Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

by Jack Campbell

  “We paid too much,” an older girl said, looking at him with the eyes of an adult. “We see the news, and it’s all about people arguing and complaining, just as if we hadn’t won the war. Everyone talks about the price we paid, and the debts, and how hard things are. Sometimes . . . sometimes I want to speak to my ancestors, and I can’t feel that anyone is there. It is very hard to believe. I know that you are here. I don’t know if you actually were somewhere else all this time, if you saw or heard things we can only imagine, but how can we fix everything that was broken? How can we bring back what was lost?”

  She faltered, swallowing, then spoke in a very low voice. “How can we even know what our parents would have wanted? The answer used to be, don’t give up. Keep fighting. But the war is over. What is the answer now? Do you know . . . Black Jack?”

  “I . . .” He had no idea what to say, then suddenly he did. “Listen.” It hadn’t been necessary to say that. They were all hanging on his every word though he himself didn’t understand where these words were coming from. “There is one thing I did learn on Old Earth that I can tell you right now. Something I was shown there. You have heard some of ancient history, haven’t you? A little about the old days, before humanity reached the stars, when we were confined to one small planet in one star system? Did you learn about the wars? The disasters? I never really understood that when I studied it in school. It was too far away, lost in the far past.”

  Geary paused, looking around at the children. “But I saw it firsthand recently, saw what Old Earth and our oldest ancestors had endured, and I finally understood. Old Earth is covered with ruins and wreckage and remnants of the past. But not one of those ruins is the last word. Our ancestors on that one, small planet never gave up. They rose again from every war, every disaster, every loss, and they built again and they kept rising and they kept building until they reached the stars. That’s why we’re here. Because our ancestors never stopped trying, never gave up.

  “There was a town we visited. An old, ruined town in a place called Kansas. It had been abandoned because of the wars and other things too awful for the people there to endure. But when I was there, the people with us from Old Earth said the town would live again. I asked before we left Sol Star System. Is it true? Will that town live again? And I was told that yes, it would, that people whose own ancestors had lived there, and had never forgotten it, had already begun preparations to rebuild. Just a small town. But even it would not be allowed to die, to be forgotten.”

  He had to pause again, overcome by emotions. “If the people of Old Earth, our ancestors and their descendants today who remain there, could keep building, could keep trying, how can we do less? We are their children, and while we brought to the stars with us all the faults and problems and flaws of the past, we also brought the good things, the determination, and the willingness to help others, and the imagination to build things greater than every shortcoming humanity has ever known. We, all of us, will save the Alliance, will rebuild and carry on. Because it is not in us to quit. Our ancestors gave us that gift. And you and I and everyone else will use that gift to honor them and to give our children a better future than we once believed possible.”

  It was only then that he realized many of the children and adults in the room had phones and other devices with which they were recording his words. Very likely those words had already left this building and were flying around the planet on wings of light, soon to leave even this star, carried inside ships to go everywhere the Alliance mattered.

  And he wondered who or what had given him those words and if those words would be good enough to help save what some thought already unsaveable.

  The older girl was crying. “My grandfather was on Merlon. Thank you for saving him.”

  Somehow, she was hugging him, face buried in his chest, tears wetting the fabric of his uniform, Geary feeling incredibly awkward and fighting back tears himself as other children came close to touch him and laugh or cry.

  He had considered avoiding talking to the press again, considered finding a back way out and fleeing to the privacy to be found in the confines of a battle cruiser, but not now. He would face the press and everyone else, and say what he could say to them because he couldn’t be any less brave than these kids.

  • • •

  THE conference room once again felt uncrowded, with just Geary there along with Captain Duellos and the virtual presences of two ground forces colonels. Colonel Voston, the commander of the regiment very grudgingly provided by General Sissons, had that look Geary had seen so much of since being reawakened. It was the look of a man who had witnessed too many horrible things for too long. When a massive war went on for a century, many, many people had that look.

  Colonel Kim, commanding Adriana Star System’s contribution to the ground forces, had a ready smile and a calm disposition. She had made no secret of her relative lack of combat experience and was paying close attention to everything said.

  Searching for a means to open the conversation, Geary fell back on the old military standby of asking about prior service. “Have you been stationed at Adriana for long, Colonel?”

  Voston paused to think. “About five years now. My unit was sent here to reconstitute after we got chopped up at Empyria.” He stopped speaking as if no further explanation was needed.

  Geary chose his words with extra care. “There’s a lot of history I haven’t been able to fully familiarize myself with.”

  “Oh.” Colonel Voston had the slightly puzzled expression of someone trying to explain something he had never before had to explain. “Empyria was Objective One for the Auger Campaign. It was a lynchpin for Syndic defenses in that region of space. We were going to go in with overwhelming force, take it, hold it, and move on to another star system deeper in. Hit one star system after another, going deeper and deeper into Syndic space, until we . . .” Voston hesitated, then smiled slightly. “Actually, I don’t know what we would have ultimately done. That was above my pay grade.”

  “There were other campaigns like that, weren’t there?” Geary asked.

  “Over the course of the war? Yes. Many. None of them had succeeded. But This Time Would Be Different,” Voston said, pronouncing all of the capital letters with extra, mocking emphasis. He paused once more, a shadow crossing over his face. “The entire Third Army was sent in against Empyria. We took half a million casualties during the landings, then lost a million more dead and wounded over the next several weeks as we reduced all of the Syndic defenses.”

  “How many Syndics were defending that star system?” Geary asked, trying not to let show how appalled he was.

  “They told us going in that estimates were about half a million defenders.” Voston shrugged. “I’m guessing it was closer to a million. No telling what the real number was. Too many bodies got destroyed during the fighting, blown into fragments, and nobody had the time or interest to collect fragments of the enemy. We’d gone in with three million, the entire army, but our losses were so bad that after we took Empyria, instead of heading for the next objective, we were told to hold for resupply and reinforcement.” Another shrug. “A month went by, the Syndics were popping into the star system and launching raids and counterattacks, logistics were a nightmare, another month passed, the next big offensive got delayed and delayed again; eventually, my division got sent to Adriana to rebuild, and here we’ve been since.”

  Colonel Kim nodded. “Logistics. My mother handled part of that for the Empyria assault. Supplying three million ground forces soldiers on the attack strained our systems in this region to the limit. We dropped in freshwater recyclers, but still had to constantly bring in huge amounts of food and ammo. Every Sillis we had in that part of space was committed to the job, and we were barely keeping up.”

  “Sillis?” Geary asked.

  “SLLS. Super-Large Logistics Ship. There aren’t many left, so you probably never saw one. The Syndics figured out
that with how many supplies each Sillis carried, they could score a significant victory every time they destroyed one of them. The Syndics started launching raids targeted on every Sillis they could find, tearing past other targets to destroy the big prize.”

  Geary nodded as a memory came to him. “At Corvus, I saw a Syndic light cruiser that was designed to take out targets like that.”

  “Corvus?” Kim asked, puzzled.

  “A Syndic star system. One jump away from Prime.”

  “Damn,” Colonel Kim said admiringly. “You were right in the Syndics’ guts, weren’t you?”

  “We never should have built something that was such an attractive target and couldn’t defend itself,” Colonel Voston grumbled.

  “It made sense from a logistics standpoint,” Kim said. “Just not from a war standpoint. You’d think after so many decades of fighting, the brass would have realized that.”

  “I don’t spend much time assuming the brass will figure things out,” Voston said sourly, then realized he had said that in Geary’s presence. “Admiral, I apologize for—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Geary looked over at Duellos, who hadn’t said anything since being introduced and apparently didn’t plan on saying anything. “Let’s get started. I understand that General Shwartz has recommended that your regiment, Colonel Kim, provide security on the refugee ships.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get me a plan for dividing up your force. They won’t be alone. We’ll have all of my warships nearby, and if any emergency pops up, we’ll have three platoons of Marines for immediate reinforcement on any ship that needs it, as well as Colonel Voston’s regiment if more ground forces are needed.”

  Voston spoke slowly, as if trying to ensure his words were understood. “My regiment is full of soldiers who have lots of time in combat, Admiral.”

  “I’ve been told that,” Geary replied.

  “Yes, but . . . Admiral, there’s a reason we haven’t been sent back into offensive operations. I’ve got a lot of people who’ve been pushed to borderline status. I think they’ve been kept active only because the medical treatment costs for them once discharged would help overwhelm the treatment centers in their home star systems. They’re good soldiers. Good fighters. Good people. But they’ve been through hell. More than once. They might shoot when they shouldn’t. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Colonel, I understand. Can they still handle this kind of mission?” Had Sissons burdened him with useless troops, soldiers too burned out to function anymore?

  “They’re good soldiers!” Colonel Voston repeated, his voice rising. “Excuse me, Admiral. They can do the job. Put them in combat, and they’ll know what to do. Tell them to set up a security perimeter, and they’ll hold it. But if you put them into some more ambiguous situation, they might . . . overreact.”

  “I see.” Geary nodded his understanding to the colonel. “How about you?”

  Voston smiled crookedly. “I won’t let you down. I won’t let my soldiers down. But, yeah, I’m pretty burnt, too.”

  “All right.” Geary activated the star display on the table. “There’s going to have to be a lot of improvisation because of how little we know about the tactical situation. I intend coming into Batara ready to shove the refugees back down the throats of the government there. I want to do that in a manner that makes it clear they had better not toss any more refugees our way. Colonel Kim, your soldiers will make sure the refugees board shuttles to be dropped off at Batara without rioting or just passively refusing to go. Colonel Voston, your regiment will provide security at the place where we drop them off.”

  “The locals are going to object?” Voston asked.

  “Very likely. From what I hear of the current local leaders, they’re way too much like Syndics for my taste.”

  “We can handle anything they throw at us.”

  “You’ll have fleet warships providing fire support,” Geary added. “Once we have the refugees dropped off, I’m considering continuing onward to Tiyannak.”

  Colonel Kim gave him a doubtful look. “There’s nothing about Tiyannak in my orders, Admiral.”

  “I shouldn’t need you there. If the situation looks calm enough, I’ll send you back from Batara with my light cruisers as escorts before proceeding to Tiyannak. There’s a former Syndic battleship that needs to be eliminated as a threat. Ideally, we’ll be able to hit it in the dock where it’s being repaired.”

  “And if everything goes to hell?” Voston asked.

  “Then we’ll improvise and respond as necessary. My three objectives are to return the refugees, try to ensure that the refugees don’t get sent here again, and take out that battleship. You two only have to worry about the first couple of those.”

  “No problem,” Colonel Voston said.

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Kim agreed.

  “Let me know how soon we can get going. The sooner we hit Batara, the sooner we can hit Tiyannak, and if we hit them soon enough, Tiyannak may not have that battleship working yet.”

  After Kim said her farewells, her image vanished, but Voston lingered, eyeing Duellos.

  “Captain,” Geary said, “can I have a moment alone with the colonel?”

  “Certainly,” Duellos said. He stood up with careful deliberation, then saluted Voston with the same slow precision before leaving the compartment.

  Voston watched him go, then looked at Geary. “Admiral, I think you know why General Sissons tapped me and my soldiers for this. He expects us to screw up. He expects us to fail. Which I guess might make you look bad, or at least cause you a lot of extra trouble. But I want you to know that we won’t screw up. We’re not angels in the barracks, but in combat we’ve never let anyone down. You can count on us.”

  “I never doubted it, Colonel,” Geary said.

  • • •

  IT took close to two weeks for the two ground forces regiments to be organized and loaded, and for three of Colonel Galland’s FACs to be eased onto the shuttle docks aboard Inspire, Formidable, and Implacable. Geary watched the lethargic process with growing impatience, unable to do much as the wheels of the ground forces bureaucracy and the Adriana government bureaucracy ground slowly toward actually getting anything done. He had no doubt that General Sissons was tossing all of the sand possible into the gears driving the ground forces’ wheels, and wished mightily that Victoria Rione were here to help bypass the countless layers of approval required for the Adriana government to lease the necessary transport for the ground forces.

  More than once he found himself regretting ruling out employing TECA and envying the leaders of Midway. Having dictatorial control and the ability to throw laggards into prison just for taking their own sweet time to get things done seemed more attractive with every day that crawled by.

  And with so many of Adriana’s self-defense forces coming along to Batara, it seemed as if every soldier in that regiment, all of their families, and everyone else in Adriana Star System were talking about it. If Tiyannak didn’t get advance warning of all this, it would be purely due to the vast distances between stars and the still-limited time for some ship to carry the word there.

  Finally, the day came. The refugees maintained a sullen, watchful silence under the eyes of Colonel Kim’s soldiers as the freighters carrying all of them began accelerating toward the jump point for Yokai.

  Geary ordered his warships into motion, pacing the clumsy freighters and wishing for the thousandth time that auxiliaries and freighters could accelerate like warships.

  Duellos sat next to him on the bridge of Inspire, watching his display. As the large convoy of refugee ships (which more closely resembled a swarm of gnats herded by the warships than an organized formation) settled onto a vector for the jump point, Duellos glanced at Geary. “We haven’t seen any new refugee ships arrive from Batara since that one with the power core problems about three weeks
ago.”

  “I noticed,” Geary said. “Colonel Galland said they were formerly showing up at a rate of one or two a week.”

  “I have a feeling that’s a bad thing,” Duellos continued. “That it may indicate that conditions at Batara have already changed.”

  “I have the same feeling,” Geary said. “The living stars know there’s been enough time wasted for conditions to change. We’ll be jumping to Yokai in combat formation.”

  ELEVEN

  YOKAI did not prove to be as empty as hoped.

  Geary had jumped there prepared for battle. The battle cruisers and half the destroyers arrived ten minutes before the light cruisers, the rest of the destroyers, and the clutter of refugee freighters. Nothing waited near the jump exit, though, except a few automated Alliance navigation buoys, which were continuing the same mechanically mandated roles they had fulfilled for decades. Amidst the quiet of the shut-down defenses elsewhere at Yokai, one object stood out as very much active.

  “Syndic Hunter-Killer,” the combat watch-stander said. “Right next to the jump point for Batara.”

  “A picket ship,” Duellos observed. “But whose picket ship?”

  The jump exit for Batara was on the other side of the star system, nearly seven light-hours distant. “Let’s see what he does when he sees us,” Geary said. “Are there any indications that someone is trying to set up shop here?”

  “There aren’t any signs that anyone has broken into any of the mothballed defense sites,” Duellos replied.