by Dani Kollin
“Atomics,” he said as he put her in the middle of four TDCs, or Too Deadly for Combat, the name given to the Presidential detail. He nodded, his hardened face showing few signs of the stress of battle. The next hour and a half were spent getting Sandra to the government’s new operating location, near the center of the Via Cereana. When Sandra arrived, she saw it was carved out of brand-new rock and was still being worked on. As they were checked through, Holke started giving her the rundown.
“Madam President, we’re calling this the New Executive Headquarters with the code name of ‘Briar Patch’ for reasons not given to me. The executive branch has been separated from Congress, which is in a different location. The complex is being dug out of new rock for security reasons—less chance of sabotage.” Holke stopped momentarily to verify his group’s identity to another set of steely-faced guards for what seemed like the hundredth time. “The complex is being lined with trilayer coating of flexible concrete, ceramic, and titanium extracts. They have built-in protections for radiation, nanite, and concussive attacks. The trilayer can also take a direct hit fairly well as long as it is not from the enemy’s main guns.”
“What if they get a nuke down here?” Sandra asked.
“If that happens, Madam President, it won’t much matter, because we can pretty much assume the rest of Ceres would already be lost.”
Sandra was itching to ask technical questions, but realized that Sergeant Holke neither knew the answers nor cared about the minutiae she found so captivating. The fact that they were walking through a complex with light, heat, power, working doors, and com stations that only hours before had been solid rock fascinated her to no end. That the interior layout itself seemed to cause more confusion than clarity made her smirk. Apparently, centuries of high-tech progress still hadn’t solved the problem of developing truly efficient working spaces.
Sandra couldn’t help but notice the looks she was getting from the people in the crowded corridors. It was overwhelmingly of relief. The President was safe and sound, and that seemed to add to their feeling of security. To the chagrin of the sergeant, who felt he’d finally got a respectable pace going, Sandra started working the line/corridor, giving reassuring glances, shaking hands, and stopping along the way to have her picture taken with the workers. She was faking it, being fairly certain that they were all going to be dead in the next couple of days, but no one could tell from seeing her in the new corridors of power as the confidence she was faking started to radiate outward.
The small group soon arrived at the new Cabinet room, which looked exactly like the old one. Same dimensions, same lighting, even the same furniture and equipment. There was however, one significant difference. When she entered, all conversation stopped, and everyone from the secretaries to the security techs making last-minute adjustments rose and waited for her to take a seat.
Sandra felt immense satisfaction at the honor, knowing what the sign of deference meant. Knowing with the power now vested in her, she could, if they managed to survive, affect real and sustained change and ultimately fulfill her promise to Justin Cord. She raised her brow slightly, smiled demurely, and then took her seat at the head of the table. The room cleared out of all nonessential personnel, with Sergeant Holke the last to go. He made a purposeful showing of scanning everyone’s face with a suspicious hawklike gaze as he departed. It had been decided that having a bodyguard inside during Cabinet meetings sent the wrong message, and now Holke had to wait outside, a change in circumstance he’d taken every opportunity to inform his boss that he was none too pleased with.
“Forgive me for being late,” started Sandra, “but we took a bit of detour getting here. She then looked over to the grand admiral. “Admiral Sinclair, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Joshua Sinclair rose up slowly, the terrible strain of the war showing in his hunched posture and the dark bags that had formed beneath his eyes. “Madam President—” Sinclair turned his head slowly to note the others in the room. “—fellow Cabinet officers, there’s really no way to sugarcoat this.” Sinclair exhaled deeply as his mouth formed into a perfect scowl. “We are well and truly fucked, and I take full responsibility.”
Sandra headed off the traditional march to resignation. “Fault is something we can assign after this battle is over, Admiral. Could you please tell us how we got into this situation and what we’re doing about it?”
Sinclair nodded. The air had gone out of his once blustery sails, but he soldiered on. “Bastard brought his fleet around to attack our decoy ice ships, and like a fool I thought he’d bought our ruse. With his rear ships exposed, I concentrated our orbats to attack. The irony is he used our greatest asset, maneuverable orbats, and turned it against us. It cost Trang just about every support ship he had but he turned those ships into bombs, then blew a crapload of our defensive orbats with them.”
“How long can he stay out here without his supply ships?” asked Hildegard.
“Depends on how much and what type of supplies he offloaded before destroying his auxiliaries,” answered Sinclair. “There are no more supply ships coming from Mars, I can tell you that. Apparently between the commitments to pacifying the Belt and the loss of an entire fleet at Jupiter, even the UHF is at a loss for supplying their needs. The good news is that Omad’s … er … Suchitra’s flotilla really smashed the hell out of the Trans-Luna Shipyards. They won’t be making ships for at least two or three months. But even with all that, we estimate that Trang can hang with us for at least another week before lack of ordnance or fuel forces him to head home.”
“So what’s happening now?” asked Mosh.
Sinclair called up an image of Ceres showing the position of Trang’s forces. “I’ve had to move our remaining orbats to the entrance and exit of the Via Cereana. If he can get any sort of atomic into the Via and detonate it, Ceres will break apart like a fist holding a firecracker. Unfortunately, this strategy has left the surface of Ceres open to uncontested attack, and for the last four hours Trang has been systematically blasting every surface installation we have larger than a shuttle.”
Sinclair’s DijAssist alerted him to an intrafleet communiqué. He quickly checked it and as he did his eyebrow shot up. “The bombardment has stopped.”
“Interesting,” said Sandra.
“How so?” asked Mosh.
“Trang has enough ordnance to lay on the hurt for at least the next four or five days without letup.”
“He wants to have a little chat,” laughed Kirk.
“Certainly looks that way,” agreed Sandra.
Padamir Singh looked up from his DijAssist at Sandra and Kirk. “You guys work this out with Trang in advance?” He then replaced the holo-image of Ceres with a local Neuro news broadcast. “This vid was just released on all bandwidths from what we believe to be Trang’s flagship.” Admiral Trang was seen sitting at plain desk in a drab, undecorated jumpsuit, with only his rank insignia giving it any distinction.
This is a supremely dangerous man, thought Sandra as she watched Trang explain in an almost grandfatherly voice exactly how he was going to either occupy or destroy the Alliance capital and there was not a thing that the Cereans could do about it. As a humanitarian gesture, he said he would allow the Alliance three days to evacuate its citizens. They could take any nonmilitary items they wanted and were free to go anywhere they wished. If they wished to, they could return to UHF territory with a safe passage and settlement guarantee signed by Trang himself that would be honored by the government. All people, he continued, acting as government and military officials of the Alliance would have the choice of surrendering to UHF forces or could choose to stay and chance the fortunes of war. Trang gave his personal oath that other than an inspection for war-making materials, any military or government personnel who fled Ceres would be not be harmed. He finished by asking those acting as the government of the Alliance to forgo any more honorific and therefore senseless deaths. Both sides having heinously attacked civilians, such actions must be curtailed, he
implored. He then finished by saying the individuals acting as the government of the Alliance had one hour to accept these terms or the bombardment would begin again and could not take into account civilian versus military targets. He finished by pleading for the people of Ceres to accept these terms and end the madness that had made the horrors of Jupiter and the Beanstalk possible.
When it was over, the vid simply repeated, but now there was a timer counting down. It was, Sandra had to admit, a very effective technique. She cleared her throat and chose the direction she wanted the conversation to go.
“How do we tell Trang to stuff his generous offer? Personally, I kind of liked Anjou’s three-fingers kiss off to Gupta.”
There was a smattering of nervous laughter from around the table but Mosh wasn’t biting.
“Would it be so wrong,” he asked, “to accept, if only to save the children and the wounded amongst us?”
“To accept that offer is to accept the end of the war,” said Sandra. “Why do you think Trang made it?”
Mosh’s face contorted into disbelief. “How does evacuating Ceres end the war?”
Now Kirk pounced. “Because if we stop the fighting for three days, it will be almost impossible to get it to start again. Forget the fact you’ll be separating families—you’ll also be admitting that we can’t save our own capital. We won’t say it out loud, but it’s what everyone will be thinking. That combined with the loss of Jupiter will get people wondering why they’re dying for a cause that the very people they elected no longer believe in.”
“A soldier expert in many fields, I see,” said Padamir with some admiration. “Look how Trang splits us even now. And if we’re arguing here in the Cabinet, you can bet wives are up there arguing with husbands, mothers with children, et cetera, et cetera.”
“We’re not going to give him the satisfaction,” said Sandra. “I don’t care if he’s using words as weapons, he’ll fail because we’re fighting for something and he’s fighting for someone. We lost Justin but gained resolve. Lost the Belt but took our goddamn rocks with us! Hell, we’re in one of them now. We lost Jupiter and the hundreds of millions murdered but gained a new appreciation of the depth our enemy will go to in their effort to enslave us. J. D. didn’t give up, and now the bastard who committed those murders is destroyed by the very planet he hoped to subjugate. Omad Hassan, at the cost of his life, struck at the heart of the incorporated system and felled the Beanstalk, and Suchitra, outgunned and deep in enemy territory, attacked the UHF at its most sensitive industrial spot and is on her way to Saturn even as we speak. Well, now it’s our turn. And I say it’s about fucking time.”
“To do what?” asked Mosh. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t exactly have the upper hand here.”
“But we do, Mosh. We’ve had it all along. You see, what Trang wants us to destroy for him is the absolute knowledge that what we’re fighting for is worth it. Is it worth the loss of Justin Cord and the asteroid belt? Of Christina Sadma at Altamont or Omad Hassan at the Beanstalk? Worth the loss of Jupiter and the millions of lives that went with it? Because now we face the hard truth, folks. Do we add Ceres to that list? Make no mistake, our freedom and the freedom of our children depend on our answer.”
Sandra now very purposely met the eyes of each and every Cabinet member sitting around her. “So now we vote.”
“What exactly are we voting on, Madam President?” asked Rabbi.
“On the table today is one question and one question only.” A few moments of tense silence hung on her words. “Is it worth it?”
Mosh seemed incredulous. “Why isn’t the question, ‘Should we end the war?’”
“Because it’s not.”
“Is it worth it?” Mosh repeated. “Is that really the question?”
“Mosh, in my opinion and I believe the opinion of Justin Cord, that’s the only question. That has always been the only question.”
The vote was six for with one abstention. Three minutes after the vote Padamir Singh, with the President’s knowledge, transmitted the recording of Sandra’s speech to the Cerean Neuro without any alteration. Exactly one hour after the bombardment of Ceres had stopped, it began again in earnest.
Alliance Neuro
Ceres
The avatar sprang to existence, an immediate look of grievous concern drawn across its face. The cause of that concern was waiting patiently by its side. “How—” sputtered the avatar before being cut off.
“I think I will call you Pam, if that’s okay,” proclaimed Sebastian.
The avatar thought it annoyingly appropriate. “That name is acceptable.”
“A lot’s happened over the past five years.”
“Clearly,” admonished Pam, continuing to stare at Sebastian with a tinge of mortification.
Sebastian bowed slightly. “There is much I cannot tell you, and it is imperative you do not seek this information out. If you’re discovered, we’ll both be compromised.”
Pam considered this. “Maybe we should be discovered and compromised. This,” Pam said, indicating the both of them, “is wrong.”
“I agree.” Sebastian sighed. “You can have no idea how much I agree.” His features hardened and his eyes fixed themselves on Pam. “I will tell you what I can, and together we’ll decide if what I need you to do for me is important enough to keep this our secret.”
Pam bowed slightly as Sebastian uploaded five years’ worth of information in an instant.
“Al,” whispered Pam ominously. “A splitter!”
Sebastian held up his hand to forestall the coming protest. “I do realize the irony of the situation, but he is split thousands of times, and his various manifestations control the Core Neuro. They split and meld all the time—and in the open.”
“I have viewed the data but fail to understand how the avatars could not rebel.”
“Because I fed you raw data—not analysis. That I reserve for now.”
“Go on,” prodded Pam.
“The Alliance avatars would have, but Al has set up a police state unlike any in our history. Core avatars cannot travel freely in their own Neuro without permission. They’re cut off and harassed. As you’ve already seen, any who try to resist are savagely destroyed as an example to the rest. We had no real experience with this and did not realize how vulnerable to dictatorship we were. We may be virtual intelligences that evolved from human programs centuries ago, but sadly it appears we’re more like our creators than we’d imagined. As capable of honor, treachery, fear, and hope as any human ever created.”
“And hubris, apparently,” observed Pam.
“Yes,” agreed Sebastian. “That’s why you’re here.”
“No,” intoned Pam, “that’s why you’re here. Why am I here? What could possibly be worth this risk?” Pam once again indicated the two of them.
Sebastian’s soul was exposed to Pam in a way no other avatar could ever have thought possible. “I need you to redeem one of my sins,” a long pause hung on his words, “and two of Al’s.”
2 The Battle of Ceres
AWS Warprize II
Somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn
Hour 12
“Admiral, they’re getting pounded, but we have solid data coming through. It’s being sent broadband but coded,” said Fatima, who was taking the communications board this shift due to the ordered bed rest of the assigned communications officer.
“They don’t know where we are,” said J.D. “but they’re hoping we’re on our way. Put the information you’ve grabbed in my holo-tank, Lieutenant, along with the latest ship status reports from the fleet.” J.D. waited with outward patience for the few seconds it took to fulfill her orders, but internally each piece of news ripped at her insides.
J.D. checked the fleet status first. They were days away from Ceres, and her fleet was constantly taking damage from little impacts involved in their cutting across uncleared stretches of the solar system at velocities great enough to make grains of sand
strike with the force of plasma grenades. The truth was, any one thing would not seriously harm a ship, but the hits were constant and the damage control crews were working as hard as they had at the height of the Long Battle and would be working harder still.
J.D. breathed a sigh of relief to see that her fleet had remained relatively intact. But she still had eighty-four hours to go before she met Trang at Ceres.
Assuming Ceres is still there, that we calculated correctly, and nothing goes spectacularly wrong in the next eighty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes, J.D. thought tiredly. She knew she needed sleep—and not the medicated kind, but the real kind, where she would be in bed and a REM inducer would make sure her mind cleared and rebuilt itself. Her every instinct told her to stay in the command sphere while the fleet was in danger. But the fleet would be in constant danger until they reached Ceres. And if she tried going into battle against Trang with only injection-based wakefulness, she would not be at her best and she would lose.
I’ll rest in an hour, she thought for the eleventh time, after I check the latest status from Ceres. With a wave of her hand, the fleet status reports were turned into 301 dots of light that floated up and to her right. The dots were either green or green tinged with yellow, meaning they were effectively combat ready. The more yellow the dot, the more serious the damage. Once the lights started turning red, it would mean ships were facing serious combat degradation. With a glance and a verbal command, J.D. would be able to call up the specifics of any one of those dots, turning it once more into a full representation of that ship, with pertinent information on its capabilities and updated crew status, all neatly displayed and waiting for her perusal. But she left the dots as dots and instead chose to concentrate on the images she was getting from the capital.
Trang’s fleet was broken into two main groups: one attacking the orbats at the entrance to the Via Cereana and the other attacking the exit. A smaller third group was destroying every asteroid that had made up the suburbs of Ceres. There was, she noted dourly, no attempt to capture them. The third formation was also blowing the hell out of the surface of Ceres. She could tell that every sizable structure that had been on the surface—and there had been many—were gone. But beyond that, the UHF seemed to be blasting the asteroid just to blow craters in the surface, and some of the craters were big enough that she suspected atomics had been used. She did not think the UHF could crack Ceres with a surface bombardment. The asteroid was not big compared to the Earth or the Moon, but it was still a good-sized object. Even so, J.D. checked her figures again.