for the two joint Companies. The outer two tents they passed through were storage and prep facilities, with gear suited for the mud and the forest around them, but the command center was more electronic than pragmatic at its heart.
That heart was filled with tables, machines, boxes, and bodies. On one side—technically occupying almost three-quarters of the tent—sat the unfamiliar clerks and scanner techs of Captain Luca Roghetti’s Roughriders of the TUPSF Army, clad in russet camouflage colors that were well suited for the local terrain. On the other side, tucked into their allotted little corner, sat a handful of familiar faces from Ia’s bridge-crew rotations.
“Captain on deck!” Harper called out as soon as he wiped the rainwater from his eyes. He grinned at the puzzled looks from Roghetti’s soldiers and chuckled. “Not your captain, meioas. Our captain.”
It wasn’t just the humorous way her first officer announced her presence that warmed Ia down to her bones, it was the widened eyes and broad smiles of relief from the three members of Ia’s Damned as they looked up from their workstations. They didn’t move to greet her since they were technically on duty, but they did flash her smiles and grins. She found herself grinning back as well, an unusual thing for her.
“Sharpe, York, Douglas,” she greeted the trio. “I’m glad to see you made it here alright.”
“I’m glad to see you made it, sir,” Private York offered, relief in his light brown eyes. “We were expecting you hours ago.”
“I had a slight transportation problem,” she dismissed. “Nothing a couple friends couldn’t take care of.”
“The ship, sir?” Private Douglas asked, her gaze flicking to the other side of the room and back.
Equally mindful of the others, Ia touched the fingers of both hands together, then flicked them up and outward, mimicking a silent explosion. Out loud, she said, “Everything went according to plan and on schedule . . . except for my little post-party transportation snafu. But I’m here now, and here in time to do some good. As you were, gentlemeioas. Eyes to your boards, thoughts on your tasks.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Douglas nodded, returning her gaze to her screens. She wasn’t monitoring ship functions since they had no more ship. From the looks of things, she was instead monitoring the battlefront perimeter, located about twenty kilometers to the north and west.
Ia looked back over at the comm tech. “Private York, how soon can you get me Admiral Genibes?”
“Ahh . . . it might take a while. And this comm system is not secure, sir. Not like it was on the ship,” he warned her. “We’re on a portable lightwave relay here at the camp. It links to the main hyperrelay hub in Gonzalah, which is the nearest big city. From there . . . it’s three, four hub jumps before it gets anywhere near Earth. If the Salik take out another of those hubs between here and Earth, or if they find and smash through the local one planet-side, it’ll be five or six links, assuming they can retune the transmitters well enough to get a signal picked up by one of the other relay centers. I’m sorry about that, sir,” he apologized, “but there is no way we can get a direct secured line from here.”
“Understood. We’ll have that fixed soon enough. Raise the Admiral anyway,” she ordered. “Use the gamma-level code from the Company bible so Genibes knows it’s not secure.”
“Aye, sir.”
A new figure stepped through the drapes covering one of the doorways into the comm
and hub. Apparently, Roghetti’s crew had summoned their CO, given the twin silver bars gleaming on his collar points and the front of his soft cap. He didn’t waste any time in spotting and approaching her. “You must be Ship’s Captain Ia.”
“That I am, Captain Roghetti,” Ia greeted him, turning away from her crew. He saluted her first, since she technically outranked him even if they weren’t in the same Service Branch. Returning it, Ia dropped her arm, then flicked her fingers at her rumpled clothes. “I just arrived the hard way, so you’ll have to forgive me for my lack of formal Dress Grays.”
“This is a combat command. We don’t ‘do’ formality,” he dismissed, and gestured at her solid gray dress shirt and black-striped gray pants, a plain contrast to his mottled camouflage, dyed in reddish, brownish, and yellowish hues that matched the local foliage. “That outfit’s more formal than things will ever get around here, unless and until we can get the damned frogtopi off-planet.
“Speaking of which,” Roghetti added, glancing at his comm techs briefly, “we heard down the line about an hour ago that the frogs shot up two more ships poking their noses into this system in the last twenty hours Standard, but that was about a thousand klicks from here. Blew them to bits, too, according to the passive lightwave scans. Your lieutenant commander, here, swore you’d make it through,” he added, lifting his chin at the Asiatic man at her side. “He even tried to bet on it. I’ll admit I had my doubts. I’m pleased to see I was wrong.”
Harper smirked. “If you’d taken me up on that bet, you’d owe me a hundred creds since she clearly made it.”
“Good thing I’m not into gambling, then, or I’d be out of Leave money. Or rather, bail money. Brigadier General Mattox doesn’t have a sense of humor when it comes to Fatality Forty-Nine and ‘Fraternizing’ by laying bets,” he quipped darkly. Then muttered, “Or so-called ‘rash’ battle plans, or using vehicles for ‘unauthorized activities’ or other shakk like that.”
“I’m already aware of the general’s . . . viewpoints,” Ia replied dryly. Diplomatically.
“I take it Harper’s been giving you an earful since his arrival?” Roghetti asked, lifting his brows. “I wasn’t aware of any extra calls going out.”
“No, Captain Roghetti, I wasn’t in contact with her,” Harper said, hands clasped behind his back. “As I explained, Ship’s Captain Ia is a high-ranked precognitive, among other things. I’m confident she has already foreseen the many difficulties of our current situation.”
“Such as the fact that the Salik are thoroughly enjoying the heavy rain out there, if not the cold. They’ll be attacking within the hour,” Ia told him. “It’ll be mostly potshots in our direction, but you should pass word down to D and C Companies in your Legion to evacuate their biggest tents and get all their vehicles moved to rearward cover. The more their people scatter, the fewer casualties they’ll take. Suggest moving things around.”
Roghetti narrowed his eyes. He studied her a long moment, then turned his head slightly. “. . . Corporal Sung, send word down the line to D and C to watch for an air raid on all vehicles and large structures.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the corporal replied, bending to that task.
Lifting his chin at Harper, Roghetti addressed Ia. “Your second-in-command, there, isn’t the only one who’s mentioned your precognitive abilities, Captain. Your Company has been giving mine an earful while they’ve been waiting. I didn’t know what to make of being asked to set up extra barracks tents, stockpile extra weapons, ammunitions, various supplies . . . or the hundred mechsuits your people showed up wearing. Mechsuits don’t work well on this mudball; they sink in with every step. And I don’t know what to make of them claiming you’re some long-foretold V’Dan prophet.”
He shook his head. Ia stayed silent, waiting for him to finish what he had to say. Eyes unfocused as he stared across the command tent, he thought a moment, then spoke.
“But to have 160 soldiers show up and know exactly where everything is in the camp, to hear your officers address my men and women by name when we’ve never met, to advise my scouts where to catch Salik infiltrations and what to look out for when on patrol, and then they simply tell me it’s because you knew all of that in advance and told them what to do? That’s earned a little leeway in my trust . . . but only a little,” he allowed, meeting her gaze. “Don’t abuse it, sir.”
“I’ll try not to, Captain,” Ia said. “I make no promises, other than that I’m here to help you kick the Salik off-world.”
Someone else entered the tent, bringing a gust of cold, damp air. The man approached Captain Roghetti and started discussing some matter concerning the camp with him. Shivering, Ia reviewed the immediate future. She pinched the bridge of her nose and focused through her exhaustion and hunger. Finally, she nodded. “Harper, get me your arm unit.”
He held out his left arm to her. Touching it, she sent it a jolt of electrokinetic programming. He lowered his arm when she was done, giving her a curious look. “I take it these are my orders, sir?”
“Carry ’em out, Commander. I’m going to go have a hot shower, a change of clothes, and a meal before those potshots come our way. Right after I speak with—” Ia broke off as York called out her name. She smiled wryly at Harper. “With my superiors. On an empty stomach and low reserves.”
Harper clasped her shoulder, his hand sharing its warmth through the damp fabric of her dress shirt. He didn’t let it linger, though; he knew all too well why she didn’t like people touching her for long. Squeezing and releasing, he nodded at Private York’s workstation. “Go get ’em, sir.”
Returning to York’s side, she braced her hands on the back of his folding chair and leaned over his shoulder, gazing into the pickups. “Patch me through, Private.”
He nodded at the commscreen on his left as well as the center one. “We’re receiving two pings, sir. The first one’s from Admiral Genibes, but the Admiral-General’s also on the line. Either way, it’s an eight-second delay one way, sixteen seconds round-trip, thanks to all the rerouting. Who do you want first, sir?”
“Patch it for a three-way conference,” Ia ordered.
“. . . Did you just say ‘Admiral-General’?” Roghetti asked, moving closer to the two of them. He straightened abruptly into Attention at the sight of the graying-haired, Asiatic Human on the left side of York’s primary screen, her brown eyes sharp and searching. On the right side, the less-well-known, mostly brown-haired and hazel-eyed face of Admiral John Genibes appeared, his nose long and sharp compared to her flatter one, his skin a few shades lighter, his face more rectangular than hers.
“Admiral-General Myang, Admiral Genibes,” Ia greeted them, speaking right away. “I apologize for my delay in reporting in, but I had some transportation difficulties following the destruction of TUPSF Hellfire. Suffice to say, my—” She cut herself off as the link from Earth caught up with her.
“Captain Ia, I gave you that ship in the understanding that you would use it continually to fight our enemies,” Admiral-General Myang stated. “While I understand the need for you to keep it out of enemy hands, and to—shova v’shakking damned time lags,” Myang muttered, just as Genibes spoke.
“I’m glad to see you made it out alive—Sorry, sir,” he added, shifting his gaze slightly to one side and nodding. “You first, Admiral-General.”
“It’s an eight-second delay,” Ia warned both of them. “I’ll remind you the Salik are determined to take over Dabin as a new colonyworld. I need to kick every last one of them off-planet. They want to establish a foothold, and as I told you, this must not happen.”
Myang frowned. She looked older than when Ia had first met her in person, bartering to gain the Hellfire as her ship. Back then, her hair had been mostly black, with a few streaks of gray. Now it was mostly gray, with a bit of lingering black. The Admiral-General had 2 billion soldiers to keep track of in a nasty war against a well-prepared foe, an
d it showed.
“I gave you that ship, Captain, in the understanding that you would use it to our best possible advantage,” she stated sternly. “You did warn me it would need to be destroyed when you switched helms, and I agreed that it was too great a danger to let it fall into anyone else’s hands, but I was hoping we could actually mothball it. As it is, the Damnation is still not yet ready for service, and I need you at its helm.
“Or rather, I need you at the helm of the Hellfire right now. You proved that with your adroit management of the Hellfire’s weaponry, and its little ‘overshoot’ problem. You owe me the fighting power you’ve squandered with the premature loss of that ship, Captain,” she told Ia. “I was hoping you’d use it right up to the point where you’d transfer to the upgrade.”
“I am aware of that, sir. The timing demanded otherwise . . . which is why my crew and I are here on Dabin,” Ia replied, dipping her head in acknowledgment. “The war isn’t going well on this battlefront. It’s . . . cloudy . . . but something isn’t going well, and it’s going to get worse. I have less than two months to turn it all around and save these people. The things my crew and I can do will turn the tide for this world and save the majority of these colonists’ lives. You need that a lot more than you need our firepower out there right now. My Prophetic Stamp on that.
“As for the destruction of my ship, I may have lost you the main cannon when it was destroyed,” she acknowledged, “but in the same move, I gained us 1,658 Feyori factioned to my side, which means they’ll be on our side when the Alliance needs them most. I trust you’ll count that as a bonus on that long ledger of all the things I owe you, sir?”
Behind her, Roghetti choked. Ia didn’t even glance at him. He wasn’t a security concern in her eyes, nor were the on-duty members of his surveillance crew. This wasn’t a secured channel—by its very nature, lightwave couldn’t ever be completely secure, however heavily encrypted—but neither was it being monitored by the Salik. At least, not immediately. She knew they’d send ships outsystem to look for lightwave records of her arrival, once the Salik realized she was now on Dabin.