by Ben Weaver
“If we leave the city completely undefended, they’re going to know we have an ace in the hole,” Halitov pointed out.
“Which is why I haven’t bothered to tell you about any of this,” Drage said with a nod, then turned a hard gaze on me. “I’m leaving your company and one other behind to man the tower and all perimeter bunkers.”
“Sir?” Halitov asked, utterly dumfounded. “You’re ordering us to die?” He looked at me. “Fuckin’ volunteer mission, huh?”
“When the Flower’s a couple kilometers out, the Marines will launch their hovercraft. When they do, that’s your cue to withdraw. Jumpsubs will be waiting for you at the main pier below. You’ll have thirty minutes to get to the trench. Coordinates will be uploaded into the subs.”
“Sir, why do I get the feeling you’re making this up as you go?” asked Halitov. “You’re telling us anything you can to get us out of your face. Maybe there won’t be any jumpsubs waiting for us, huh? Just another day where you send good people to their deaths…”
Drage finished filling one rucksack, hoisted it over his shoulder. “I guess you’ll have to trust me, won’t you, Captain? Now take your insubordinate attitude back to your station before I have you locked up.”
“Sir, we’ll do what you want, sir,” I said quickly. “Just make sure those subs are waiting for us.” I could not have looked more serious.
His gaze didn’t flinch. “They’ll be there.”
He rushed out of the office, and Halitov and I remained a moment, letting it all course through and contaminate us like the radiation soon to come.
“Well, at least we know the Wardens have a conscience,” said Halitov. “Sure, they’ll kill civvies, but they won’t kill guardsmen. Can’t say I have any major problems with their priorities…”
“You know what I really want right now?” I asked. “Just a straight fight. Tell me I have to secure a location. Show me where the enemy is, let me coordinate my people so we can get the job done.”
“Yeah, don’t lie to us about who the good guys and the bad guys are. Don’t lie about the location. Don’t lie to us about the mission,” he added.
“Can I tell you something? This whole Op has been so drawn-out and depressing, it’s making me question whether anyone believes in the code anymore.”
He raised his brows. “I know one idiot who does.”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning faintly.
“So, can we even believe this guy now? Are we really going to sit up there until the very last second? Tell you what? I like your original plan a lot better. Let’s go throw ourselves on the Wardens’ mercy.”
“What about those people still up there? Two full companies of guardsmen. We just abandon them?”
“Uh, let me think about that. Yeah. And do you see any guilt on this face? No.”
“I think we should tell our people what’s going to happen,” I said.
“Okay, you do that while I find us a jumpsub.”
“You know it seems like a long time ago, that night at the academy, when we were leaving Pope’s office, just after I was going to dust out? You asked me to teach you how to put others before yourself. I guess we never got to that lesson.”
“Look at my face. I’m telling you, there is no guilt.”
I stared at him, stared a moment more, widened my eyes.
“Oh, fuck you, man,” he said, looking as guilt-stricken as ever. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this.”
I smiled inwardly and followed him out.
Once we were back up top, I got on the companywide frequency and addressed my people. “Ladies and gentlemen, scuttlebutt aside, I’d like to confirm a few things for you and clarify our mission here.”
Halitov lifted his chin, and I switched to our private channel. “Careful, Scott. You tell ’em too much, and some of them might desert.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said, then returned to the company channel. “All right. The Eri Flower is en route to us. She’ll arrive sometime tomorrow. She’s carrying an invasion force. Our job is to remain at our posts until her hovercraft launch, at which time we’ll withdraw down to the main pier and board jumpsubs. Nav systems will have your coordinates. Understand this: we’re not running from the enemy. We are, as always, part of a much larger plan.” I hesitated, then: “The truth is, we want them to believe that the entire garrison is still here. We’ll be jamming their scans, so they’ll have to rely on visual contact. We’re the bait, and we can fool them. Now then, direct all questions to your squad corporals and hang tight. I’ll deliver the evac order myself. That is all.” I went to the railing ahead, looked off, past the city’s lights, to that impenetrably dark horizon.
“Well, no deserters so far,” said Halitov, his gaze distant as he read his HUV’s screens. “Everyone’s still in position. Three hundred and twenty lives putting on a show. Chezower says she’s had no problems with her company.”
“Good. Third watch begins. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll take next watch.”
“Okay. And Scott? If anything bad happens? You’ll take care of it, right? I don’t want to be disturbed.”
I smiled tightly. “Right.”
He went below, where in the corner of a small C&C room we had set up our bunks.
During the night, I scanned the horizon at least a dozen times while listening in to the company’s skipchatter. Then, just as the sky began to wash into a deep, early-morning blue, one of my platoon commanders abruptly reported in: “Sir, I think we’ve spotted her, sir.”
I bolted to the rail, jammed my binocs to my eyes, and saw the faint outline of a massive, pointed bow. Then I skinned up and ordered the tactical computer to show me a digitized image of the approaching ship within a 3-D grid that pinpointed her position and marked her ETA. She had increased speed and would arrive by midday. For the hell of it, I tried a low-emission scan of her hull to see if I could detect any chemical residue from weapons within, but, as expected, my scans were jammed. For all of three seconds, I entertained the idea of willing myself into her hold to learn the truth, but I feared the drain on me would be too much, and if the bond failed me there, I might be trapped aboard a ship about to be destroyed. I thought of Jing, of how she so effortlessly shifted her body across the bond. If I envied one thing about her, that was it.
“Hey, Scott,” Halitov called on our channel. He was still down in our C&C room, but he sounded fully awake. “You have to see this report I just recorded. Transferring to your tac.”
A data box opened in my HUV, and within it sat a handsome, young news reporter seated behind his desk, delivering a special report in exaggerated tones. “…and while we still haven’t received official confirmation from the military or pier command, witnesses do report sighting the Eri Flower in the southeast. She’s best viewed from anywhere within the main tower. And as most of us have heard, the Flower’s arrival represents a long-awaited rescue from the sewage spill that has plagued our community and recently resulted in a massive evacuation because of the spread of contaminates into the main water lines. Those of us still here can breathe a little easier. Help is on the way.”
I switched off the data box, wincing over the irony, then I opened the command frequency. “All right, Poseidon Company, let’s start the show. Activate the holos and make yourselves as visible as possible.”
I’ve waited for a lot of things in my life, but waiting for that ship to arrive ranks right up there with some of the most difficult. Her bow grew out of a morning fog hugging the water’s surface. And as the sun began to burn off that fog, more of her incredible girth lumbered into view. A half dozen tugs launched to meet and guide her toward the docking platform about a quarter kilometer out.
To play it safe Halitov and I charged a pair of second lieutenants with procuring some backup transportation, in case Drage had been lying to us. Unfortunately, they had come up with a single, small ferry that could only carry about fifty people and whose engine wailed as much as it smoked. So we gave up on
that idea and placed the two lieutenants on a recon at the main pier. When the Flower was just an hour out and about to launch hovercraft, one of those lieutenants frantically reported in. “Sir, jumpsubs arriving, sir!”
“Copy,” I said, gasping with relief, my gaze still fixed through my binocs. “Tell ’em to stand by.”
“Jesus, I’m shaking,” said Halitov, clutching the rail to my right.
“I don’t see any hovercraft,” I reported.
“Here’s one for you: maybe there is no invasion force. Maybe that’s just an excuse the Wardens are using. Maybe they don’t want the alliances to control this city and that ship. Period. Maybe the Flower really has come on a humanitarian mission, and we’re here, drawing her in, helping the Wardens to blow her up.”
“I’d say you might be right, but I’m looking at hovercraft launching right now!”
He raised his own binocs, took a look. “Son of a bitch.”
While those low-tech hovercraft were not the most swift or efficient troop carriers for launching an invasion, they were the most portable. A steady stream of them poured from the Flower’s port and starboard launching platforms. The three lead craft skipped across the water, jetted past the tugs, and swiveled their main guns into firing position.
“Company! Light up those autoseekers and fall back! Fall back!” There was the order I had been waiting all morning to give. And mere seconds after I gave it, the sky between the tower and ship lit up in a gleaming storm of crossfire. Our autoseeker guns would automatically track and fire upon the incoming ships, but they would only ward them off until the enemy’s own tactical computers got a positive lock and destroyed them. The guns would, however, buy us the time we needed to—as the brass might put it—“commence in an orderly withdrawal.”
What I didn’t count on was the mob of civilians held behind force shield barricades just outside the main pier. They saw the jumpsubs. They saw members of my company climbing into those subs. They saw that they were being abandoned, and all Halitov and I could do was run across the pier, trying to ignore their screaming. I noticed a young woman standing at the barricade, crying, a small boy and a small girl clutching her hips. I started toward them, visualizing myself leaping over the fence and leaping back, carrying all three in my arms toward a sub.
“Scott?” Halitov called. “Come on!”
He grabbed my shoulder, pulled me back. I whirled to face him but found Katya Jing staring back at me. And over her shoulder stood Kristi Breckinridge. The two of them had just stepped out of a jumpsub.
“See? Everything works out in the end,” Jing said brightly, then her expression darkened. “Now let’s go”
“Not before you see what you’re doing here. Take a long, hard look.”
“I’m just a soldier,” she said. “Just like you.”
“You seeing this?” I asked Breckinridge, shouting over the crowd. “You seeing this?”
Breckinridge marched up to me. “Get in the fucking sub. Now!”
I glanced at the woman, the children.
“I’m not kidding, Scott.”
I turned back to them, saw Halitov gesturing emphatically with his hands, and mouthing the words, “Come on!”
Even as I chanced another look back to the force fence, the ceiling above it exploded and collapsed on the screaming crowd, crushing them where they stood as a dense cloud of debris rose and blanketed the sudden horror.
Jing grabbed my wrist and, exploiting the bond, dragged me back to the jumpsub and threw me into a seat beside Halitov. She and Breckinridge sat up front, and as a second artillery shell blew through the northwest wall, sinking two jumpsubs with it, Breckinridge slammed down the canopy and submerged.
I threw my head back on the seat and thought of that woman, those kids, and muttered epithets, muttered that I’d had enough, that I couldn’t take any of it anymore, that duty, honor, and courage had nothing to do with this. The war was the real pollutant…
When the water finally grew clear, Halitov called my attention to the right, where dozens of torpedoes armed with low-level nukes came within a hundred meters of us and arrowed by, leaving dense trails of bubbles in their wakes. Ten or so other jumpsubs kept tight to our heels, and Breckinridge repeatedly ordered their skippers to tighten up the patterns, lest they accidentally travel into a torpedo’s path.
“Impact in five, four, three, two, one,” Jing said calmly as she watched a monitor.
Nothing for a moment. Just the whir of our engine. Then a dull thud seemed to reverberate over the hull, followed by another, more powerful one, then another that actually kicked the sub forward, and Breckinridge fought with the control stick. “Damn it,” she gasped.
“The tower’s coming down,” said Jing, pulling up a satellite image.
I leaned forward and watched on the small monitor as the very tower atop which Halitov and I had stood leaned precariously to the north, then splashed violently into the murk.
“And there goes the Flower,” added Jing, switching to another image of the great research ship. Flames pouring from jagged holes near the Flower’s waterline licked at her port side. She listed hard to that side, where scores of life tubes dropped into the water near the docking platform, itself exploding under the onslaught of torpedoes.
“Sink, you bastard,” said Breckinridge. “Sink.”
“You have no idea what’s going on here, do you?” I asked her.
“Oh, I know exactly what’s going on. We’re scoring a major victory for the colonies.”
I fell back into my seat. “If you say so.”
“Scott, you don’t know the details. Let’s just say that this needed to be done. There was no other way, believe me. And with the Flower and AQ destroyed, the alliances’ research and development teams have been set back six months, maybe even a year. They planned on seizing AQ and using it as a proving ground for new aquatic weaponry and biologics. We couldn’t let that happen.”
“Tell that to survivors of all those families you killed. Tell that to all those people floating out there, trying to get to Jones-Rigi. Thousands more are going to die.”
“You know I don’t usually jump up and preach it with him,” said Halitov. “But this time, I have to. AQ Tower was a free colony at the time you destroyed it. History repeats itself. They burned the village in order to save it.”
“We burned the village to save the Colonial Alliance. Slight difference, don’t you think?”
Halitov threw up his hands. “I don’t know.”
“What about those refugees?” I asked.
“Hey, Scott, you’re not the only one who knows how to cut deals with mineral barge skippers,” Breckinridge said. “We have twenty or thirty of them standing by to rescue those people. Yeah, a lot of civvies died, but we saved as many as we could.”
“Does that really make you feel better?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact it does. And as a matter of fact, I’ve grown pretty fucking tired of defending our actions to you and listening to your personal attacks.” She glared back at me. “Just shut up. And enjoy the ride.”
“Enjoy the ride?”
“Scott,” Halitov warned.
I balled my hands into fists and stiffened. Halitov gave me that “just relax” look.
With a snort, I shifted away from him, staring fiercely through the canopy at the icy depths.
11
We rendezvoused with the Charles Michael at the designated location, nearly a half kilometer below the ocean’s surface and walled in by the trench. Assuming that word of the destruction would quickly reach the alliances, the docking procedures were rushed to get everyone on board so the ship could tawt out.
“What now?” I asked Breckinridge as I stepped onto the pier. “You have us escorted to the brig?”
“If that’s necessary. If you choose to remain civil about all this, you’ll stay in officers’ quarters until we tawt out. After that, the Charles Michael will get her new orders, and we’ll take an ATC to meet up with
Vanguard One.”
“Colonel Beauregard’s ship?” I asked.
“The colonel’s disappointed in your reaction to our offer, and he wants to talk to you himself. I have a feeling that if you’re more open to the idea of joining the Wardens, he’ll take you to Aire-Wu. It’s up to you.”
Halitov came up behind me, put his hand over my mouth. “It’s a deal. We’re in. And we won’t give you any more trouble.”
“God, I hope so,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve been getting some of the worst migraines I’ve had in years.”
I pulled away Halitov’s hand. “Maybe it’s not us. Maybe it’s the guilt.”
“Just go. Find an ensign with a tablet. One of them will take you to your quarters.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Halitov said, a little too politely.
“Oh, and Rooslin, if you’d like to join me for a drink in a few hours…”
“Yeah,” he replied, looking thrilled until I dampened his enthusiasm with my stare. “A drink to fallen comrades,” he added softly.
She nodded. “I’ll call.”
We found an ensign who led us to our quarters, where we spent a moment buckling into jumpseats that folded down out of the bulkhead. Angelino’s voice echoed through the shipwide comm as she announced the oncoming tawt. The Trans Accelerated Wave Theory drive went to work, twisting our stomachs into knots as it booted us a tenth of a light-year away, to the terrestrial planet Nau Dane, a solitary world orbiting a red, M5 star. The planet’s rolling uplands were strangely devoid of impact craters, despite its thin, hydrogen-argon atmosphere. We had no idea why we were going there, but once we settled into a polar orbit, Halitov unbuckled and headed into the shower. I fell back onto a gelrack and closed my eyes.
Sometime later, the hatchcomm beeped. “Rooslin?”
He didn’t answer.
I rose. “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Dina.”
Stunned, I opened the hatch, and there she was, dressed in dark blue utilities, looking a little pale but very much alive. “Oh my God.”