The Odyssey and the Iliad (Kinsella Universe Book 7)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Major Duckworth laughed. “Do you know what Admiral Gull said when he briefed me, Ensign Ruiz?

  “No, sir.”

  “If Steve Yardley or Yolanda Ruiz offers a plan that doesn’t conflict my orders -- follow it. They are two of the best military planners in the Federation. This doesn’t conflict my orders, gets us out of a very deep hole and delivers us to the vicinity of my boss, Admiral Cloud.

  “Make the calculations, Lieutenant, and tell me when you ready to execute.”

  The comm tech said, “What about informing California?”

  The major shook his head. “There is no need, mister. They can see what we see. We make a course change and they will look at it very hard; they will figure out what we are doing and alert Fleet HQ. Yeah, if we lose the trailers we should return to Snow Dance if we can, but the point is we don’t want any egg breakage -- not when we’re the eggs.”

  The calculations were made and the pilot spoke before he executed the maneuver. “I have to advise that this maneuver brings the alien missiles closer. We need to make a twenty-degree change of course, and the missiles will be able to turn inside of us. No matter how fast we execute, the missiles will be seventeen minutes of travel time closer to us, which means that in a few weeks they will be pacing us, and coming off High Fan would mean instant destruction if they are still there.

  “Shall I proceed?”

  “Execute; the only guarantee in life is death,” the major stated.

  When they were done, the pilot nodded to the sensor tech. “We lost twenty minutes; we can increase power but we’re on the sweet part of the curve. We get diminishing returns on power consumption and a greater risk of a fan failing. We can lose one fan and they will just catch us that much sooner. Two... it’s curtains.”

  “Maintain the pace,” Major Duckworth said.

  It got very boring after that. Steve had found that a several weeks-long trip with classes and duty kept his attention. Being cooped up on a shuttle with forty others was enough to try the patience of Job.

  Still, these were Marines... there was a marathon poker game with serious stakes; there were several others of a more recreational variety.

  Very quickly, the Marines learned not to play with Yolanda because she not only had a poker face, she knew the odds of everything. Steve was shut out of the poker games as well, which seemed to Steve to only be sensible.

  On the eighth day, the duty sensor tech announced that there was only one trailing missile -- one had simply vanished. On day sixteen, the last missile vanished.

  Major Duckworth was apologetic. “We have to continue. Yes, we are closer to Snow Dance than Earth, but we have no idea if one or both of those missiles has a Hail Mary program. Where it shuts down before it fails, in the hopes of luring its target back into range.”

  *** ** ***

  Admiral Gull looked at the admirals assembled and abruptly slammed his fists into the conference table upsetting, a great many coffee cups.

  “I have had the grave misfortune of reporting to Admiral Fletcher that while we destroyed the alien base and the alien fleet, we lost the Congo. Fletcher asked me how it happened and I had to tell him that Admiral Hollister disobeyed orders and got too close to the dash-five planet, and the aliens snuck a gigaton bomb up in the debris. Then he asked about Lieutenant Yardley and I told him that he’d been sent to Snow Dance, but the aliens had some of their homing missiles on his shuttle and they had diverted to Earth -- let me know if they get there.

  “I’m afraid I got something a lot hotter than a purple rocket. Call it the far, far, far ultra-violet.

  “Don’t do as Hollister did -- get down close to the fan well hunting aliens. They are tricky devils. I pride myself on a job well done; this is on me -- failure to command. There had better never be a repeat! Never!

  “Admiral Timmu, the report on the action earlier today.”

  The diminutive admiral stood up. “The aliens arrived at the exact tick determined by Ensign Ruiz. Our ships were in place and fired the missile broadside as planned. Four thousand fighters and eighteen thousand missiles from the battle moons. Half of them were millisecond jumpers.

  “That two minute delay hamstrung them; some vessels tried to maneuver on low fan, but it was too little, too late. Eighteen hundred and forty of their ships were hit in the first salvo. A few dozen fighters were launched, but they were eliminated as well.

  “The backup squadron engaged the survivors more than a minute before they could jump. There were no survivors. There was an element of three ships slightly offset from the main group, but they were killed as well. Probably command and control overwatch.

  “We saw no signs of return fire. This is a significant fact without any explanation. It harkens back to an observation made after Gandalf by David Zinder. The enemy attack stalled for what would be, for us, an unconscionably long time. His belief was that the aliens were having difficulties with chain-of-command issues.

  “What if that wasn’t it? What if the reason for the delay is simple incapacity? They don’t react as we do to High Fan and need a few moments to recover. We have long speculated on the alien propensity for following some master plan that we have no knowledge of. What if that is an adaptation to the effects of High Fan? They set up a plan, and for a couple of minutes, they can’t change it?”

  “Thank you, Admiral Timmu. Now, unfortunately, we have an urgent communication from Merriweather to deal with. Be patient, this won’t take long.”

  The two admirals resumed their positions in their conference room reserved for Richard Merriweather. “Are you prepared to surrender to the Federation, Merriweather?”

  “That battle was a fake!” the dictator said. “It was fought at a distance of twelve light hours! Sensors can barely see that far!”

  “Your sensors. Ours are better. We lost the Congo; it wasn’t a painless victory. That should have been close enough for your sensor techs!”

  “That could have been faked, too!”

  Admiral Gull’s voice turned cold. “You recruited the Campbell’s Home Defense Force with the premise that the Federation wasn’t doing enough to defend Campbell’s. More than five hundred of your fighters, about fifty cruisers from Kalliste are joining our forces to scan the debris field from the battle to see what we can find.

  “They know what they are looking at, Merriweather. You can’t kill all of them when they get back -- and they are going to tout how crazy effective the Fleet was at knocking back a huge attack. They’ll be convinced that the Fleet wasn’t slacking, and they will be convinced that you were lying to them.

  “You might as well surrender, Merriweather!” Admiral Gull concluded.

  The link went down and the two admirals grinned at each other. “Now we have to arrest him!” Admiral Timmu observed.

  “We tried once -- we found Plan B -- and it was a dead end,” Admiral Gull said.

  “Evidently, Black is cleverer than we thought. He had two Plan Bs. One obscured the other in his mind.”

  “We need Yardley for that; a lot is riding on that young man.”

  “Duckworth will take care of him,” Admiral Timmu said.

  *** ** ***

  The shuttle approached Earth, had their IFF verified ten times over, and finally dropped from fans close to Grissom Station.

  Steve Yardley spoke to Vice Admiral Sanchez. “Lieutenant Yardley and party reporting, sir.”

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant,” the admiral said.

  “How did they do at Campbell’s?” was the first question out of Steve’s mouth.

  “Scratch one alien fleet. Thank you very much, Lieutenant!”

  “Were there any other losses, other than Congo?”

  “No, Lieutenant. Still, that hurt like the very devil!”

  “This shuttle was off Congo, sir. A great many of the crew suffered personal losses.”

  “Is Major Duckworth available?” asked Sanchez.

  “Of course, sir.”

  Major Duckworth saluted Adm
iral Sanchez who shook his head, “You never need do that to me again, Major. None of you do. My very great honor, Major, to you and your crew.”

  A day later Steve sat in front of a panel of admirals and politicians. “We have the material you sent to Admiral Gull; we’ve read your report. Is there anything else you want to report?” Admiral Fletcher asked.

  “Sir, it was only when Admiral Sanchez and Major Duckworth were talking about how many aliens might have died at Second Campbell’s. Sir, the aliens are controlled by AIs. The original people are zeroes, sir, to the alien AI’s ways of thinking. There’s part of a senior AI that assigns locals to a crew, but they no more count them than you count the number of fuses you send to a ship. They are just spare parts, mostly interchangeable, and for the most part ignored.

  “The AIs assign themselves to particular tasks. They reach rapid consensus as to what is to be done; as near as I could tell, sir, there is no real debate.

  The AI I overheard thought I was a peer, and then it realized I wasn’t. At first I thought that it had shielded itself, but now I think it simply shut off the connections it had open to others. Like disconnecting a phone.”

  “So there may be a shield to telepathic thought, but just as likely there is not,” Admiral Fletcher said. “The missiles were fired at you after the AI shut down and roughly at the same time as Ensign Ruiz heard their abort command.

  “And she was sure what the message was?”

  Yolanda spoke up. “It was a primal scream, Admiral Fletcher. Lieutenant Yardley told me that it had as full of an access to his thoughts as he had to theirs. The battle plan would have been uppermost in his thoughts.”

  “I’m not sure if you can answer this, Lieutenant -- but did you contact it -- or did it contact you?”

  “The latter, sir. I was talking to our pilot about Marine shuttle piloting, and I felt something. For an instant I wasn’t sure what it was -- but then the AI’s thoughts turned to wondering if our ship presented a threat. It thought not; there have been many such flights before. Then it realized I was in the loop and all hell broke loose.”

  “I wish to say this again and again. You were not responsible for the loss of the Congo. You did what you were told, including making tracks when so ordered. You did the right thing when you changed course for Snow Dance, and you did the right thing again when you diverted for Sirius. There are none of us who think you did less than your duty -- you did more.

  “We’ve sent hasty probes galactic north and south, in case there are more attacks inbound. We’ve sent slop buckets up for your resupply. Suddenly, Earth isn’t as well defended as we thought... we can’t spare any ships to tote you back to Snow Dance -- your first stop.

  “I promoted Commander Booth captain and have given her Thebes. Admiral Merriweather is detached from the Fleet for service at Campbell’s -- although she’s currently not on either Campbell’s or California. Thebes and two battle moons will stay at Campbell’s as an ostentatious show of force. I’ll have orders for you in a short while -- we are still working out the details.”

  They returned to their assault shuttle and Steve and Yolanda sat in the mess area. They talked about nothing much while Major Duckworth dealt with the resupply.

  When Steve woke the next morning, there was a note to see the major at 0900 in his office. That was a curtain-closed cubicle with space for a tiny desk and a chair.

  Steve reported and the major simply said, “We have our orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They confirm that we are to return to Snow Dance. Admiral Gull will be there before we are, but these orders are from Fletcher -- not even Charlie Gull can change them.

  “The primary objective of the Fleet now is to picket all possible routes into the Federation. Discussions have been undertaken at the highest levels as to what we are going to do with the alien bases. There is considerable concern that the aliens can do to people what our own AIs could -- control individuals.

  “You avoided it; Captain Rhodes did as well. Our best guess is that some people are immune, and they were afraid of alerting us early. Perhaps they can only touch telepaths.

  “The remaining AIs extracted a price for using their battle moons at Campbell’s. They are as interested in defeating the aliens as we are. They sent battle moons to all the gas giants in the Snow Dance system and couldn’t make contact with any aliens. They have requested that you do the same thing you did at Campbell’s. Fleet has decided that we have lived with alien bases this long, a clean sweep of their bases in the Federation will give them information that we don’t want them to have. Still, there is a program to identify human telepaths and we will dispatch them to Federation systems. If an attack is detected, the bases would be destroyed.

  “So, as for you and us. You are assigned to ship Mad Hatter; I understand it is a cruiser class despite the whimsical name.”

  “It was Ensign Ruiz’s ship. We know it.”

  “You are authorized to form a team for I-Branch. Initially it will consist of Fleet Captain Shapiro in command of the ship, with an executive officer who is not in the public data base, a Captain Makaa. They have included two Fleet cadets and I quote, ‘For such training purposes as Captain Shapiro determines.’ A Cadet Hightower and a Cadet Maitland.

  “Further, this shuttle is detached for duty with Mad Hatter with me in command of the security detail and the rest of First Platoon (augmented) of Company B, First Battalion of the Second Marines. We are permanently assigned to California base.

  “There is lot of the usual boiler plate; actually quite a lot.

  “Obviously, we will be doing I-Branch tasks. I realize that you won’t be able to explain specific tasks in detail -- but Lieutenant, I’d like a run down on the people I don’t know.”

  Steve grimaced. “Captain Shapiro is in the Fleet public records. She is tough as nails -- she has the Star.”

  “She turned down an award, Lieutenant. Marines think that is the same as disobeying an order.”

  Steve literally counted to ten. Major Duckworth broke in before he finished, “Cat got your tongue, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m just trying to martial my thoughts, sir. Suppose you were called to Admiral Fletcher’s office and told that you’d done well on your last assignment, you’d faced danger and triumphed -- you were to be awarded the Star because you didn’t die with Congo.”

  “Leave Congo out of this!”

  “Major, Captain Shapiro lost all of her people in the Big Battle -- every last one. She was severely wounded herself. She’d flown just as thousands of other pilots had -- and they wanted to give her a gong for coming back. Captain Shapiro was -- rude -- from her sick bed. What would you have done?”

  “Really, they did that?”

  “They told her she was a symbol for all the rest. She told them where to put their symbol.”

  “And this Captain Makaa?”

  “She’s from the Union; she has been genetically adapted for space. You’d have to ask her about her adaptations.

  “Cliff Maitland was with me on an op -- he had a Cold Dark certificate, but it was a basic certificate. At forty minutes, he went catatonic. He’s recovered; the medics say it won’t be a problem in the future.”

  “Still, he won’t be your first choice if there is a next time,” Major Duckworth said.

  Steve shrugged. “Susan Hightower is a pilot trainee; Captain Shapiro graduated with the first fighter transition class. She has been directing Cadet Hightower’s training. Hightower wants to pilot ships, not fighters.”

  “And the ship itself? How is it crewed?”

  “I assume the Fleet knows what it is doing. Mad Hatter can run with one person at the helm. Now it has Shapiro, Makaa and Hightower. It is armed with Blues, but no missiles. It has Union tech -- and you’d have to ask Ensign Ruiz about that.”

  “Why is she still an ensign?”

  “I think they are trying to avoid drawing attention to her. While she is from the Union as well, she’s adapted as a
deep-cover agent. She can read most codes real time; things like that.”

  “And you, Lieutenant?”

  “I also suspect I will have a very hard time getting promoted.”

  “Suspect... or know?”

  “Major, if I ever show evidence of reading people’s minds without cause, I expect my next stop will be a funny farm on Pluto -- a thousand kilometers from another human being. I have too much to lose; too much to live for. Suspect, sir.”

  The major chuckled. “Lean back and relax; we have six and a half weeks to kill until Snow Dance.”

  *** ** ***

  Yolanda was reading a book, so Steve went to the bridge and settled into his position. He glanced at Major Duckworth and the ever-present cigar twirled. Steve laughed and said, “Are we there yet?”

  The cigar froze and the major said, “That joke hasn’t been funny for five hundred years -- and it has been tiresome for every last one of those years.”

  “I only ask as I thought we’d be on our way by now.”

  The pilot tried to head off trouble, “Lieutenant Yardley, Traffic issued a pax hold for us.”

  “No, you can’t move in with your fiancée to ‘save space,’” the major said. “It’s another female ensign and traveling by order of President Drummlin. We are now officially at capacity of this vehicle.”

  “How long is the hold?” Steve asked.

  The pilot spoke up again. “Her shuttle is in the last stages of docking. Call it five minutes.”

  Steve looked with his mind. He was silent for four of the five minutes. “Major Duckworth, have the sergeant-at-arms meet the ensign at the lock and escort her to the bridge. Comms, establish a link to Admiral Fletcher, forthwith. The rest of you, with the exception of Major Duckworth, report to the mess.”

  “What’s going on, Lieutenant?” the major asked.

  “Major, I’m currently locked in a knock-down drag-out fight with a rogue AI; don’t jiggle my elbow.”

  The lock sergeant and Admiral Fletcher’s calls came at the same time. “The ensign is disoriented, Major, she can barely walk,” the dock sergeant said.