The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

by Ian Whates

  She heard the footfalls of one of the Patrol, walking close. She kept her eyes on the driver’s pistol. The second it moved, she would act.

  Then the driver gave a startled grunt, and the van surged forward. The knuckles relaxed on the pistol.

  “She waved us through,” the driver said.

  There was a moment of disbelieving silence, and then Sula heard the rustle and shift of ten tense, frightened, heavily armed people all relaxing at once.

  The van accelerated. Sula let the breath sigh slowly from her lungs, and put her rifle carefully down on the floor of the vehicle. She turned to the others and saw at least six cigarettes being lit. Then she laughed and sat heavily on the floor.

  Casimir turned to her, his expression filled with a kind of savage wonder. “That was lucky,” he said.

  Sula didn’t answer. She only looked at him, at the pulse throbbing in his neck, the slight glisten of sweat at the base of his throat, the fine mad glitter in his eyes. She had never wanted anything so much.

  “Lucky,” he said again.

  She didn’t touch Casimir till they reached Riverside, when the van pulled up outside the Hotel of Many Blessings. Careful not to touch him, she followed him out of the van – the others would store the weapons – and then went with him to his suite, keeping half a pace apart on the elevator.

  He turned to her, and she reached forward and tore open his shirt so that she could lick the burning adrenaline from his skin.

  His frenzy equalled hers. Their blood smoked with the excitement of shared danger, and the only way to relieve the heat was to spend it on each other.

  They laughed. They shrieked. They snarled. They tumbled over each other like lion cubs, claws only half-sheathed. They pressed skin to skin so hard that it seemed as if they were trying to climb into one another.

  The fury spent itself some time after midnight. Casimir called room service for something to eat. Sula craved chocolate, but there was none to be had. For a brief moment she considered breaking into her own warehouse to satisfy her hunger.

  “For once,” he said, as he cut his omelette with a fork and slid half of it onto Sula’s plate, “for once you didn’t sound like you came from Riverside.”

  “Yes?” Sula raised an eyebrow.

  “And you didn’t sound like Lady Sula either. You had some other accent, one I’d never heard before.”

  “It’s an accent I’ll use only with you,” Sula said.

  The accent of the Fabs, on Spannan. The voice of Gredel.

  Lady Mitsuko signed the transfer order that morning. Transport wasn’t arranged till the afternoon, so Julien and the other eleven arrived at the Riverside station late in the afternoon, about six.

  Sergius Bakshi had a long-standing arrangement with the captain of the Riverside station. Julien’s freedom cost two hundred zeniths. Veronika cost fifty, and the Cree cook a mere fifteen.

  Julien would have been on his way by seven, but it was necessary to wait for the Naxid supervisor, the one who approved all the ration cards, to leave.

  Still suffering from his interrogation, Julien limped to liberty, on the night that the Naxids announced that the Committee to Save the Praxis, their own government, was already on its way from Naxas to take up residence in the High City of Zanshaa. A new Convocation would be assembled, composed both of Naxids and other races, to be the supreme governing body of their empire.

  “Here’s hoping we can give them a hot landing,” Sula said. She was among the guests at Sergius’s welcome-home dinner, along with Julien’s mother, a tall, gaunt woman, forbidding as a statue, who burst into tears at the sight of him.

  Veronika was not present. Interrogation had broken a cheekbone and the orbit of one eye: Julien had called a surgeon, and in the meantime had provided painkillers.

  “I’ll give them a welcome,” Julien said grimly, through lips that had been bruised and cut. “I’ll rip the bastards to bits.”

  Sula looked across the table at Sergius, and silently mimed the word “ten” at him. He smiled at her, and when he looked at Julien the smile turned hard.

  “Ten,” he said. “Why stop there?”

  Sula smiled. At last she had her army. Her own team of three plus a tough, disciplined order of killers who had decided – after a proper show of resistance – to be loved.

  THE PRICE

  Michael Z. Williamson

  Inevitably combatants get killed in war, yet some must choose their deaths …

  Michael Z. Williamson was born and raised in the UK, then in Canada, then in the US. He served twenty-five years in the US military in engineer fields, in the Army and US Air Force, with deployments for Operation Desert Fox and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He retired in 2010. When not writing, he tests and reviews, restores and repairs, builds and collects firearms and edged weapons. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife Gail Sanders, a veteran US Army combat photographer, and two children who are studying languages, history and mathematics with the intent of world domination.

  FOUR JEMMA TWO Three, Freehold of Grainne Military Forces, (J Frame Craft, Reconnaissance, Stealth), was a tired boat with a tired crew.

  After two local years – three Earth years – of war with the United Nations of Earth and Space, that was no small accomplishment. Most of her sister vessels had been destroyed. That 4J23 was intact, functional and only slightly ragged with a few “character traits” spoke well of her remarkable crew.

  “I have a message, and I can’t decode it with my comm,” Warrant Leader Derek Costlow announced. The crew turned to him. This could be a welcome break from the monotony of maintenance. Jan Marsich and his sister Meka, both from Special Warfare and passengers stuck aboard since the war started, paid particular attention. Any chance of finding a real mission or transport back to Grainne proper was of interest to them.

  “Want me to have a whack at it, Warrant?” asked Sergeant Melanie Sarendy, head of the intelligence mission crew.

  “If you would, Mel.” He nodded. “I’ll forward the data to your system.”

  Sarendy dropped her game control, which was hardwired and shielded rather than wireless. Intel boats radiated almost no signature. The handheld floated where it was until disturbed by the eddies of her passage.

  Jan asked, “Why do we have a message when we’re tethered to the Rock? From who?”

  Meka wrinkled her brow. “That’s an interesting series of questions,” she commented.

  “The Rock” was a field-expedient facility with no official name other than a catalogue number of use only for communication logs. The engineers who carved and blasted it from a planetoid, the boat crews who used it, the worn and chronically short-handed maintenance personnel aboard had had too little time to waste on trivialities such as names. There were other such facilities throughout the system, but few of the surviving vessels strayed far enough from their own bases to consort with other stations. “The Rock” sufficed.

  They were both attentive again as Sarendy returned. She looked around at the eyes on her, and said, “Sorry. Whatever it is, I don’t have a key for it.”

  Meka quivered alert. “Mind if I try?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Costlow replied.

  She grabbed her comm and plugged it into a port as everyone waited silently. She identified herself through several layers of security and the machine conceded that perhaps it might have heard of that code. A few more jumped hoops and it flashed a translation on her screen.

  The silence grew even more palpable when she looked up with her eyes blurring with tears. “Warrant,” she said, voice cracking, and locked eyes with him.

  Costlow glanced around the cabin, and in seconds everyone departed for their duty stations or favourite hidey-holes, leaving the two of them and Jan in relative privacy. Jan was family, and Costlow let him stay. In response to the worried looks from the two of them, Meka turned her screen to face them.

  The message was brief and said simply, “YOU ARE ORDERED TO DESTROY AS MANY OF THE FOLLOWING PRIOR
ITIZED TARGETS AS POSSIBLE. ANY AND ALL ASSETS AND RESOURCES ARE TO BE UTILIZED TO ACCOMPLISH THIS MISSION. SIGNED, NAUMANN, COLONEL COMMANDING, PROVISIONAL FREEHOLD MILITARY FORCES. VERIFICATION X247.” Attached were a list of targets and a time frame. All the targets were in a radius around Jump Point Three, within about a day of their current location.

  “I don’t understand,” Jan said. “Intel boats don’t carry heavy weapons. How do they expect us to do this?”

  “It was addressed to me, not the boat,” Meka replied. “He wants me to take out these targets, using any means necessary.”

  That didn’t need translating. There was a silence, broken by Costlow asking, “Are you sure that’s a legit order? It looks pointless. Why would they have you attack stuff way out here in the Halo?”

  Meka replied, “We know what the enemy has insystem. We know where most of their infrastructure is. If Naumann wants it taken out, it means he’s preparing an offensive.”

  “But this is insane!” Jan protested. “The Aardvarks will have any target replaced in days!”

  “No,” Meka replied, shaking her head. “It’s a legit order. All those targets are intel or command and control.”

  Costlow said, “So he wants the command infrastructure taken out to prevent them responding quickly. Then he hits them with physical force.”

  “OK, but why not just bomb them or use rocks in fast trajectories?” Jan asked.

  Costlow said, “It would take too long to set that many rocks in orbit. Nor could we get them moving fast enough. Manoeuvring thrusters and standard meteor watch would take care of them. As to bombing them, they all have defensive grids, and we’re a recon boat.”

  Jan paused and nodded. “Yeah, I know. And there aren’t many real gunboats left. I’d just like a safer method.” He asked Meka, “So how could you get in?”

  “UN stations have sensor holes to ignore vacsuits and toolkits. Ships can’t get in, but a single person can.”

  Costlow looked confused. “Why’d they leave a hole like that?” he asked.

  “Partly to prevent accidents with EVA and rescue, partly laziness. They lost a couple of people, and that’s just not socially acceptable on Earth,” she said. “It’s the Blazer’s greatest asset to penetrating security. Systems only work if they are used. Back doors and human stupidity are some of our best tools.”

  “Didn’t they think anyone would do what you’re discussing?” Jan asked. That was dangerous. It would push EVA gear to the edge.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “They would never give such an order. The political bureaucracy of the UNPF requires all missions be planned with no loss of life. Not minimal, but zero. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but that’s how they do things.”

  “And they don’t think we’d do it?” Costlow asked.

  “Why should they assume we’d do it if they wouldn’t? You’re having a hard enough time with the concept.”

  Jan asked, “So you EVA in, and then back out?”

  “How would I find a stealthed boat from a suit? How would you find me? It’s not as if there’s enough power to just loiter, and doing so would show on any scan.” Her expression was flushed, nauseous and half grinning. It was creepy.

  “But even if you get through, they can still get new forces here in short order,” Jan said. He didn’t want his sister to die, because that’s what this was: a literal suicide mission. His own guts churned.

  “No,” Meka replied. “Or, not fast enough to matter, I should say.” She tapped tactical calculus algorithms into her comm while mumbling, “Minimum twenty hours to get a message relayed to Sol … flight time through Jump Point Two …”

  Jan had forgotten that. Jump Point One came straight from Sol, but it no longer existed. Professor Meacham and his wife had taken their hyperdrive research ship into it, then activated phase drive. The result of two intersecting stardrive fields was hard to describe mathematically, but the practical, strategic result was that the point collapsed. No jump drive vessel could transit directly from Sol to Grainne any more, and the UN didn’t yet have any phase drive vessels that they knew of.

  Meka finished mumbling, looked up, and said, “Median estimate of forty-three days to get sufficient force here. They could have command and control back theoretically in forty hours, median two eighty-six, but that doesn’t help them if they are overrun. It’s risky, but we don’t have any other option.”

  Costlow said, “That may be true, but they can send more force. It’s a short-term tactical gain, but not a strategic win.”

  “I know Naumann,” Meka replied firmly. “He has something planned.”

  “Unless it’s desperation,” Costlow said.

  Shaking her head, her body unconsciously twisting to compensate, she said, “No. He never throws his people away, and he has very low casualty counts. If he wants me to do this, then he has a valid plan.”

  “Trusting him with your life is dangerous, especially since you don’t even know that’s him,” Jan said. They’d almost died three times now. She’d almost died a couple more. This one was for real.

  “We’re trusting him with more than that,” she said. “And that’s definitely him. Security protocols aside, no one else would have the balls to give an order like that and just assume it would be followed. Besides, it authenticates.”

  “OK,” Costlow reluctantly agreed. “Which target are you taking?”

  She pointed as she spoke, “Well, the command ship London is the first choice, but I don’t think I can get near a ship. This crewed platform is second, but I’d have to blast or fight my way in. If I fail, I still die, and accomplish nothing. I suppose I have to chicken out and take the automatic commo station.”

  “Odd way to chicken out,” Jan commented in a murmur.

  “Are you sure of these priorities?” Costlow asked. His teeth were grinding and he looked very bothered.

  “Yes,” she replied. “If I had more resources, I’d take London, too. We don’t have any offensive missiles, though.”

  “We have one,” the older man softly replied. They looked at him silently. “If you’re sure that’s a good order,” he said. His face turned from tan to ashen as he spoke.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Then I’ll drop you on the way. Just think of this as an intelligent stealth missile,” he said, and tried to smile. It looked like a rictus.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “No,” he admitted. “But if it’s what we have to do to win …”

  There was silence for a few moments. Hating himself for not speaking already, hating the others even though it wasn’t their fault, Jan said, “I’ll take the automatic station.” Saying it was more concrete than thinking it. His guts began twisting and roiling, and cold sweat burst from his body. He felt shock and adrenaline course through him. “That takes it out of the equation, and you can fight your way into the crewed one.”

  Costlow said, “It’s appreciated, Jan, but you’re tech branch. I think you’d be of more help here.”

  It was a perfect escape, and Meka’s expression said she wasn’t going to tell his secret if he wanted to stop there. He was a Special Projects technician who built custom gear for others, usually in close support, but too valuable to be directly combatant save in emergencies. The act of volunteering was more than enough for most people, and he could gracefully bow out. He felt himself talking, brain whirling as he did. “I do EVA as a hobby. I’m not as good as Meka, but I can manage, given the gear.” There. Now he was committed.

  “You don’t have to, Jan,” Meka said. “There are other Blazers. We’ll get enough targets.”

  “Meka, I’m not doing this out of inadequacy or false bravery.” Actually, he was. There was another factor, too. When she looked at him, he continued, “I can’t face Mom and Dad and tell them you did this. No way. I’m doing this so I don’t have to face them. And because I guess it has to be done.”

  After a long wait, staring at each other, conversation resumed. The three made
a basic schedule, hid all data and undogged the cabin. They each sought their own private spaces to think and come to grips, and the rest of the crew were left to speculate. The normal schedule resumed, and would remain in force until the planned zero time, five days away.

  The three were reserved during the PT sparring match that evening. The crew each picked a corner or a hatch to watch from in the day cabin, a five-metre cylinder ten metres long, and cheered and critiqued as they took turns tying each other in knots. Sarendy was small but vicious, her lithe and slender limbs striking like those of a praying mantis. Jan and Meka were tall and rangy. Costlow was older and stubborn. Each one had his or her own method of fighting. They were all about as effective.

  Jan was strong, determined, and made a point of staying current on unarmed combat, partly due to a lack of demand for his services. He and Costlow twirled and kicked and grappled for several minutes, sweating and gasping from exertion, until Jan finally pinned the older man in a corner with a forearm wedged against his throat. “Yours,” Costlow acknowledged.

  Jan and Meka faced off from opposite ends, both lean and pantherlike. They studied each other carefully for seconds, then flew at each other, twisting and reaching, and met in a flurry of long limbs. Meka slapped him into a spin, twisted his ankles around, locked a foot under his jaw and let her momentum carry them against the aft hatch, where her other knee settled in the small of his back, pinning him helplessly as she grabbed the edge. Her kinesthetic sense and coordination never ceased to amaze the rest of them.

  Passive Sensor Specialist Riechard gamely threw himself into the bout. He advanced and made a feint with one hand, orienting to keep a foot where he could get leverage off the bulkhead. He moved in fast and hard and scored a strike against Meka’s shoulder, gripped her arm and began to apply leverage. She countered by pivoting and kicking for his head.

  Riechard spun and flinched. “Shoot, Meka, watch it!” he snapped.

  “Sorry,” she replied. Nerves had her frazzled, and she’d overreacted, her kick almost tearing his ear off. “I better take a break. Default yours.”