Gust Front

by John Ringo

  "Not for being on Diess, mon Général," corrected Géneral Crenaus's senior aide from the periphery where the aides danced attendance. "It is a Federation recognition device for being in the effect zone of a nuclear blast."

  "Oui, this one is entirely our young friend's fault," laughed the boisterous French general, thumbing in the direction of the captain. "However, on reflection, I can hardly fault him."

  "Fine, great," said Mike, feeling the bourbons the senior officers had been pressing on him. "Next time I'll leave your Frog ass swinging in the breeze."

  Géneral Crenaus laughed uproariously to the apparent relief of the officers in the outer ring. "I sincerely desire that there is never another such incident, my young capitaine."

  Mike, in the meantime, was rather drunkenly looking at his Star Burst medal upside down. "You know the bastard part of it, sir?" he asked as he swayed forward and back; trying to maintain balance with his head down was getting harder and harder.

  "What?" asked General Horner, knocking back his Absolut and picking another off a passing tray.

  "I don't remember a bit of it. I mean, some of the guys got to really groove with the experience. Some of the platoon couldn't find bolt holes in time and they were on the roofs when it went. Now that would be a rush."

  "A rush?" gasped one of the colonels in the periphery.

  Mike rounded on the officer, with a look of disbelief on his face. "Sure, sir, can't you just see it? That wall of flame coming right at you and all you can do is duck and cover? I mean, like, what a rush!" He smiled ferally as the generals laughed. Most of the American aides, none less than a major in rank, were remarkably short on medals indicating combat time. They obviously were not sure to what extent the aggressive captain was joking.

  Crenaus's aide, wearing the same medal, snorted and shook his head. Having met the junior officer at his best, and worst, he had no doubt of the little firecracker's sincerity. Deuxieme Armore called him "The Little Shrew" and spoke it in hushed tones. Not for any spitefulness, but because, weight for ferocity, shrews were the most deadly thing on earth. And quite utterly fearless.

  "Oui, in a suit perhaps," interjected Géneral Crenaus, genially. "But most of us were not in suits. It was quite unpleasant from my point of view."

  "Sure, sir," slurred Mike. "That's why I gave you thirty—hic—seconds warning."

  "Twenty. You said thirty and detonated at twenty. Merci beaucoup, by the way, and what a surprise that was!"

  "C'est la guerre. Vingt, trente, who's counting."

  "We were, certainment. With our, how do you say it? 'pedal to the metal' we were. 'Dix-neuf . . . ' Wham! Zee Camera of God!" the general continued, mock angrily.

  "Bitch, bitch, bitch," Mike snorted and took another slug.

  Géneral Crenaus laughed again, hard, as at another thought. "Your Private Buckley did not think it was, as you say, a 'roosh.' "

  "Heh, yeah, I heard that one afterwards. Hah! And I thought I was havin' a bad day."

  "Would you care to let the rest of us in on the joke?" asked General Taylor, settling rather heavily on the head table.

  "Oui, it is a good one," said Géneral Crenaus, gesturing at Mike.

  "Well, come on in when you want. Where to begin?" mused Mike, taking a sip of bourbon.

  "At the beginning is usually best," commented General Horner dryly. The dozen or so Absoluts had seemed to effect Horner not at all. Mike had heard he had a hollow leg. Now he believed it. The only way to tell he was drunk off his ass was that his normally sober expression had become like iron. Way drunk.

  "Yeah. Well, Buckley was one of the guys caught under Qualtren. Now, we had to extract ourselves from the rubble, which we did by blowing through with our grenades and stuff, not a technique I suggest to the unarmored."

  "Oui, they are after all . . ."

  " . . . antimatter!" Mike finished. "Right. So, everybody was able to figure out how to do this successfully except the unfortunate Private Buckley, or Lefty as we came to call him. Private 'Lefty' Buckley, on his first try, slipped out his grenade, extended it as far away as he could, since it was, after all . . ."

  " . . . antimatter!" chorused Géneral Crenaus and his aide.

  "Right. So he sticks his arm out as far as it will go, pushing through the rubble, and thumbs the activator."

  "Oui, oui! Only to find that he can't retract his arm!" crowed the French general, belly laughing.

  "Yeah! The rubble shifted and it's caught. So, like, this is gonna huuurt, right? Actually, it only hurts for a second 'cause of all the suit systems. Blocks the nerve, shuts down the bleeding, debrides and disinfects the wound, all in seconds. But, ya know, ya got to imagine, I mean . . ."

  "It's a ten-second count?" asked General Horner, looking grim, which for him was the same as smiling.

  "Right, right. So like . . ."

  "Dix, neuf, huit, sept . . ." interjected Crenaus, with tears of laughter in his eyes.

  "Right, ten, nine . . ." Mike translated, "and then . . ."

  "Wham!" interjected General Taylor, laughing.

  "Right. Like, 'Whoa, is this a Monday or what?' Anyway, it didn't, doesn't really hurt, or it wouldn't be so funny. Just the really brief but memorable sensation of your hand vaporizing."

  "So, what does that have to do with the command ship detonation?" asked one of the surrounding aides.

  "Well," continued Mike, with another sip of bourbon. "Lefty has made it to the perimeter, and performed a really decent private's job, as well as he can left-handed. And when the command ship lifts he's one of the guys that goes with Sergeant Green." Mike paused and solemnly lifted his glass. "Absent companions . . ."

  "Absent companions," the officers chorused.

  " . . . he went with Staff Sergeant Alonisus Green to distract the command ship away from the Main Line of Resistance and focus its attention so that I could attempt to plant a friggin' antimatter mine on its side," he ended, quite solemnly.

  "There was supposed to be a humorous punch line," said General Horner as the pause became elongated.

  "Right, sir," said Captain O'Neal after a sip of his sour mash. " . . . so anyway the whole cockamamie thing works, I get through the defenses, plant the mine and do my now famous imitation of a piece of radioactive fallout . . ."

  "Ten seconds early, might I add!" interjected Géneral Crenaus.

  "Man, some people wouldn't be happy if you hanged them with a gold rope! I go 'to infinity and beyond' and all the friggin' Frenchie can do is complain about premature detonations. Where was I, sirs?"

  "Detonation," answered a very junior aide, a mere stripling of a major.

  "Right," said the captain. "Well, the mine works like a charm, except for some minor little secondary effects . . ."

  "Another three meters and I would have been steak tartare!" the general shouted, holding his arms in the air.

  "With all due respect: Quit interrupting, General, sir. Anyway it packs about the wallop of a Class Three Space Mine and it causes some nasty secondaries, most of which are, fortunately, directed away from the MLR and certain unnamed ungrateful Frenchmen . . ." commented Captain O'Neal, rolling his eyes.

  "Did I say I was ungrateful? General Taylor, General Horner, I call you to witness, I never have said I was ungrateful. Nervous? A touch. Frightened? Merde, yes! But not ungrateful, you dwarf poltroon!"

  "Hah, stork! Anyway, it tears the living shit out of the command ship, but about a third of the ship hangs together. It apparently was really spectacularly visible from some of the positions on the MLR. This big piece of space cruiser describes a beautiful ballistic arc almost straight up, looking like it's moving in slow motion," expounded Captain O'Neal, gesturing with both hands. "You have to remember, this is to the background of a relatively small but quite noticeable nuclear blast . . ."

  "About four kilotons," interjected Géneral Crenaus, taking a hard pull on his cognac, "and less than a kilometer away!"

  "More like three kilometers. Anyway, it rides up on th
e mushroom cloud, describes this tremendous vertical arc and comes gracefully back down . . ."

  "Right on Buckley," hooted Géneral Crenaus and cracked up.

  " . . . right smack dab on Private Second Class Buckley. He was one of the guys who was on the roofs, in the blast radius . . ."

  "Sacré Bleu! I was in the blast radius!"

  "You guys should have hardly felt it in the blast shadow from the buildings!"

  "Blast shadow he calls it! Oui! They were around our ears!" shouted the general, hands waving on either side of his head. "I know, I know . . ." he continued, holding up a hand.

  "Bitch, bitch . . . anyway, here's Buckley, grav-boots clamped to some nice powerful structure, miraculously alive, survives looking right into the shockwave, survives looking right into the neutron pulse, survives looking right into the thermal pulse . . ." Mike paused dramatically.

  "It didn't kill him, did it?" asked one of the aides, right on cue.

  "In a suit? Nah, but it did knock him clean out. And this time he waited for somebody to come dig him up. He kinda had to since he was about fifty stories down in the building with a quarter kilometer of space cruiser on top of him," ended Captain O'Neal, chuckling.

  "To Private Buckley!" roared Géneral Crenaus, raising his brandy on high.

  "To Private Buckley!" roared Captain O'Neal. "And all the other poor sods who wear the Mask of Hell!" he ended, a touch bitterly.

  "Here, here," chorused General Taylor, after there was a moment's uncomfortable pause, and everyone raised their glasses and drank. "Is that what you call it, Mike?"

  "Isn't it, sir?" asked Captain O'Neal, swaying like an oak in the wind. "I may joke about a rush, but it's armor that you can take into a friggin' nuclear blast. As we have, and will have to again. What else is the mission that I have been working on for two weeks? To go where no one else can go, to do what no one else can do and to do that until we are no more.

  "For whatever goddamn reason we are going to get hit with five times the number of Posleen pointed at Barwhon and Diess. As we are all well aware. That level of force will leave us totally invested. No large ships are going to be able to sneak through that firepower!

  "So, from when the Posleen land until Fleet is strong enough to invest us and take out the landers, we will be cut off from resupply of GalTech. And that means ten little MI troopers . . . nine little MI troopers . . . eight little MI troopers, until 'we're singing Glory be to God that there are no more of us, cause one of us could drink it all alone.' And it is my a-hoo-wah job to take my company into that maelstrom of nukes and gas and hypervelocity missile rounds and fight the Posleen on their own turf at up to one-thousand-to-one odds and cover all the other troops who don't have the equipment to experience it.

  "Yes, sir," finished Mike. "I designed it, I made it, I live it and I call it the Mask of Hell. And all who wear it are the Damned!" he ended softly.

  CHAPTER 17

  Lunar Orbit, Sol III

  2230 EDT September 13th, 2004 ad

  "Oh, I will be God damned!" If anyone had been present when Captain Weston opened the e-mail from Fleet HQ on Titan Base, they would have been amazed at her command of invective. She managed to curse for a solid pair of minutes without repeating herself once. At the end of the diatribe she cut herself off abruptly, realizing that the stresses of the new command were causing the reaction.

  In the short time she had been there, the only thing she had been able to determine was that the situation was worse than expected. She now realized that keeping the systems on-line had meant not only Herculean effort on the part of her XO, but sheer good luck. Any of the jury-rigged repairs, patches and add-ons could cut out at any time. This would make it appear that Captain April Weston was not quite as competent as some had supposed. She doubted it would destroy her career, but it would be awfully embarrassing.

  For that matter they might not have to worry too much about embarrassment. With the forward deflector screen out any Posleen missile that made it through the defenses would have a free ride. The detonation of a twenty-kiloton nuclear missile in contact with the hull would erase any need to worry about career advancement.

  The parts were bound to turn up sooner or later. And the XO was just as good as advertised at wheedling them out of Titan Base and getting the Indowy to venture out of their quarters and install them. Losing her "immediately" and without any warning for a two-week leave was not good news.

  The other side of the ledger, however, was that the XO definitely needed some time off. She had brightened up in the last few days, but it was a brittle brightness. She definitely needed some shore leave.

  So be it. Far be it from April Weston to hold someone back from their just deserts. If Uncle Al Bledspeth thought it was a good idea then it was a good idea. But when she found whoever it was pulling the strings in the background, she was going to have their guts for garters. She hated figuring out who was conspiring with whom.

  * * *

  "Nathan!" came the pleased cry.

  Monsignor O'Reilly looked over his shoulder and stood up in greeting. "Paul, how are you?"

  The short, balding, dapper man was finely dressed in a tailored silk suit shot through with threads of purple and green that caught the soft lighting in the Century Club dining room. He smiled at his old friend and shook his hand vigorously.

  "Oh, well, my friend, well." He was accompanied by an Indowy. While they were no longer in the two-headed calf category, it was exceedingly rare to see one in public. Paul des Jardins gestured at the alien. "Monsignor Nathan O'Reilly, I would be pleased to introduce you to the Indowy Aelool."

  O'Reilly was aware that Indowy did not consider touching to be an appropriate action. Like the Japanese they engaged in a variety of bows depending on status. Since he had no idea what its status would be to the Galactics and since he had no conception of the Indowy's rank, trying to bow appropriately would be an exercise in futility. He settled for bowing his head fractionally.

  He also was unsure of the Indowy's sex. They had male, female and transfer neuter to choose from and there was no discrimination. They also were difficult to discern: The Indowy did not have significant external physical sexual expression such as mammaries. And their subtle expression—their equivalent of softer skin and rounded hips—was notoriously hard to spot. After a moment's introspection he decided that the neuter forms of speech would be best. Male and female Indowy rarely objected to an accidental neuter reference, but transfer neuters tended to treat male/female references with humor.

  The Indowy had an aura of peace and calm that was rarely found when they were near humans. Normally the little creatures were as nervous as cats in a room full of rocking chairs. This one did not even flinch at the sight of humans eating meat.

  "Indowy Aelool, I see you." He was enough of a student of the Galactics to know their greetings. Actually he was enough of a student of the Galactics to know three of the extraterrestrial languages. He still had no idea why Paul had tracked him down at the Club. They normally used cut-outs. This was lousy tradecraft and could damage an executive cell. He was furious; Paul had better have a damn good reason for this.

  "Please." He gestured at his table. "Sit down." The damage, if any, was done. Might as well play the hand.

  "I'm glad you were here, Nathan," said Paul, taking a seat. One of the hovering waiters came forward and replaced the high-backed leather chair with one designed for Indowy. Nathan had not been aware that the club had them, but he was not surprised. The Century Club was one of the most exclusive clubs in Washington. Since it catered to the highest class of clientele, it undoubtedly had preparations for every type of Galactic visitor. "The Indowy Aelool is heading off-planet shortly and I wanted you to get a chance to meet him."

  "There was so much to do," said the diminutive alien in a soft, high voice. Monsignor O'Reilly suddenly realized that the Indowy had spoken English rather than use an AID translator and was surprised. As far as he knew, no Indowys spoke the language or any
language but Indowy. It was generally believed that their vocal resonance cavities could not form human-style words. What other capabilities might they be hiding? "My team has just completed the armoring of the First Battalion of your Five-Fifty-Fifth Fleet Strike and I was to head back to Irmansul immediately. However, my good friend Monsieur des Jardins insisted that I meet you. As he said, 'A stitch in time saves nine.' "

  O'Reilly paid no attention to the code phrase, simply nodding and taking a sip of the fruity Washington State Beaujolais the waiter had delivered earlier. As he did his mind raced and a series of pieces fell into place.

  Apparently Paul or someone high among the Fellowship had decided that the Indowy was the perfect conduit into the Galactics. And he was sure enough to possibly burn his sole contact to O'Reilly's Société. The Fellowship and the Société had similar aims, but O'Reilly was, as far as he knew, the sole link. If this little meeting exposed him it would set back the work a decade. On the other hand, access to Galactic technology was imperative. Both groups were hampered by imperfect knowledge of the Galactics' surveillance capabilities.

  And the Indowy always insisted on a face-to-face meeting before any serious alliance was joined. From what he had been able to glean from current study, and on the basis of Société records, he could understand why. The Darhel had owned the electronic information systems of the Galactic Federation for thousands of years. That gave them the ability to create any illusion they chose using those systems. Face-to-face was the only way to be sure you were talking to an actual contact.

  The logic complete he nodded to himself internally. The risk was worth the action. He would have to sever himself from Paul as a contact for some time to come. However, they would still be able to use intermediaries. And there was always the Internet. The chaotic system still seemed to have the Darhel confused; they depended upon filtering proxy servers for information control and the American Supreme Court—bless those nine unknowing fools—had recently ruled them unconstitutional.