Engels voice rose toward a shriek. “Almost nobody? Including me?”
Loco spoke up, obviously trying to head off an explosion. “Zulu, huh? Didn’t that work out crappy for the British?”
“Not Zulu like the tribal people,” Straker said. “Zulu like the letter Z, the end of the phonetic alphabet. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie… Zulu. Annex Zulu.”
Engels spoke angrily, unmollified. “So… you cut me out of the loop again.”
“Hey,” Loco said, “I don’t know what it is either.”
Heiser shrugged. “Me neither.”
Engels glared hard at Straker. “Who does know?”
A voice from the room intercom spoke up. “I’m so glad you asked.”
Engels gaped at the comlink speaker as if it had grown eight arms. “Zaxby?”
Chapter 3
Straker on Culloden
“I have returned,” Zaxby said over Straker’s office comlink speaker. “And just in time, too, it seems. You squabbling humans need my clarity and expertise.”
Straker, Engels, Heiser and Loco all began to speak at once.
Loco yelled the loudest. “I thought you were having a great old time as the Grand Poobah of Ruxin and consort of Premier Vuxana. How the hell did you just happen to show up now?”
“It wasn’t happenstance, General Paloco. The Ruxin intelligence services are the finest in the universe, and with my own superior brainpower I divined the situation. It seemed clear that the Breakers would consider implementing Annex Zaxby, so—”
“Wait a minute. Annex Zaxby?” Engels’ brows furrowed at Straker. “There’s another annex I don’t know about?”
“No, no, same annex,” Straker explained. “He wanted to call it Zaxby, but I thought that’d be too obvious, so we called it Annex Zulu.”
“But now that it’s implemented, we can call it by its rightful name,” Zaxby said. “Annex Zaxby.”
“So what exactly is Annex Zulu-Zaxby?” Loco asked. “Other than having a Breakers’ reunion party, which I’m all for, mind you, as long as there’s free beer.”
“It’s the way to win the losing scenario.” Straker said, relieved that Zaxby had shown up so far ahead of schedule. Much depended on the oddball octopoid, and Straker hated depending on others. Like Loco—and Carla, and all of his best officers—Zaxby was a pain in the ass, but he’d come to realize, of all Zaxby’s faults, unreliability wasn’t one of them.
Like me, Straker thought. Maybe being a pain in the ass is a prerequisite for being a good combat commander. Annoying in peacetime, superb in war. The more time I spend in this business, the more I realize who my real friends are. Not the ones who simply follow orders, but those willing to ignore them when needed.
When he was done outlining Annex Zulu, Straker checked his chrono. “Coming up on 1300. That’s the summary. Everyone on board, now that you know we have a fighting chance?”
The two men nodded.
Engels reluctantly followed suit. “I’m just concerned about the noncombatants…and as long as Zaxby can do what he claims—”
“Have I ever lied to you, Carla Engels?” Zaxby’s voice asked.
“You are prone to exaggeration, Zaxby.”
“I protest in the most strenuous terms! I have never once exaggerated anything. At all. Ever. Not once.”
“I rest my case.”
“Well. Time for me to leave in a huff.”
“You’re not even here,” Loco said. “You’re on comlink.”
“And grateful for it, considering the amount of cologne you drown yourself in, Johnny Paloco. Zaxby out.”
“Back to the Big Room,” Straker said, glancing again at his chrono and inserting his own comlink. The others followed. “Indy, how many did we lose?”
“I presume you’re referring to those choosing to depart the Breakers?”
“Right.”
“Nineteen.”
Straker stopped dead in the corridor. Loco dodged him with a yelp, and Engels bumped into him. “Only nineteen effectives?”
“Eight effectives from the active forces, plus family members. A few more from the reserves might trickle in.”
“Cosmos! I’d expected hundreds to desert us, maybe thousands.”
Loco slapped Straker’s back with a grin. “Told you, boss. They love you, though it beats the shit out of me why.”
Straker rubbed his jaw. “Me too, sometimes. Don’t let me ever forget it.”
Engels poked Straker in the chest. “Loco might. I won’t.”
“Good.” Straker kissed her. “Come on.”
Once in the Big Room, Straker took the stage again. For those present and those with vidlink available, it would help to see him. Full vid provided a sense of the speaker impossible on mere audio.
“Thanks to everyone who decided to stay—that’s most of you, as I notice only a few vacancies in the ranks. You have one last chance, right now. If you’re not sure, walk away.” Straker let the silence stretch.
Nobody moved.
“All right. Let’s get ready to fight.”
A rumble of excitement spread through the room, a few cheers and yells, quickly suppressed by growling noncoms.
“Indy, distribute the preset orders from all annexes, including Annex Zulu.” Sections of orders and annexes appeared on screens around the room, comlinks beeped, and those with active brainlinks found themselves staring at optical HUDs.
“Ladies and gentlemen—and others,” Straker nodded at a nearby Ruxin neuter, one of the small alien community within the Breakers, “we have between six and twenty-four hours until the Republic task force arrives. They could hit us with railgun ordnance and missiles sooner than that. Until we’re certain, we’re treating this as a combat operation and the task force as the enemy. If they aren’t, we’ll all have a beer and a good laugh. If they are, we have to be ready to win as quickly, decisively, and cheaply as possible. That’s what Annex Zulu is for. Trust the plan and trust each other, and we’ll all make it through.”
Colonel Winter stood once more. “Sir—then what?”
“Then what, what?”
“Once we beat these sons-of-bitches, what then?”
Very conscious of the ticking chrono, Straker forced himself to answer calmly. There weren’t a lot of hours left for talking.
But making sure everyone was on board and pulling in the same direction was more important than minutes right now. “Then we’re outcasts from the Republic, at least until Steel and the Victory Party are out of power and we can smooth things over with whomever takes their place. They’ll treat us as rebels and mutineers. They’ll hunt us down if we let them. We’ll make our own way, find our own place out there.”
“Where?”
Straker gestured widely, as if taking in all of space. “It’s a big galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of stars. Republic space only contains two thousand or so, with twelve or thirteen hundred inhabited planets. There are independent human worlds out in the frontier, and uncounted aliens. We’ll find a place for ourselves, a new home for our families. That, I promise you.”
Spontaneous applause broke out, and Straker let it run until it began to die. Then he waved it down. “Get to work. Carry on.”
Colonel Winter approached him as he stepped off the stage and spoke stiffly. “Sir, I’m sorry if I—”
“No need to apologize, Colonel. It’s one of your responsibilities to ask the hard questions your troops won’t.”
“Not in public, sir. But it seemed—”
“An extraordinary situation. Agreed. In the future, though—”
“I’ll disagree in private.”
Straker put out his hand. “Keep on doing what you’re doing, Colonel. I have full confidence in you, otherwise I wouldn’t have put you in charge of First Battalion.”
“Thank you, sir.” Winter saluted and withdrew.
“One of the naturals,” Loco said at Straker’s elbow. He was referring to mechsuit pilots chosen from the general population rather
than genetically engineered for the job. “He doesn’t have the highest scores.”
“High enough—and I wanted a leader first, not just a pilot. Too many of the physical jocks only want to drive their suits and shoot things. This guy takes initiative, thinks outside the box.”
“He’s like you, you mean.”
Straker grunted. “Better strong horses I have to rein in than weak ones I have to put the spurs to.”
“That’s why you keep me around.”
“Guess so. And we’ll need that initiative if Zulu is to work. If we’re lucky, the casualties will be low. If not...”
“We could lose everything.”
“Everything but our families. They matter more than we do. That’s our calling, Loco. To put our bodies and blood between innocent civilians and the enemy.”
Loco’s jaw dropped and his eyes filled with mock hero-worship. “Oh my, oh my, Liberator, sir! Can I have your autograph?”
“Smartass. You know I’m right.”
Loco sobered. “Of course you’re right. You get all pompous in the face of danger. Carla worries. Heiser gets to work, Gurung starts sharpening his knife... I laugh and cut up. You want me to change?”
“No, not really.”
“Good, ’cause I ain’t gonna. Somebody needs to lighten the mood or we’ll all die of terminal earnestness.”
“I doubt that will kill us.” Straker slapped Loco’s shoulder. “Carry on, General. Go crack the whip.”
“Aye aye, Your Liberatorship.” Loco jogged off to check up on his commanders and their progress.
Straker resisted the urge to do the same, but over the years he’d come to accept the wisdom of allowing himself to be the figurehead and inspiration for his troops. Loco and the officers under him could be his hammers, exerting pressure where things needed to get moving. Instead, he stepped over to where Commander Sinden was supervising the ops-intel team maintaining the super-sized Common Operating Picture holograms, along with their secondary holotanks and screens displaying specific subsets of data.
In the big holo he saw the inbound ships, along with all the other significant items within the star system, which were few. Culloden was a recent colony on the edge of settled space, and well away from the Opters, so it hadn’t been occupied during the Hive War. It also happened to be within an easy sidespace jump of the Starfish Nebula, where Freenix’s secret Ruxin habitats and the still-undiscovered Freiheit colony maintained their clandestine existence.
As a new colony, Culloden didn’t yet have industry around either of the system’s gas giants, except for one hydrogen skimmer which collected enough fuel isotopes for local use. The planet, second from its star—so technically it was Culloden-2—had a few communications satellites, a dozen captured asteroids parked in orbit, and a growing space industry including one small shipyard, along with support for the miners and manufactories.
In short, it had nothing with which to defend itself—other than Breaker assets.
Those consisted of three brigades of about six thousand troops each. They were organized identically into four battalions each, three combat and one headquarters-and-support. The only differences between the active First Brigade and the reserve Second and Third were the edge on their training, and the presence of mechsuits in First. During the military drawdown, Straker had managed to get all the Republic’s remaining mechsuits and pilots transferred to the Breakers, as long as he agreed to pay for everything out of Breaker funds.
He’d gladly picked up the tab.
Now, he had over two hundred of the best ground combat machines ever built, and more than three hundred qualified pilots. He’d had the rebuilt manufacturing depot brought to Culloden from Sparta, along with those of its workforce who wanted to join the Breakers. And, he still had the small, secret factory on Freiheit making parts and ammunition.
While Straker couldn’t say he’d foreseen this situation, exactly, he believed in being prepared, and independent of the increasingly unreliable regular forces. He was very glad of that now.
The hologram also showed the Breakers’ twenty-one fast military transports, capable of planetside operation. These were normally used for trade, and moving supplies and equipment—and, in an emergency, for evacuation of personnel. They were now on the ground, being loaded.
“Everything on track?” Straker asked Commander Sinden.
Her expression soured slightly and she gestured toward Colonel Keller, the divisional logistics officer from Sachsen, as if to say, ask her.
“Right.” And Sinden was right. As the Breakers’ chief of intelligence, it was her job to keep an eye on the enemy, not to track friendly operations, and certainly not to keep tabs on ship loading. Also, as a genetically engineered brainiac, Sinden was short on tact, long on expertise.
Straker stepped over to Colonel Keller and her team busily plying their consoles, some with brainlinks hardwired into the operating system. “Progress report?”
The pinch-faced older woman spoke with a Sachsen accent. “We’re ninety-six percent on or ahead of schedule. A few speedbumps, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“What’s our margin for delay?”
“One hundred nineteen minutes, minimum. We’re fourteen minutes behind the Annex Zulu schedule. It looks like the enemy is slowing to go into orbit. That gives us several hours more. In short, I’m confident we’ll hit all the marks.”
“Excellent. Carry on.”
In the holo, the first of the transports lofted toward its rendezvous with the Independence. That ship’s lifters and dropships were already busily shuttling people and equipment up from the surface, but the transports could hold far more. With twenty thousand troops and an equal number of civilians to get into space, along with supplies and equipment, the Breakers needed every kilo of lift.
In her role as overall commander of the tiny Breakers fleet, Engels would be already aboard the Independence, making sure all ships were in place and ready. Loco should be doing the same for the combat units, each with the right loadout of equipment and each commander fully briefed on their individual roles and missions. Heiser would be keeping the troops informed and smoothing the inevitable ruffled feathers, while Colonel Winter was preparing the mechsuiters for their particular role in the coming action.
Zaxby, after his initial dramatic entry, had vanished again, incommunicado. Well, he knew his part in the violent impending drama. As long as he showed, with his forces, on time and on target...
It was all so complex. Straker wondered whether he’d made Annex Zulu too complicated. It reminded him of Engels’s type of plan, with many interlocking parts rather than a simple ground force execution... but if he was to keep casualties down, it had to be this way.
Two hours of tense waiting later, Commander Sinden reported to him. “The enemy ships have cut acceleration and are beginning decel on impellers alone.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they’re opening up their options. They can take up parking orbits, but they’re retaining enough velocity to make a fast pass if they need to.”
“How will this affect our potential courses of action?”
Sinden manipulated the holo, one hand on her console, one holding the untethered cursor control. “Here’s their baskets.” She highlighted color-coded areas defining areas the enemy could navigate to. “And here are ours.” The holo added areas where the Breaker ships could reach, also color coded by time and distance.
“And the overlap?”
“We’re continually updating in realtime, but here’s our best projection.” The graphics moved forward into the future, to eventually show overlapping three-dimensional Venn diagrams of possibilities. “If they react as expected, and if everyone hits their marks properly...” Sinden’s tone made it clear she was skeptical about that. “The action will take place here.”
“Looks good.”
“That’s a big ‘if,’ sir. We’re assuming they won’t simply open fire.”
Straker rubbed his fac
e. She was right. He was talking a big risk. Not as big as it looked—the Breakers had a few tricks up their sleeves—but still, thousands could die in an eyeblink if he guessed wrong. “Your analysis? How do you rate the odds, Nancy?”
Sinden squeezed her eyes shut a couple of times, no doubt accessing her optical HUD and brainlink implants. “High confidence, but high statistical margin of error. We don’t know enough about Steel’s thinking, or that of this task force commander. Would Steel give extermination orders, even against civilians?”
“My gut says no—not yet,” Straker replied. “He can’t be sure that a record of what happens here doesn’t make it back to the newsnets, and he doesn’t have complete control yet. Proof he fired on unarmed fleeing civilians could turn the tide against him. No, he’ll want to capture them as trophies—and as hostages to force us to comply.”
“I do hope we’re right, sir.”
“Me too. We’re gambling here, Nancy, but the payoff is big, and we need it.”
“Pascal’s Wager, sir?”
“Always. Bet a little to win a lot.”
Four hours later, the presumed-enemy task force had lit its fusion engines to decelerate, apparently to take up orbit. There was still no answer to constant Breaker hails.
As Straker stepped onto the final lifter with the last of the command and staff, he glanced around at the aerospace field, empty of all possible equipment except for a row of two dozen old, non-operational mechsuits parked at the edge of the pads. These stood open and abandoned, apparently left there for lack of lift.
The people who’d decided to leave the Breakers, plus a few non-Breaker visitors caught by the situation, had departed in ground transports with universal medical markings and noncombatant transponders, heading toward the empty Breakers recreational complex on the south coast of the continent. That would put them out of harm’s way when the shit hit the fan.
On the lifter, Straker wiggled backward into his open half-ton battlesuit. It was a new Ripper, an upgraded, top-of-the-line model unique to the Breakers. This command version had mechsuit-quality sensors and C3I functions.
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