by P. R. Adams
“Colonel Rimes!” The color drained from Saxbury’s face.
Rimes turned calmly to the purple-faced general. “And General Mazarov, I’m sure your brother’s position at EEC can’t possibly be stable, given the relative failure of their security forces to date. Imagine the money at risk, not just for him but for you with touchy negotiations like this. You were planning to retire next year, I believe? Right around the time EEC planned to stand up a permanent security presence on the Europa colony? You’d probably double your pay with a position like that. Fortunately, you’re willing to put our people before your own welfare. I only wish I could manage such integrity and restraint at a time like this.”
Mazarov’s mouth worked, and veins bulged on his face. He looked from Rimes to Saxbury, exasperated. Finally, he turned to the young captain, who seemed once again calm.
“Do try to maintain some semblance of dignity, Mikhail,” Saxbury said. Her face was a waxy mask as she nodded slowly at Rimes. “Agent Barlowe, I believe that is quite sufficient?”
Rimes nodded confirmation.
Saxbury closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Please close the systems down now, Captain. You may excuse yourself once that has been accomplished.”
The glow from the young woman’s system interface faded, and she stood, giving a curt nod to Saxbury before casting a quick, assessing glance at Rimes. When the captain was gone, Mazarov’s exploded into a string of curses.
“Mikhail, that is of no help.” Saxbury looked at Rimes, a hint of color returning to her face. “Colonel, I must commend you. Your breadth of knowledge is far greater than I was led to believe. Coupled with the sort of bravery I was expecting, you have presented us with quite the problem.”
“I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience, Admiral.”
Saxbury coughed quietly again. “We were aware you had contacts, of course, but we were operating under the assumption those contacts were not an issue. So, as to the complications and resolution…”
Rimes raised an eyebrow. “You had something in mind, ma’am?”
“Commander Talwar has an unwavering hatred of you and a desire to see that hatred sated with your…termination. I must admit, I am developing a better appreciation of his position.”
“I appreciate that position myself.”
Saxbury pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and dabbed at her brow. “We have an opportunity to bring about a peace after an unjustified attack upon our sovereign territories and the brutal murder of our citizens and soldiers. These were criminal acts, and those responsible must be prosecuted.”
Mazarov’s eyes grew as big as saucers. “Nyet! Charlotte, what are you—”
“Do be quiet, Mikhail. The T-Corp representatives have been reasonable in some of their demands. They wish an immediate ceasefire. They wish us to hand over all of our nuclear warheads. They wish for open access to colonial markets, unfettered by United Nations regulation. Colonel, I think you can agree these demands are acceptable?”
“They make a good starting point,” Rimes said.
“The demand for your delivery to Commander Talwar is, of course, unacceptable. The same holds for demands that you be tried in absentia for war crimes. As you so adroitly pointed out, Colonel, you were combating terrorists engaged in criminal activity. While your tactics may be argued as questionable they certainly would not be seen as criminal, and there is significant precedent when it comes to counter-terrorism. This will be noted in our final report. I would expect the Brotherhood will be assigned blame for failure to adequately train and manage their personnel in this matter.”
“Thank you, Admiral.” Rimes felt the roar of fury quieting in his chest.
“If this is all acceptable to you, Colonel, please see to it that the warheads—all of them—are loaded onto my shuttle within the hour.”
“You realize they could use them against us,” Rimes said.
“They could build their own, if that was their intent.”
Rimes stood. “It was a pleasure meeting two such esteemed officers. Admiral. General.” He glanced at each officer in turn, then spun and exited the conference room.
The shuttle shrank to little more than a glowing speck on the display, merely another star in the vast universe. Rimes watched it disappear into the hangar of the T-Corps ship the Arizona’s sensors now labeled TC-18. Regardless of the fact that the ship was more a glorified troop transport, it was still intimidating. Having four such vessels so tightly packed made for both a tempting target and an imposing defense. Rimes could imagine all the angry and confused faces in the welcoming party in the hangar.
After a moment, the video switched to the shuttle’s roof camera. The angle was far from ideal, the video grainy and at times choppy, but it was good enough for him to make out the hangar bay.
It took a few minutes for the hangar’s oxygen to cycle, but when it finally did, the three uniformed metacorporate senior officers and an oversized honor guard stepped into the hangar.
Rimes’s eyes were drawn to Talwar, who seemed to have developed a limp and a facial tic. His attention seemed focused on the shuttle’s port side.
Rimes thought there might be a smile creeping across Talwar’s twitching features, but it could just as easily have been a trick of imagination. There was so much Rimes wished his imagination could change.
He looked at Kleigshoen’s travel bag and shook off the slightest hint of cold dread spreading in his gut.
Why, Dana? Isn’t there more to life than a career?
He turned back and saw first Mazarov then Saxbury step into view. They seemed less cocky than he remembered them. Rimes’s eyes flitted back to Talwar’s face; his eyes were nearly bugging out, and the corner of his mouth was contorted in a snarl. Talwar seemed to shout something, and Saxbury responded. Talwar’s anger seemed to intensify. For the first time, Rimes realized Talwar’s left arm now hung limp at his side.
Was that damage there before, or did it come from the proxy disconnect?
The drama played out, with the T-Corps officers and their thugs edging dangerously close to violence. Rimes watched for a few moments more.
Their course was set, the last piece remaining only to be acted out. There was no wavering, not since he’d stepped on the current path. He wondered distractedly if Kleigshoen would step into view or stay aboard the shuttle.
Suddenly, the signal died.
A second passed, two, and then the call to general quarters shattered the silence aboard the Arizona. Rimes watched the display, which had flipped back to the Arizona’s cameras. A ball of fire rolled out where only moments before TC-18 had floated in space. As quick as the fire flashed it was gone, leaving behind a heavily damaged and vulnerable fleet, once again crippled by an EMP.
Dana, why did you choose this path?
Rimes wiped away a tear and activated his earpiece. “Ladell, for your own good, take a break. Stop recording. Five minutes.” He waited a moment before opening a channel to Brigston. When Brigston finally answered, Rimes spoke with utmost calm. “Captain, this is Colonel Rimes.”
“I’m in the middle of a crisis, Jack,” Brigston said. He shouted an order at someone on the bridge. “Make it quick.”
“I just wanted to remind you that, with the admiral’s passing, you’re now in command of the task forces.”
The line was silent.
“I also wanted to point out that the metacorporate fleet has suffered what would appear to be another nuclear blast and the resultant exposure to an electromagnetic pulse. While this is no doubt unfortunate, and our hearts should go out to our enemies, it is a moment ripe with opportunity. And risk.”
“Jack,” Brigston whispered. “What have y—”
“Jeremy, that task force is currently in disarray, with very few operational vessels. It won’t be that way forever. When they bring everything back online, they’re going to assume we attacked them. Opportunity and risk.” Rimes disconnected. He turned at the sound of the hatch opening. Kleig
shoen stepped through, eyes wide in shock.
“The ship bl—”
Rimes stood. He pulled Kleigshoen to him and breathed in her scent, felt her warmth and softness. “I thought you’d gone with them.”
“I changed my mind at the last second,” Kleigshoen said, her voice cracking. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would have been a…defining act, a career move. I just couldn’t—” She pulled a slender pistol from her outfit and, hands shaking, set it on the desk.
“What were you planning to do, kill them?”
She shook her head. “Not unless they made me. They may have changed their minds about turning you over, but they were still criminals. Their careers were over. They were facing prison. Jack, did they—”
“We’ll never know what happened.” Rimes embraced her tighter. “They’ve already shown what sort of madness they were capable of. I hope Jeremy realizes the danger we face now.”
“Jeremy?” Kleigshoen’s voice was dreamy and far away.
Rimes slowly pushed Kleigshoen into the desk chair. “Captain Brigston. I contacted him already. He’s in command of these task forces now. He’ll need to make the hard call.”
“What…?”
“They’re going to assume this was our doing, and they’ll retaliate. We have a few minutes where their systems won’t be operational. This is the moment to act.”
Comprehension slowly spread across Kleigshoen’s face. “The warheads…” She shook her head. “You detonated the warheads. Jack, what have you done? They were ready to negotiate an end to the war.”
“The warheads detonated in proximity to the T-Corp systems. Their insistence on us turning the warheads over caused this, not me.”
Kleigshoen’s eyes went wide. “You thought I was on that shuttle, but you still…”
“I’m sorry, Dana. Like you said, I wasn’t really ever given any choice.” Rimes looked up as the faint roar of the Arizona’s missile batteries firing echoed through the hull. Seconds later he could feel the rail guns firing.
The inevitable destruction had begun.
Rimes glanced past Kleigshoen at the display. Explosions tore through the metacorporate ships with each missile impact. It was over in a matter of minutes, the metacorporate fleet little more than floating debris.
“What have I done?” Rimes finished the question for her. He downloaded the video from the shuttle’s departure to the last ship’s explosion, storing it all in his earpiece. “This was their war, not mine. We have it on official record that the UN’s own team of negotiators considered them terrorists. Now look what they’ve forced us to do.”
“The peace.” Kleigshoen buried her face in her hands.
“There can’t be peace without a reckoning.” Rimes attached the video of the incident to a message he’d previously recorded for each of the metacorporations’ legal departments. “Send,” he said before looking down at Kleigshoen. “There will be a reckoning, Dana.”
23
2 March, 2174. Bermuda Colony.
* * *
Rimes paced the burned-out heart of Fort Monroe’s operations center. It was a gutted, blackened husk of a building that still stank of ash, cordite, and burned flesh. Dust and ash floated up, filling the air and clogging his sinuses. Beneath his booted stride, glass scraped against the concrete floor, making it impossible to concentrate. He couldn’t stop imagining the way the fort had been destroyed, the metacorporate forces launching their devastating surprise attack in the black of night. The attack had been effective in part because EEC had an existing security presence on-planet, but the biggest problem had been a too-cozy relationship between the fort’s commander and EEC representatives.
That failure in operational security had nearly caused a complete loss of personnel. Only luck and a mix of incompetence and arrogance on EEC’s part had made it possible for close to half of the soldiers to escape the slaughter. Those soldiers had fled east, into the Roarke Mountains.
But it was the post’s civilian population that haunted Rimes. Most of them had been killed in the first wave of shelling.
Because of the post’s commander.
Rimes settled onto a pile of rubble and tried to understand how it could have happened. The fort had been named for a British officer murdered in cold blood by EEC operatives early in the colony’s struggles to survive. There was a history of trouble with the metacorporations, even all-out conflict when several tried to lay claim to the colony following an extraterrestrial find.
How could anyone forget about history like that?
Located fifty klicks southeast of Rosaleen, the fort had been by all rights a fourth settlement on the planet. It had been home to a company from the UN’s Combined Military Forces. Like the colony’s population the company’s platoons had mostly been drawn from the Pacific: Australia, Indonesia, and New Zealand. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam had each contributed to a mixed platoon that rounded out the company. The fort and its occupants had been popular, welcome.
Was that what happened? Did they forget there’s always the chance an enemy might hide among allies?
Rimes stood and walked out to the doorway that looked onto the heart of the fort. Sand whispered across the rocky ground. Here and there patches of green sprouted from ash or up through broken rock. He recalled seeing oceans and lakes when they’d shuttled down, and intelligence said those were teeming with life, but the land was largely a sprawl of rock and sand and several varieties of rugged scrub. The colonists hadn’t managed to get many Earth-native plants to take root in the unforgiving soil. A few sturdy grasses and vines were about it.
It was an ugly rock of a planet, with fewer than five million colonists, but EEC considered it worth killing innocent civilians over.
Rimes stepped outside and gazed toward Rosaleen, admiring the soft glow it gave off in the darkness. The original settlement had been named for a quirky twentieth-century Australian witch because the colonists had run into so much ill fortune during settlement. Rimes wasn’t a superstitious man, but it was hard to ignore the string of bad breaks that had struck his team since their arrival.
The war should have been over weeks before, but they’d suffered so many setbacks—ambushes, bad luck, poor intelligence—in the two months since his arrival. He’d come to Bermuda in the hopes of breaking the metacorporations’ collective will. A remote colony, one that, like Plymouth, had only recently begun to prosper; it had seemed ideal.
Instead of destroying the enemy, though, he found himself caught in a spirit-draining rubber-banding conflict. For every victory he managed, the enemy had found sufficient reinforcements to fend off collapse.
Dark memories and grim plans came to him, and he closed his eyes. He wished that, for a short moment, he could drift off into dreamless sleep, just resting, recharging.
The memories intensified and transformed. Sahara. Plymouth. Molly.
He sighed heavily and returned to the operations center, taking a moment to check on his sleeping team.
His eyes settled on Lieutenant Danni Oswald, the nominal commander of what remained of Fort Gordon’s forces. She dozed not three meters away. Oswald was slightly taller than him and sturdily built. Her broad nose, big doe eyes, and plump lips combined into an awkwardly cute face, which seemed incongruous with her imposing frame. Her soldiers enjoyed her quick, dark humor, and Rimes found her instantly approachable. The fact that she’d kept her unit alive despite everything said a lot about her natural leadership.
A few meters away, Kleigshoen shifted and muttered something in her sleep. She was pressed against one of the remaining wall sections, her backpack serving as a pillow. She seemed to return to a peaceful slumber, something she had initially experienced problems with. Rimes had assured her it was the result of being so long away from a combat role. Not the physical exertion, although the difference between gym fitness and hauling a dozen kilograms of kit all over a mountain fourteen hours a day had been a real challenge the first week. She had confessed tha
t the problems were with the sort of personalized killing she had to do. Ambushes often involved waiting for the enemy to close within a few meters before opening fire or sometimes resorting to knife work.
It was the sort of thing that tested even the strongest person.
Meyers lay on his back closer by, helmet shielding his eyes, backpack next to his left hand, freshly cleaned carbine resting on his chest. He’d grown solemn, almost bitter since Plymouth, but Rimes figured that was to be expected. Shortly before their arrival at Bermuda, Meyers had finally opened up about Irvin and the pain he was trying to deal with, but he’d also challenged Rimes’s objectivity and motivations. Meyers had voiced serious reservations about the surprise attack on the metacorporate fleet over Plymouth. A gap—more like a chasm—rested where their friendship once had, but that was purely one-sided. Rimes held no animosity toward Meyers for his views.
I do what I have to do, Lonny. There’s no desire to it. At some level, it disgusts me. The faces that haunt my dreams aren’t only those I loved.
Dariusz Brozek, now a brevet lieutenant, lay not far from Meyers. Brozek’s uniform hung off him limply. He was fading, the war draining his youthful enthusiasm and energy. Rimes wasn’t sure the mad little genius would last much longer.
Barlowe slept curled close to Brozek. Life in the field had come back easily for Barlowe, who was nearly as slight as Brozek. Barlowe’s face had a calm about it that softened features most already considered pretty rather than handsome. His rogue status and civilian position had left him with the sort of freedom he’d never known on Commando operations. He wore his satisfaction like another piece of armor. For someone who’d nearly faced the firing squad after the X-17 theft—and after Rimes’s actions to bring people to justice—Barlowe’s loyalty was as clear as his enjoyment of the freedom the life of a guerrilla offered him.