by Nick Webb
As much as she hated watching humanity bow and scrape for food aid, the fact was that they couldn’t feed themselves. They needed the aid the Telestines gave them, and that was all on the discretion of what seemed to be the richest members of their society.
Yet another reason for this Rebellion: who could say when that charitable streak would end? Tel’rabim had been sending aid to humanity out of his own coffers for decades. Surely he—she was fairly sure it was a he—would tire of it someday.
“Communications about these issues should obscure any signals coming from our ships,” Walker continued. “Please note that we are allowing these stations to handle all communications themselves, for the purposes of seeking UN aid to ensure Technological Easement.” Her gaze swept around the table, meeting each pair of eyes. She did not have to remind them how important this was. If the UN found out about this mission, they were in for a world of trouble. The General Secretary would almost certainly do something, whether intentional or not, that would expose the scope of the operation.
“On that note, ma’am, we have arranged for Secretary Sokoloff to be occupied with a great number of requests from the outermost stations so that he doesn’t get too suspicious about these.” Larsen looked up to meet her eyes and nodded.
“Thank you. Meanwhile, a diversion ship will send a transport for the parts they’re requesting, which will break down near—” she tapped the screen, “this sensor.”
“That will mobilize their fleet into the asteroid belt, won’t it?” Commander King frowned.
“They’ll tell the Telestines they’re doing the repairs themselves. The trick is, the sensor arrays become backup communications grids. If the ship signals for help, that hijacks the sensor’s primary array. As long as our ship can keep it busy with transmissions about parts and repairs, we can get through the belt with minimal interference.”
Or so their source on Venus said.
She wished she knew who that was. Whoever they were, they commanded a network larger than her own, and better connected—and if the cargo haulers knew who it was, they weren’t saying.
Right about now, however, Walker was willing to take any ally she could get. She stared down at the maps and tried to keep her expression blank.
“Ma’am?” Commander King looked worried at her pause.
At her side, Commander Delaney watched Walker, his eyes narrowing.
“Right.” Walker turned back to the screens with cold determination. “Now, the other diversions....”
I will free humanity from this hell if it is the last thing I do. Don’t fail me, Pike.
Chapter Five
Venus, 49 kilometers above surface
Tang Estate, New Zurich
“Sir?”
“What is it?” Nhean Tang kept his gaze fixed on the blaze of sunlight outside his office windows. He had stationed his personal chambers at the top of the floating estate so that he would always be surrounded by a view of towering golden clouds. The estates on Venus were prized for precisely this view, and his was one of the finest. That he did not like the view was another matter entirely.
For him, it was a reminder.
He turned his head at last as the footsteps approached. “A detachment of the Exile Fleet has broken out of orbit around Jupiter.” Parees, his aide, placed a document reader on the desk behind him.
“Yes, I know. The admiral informed me.” Nhean sank his chin onto one hand. His focus was split now, between the view before him—a lightning storm brewing in the clouds to the east—and the constant scroll of information on the screens to his left. Information was his lifeblood. It was the only thing that mattered. Bullets could be dodged. Money could be lost. Power could be bought. But information? Nothing mattered more. “Anything else of interest?”
“Some are concerned about her choice regarding a mission specialist.” The aide considered. “And the Valiant is their escort ship. Internal reports suggest that it’s damaged.”
“Yes, she’s asked us to see to its repairs, if it survives this mission.” His voice was neutral. He was not pleased by the admiral’s request, but he could hardly fault her for asking for his help—or for using a weakened ship for this mission. The odds that any of them would make it out of this gambit alive were slim.
Then again, he could have predicted her actions when he told the Rebellion about the Dawning. He had judged it worth the risk. He wondered if the rest of the fleet knew the dangers, and decided they likely did not. Laura Walker was not someone to risk a mission with too many facts, or too many people knowing said facts. He had never met the woman, of course, but it had not been too difficult to learn about her.
“Tell me about the mission specialist.”
“William Pike,” Parees said promptly. He clasped his hands behind his back, reciting information without looking directly at Nhean. “Approximately thirty-five years old, but his birthdate is unknown. Native of Earth.”
Nhean’s eyebrows went up. There were humans still living on Earth—a great many of them, in fact—but the bulk of them were in chain gangs, used for whatever purpose the Telestines deemed most expedient. Official human settlement was banned under the terms of the treaty that had been so carefully written and imposed upon the human race, a farcical invitation for the Telestines to settle Earth, acknowledging their technological superiority and thanking them for the great kindness of not wiping out the species. Some humans still remained, of course, in defiance of the treaty.
They were hunted like animals.
His eyes flickered. “Was there a recent escape I was not informed of?”
“He was given passage off earth twenty-four years ago. His family was feeding information to the Rebellion; they were found, and the colony was destroyed. Out of loyalty, the Rebellion saved as many from the camp as possible.”
Nhean said nothing. His eyes were narrowed. This man, William Pike, knew Earth, then. No wonder the admiral had been so assured that she had a good mission specialist. And ... ah. Of course.
“He’s not part of the Rebellion, himself, is he?”
“No.” Parees hesitated. “He was a childhood friend of the admiral’s, from Johnson Station at Ganymede. His current political views are unknown.”
Had been unknown. Nhean smiled grimly. However careful he might have been in the past, William Pike was part of the Rebellion now. “Learn what you can about him. And find me a way to get in contact with him on the surface—outside the admiral’s channels.”
“Of course, sir.” Parees did not protest; he never protested when Nhean gave him impossible orders. “Will there be anything else?”
“Tell me if any of the rest of the fleet starts moving. Otherwise, no. You may go.”
“Sir.” Parees bowed and withdrew, bare feet padding on the marble floors. If one looked only at him, in his sleeveless vest and loose pants, long black hair drawn back in an austere braid, one might think this a tableau from Earth itself, and not in a floating estate in the caustic atmosphere of another planet.
From the marble columns to the hanging plants, it was an image Nhean did his best to cultivate in every room but this one. The view here was too obvious for such a deception to be successful.
He swung his chair around and gave the screens his full attention. A few he moved to one side so that he could still catch a glimpse of the stock market feeds and the meager packets of information he was able to extract from the Telestine communication systems.
The remaining screens arranged themselves into a map. He could see the advance scouts of the Exile Fleet forging through the sensors placed within the asteroid belt. The Telestines, justifiably mistrustful of humanity in spite of its surrender, liked to keep tabs on the passage of ships toward Earth. Those sensors were the epitome of high-tech: small, easily overlooked, with self-destruct capabilities if anyone tried to take them apart. They were still, however, prone to debris collisions, and thus the catapult had made a surprising return to the human military arsenal.
The ad
miral’s ships had been careful not to take out too many sensors in any one area. They charted a careful path indirectly through the asteroid belt. From the number of fighters accompanying the mission, it was almost certain that Admiral Walker knew some of the defenses that lay between her fleet and its home planet.
She did not know all of them, however, and it had not been in Nhean’s interest to tell her. To do so would be to betray how much he knew, his capabilities ... and his limits. He had spent the past few years very carefully building a tiny arsenal of copycat satellites, working his way insidiously into the Telestine communication systems. He could quite easily access the peripheral systems, but it was Earth’s defense he needed to crack.
For that, he needed the fleet. Nhean was not foolish enough to show his own hand just yet. Rebels with guns, making a terrible commotion on the surface of the planet and stealing all of the Telestines’ attention, would make the perfect diversion.
And, if he played his cards right, he would have access to a man not as loyal to the Rebellion as to the idea of Earth. Someone like that could be the most useful tool of all.
Admiral Walker had no idea what she had just handed him.
Chapter Six
Jupiter, Ganymede’s L4 Lagrange point
Command Center, New Beginnings Station
Admiral Walker watched the view screen with bated breath.
It was finally time.
The entire command center fell quiet as they watched the ships come out of deceleration burn at precisely 0800 ship-time. The Valiant began its slow turn broad-side to the bright blue planet below. Walker had only been there once before, but like that time she now marveled at how the atmosphere seemed to glow like blue fire, compared to the sterile vacuums of the Snowball Moons of Jupiter.
At least, it felt like she was there. In reality, she was watching from the relative safety of New Beginnings Station at Jupiter. Thank god they’d stolen faster-than-light comm tech from the Telestines or this would never have been possible.
On the view screen it looked like the whole ship reverberated as the fighter bay doors slid open. She was, charitably speaking, an ugly ship, a refitted algae tanker that still smelled to high heaven in the fighter bays. She didn’t need to be aerodynamic, and so she wasn’t. Her hull was streaked and scratched, and her crew called her—however affectionately—“the Troll.”
She had it where it counted, though. The old skim tubes for the algae harvest now provided the lateral thrust to spin the ship, and the seven tanks held forty-nine fighters, more than any other “carrier” the Exile Fleet commanded. Delaney sometimes spoke of old aircraft carriers on Earth the size of small space stations, and also of the starships humanity had one day hoped to send into space, floating cities with gardens and schools, made not just to support the basic rudiments of life but to allow humanity to flourish.
Walker paid more attention to those stories than she let on.
“Fighter bays reporting open.” Lieutenant Commander Scott Larsen kept his eyes fixed on the text readout.
“Thank you.” Walker rested her palms lightly on the desk.
“Fighters beginning launch,” Larsen reported.
Walker kept her eyes fixed on the screen. The planet curved gracefully beneath the Valiant, deceptively peaceful. She gave a quick look, counting the soldiers watching here: King, Delany, and Larsen; Captains Noringe, Lee, and Kim; her navigator Ensign Harris—men and women from all walks. Larsen had been a friend of Walker’s younger brother, one of the many children who played “Tag and Retake Earth” in the zero-g center of Johnson Station. Sara Harris had been raised in the relative luxury of the Mars settlement, and Ed Noringe, people whispered, was the heir to an estate on Venus. Walker believed it. He rarely spoke up, and when others mentioned the squalid conditions on the stations, he furrowed his brow and tighten his lips, as if he felt guilty.
On screen, the fighters began to emerge from the Valiant, taking up their formation in a three-dimensional wedge pointed at the planet’s surface. Nestled among them was Pike’s ship, a heavier fighter with a capsule strapped to the bottom.
Pike would have a rough, unguided landing, but they’d learned through trial and error that the Telestines didn’t bother to shoot down objects in free fall. The Telestine sensors looked for the byproducts of propulsion, and accordingly, the Rebellion had designed its ships to tumble like asteroids, drift inert, and plummet into gravity wells.
The species they were up against had been in space since before the birth of Christ; humanity scavenged the scraps of their technology, some given, some stolen.
Every part of this plan had been tailored to fit their enemy’s weaknesses. Like their ships, human technology was crude and limited, scarcely advanced beyond NASA’s heyday in the last century. Hopefully it was good enough.
They’d soon find out.
“No engagement yet from defensive satellites. I suppose that’s good, right?” Larsen’s gaze went to the readout, as if checking whether this could possibly be correct.
Walker paused. No detection, no scrutiny at all? No Telestine engagement? She zoomed in on the wedge of the fighters and peered at a serial number.
“Fighter Eighteen. Give me its video feed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The officers all turned their heads to watch as one of the side screens came alive with the video feed. It was a grainy fisheye view. Earth appeared as a glowing arc at the bottom of the feed, and two other ships hovered just in sight out the windows. Walker’s eyes picked out the somewhat larger shape of the ship carrying Pike’s capsule. She folded her arms over her chest and tried not to tap her fingers.
A flare of activity on the screen drew everyone’s attention.
“Defensive systems engaging.” Larsen swallowed. He looked up at Walker, his gaze like steel.
She nodded. There was nothing to do now but begin. Retreat was not an option.
“Formation spreading.” Larsen’s voice almost trembled now. “Bunching toward the sites of engagement.”
“They’re doing well.” Delaney said, gruffly, stroking the white stubble on his chin. He sounded impressed. His eyes met Walker’s and he gave a nod. They had created this formation together and tested the fighter pilots on it. When she worried and wished they had the old military manuals from Earth, he reminded her that they would have been no use. Three dimensional warfare was new to humanity. Space is not the sea.
And, in any case, as always, there was no use in wishing for what they could not have. The Telestines had carefully destroyed the entire human military knowledge base, along with the militaries themselves. The records of bases and ships, all lost. Weapons, missiles, strategies, tactics, all gone. All they had left were traces of memory in those who had escaped the culling.
That, and instinct. And as a million years of survival had proved, humans had excellent instincts.
“Dive.”
She gave the order firmly, with confidence. Afterwards, her lips shaped silent words as she recited the Lord’s Prayer. She kept her faith hidden, the cross below her uniform, the icons in the drawer of her locker, and she always prayed in silence. God can hear you anywhere, Laura, Grandmother’s voice whispered.
Her fingers clenched against the desk.
A flicker caught her eyes.
“Air-to-air mass-drivers detected. One ship down.”
The room went still. Walker swallowed, and then the video feed pitched sharply to the left. On the screen, the wedge lengthened and began to tip. The rearguard fanned out and arced away in their own wedge formations. Blips of light flared and disappeared.
“Second ship down. Two—no, three more.” Larsen did not seem able to avoid giving an account, even though they could all see it. “Defensive systems engaging ahead of the scout group.”
A flare of light showed in the video feed and the ship swerved sideways. At the edges of the feed, Walker could see the other ships bunch and exchange places.
Four minutes and nine seconds i
n. She tracked the progress of the lead group with her eyes. They were close to the stratosphere now. Close, very close. She looked between the feed and the screen. Dots were beginning to freeze in place as the ships that were supposed to monitor one another were blown out of the sky.
A massive flare of light to starboard, and the whole screen flickered.
“What the hell was that?” The words came out before she could stop them. She looked over at Larsen, who was staring, frozen, at the video screen. “Scott, what was that?”
“Two detachments down, ma’am.”
She didn’t understand him. “Two ships?”
“Fourteen ships.”
“What? What hit them?” The satellites had defensive arrays, but nothing to take out fourteen ships in perfect unison.
“I ... don’t know.” Larsen’s eyes moved to the screen. “They’re ... forming up.”
The wedge tightened and lengthened yet again. Walker zoomed in, fingers moving unconsciously. The fighters had formed a cone around the drop ship and they were putting on speed. They arrowed desperately down toward the surface in a swift glow of compressed orange atmosphere.
Two minutes and forty-eight seconds.
The ship at the fore burst apart in a cloud of debris and the formation spread to avoid the fallout before joining up again. The view of Pike’s ship dropped away as their feed ship took the lead position.
Walker’s hand was over her mouth. It was her own voice she heard in her head now, two weeks back, her own speech to the very pilots she was now watching die horrific deaths. The Dawning gives us a fighting chance. If we want humanity to survive, the drop ship must get to the surface and steal that tech.
They had believed her, those pilots. They had hurled themselves into the defensive arrays, they had watched their fellow pilots blown to pieces, and now they were fanning out around the drop ship for what cover they could find.