Ryan indicated the sitting room in his office. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable. We have a lot to discuss.”
“After you, sir,” Wilson said.
Ryan led the way, passing between two couches on his way to the bar. “Would you like a drink?”
“No, thank you. I try not to drink while on duty, but don’t let me stop you, sir.”
“Well…” Ryan hesitated with a bottle of Scotch half-tipped toward his glass. “Don’t mind if I do. Makes the bad news more palatable.”
Wilson nodded. “I imagine it does.”
Ryan poured two thumbs of Scotch before rounding the bar to sit opposite the admiral. “You first. How’s our standoff at the Looking Glass progressing?”
“The Confederates have upped the ante somewhat. They now have a second carrier, and two more destroyers. That’s a total of ten capital-ships.”
“What about us?”
“We’re recalling ships from the colonies as fast as we can, but so far we only have fourteen. We have five more en-route and another six we could call on if we had to, but that would leave the colonies completely defenseless.”
Baker took a sip of Scotch and shook his head. “Do we have we any idea of the relative strengths of the two fleets right now?”
“To the best of our knowledge we’re at two to one in our favor—a sneak attack notwithstanding.”
“And if they do sneak attack us?”
“They might put themselves on an even footing before we could respond.”
“So, unless we fire the first shot, we’re actually looking at a one-to-one strength ratio. We may as well flip a coin to see who wins! That’s not acceptable, Admiral.”
Wilson sighed. “With all due respect, sir, unless you authorize me to utilize our own first strike potential, there’s not a lot we can do.”
Ryan shook his head. “The Confederates still have plenty of missiles here on Earth, and so do we. If we destroy the last dregs of their fleet, we’ll be backing them into a corner, and they may feel they have no choice but to bring on Armageddon.”
“You really think they’d do that after there’s already so much devastation on both sides?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to comprehend the mind of the Confederate ant. They don’t think like we do. What alternatives do we have?”
“We could get some distance between us and them. That would reduce the danger of a first strike.”
Ryan frowned. “And abandon the Looking Glass?”
“Under the circumstances, what makes the Looking Glass so important? We’re fighting for our lives here, and we’re risking all of our assets to defend a gateway to a planet that may or may not even be habitable.”
Ryan set his tumbler down and steepled his hands beneath his chin, contemplating how much he should tell the admiral. The fewer people who knew the better, but it would be nice to be able to share his burden with someone. Particularly someone who would understand the importance of what they were doing.
“First of all, I’m sure you know that our unwillingness to share the Looking Glass with the Confederacy is what sparked this war, so there is the principle of the matter to consider. Giving up the Looking Glass now would be tantamount to saying that all of those millions of people died for nothing.”
Admiral Wilson nodded. “I understand that, sir, but we can’t repair one error in judgment with another.”
“Perhaps not, but we can give meaning to an otherwise senseless war. What if I told you that if Operation Alice is successful, we will be able to wipe out the entire Confederate Fleet, bankrupt their economy, and ultimately defeat them once and for all?”
“Then I would say it was worth it.”
Ryan smiled. “Suppose I also told you that we could do all of that without firing a single shot.”
Wilson’s brow furrowed and his lips parted, his expression frozen halfway between surprise and disbelief. “Then I would say there’s something you’re not telling me, and Operation Alice is a lot more important than it appears to be.”
Ryan nodded gravely. “There’s a lot of things I’m not telling you, and as for Operation Alice being more important than it appears—it’s actually the most important mission in the history of the Alliance. But—” Ryan raised a finger to point out the all-important caveat. “—if we give the Confederacy access to the Looking Glass now, the mission will be forfeit.”
Wilson blinked and swallowed visibly. “Maybe you’d better fill me in, sir.”
Ryan picked up his tumbler for another sip of Scotch. “That’s why you’re here, Admiral,” he said, lowering the glass from his lips. He tipped it toward Wilson. “Maybe now you’d like to have that drink?”
“Perhaps, yes… Vodka. Neat.”
“Coming right up.”
Chapter 26
Catalina awoke to the sound of an alarm screeching at her. The alarm was inside her head, a phantom sound that disappeared as soon as she woke up. It was more reliable to set a mental alarm via her parietlar implant than it was to set a physical alarm via her government issue comm band.
Caty sat up and spent a moment blinking away the darkness, giving her eyes time to adjust. “Lights,” she said, whispering to the home’s control system.
The lights rose gradually to full brightness, and Caty rolled out of bed. She shuffled to the home’s only bathroom, only to find that David was already using it.
She knocked lightly. “David?”
“¿Si?”
“Are you almost done?”
“Casi, casi. Puedes prepararnos un cafe mientras.”
Caty frowned, annoyed by his constant use of Spanish. She turned and went to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee like he’d suggested.
Coffee was one of the things the government didn’t really ration, but that was because all of the plantations were in the South. The Confederacy hadn’t thought to nuke the South, so relatively speaking, the southern states were doing pretty well. Scarcity, crime, poverty, and misery in general were all on the rise in the North, and if trends continued, soon the North and South would be on a par with each other.
Caty set a pot of water to boil. They didn’t have a real coffee maker yet. Too expensive. She glanced down the hall to see that the bathroom light was still on, and this time she sighed audibly.
Sharing a bathroom was difficult, but everything else was made easier by having David living with her. They’d pretended to be a couple in front of the government workers in charge of assigning homes to refugees. That way when the woman interviewing them had asked what kind of space they needed, they’d gotten a two bedroom bungalow instead of a one-bedroom. The extra bedroom was there in case they chose to get pregnant—something the government was now encouraging—but that was far from the real reason they wanted a two bedroom house. The government loan on one two bedroom place was easier to pay than two separate, slightly smaller loans. Not to mention Caty slept better knowing that David was in the room next to hers.
The woman interviewing her and David for their home assignment had found their marital statuses in the public record, but then she’d noticed that Caty’s husband was a captain with the fleet, and David’s wife was a lieutenant. That had turned the interviewer’s suspicions to sympathies.
Officially both of their spouses were MIA—Missing in Action, and had been for more than a year. To the government that meant they were dead, but Caty knew better. Alexander’s mission had been top secret, so his official status wouldn’t be accurate. Besides that, he’d left at least a week before the fighting had started, so she was sure he’d escaped. It was worrying that he hadn’t written to her the way he’d promised, but maybe he wasn’t able to send messages from where he was? Or maybe he wasn’t allowed.
Caty had a friend in Sacramento, Lieutenant Tatiana Muros. Tatiana was quietly looking into Alexander’s MIA status for her. So far no news, but Caty was hopeful that might change now that the Alliance was getting more organized.
The pot on the stove began whi
stling and Caty took it off the hotplate. She heaped instant coffee into two cups and began pouring in boiling water. As she was pouring the milk and heaping in sugar, she heard the door to the bathroom open and footsteps approaching. David dialed up the lights to full brightness as he approached, and she turned to him with his cup of coffee.
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “Gracias, cariño.”
“I’m not your honey,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him.
He grinned and took a sip of coffee. “But you are sweet like honey,” he said.
“Mmmm, smooth-talker.” Caty sat down at the kitchen table, regarding David with half an eye over the rim of her coffee mug as he poured cereal for himself. He was already dressed in his work uniform—jeans and an old t-shirt. He’d had an easy time adapting to life after the attacks. Before the attacks he’d been a handyman and carpenter. Now he was working with a large contractor to help build more homes and infrastructure for the refugees.
Caty hadn’t been so lucky. Before all hell had broken loose, she’d been finishing her doctoral thesis in fine arts while working as a museum curator. Under the current circumstances, appreciating art was the last thing on anyone’s minds. Not to mention that the Alliance’s greatest art collections had all been incinerated along with her largest cities.
Now the best job Caty could find with her skills was cleaning house for rich geners in Sacramento. That meant spending two hours on a bus every morning to earn a paltry thousand sols per month. She had to be thankful, though. Unemployment was around thirty five percent in her neighborhood. People were tripping over each other to get jobs like hers, and the only reason she’d gotten her job at all was because her employers, the Waltons, had an extensive private collection of art, and Caty had managed to impress them with her knowledge of that collection.
Catalina smirked around another sip of coffee. It’s a bold new world out there. Now you have to study for eight years just so that you can go scrub toilets for a living.
“What are you thinking about?” David asked, sitting down with his coffee and bowl of cereal. “Something funny?”
Caty shook her head. “Something sad.”
“You were smiling.”
Caty shrugged and wiped the smirk off her face. She pretended to study the bottom of her coffee mug.
“Was it Alex?”
“No.” Caty didn’t look up. She didn’t feel like talking—especially not about Alex. David was sure he was dead, and she was never going to accept that. Not until she had some kind of proof.
“Has your contact found anything yet?”
Caty got up from the table. “Not yet.” She put her mug in the sink.
David paused for a spoonful of cereal. “Maybe there is nothing to find,” he said.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
When she was done, he was waiting for her at the front door with a puppy dog look in his eyes.
“I thought you would have left already,” she said as she put on her shoes.
“And leave you to walk to the bus alone?” He shook his head. “Something could happen to you.”
As soon as she was done putting on her shoes, he lifted her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m sorry, Caty.”
“For what?”
“For not being more understanding. I miss my wife, too.”
Caty shook her head. “I know, but this is different. Alexander really could be alive. He—”
“I know. Top secret mission. I get it. You have hope, and I don’t.” His face fell dramatically and the light left his eyes. “Maybe that’s why I am not more sensitive. Maybe I am jealous.”
Caty felt a pang of guilt and she rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry, too.”
They stood there for a long moment, whole sentences hanging in the air unspoken between them. “We’re going to be late for work,” she eventually said.
He nodded, and they went out the door together. David walked her to her bus to make sure she got on safely. Everyone in the North was supposed to be already well-adjusted and non-violent thanks to their endocrine implants, but crime was still rising steadily. There was a standing nationwide order for all natural-borns with behavioral implants to go get them adjusted, but Caty had a feeling people were reluctant to dial back their primal instincts when they couldn’t be sure that their neighbors were doing the same.
“See you tonight,” David said, waving to her as she climbed on her bus.
Caty nodded and waved back. “See you.”
Three hours later she was busy dusting an explicit Kama Sutra-inspired Koons sculpture in the Waltons’ master suite when her comm band rang with an incoming call.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Caty? It’s Muros.”
“Tatiana?” Catalina’s heart became a drumbeat in her chest. “You heard something?” There was a notable pause on the other end. “Taty? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Your husband’s ship was the Lincoln, right?”
“Yes, why?” Thud-thud. Thud-thud…
“Maybe you’d like to meet with me for lunch today?”
“I’m working.”
“I could come to you.”
“If you know something, just tell me. I’ve waited long enough. I need to know, Taty. Is he okay?”
Catalina heard the other woman sigh. “The Lincoln is listed as a confirmed casualty in our records. I don’t know why your husband’s status is still MIA, but the crew went down with the ship. They didn’t have a chance to deploy lifeboats or escape pods.”
“That’s impossible! They would have updated Alexander’s status.”
“Maybe, but everything is a mess right now, so a lot of things can slip through the cracks. Checking personnel records is a low priority. I’m really sorry, Caty. If there’s anything I can do, you just let me know, okay?”
Catalina’s eyes blurred with tears. “No, thank you. Goodbye.”
“Bye, Caty… Take care.”
Catalina ended the comm call on her end and walked over to sit at the foot of the Waltons’ bed. She sat staring at her hands as her tears rained into them, slipping between her fingers.
“Catalina? Are you all right?”
Caty looked up to see Mrs. Walton standing in the doorway, an uncomfortable look on her face. “I’m fine,” Caty said.
Mrs. Walton frowned and stared at her pointedly. “Clearly you’re not fine. Otherwise you would be doing your job rather than wrinkling a thousand sol bedspread with your posterior.”
Caty stood up quickly and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry… I just heard news about my husband.”
“Captain Alexander?”
“He’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. So many months of holding onto hope and for what? She had written literally hundreds of letters to him. Letters he was never going to read.
Mrs. Walton’s disapproving frown gave way to another look of discomfort. “Oh… I see. You can take a personal day if you like, Caty. I’m sure you can catch up on all the housework tomorrow.”
Catalina wiped her tears again and managed a broken smile. “Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Walton.”
The subsequent hours both dragged and raced, passing in a dimension where time had been replaced by a terrifying void. The bus ride was shorter than usual—no traffic at this time of day. Caty walked alone from the bus stop to her home, scarcely noticing the hungry, desperate faces peering at her from curtain-less windows and barren doorsteps as she passed by.
She went straight to bed and slept a haunted sleep until she woke up with a knock at her door.
“Caty?” It was David. The door cracked open. “Are you asleep?”
She didn’t reply, hoping he would leave.
“You weren’t at the bus stop. Did something happen?”
“No. Nothing. I’m fine.”
The light from the open door increased. More footsteps. “Obvio que no estas bien, mi chiquita.”
“Go away!” she sobbed.
The bed
sank with his weight, and she buried her face in the pillows. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. You lost your job?”
She shook her head.
“Then what?”
Suddenly she was furious with him. What right did he have to intrude on her like this? What was he even doing sharing a house with her? He should just go! Catalina burst from the covers, her eyes flashing, her heart pounding. “He’s dead. Are you happy now? Alexander is dead!”
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