by Marko Kloos
“Because the transition into Leonidas takes three watch cycles, we will not be at combat stations until an hour before our arrival. Until then, it’s business as usual. All department heads will start the operational planning for the exercise, and training cycles will be maintained until we start our transition to Leonidas. That is all for now. CO out.”
I stay in my chair and stare at the blank screen of my terminal for a few moments. Then I turn the screen on and bring up the situational display. The little icon labeled “BCV-60” in the center of the screen is a few million klicks from Saturn, and the broken line of our projected course trajectory loops all the way back into the inner system. I’m gratified to see that our return trip doesn’t take us anywhere near Mars, because I’ve seen enough of that graveyard to last me for the rest of my service time.
Ottawa is the nicest and most luxurious ship I’ve ever served on, but everything about it seems just a little too easy. The network access is instantaneous, and we have so much bandwidth that we can send video messages to each other instead of being restricted to low-data text. After years of bitching about cramped accommodations and lousy food, it seems stupid to object to the great chow or the space we have, but for me, all those factors come together to make Ottawa feel unreal, as if she’s a floating RecFac with really awesome battle simulators, not a proper warship designed for combat. Even the firing range in Grunt Country follows the pattern. It doesn’t even have a live-fire section where I can burn actual propellant and shoot real projectiles. The whole range is set up for sim guns only, with holographic targets and racks full of training versions of our regular armament. The sim guns look and feel just like the live-fire versions, and the gas charges in the sim rounds do a good job of producing realistic recoil, but it’s different when you know there’s just a low-wattage laser beam coming out of the muzzle instead of a saboted dart.
When I’m off duty, I spend as much time with Halley as we can both manage to free up at the same time. But after ten weeks of deployment, I find that I am bored and stressed at the same time. I’ve had the deployment blues many times before—you learn to deal with it after almost ten years of bouncing around the settled galaxy in Fleet ships—but this spell feels more severe than the ones before it. I don’t crave combat and danger, but it seems pointless for all of us to be out here, taking the Fleet’s best equipment and her most qualified personnel on a three-month joyride to the outer planets and back. I don’t admit this to Halley, but when we’re back in the inner system and hours away from our planned Alcubierre transition to Leonidas, I am looking forward to being out of the solar system again for the first time in almost four years because there’s a chance something might go wrong.
“Now hear this: Alcubierre transition in T-minus thirty. I repeat: Alcubierre transition in T-minus thirty.”
The 1MC announcement sounds as casual as if the XO had just announced a foreign-object damage sweep on the flight deck. For the first time in my Fleet career, I’ve heard the Alcubierre transition announcement without a preceding Combat Stations alert. Every time a Fleet ship transitions into a different system, the crew is at combat stations, because you never know for certain what you’ll pop into when the ship comes out of the chute in the target system. This time, however, it’s just an inconsequential heads-up from CIC, which only serves to add to the general feeling of disconnectedness I’ve had ever since I set foot on this ship.
I continue the briefing I was conducting when the 1MC announcement interrupted my train of thought. From the expressions on the faces of my special tactics team, I can tell that some of them share my minor consternation at this change in routine.
“Thirty minutes until go time,” I say. “Well, sort of. We’ll be in transition for twenty-four hours. And the action on the other side of the chute is all in our heads. But other than that, it’s just like going to war.”
The senior NCOs chuckle a little at this and exchange amused glances.
“Anyway,” I continue. “This op is a standard by-the-book orbital drop. We are dumping the whole regiment in and around Arcadia City in a single wave with both drop ship squadrons while Ottawa provides orbital support. The regiment will have overhead cover from the strike squadrons, so there’ll be plenty to do for the combat controllers.”
I bring up the list of unit assignments on the screen behind me.
“Master Sergeant Taggart, you’re dropping with Alpha Company, First Battalion. Master Sergeant Garcia, Alpha Company, Second Battalion. Sergeant Winters, Bravo Company, First Battalion.”
I go down the list by team seniority and distribute my combat controllers so that each of them is assigned to a company command section and each company has one combat controller to drop with it. Last on the list is Delta Company of the Second Battalion, and the last unassigned name on my unit roster is Staff Sergeant Lang, the only female member of the combat controller detachment.
“Sergeant Lang,” I say. “You’ll be going with Second Battalion’s Delta Company. The CO is an old friend of mine, Captain Hansen. She knows her business. Make sure you show her that we know ours as well.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Staff Sergeant Lang replies. She glances down at her PDP to copy the data, her face serious and earnest. At her rank, she came out of Combat Controller School not too long ago, which means that she’s never done a combat drop because we haven’t dropped anywhere since Mars. The combat controller training track is extremely demanding, both physically and mentally. Eighty percent of trainees wash out for various reasons. The fact that Sergeant Lang has the red beret in her leg pocket proves that she’s tough as a bag of bricks and mentally resilient. But I know what it felt like before I did my first actual drop, so I roughly know what goes on in Sergeant Lang’s head, even if we’re only preparing for a training drop.
“Once we are in-system, we’ll check in with the local garrison, and from then on we’ll be in full war-game mode. System recon, followed by a shortest-time burn to Arcadia and full regimental assault. We’re going to come in hot and fire from all tubes, so to speak. The area around Arcadia City is a restricted no-go zone for a hundred klicks around, so it’s all our playground to shoot at simulated Lankies. The radiation on the ground, however, isn’t simulated. Those of you who haven’t had to do decontamination routines lately will have a great chance to get familiar with them again.”
I put some fake cheer into my voice with that last sentence, and I’m rewarded with some groans and low-volume grumbling. Decontamination routines are tedious, and they occur by nature at the very end of the mission, when you’re back on the flight deck after a drop, tired and sweaty and ready for some chow and twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. But there’s no way to just simulate the decon stuff on this drop because the dirt in and around Arcadia City really is irradiated.
“I have word from upstairs regarding pod launches,” I continue, and everyone’s attention is back on me in a snap.
“The brass has decided that we will do simulated launches. The combat controllers will land with the command elements of their assigned companies, and we’ll let the computer decide if your pod cratered or not. Sorry if you were hoping to add to your drop total for the next level.”
This revelation gets an even unhappier reaction than the news about decontamination. Pod launches are dangerous, but they’re our bread and butter, the distinguishing mark of our professions, and most large-scale exercises involve live launches. Because of the danger, every pod launch counts toward the total, whether it’s in exercise or combat. The staff sergeants in my group all still have the pod device in bronze above their combat-drop badges, which is awarded at five pod drops. The silver level means twenty drops, and the gold level is a long climb to fifty drops. The last three years were not a good period for adding to the drop total. It’s a small and inconsequential thing to an outsider, but being able to exchange the bronze pod device for a silver and then a gold one is one of the last rites of passage once someone makes it through combat controller training
. The day you go “all gold”—when you add a gold pod device to a gold combat-drop badge—you have to requisition drinks for the entire podhead detachment on your boat.
“It’s a sim launch, so familiarize yourselves with your assigned company zones and check in with the company commanders as soon as you can, preferably before we transition into Leonidas. Ride the bus down, check with TacOps whether your simulated pod made it down in one piece, and then go to work. There’ll be four strike squadrons overhead looking for something to do, so keep them busy, and let’s not have any midairs. Those are bad and will get you demerits.”
The NCOs reward this comment with low chuckles.
“I’ve sent out an update with the rotation schedule for the CIC station all the way through the drop. That’s it for the combat controllers,” I continue. “Now Lieutenant Brown will take over and cover the Spaceborne Rescue portion of this program.”
I nod at Lieutenant Brown, who gets out of his chair in the first row of the briefing room and steps up to the lectern. I yield the spot and sit down in the chair he just vacated. While the lieutenant goes through assignments for his eight Spaceborne Rescuemen and their tasks in the upcoming exercise, I take notes on my PDP and exchange a few messages with Halley.
He looks so damn young, I find myself thinking while Lieutenant Brown is giving his NCOs their marching orders. As a first lieutenant, he has been in the service for less than four years, and unless he spent a few years after college just loafing, he’s twenty-five at the most. I only have half a decade on him, but right now, I’m the old man in the room, and only the two master sergeants on my combat controller team look like they have more years in service and more hours on the clock than I do.
Back when I joined, captains and majors were old guys. I anticipated many things when I enlisted, but becoming one of those old guys was not among my expectations. When we graduated boot camp, Halley and I seriously thought we’d just get out after our first term and take the money. When I think of those two naive, starry-eyed kids we were back then, I feel a great deal of pity for them. They thought they had pulled the winning lottery ticket, thought they had the universe by the balls. Instead, they got chucked into a meat grinder. And we’re not those kids anymore. We’re just what made it through that grinder eventually, pounded into different shapes.
On a whim, I send to Halley:
>Ever feel ancient?
The reply comes back just a few moments later:
>Every damn day.
CHAPTER 14
WAR GAMES
“Alcubierre transition complete in five. In four. Three. Two. One. Transition complete.”
The feeling of low-level bone ache particular to Alcubierre transits disappears as soon as we come out of the chute. After three years, I had forgotten how much I dislike that sensation, which feels like sitting in a dentist’s chair for hours on end.
“The board is green. All departments reporting ready for action.”
“What’s our fuel status?” Colonel Yamin asks.
“We’re at seventy-one percent reactor fuel,” the XO replies after consulting a terminal screen.
Damn, I think. The old frigate Berlin was down to 11 percent after the same transition, and that was with fully topped-off tanks before going Alcubierre. We just made a run to the chute all the way from Saturn, and we’re not even half-dry after the transition. Either the ship has super-efficient reactors, or a quarter of the hull by mass is reactor fuel.
“Passive sensor sweep,” Colonel Yamin orders from her position in the holotable pit. “Astrogation, get me a fix, please.”
“Aye, ma’am,” the astrogation officer says. A few moments later, the holotable plot changes to display our current location in-system. I hold my breath for just a moment, but no orange icons pop up on the situational orb in our neighborhood.
“Transition successful. We are in the Leonidas system, right where we planned to be.”
“Looks like the shipyard managed to put the Alcubierre plumbing in right,” Colonel Yamin says. “1MC line, please.”
“1MC is open, ma’am.”
“Attention, all hands,” Colonel Yamin says into her headset, and I know that her amplified voice is presently coming out of every speaker and PDP on the ship. “This is the CO. Welcome to the Leonidas system. Ottawa has just completed a one-hundred-and-fifty-light-year transition. Let’s see what this puppy can do when we take off the muzzle. All hands, carry out your assigned jobs like we have some real Lankies out for our hides. Fleet Exercise Pegasus commences now. XO out.”
The scenario on the holotable looks eerily familiar. The plot on Portsmouth looked almost the same when we crept into the system with the SOCOM task force over three years ago, but this time the location of the colony is included in the plot. On the SOCOM mission, we had to spend a good while sniffing around to find Arcadia, which was built to orbit quietly and incognito around the third moon of the third planet, tucked away in the inner system behind the asteroid belt that orbits Leonidas.
“Check the rotational direction of Outpost Campbell and send them a hello on low-power tight-beam when they are facing our way. They probably already know we’re here, but it’s nice to knock.”
Outpost Campbell is a listening post on a large asteroid at the outer edge of the belt. It’s set up to monitor incoming traffic to Leonidas and serve as an early warning system in case of Lanky incursion. Three years ago, I was on a drop ship that landed several SI squads on the outpost to prevent it from transmitting a warning back to Arcadia. The asteroid rotates in its orbit, so it only faces the inner system and Arcadia every seventy-one minutes. It’s a tactical defect because it means any potential incursion would have a seventy-minute head start in a worst-case scenario, as Outpost Campbell is blind to traffic coming into the system while the listening station faces the wrong way. But it also means that any message traffic is shielded from anyone coming from the direction of the Alcubierre chute because a few million tons of asteroid block the signal completely.
Three years ago, we used their blind spot to approach the station from their dark side with a stealth drop ship and successfully boarded and neutralized it. Since then, it has been rebuilt and enhanced to serve as a forward observer, early warning system, and target designator for Arcadia’s Orion battery. Orions are too big to fit into ships for Alcubierre journeys, but their components aren’t, and Arcadia has plenty of water for warheads and an orbital shipyard to assemble Orions in-system. Other than Earth, it’s the only one of our settlements with a meaningful autonomous defense against seed ships, and we’ve been settling the place steadily with volunteers over the last three years.
“Outpost Campbell is acknowledging our Fleet transponder code,” the comms officer says. “They are replying with an all-clear, ma’am.”
“Very well. Let them know we’re about to start our scheduled exercise, and to tell Arcadia Control on the next rotation that we’ll be inbound at a hard burn as soon as we’ve finished our recon sweep.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Warm up the recon birds and float ’em out. Live-link mode. I want six to either side of our projected course to Arcadia, one hundred and eighty degrees on the system ecliptic.” Colonel Yamin marks the paths for the drones on the holotable’s display. “I want to make sure there isn’t anything stirring in the inner system that’s not broadcasting Fleet ID. Run them out as far as they go.”
The recon drones, like almost everything else on this ship, are brand-new hardware put together with liberal Eurocorps assistance. Eurocorps has the best recon tech on Earth, and until we were all looking down the barrel of species extermination, they weren’t really keen on sharing their technological edge with us or the SRA. But now that we are trading money and tech for experience, all the gear designed to keep the smaller European military punching above its weight on Earth is starting to come in very handy against the Lankies.
“Launching drones from tubes one through eight, live-link mode. First flight is on t
he way,” the lieutenant at the electronic intelligence station says. “Loading for second flight.”
“Now we wait,” Colonel Yamin says. She studies the plot intently, even though there’s nothing to see except for the slowly changing scale markers and the blue drone markers forming an umbrella shape in front of our projected course to Arcadia. “It wouldn’t do to get jumped by a seed ship out here while we have the whole regiment on the ground with exercise loads in their guns.”
“No, ma’am,” the XO agrees, and I can practically see him shudder at the thought.
The second wave of drones leaves the tubes thirty seconds later and joins the swarm that’s heading outward from the center of the plot in a hemispherical formation. Over the next half hour, our sensor awareness bubble doubles then quadruples in size as the passive reconnaissance systems of the drones scan the space ahead of them and transmit their data back to the ship. The drive systems on the drones are so shielded that only their burst transmission updates make them visible on our plot. I try to pick them up with the sensors on the ship, but no matter which spectrum I use, the drones are invisible once they’re further than a few kilometers out. With that sort of stealth technology, those drones would be lethal for a sneak attack if they were passively guided missiles with antiship warheads.