by Ben Weaver
I closed my eyes and considered the question. If I was going to present a convincing argument to Wong and Holtzman, I had to turn statistics into blood, sweat, tears, and death. I would offer my experiences as a soldier. Perhaps war stories wouldn’t be enough, but they would be a start. I thought of my early days in the corps, of the massacre at Columbia Colony, and of the friend who broke my heart.
I held the rank of major when Lieutenant Colonel Diablo gave me Fifth Battalion and sent my troops and I to the facilities of LockMar Randall, a Columbia Colony defense contractor who designed navigation and targeting systems for extrasolar craft. Our mission was to secure and defend the facility at all costs.
We had set up our headquarters inside the primary air traffic control tower, a glistening silver pyramid some three hundred stories tall. Just beyond my bank of displays and past the tower’s viewport lay a grid of hangars, test facilities, and tarmacs that dematerialized into the morning mist. As I sat at my station, I imagined thousands of engineers out there and working warily around my troops. It wasn’t every day that an entire battalion of Colonial Wardens showed up at your doorstep and told you that your place of business might fall under attack. I had mixed feelings over the engineers’ decision to stay on. Yes, their work was vital to the war effort, and you couldn’t help but admire their dedication and patriotism, but if Alliance crab carriers made planetfall and penetrated our defenses…
“Engineers,” began Captain Rooslin Halitov, leaning back in his chair and cupping hands behind his head. “It’s like God rounded up every boring person in the world and said, you, you, and you? You’re going to be engineers. And you over there? The ugly guy playing with the tablet? You, too.”
I made a face. “You’re an idiot. Every piece of tech you use was designed by an engineer. These people are creative, not boring. And they’ve saved your life a million times.”
“They’re still boring. Look at them. Listen to them.” He tapped a knuckle on a plasma screen showing a group of engineers looking diminutive as they conferenced below the bowl-shaped innards of a massive tawt drive system suspended by a lattice work of force beams.
Admittedly, their conversation was full of technobabble and devoid of emotion, but they were just doing their jobs.
“Company reports coming in,” said Halitov, gesturing to his bank of displays.
I pulled up the text on my own screen:
Captain Katya Jing, Company Commander, Saturn Company
Captain Taris Markland, Company Commander, Turbo Company
Captain Cooch Smith, Company Commander, Ulysses Company
Captain Jenny Zeist, Company Commander, Vega Company
With a quick touch, I chose Jing’s report and scanned quickly through the images and data bars. Her people had established the northwest perimeter, and if we came under attack, they would most likely be the first to encounter the enemy. I was not comfortable with assigning her that location, but I knew the rumors about us had filtered all the way down to the privates in her squads and I didn’t want to show any favoritism. Moreover, she was the most experienced conditioned soldier in her company, and I needed someone like her spearheading our defenses. I reached the final databar, where a note flashed, indicating that an encrypted comm request awaited. I tapped a button on the tac around my wrist, and my combat skin rippled over me and glowed a phosphorescent green. Communication switched to my skin, and I watched as Halitov made goo-goo eyes at me. I gave him the finger and took the call.
Jing appeared in my HUV. While most people would immediately notice the teardrop-shaped birthmark on her lower left cheek, I saw only a beautiful Asian woman with silky dark hair and wonderfully mysterious eyes. In fact, her birthmark was a welcome reminder of our connection: we were both descendants of those who had suffered from the genetic disorder epineuropathy; we had both survived childhoods full of ridicule; and we had both risen above our second-class colonists’ roots to become officers. She had once told me that I knew what it was like to be her. I guess I did.
“Major St. Andrew, sir,” she said, snapping off a salute with mock formality. “The captain wishes to speak off the record, sir.”
I grinned. “How’re you doing out there?”
“It’s muggy, the coffee’s bitter, and my people think I’m sleeping with the battalion commander. Just another Saturday morning.”
“Yeah, well it’s stuffy in here. The coffee’s just as bitter, and Rooslin’s making faces. So, will you have a couple of hours later?” I hoisted my brows.
“You’re the CO…”
“Right. Rooslin says they have a cafeteria up here, and one of the chefs stayed on. This guy makes some kind of poultry dish thing that’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”
Her head lowered in disappointment. “Just food? Damn, I was hoping I’d get to sleep with the battalion commander.”
In fact, we had never slept together, and all this talk of doing so quickened my pulse. “This battalion commander is already starving. And he’s wondering what happened to that shy little captain who used to blush around him.”
“There are no atheists or shy people in a foxhole, especially one sitting on the perimeter.”
I was about to reply as she turned her head off camera and muttered, “Damn it.”
Alarms resounded in my HUV. “Jing!”
A horrific explosion echoed over the channel, and even as she turned back to face me, debris rained down on her—
And the signal cut off.
“Jing? Jing?”
I de-skinned, my gaze intent on the multiple images pouring in from our perimeter cameras. An intense wave of glistening white particle fire formed a weird picket fence of energy that sprouted up along our northwest tarmac and raced toward one of the hangars. I shivered with the urge to abandon my post, use my conditioning to access the quantum bond between particles, and will myself down to Jing’s position to whisk her out of there.
“First wave,” cried Halitov. “Count nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two crab carriers inbound, bearings up. ETA two minutes.”
“Where the hell was Diablo?” I asked.
“Yeah, where was he?” Halitov grunted. “Incompetent brass.”
I tapped for a link to Lieutenant Colonel Diablo’s command post, and the man appeared, stroking his thin mustache. “Sir, we’re under attack!”
“That’s right. Dig in. Fight.”
“What happened to our carriers in orbit? Why didn’t they alert us?”
Diablo’s eyes glossed over, and he appeared to lose his breath. “That’s…that’s what we’re trying to figure out, Major.”
“Copy.” I broke contact and tried dialing up Jing once more. Tried her private suit channel. Nothing.
“Major, we have multiple enemy contacts,” said Captain Taris Markland. I looked at my brother’s face on the screen and would never see him as anyone but Jarrett St. Andrew.
“Jarrett, get those shuttles fired up and get those engineers in your sector the hell out of here.”
“Scott, man, you have to call me Markland.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Sounding the evacuation alarm,” he said.
My voice cracked. “Jarrett, be careful out there.”
He shook his head over the admonishment, then cut the link. Only then did I realize that I had once again called him by his real name. Sure, the Colonial Wardens had staged his death and had recruited him for their elite force, but Taris Markland? Did they have to issue him such an awkward name?
I switched to another channel. “Smitty? Zeist? Copy?”
The two captains responded nearly in unison, and their images appeared in my HUV, even as I skinned up again.
“Got those carriers on your scopes?” I asked.
“Got ’em,” said Zeist, her already fair complexion growing whiter. “And there’s another wing coming in from the south. We’ve locked their course. Count fourteen, sir.”
We were one battalion comprised of six hundred and sev
enty-one Colonial Wardens. Those crab carriers screaming toward us, their bowls loaded with over twenty thousand Western Alliance Marines, reminded me once again that our forces were spread much too thinly through the seventeen systems. We were outgunned, outnumbered, and out of our minds for staying one minute longer than necessary.
Captain Cooch Smith, a brown-haired Warden of thirty with freckles and a steely resolve that reminded me of Halitov’s, gritted his teeth. “My people are evacuating the engineers, but if those Marines take out our cannons, we’ll have no air support. The transports will be blown out of the sky.”
“Just get them loaded. I’ll see if I can get a wing of atmoattacks from Diablo.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good luck to you both.” I regarded the other twenty or so support personnel working with us inside the tower. “All right, people, listen up. We’re evacuating the tower. Purge the records. And I want all of you out—now!”
With a nervous murmuring but a practiced efficiency, the personnel erased data, then sprang from their chairs, heading for the exits. Halitov glanced up to the viewport. “They’re in the zone,” he cried.
The morning mist gave way to thick columns of smoke rising from the northwest. Through that smoke came the first wave of crab carriers, their metallic carapaces flashing, their big clawlike landing gear already flexing into position. Our rooftop cannon emplacements unleashed salvo after salvo, but those carrier pilots were running defense skins at maximum power. Our cannons would run out of ammunition long before they could gnaw away at those shields.
“If we had a little warning, we could’ve launched the EMP their way,” said Halitov. “The pulse wave would’ve stalled them. We can’t use EMP in here without destroying the electronics aboard the shuttles.”
“That’s right,” I said, glancing once more through the viewport at the half dozen crab carriers hovering over the tarmac. “Our intell was corrupt. No one saw this coming. Diablo says stay and fight. I’m making a tactical decision. This place is lost. We’ll protect the shuttles. Get those people out. Then we follow. Relay the orders.”
He nodded, turned back to his displays, and began speaking rapidly to our company commanders. At the time, I wasn’t sure why he gave me a dirty look as I listened in, a dirty look that sent me turning away, but later I would realize that I should have monitored his actions more closely.
I contacted Diablo once more, and his answer to my request for atmoattack jets was anything but promising. “All of our forces are already deployed,” he said.
“Very well, then, sir. I’ve ordered a full evacuation.”
“You’ve done what?”
“Sir, there are over twenty thousand troops hitting the ground as we speak.”
He shut his eyes, rubbed his temples. “Very well. Hold them off as long as you can, then get out.”
“We will, sir. Have you made contact with our carriers?”
His eyes snapped open, and his voice came through a shudder. “Major, our carriers are gone.”
“Sir?”
“It appears, Mr. St. Andrew, that we’ve been betrayed and ambushed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a battle to lose.”
I turned away, shocked, then Jing’s voice came from one of my panels. “Scott? Copy?”
With a start, I dodged for the display, stared worriedly at her as she crouched in her foxhole, the hazy sky beyond her stitched with particle fire. “I’m here,” I said.
“Our civvies are loaded, but my company will be overrun any second. I can’t get them out in time.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
“Scott, I’m staying with them.”
I froze, thought about what she was saying, then tried to put my feelings aside in favor of the larger picture. “You’re too valuable. I want you out of there. Fall back to Alpha pad. I’ll meet you at the drop.”
“But Scott—”
I grew rigid, spoke through my teeth. “Jing. Fall back!”
She backhanded a tear from her eye, then my screen went blank.
I tapped for her channel, got the message that she was receiving the call but ignoring. “Jing! Answer me!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a huge explosion erupting from the south, from the exact hangar where Halitov’s “boring” engineers had been working on that tawt drive system.
“Oh, shit,” cried Halitov, gaping at one of his plasma screens. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit!”
“What?”
“Got a core leak. The clock’s been tripped.”
“How long?”
“Give me a second. Pulling up specs. I’ll see if I can reach anyone there.” He muttered a command, and blueprints of the now shattered tawt drive system popped up on his displays.
I wrung my hands and waited as he scanned the images and spoke rapidly with an engineer. Then he faced me, looking gave. “Three guys are trying to get near that tawt drive. Yeah, they’ll try to shut it down, but readings indicate the leak’s pretty bad. Clock’s reading one hour, twenty-one minutes.”
“Blast radius?”
“You want it technical? Or real?”
“Just tell me!”
“Fourteen kilometers.”
“Say again?”
“Fourteen kilometers. The whole fucking place.”
I stopped, lost my breath, caught it, then thought a moment. “All right, tell those guys to access the situation, and if they can’t do anything, then they should evacuate immediately,” I said. “Is there anything we can do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can go sit on it. My fat ass might dull the blast.”
I whirled away from him, balled a hand into a fist. “Idiots!” I screamed.
Halitov spoke once more with the engineers, then said, “Yeah, the Marines probably didn’t mean to hit that. But hey, at least it wasn’t us. I’d hate to think that we decided to blow up this place instead of letting it fall into enemy hands. We’ve been there before, eh?”
“Think they know about the leak?”
“Don’t know. If not, they’re about to capture a ticking bomb. At least we get the last laugh.”
I huffed. “Twenty-one minutes…Skin up. Let’s go.”
With a sonorous boom, the viewport blew in under the incredible force of a pulse bomb that had impacted just a dozen meters below our level. The blast knocked Halitov and I across the room and sent us skittering toward the back wall. An acrid wind rushed in and howled, attended by the even louder drone of crab carrier turbines and booming particle cannons. The entire pyramid rumbled violently as two more pulse bombs detonated somewhere on the building’s west side.
We scrambled to our feet, skinned up, then Halitov smote a fist on the lift’s dead control panel. I looked to the shattered viewport, our only exit, the ground some three hundred meters below.
“No, I don’t think it’s going to happen this time,” said Halitov, unclipping a particle rifle from the wall.
“What?” I asked, grabbing my own weapon.
“Making it out alive.”
I grinned weakly. “Why do you always get depressed when we’re surrounded by twenty thousand troops? What’s your problem?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I usually like being the center of attention.” He ventured to the shattered window and stared down at a tiny gray ribbon: the perimeter walkway. “That, Major St. Andrew, is a big drop.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“If the bond fails, we’re going to die.”
“That’s right.”
“Just making sure you knew the odds.” With that, he winked, leapt from the sill, and plummeted.
For a second, I glimpsed a long line of Marines flooding out of the nearest crab carrier. While our rooftop cannons punched gaping holes in the surface near them and occasionally took out a grunt or two, for the most part, the enemy advanced routinely on our position. I knew my people would have several surprises waiting for them. However, in all the confusion, I had failed to check my HUV for casualty reports. I
didn’t realize that nearly half of my people were already dead.
The sill near me exploded with particle fire as several Marines below probed with their beads. I held my breath, reached into the bond, and took to the air.
2
“I’m still alive,” Halitov said over my private channel. “I like that.”
With the walkway rushing up at me, I strengthened my connection to the quantum bond, felt the particles within myself, the air, and the surface, then rolled up, brought my boots down, and smack, hit the quickcrete.
“Stay down,” Halitov ordered calmly as he spotted something just over my shoulder.
I shot a glance back as he charged a pair of oncoming Marines whose combat skins fluctuated from a mossy green to a deep brown. In a flash barely perceptible to the naked eye, Halitov flung himself into a biza, flying headfirst at the soldiers, his particle rifle spewing a glistening hot bead at one while he targeted the second with his free hand. The first Marine crumpled as Halitov’s hand penetrated the second Marine’s skin and latched onto the guy’s throat. The Marine stumbled back, and in that moment of disorientation, Halitov landed on his feet, crossed back, and ripped off the soldier’s tac. The combat skin vanished just as Halitov gutted him with a Ka-bar that he had wrenched from his calf sheath.
“Nineteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight to go,” he groaned.
“Approximately.”
“Yeah. Approximately.”
We darted off, keeping close to the tower. While we could will ourselves to evacuation pad Alpha, about a kilometer south of our position, we might lose consciousness from the drain of bridging such a long distance. Neither of us had mastered the technique the way Jing had, and we wouldn’t take the risk.
We had reached the tower’s southeast corner, where my friend peered around the corner and swore. I got my haunches and stole a glimpse for myself:
Ten crab carriers lined the nearest tarmac, Marines charging out of them as though they had just been given a week’s leave at an exotic port. They hooted, hollered, activated their skins, and fired seemingly without cause or direction, just tossing up beads into the sky or at the row of five-story research buildings that lay ahead.