Coalition Defense Force Boxed Set: First to Fight

by Gibbs, Daniel

  Henry tried to inject sympathy into his voice as he continued. "Listen, I know you're frightened. I'm scared to death myself. This is the kind of shit I try to stay out of. But people I care for are in danger, including all of you. If we cross Caetano, she's not going to stop at kicking us off Lusitania. She'll have people gunning for us too. It's a point of pride for her—not just pride but survival. She can't afford to look weak to anyone. So yeah, I'm finishing this job."

  "How are you going to satisfy Caetano, Vitorino, and Coalition Intelligence all at once?" asked Oskar.

  "I'm not sure," Henry admitted. "I'm sorry, no guarantees there. All I can say is I'll make whatever deal best fits the situation. I'll do what I have to in order to get us out of this predicament, all right? Even if it means dropping Gaon off on Lusitania and taking right off for the Jewels."

  There was a chuckle from Piper and a grin on Vidia's face. The Jewels, aka the Jewel Box, were a cluster of stars far to Anti-Spinward from their region of Sagittarius-Centaurus, so named centuries before due to their appearance from Earth. It was the farthest known extent of human exploration to the Anti-Spinward, a journey of months through the Coalition, Saurian, and Tash'vakal systems, and then a whole stretch of independent space. "And just what kind of work do you think we'll find out there?" Piper asked. "Crucians and Laconians don't take kindly to strangers."

  "I'd hope to find something nearer," Henry said with a grin. "But like I said, whatever I have to for this crew."

  That drew nods from the others.

  "I'm with you, Jim. You know that," Felix said. While he initially faced Henry, his eyes drifted over to Tia, a challenge in them.

  Tia returned the glance. "Like I said, this job's going to go bad," she said. "But it wouldn't be my first lost cause. I'm with you, Jim."

  One by one, the others indicated their agreement. A brief crackle came over the intercom. "Cera and I are in concurrence, Captain. We will remain," Yanik announced, his words accented with a slight hiss.

  Henry smiled. "All right, then. Everyone who's due, get some rack time. It's five jumps to Harron, so we'll be there in about two days."

  Everyone but Felix departed. "Thanks, Jim," he said. "I know my brother's being a stubborn ass."

  "As I said before, it runs in the family," Henry replied.

  "He's got more faith than the two of us combined."

  "He always has." Henry went to one of the refrigerators and pulled out a couple of cans. "Here." He tossed one of them.

  Felix caught and stared at it. "Non-alcoholic beer, Jim? Really?"

  "No alcohol on duty," Henry replied. "You and I are due on watch in an hour, remember?"

  "Right." Felix sighed and opened his can with a hiss. "So, I guess I'm about to get chewed out for what happened with Tia?"

  "She's my first mate, Felix. Your boss when I'm not here." Henry opened his beer while Felix took a drink. "You've got to work with her, and politics be damned."

  "Listen, I know she means well. People like her always do. They always convince themselves they're the special ones who will make it work, and they never do."

  "Maybe not, but…" Henry drew in a breath. "I've been to Hestia, Felix. Just after that, revolution failed. It was bad. She's got every right to want to change things there."

  "I've heard the stories," Felix said. "As bad as they sound?"

  "Worse. The offworld megacorps built an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy, and they use it as justification to treat the Hestians like disposable tools more than people. They restrict agriculture to make the Hestians reliant on food imports. They arrest people for growing unauthorized food or hunting game. It lets them use starvation to control the population. They force them to work in mines for crap wages and pay them in company scrip, so they have no choices."

  "Bastards," Felix grumbled. "Yeah, I'd rebel too. But her friends went too far. The League should be all the example people need about what happens when you give the government too much power."

  Henry shrugged. "From their perspective, a new government powerful enough to control or expel the megacorps is the only way to freedom. Otherwise, the megacorps will wave their money around and walk right back in." Henry took another drink, during which Felix said nothing. "I saw what they did to the rebels they caught, Felix. Public punishment details. They worked a lot of them to death, humiliated them publicly, as in literally putting them in stocks and the like to be shamed by their communities. Sometimes forced their neighbors, relatives, to help, while they cut food imports across the planet as punishment and fired native Hestians from all but the lowest managerial positions." Henry swallowed. "Honestly, they behaved like the bloody League. It wasn't like they had to fear another revolt—they'd just crushed a rising, and they had all the guns."

  The scowl forming on Felix’s face was enough.

  "So yeah, when I met Tia, I signed her on," Henry continued. "She's never made me regret it."

  "Sounds like it wouldn't have been easy. She's got no love for the Coalition."

  "I didn't approach her as someone from the Coalition," Henry said. "I found her on Darien when I was getting the Shadow Wolf's registry renewed. Broken, hurt, angry." His look turned distant. "I wasn't much better at the time. I mean, if it hadn't been for Uncle Charlie, I would have been just as bad as her."

  Felix laughed softly, thinking of Charlie Henry with fondness. "So you decided to pass on the goodwill, just as the good Lord intended, and be her Uncle Charlie?"

  Henry chuckled before taking a drink. After swallowing, he shook his head. "That was the plan. It didn't quite go that way, in the end. But in time, I ended up with the best first mate I could ask for out here. And you've got to admit her contacts have come in handy."

  "Yeah, they have. I guess she's earned some tolerance, given what her world's like." Felix shrugged. "I just could never turn away from a fight on that issue. You know that."

  "Boy, do I ever," Henry said, chuckling again. "I still remember that big argument you and Mister Tanner got into back in our senior year."

  "Man was the worst economics teacher ever," Felix said.

  "School board didn't think so."

  "Statist pricks, the lot of them."

  Henry kept laughing.

  * * *

  After being relieved from watch duties, Tia briefly considered rest before deciding she needed to wind down first. She grabbed a soda from the galley fridge and headed to the rec room. It was astern of the galley, the last room before one reached before the aft engineering spaces. Built to the same size as the galley, with a floor space of about seventy square meters, the rec room had an old reconstructed jukebox Henry had brought from Tylerville with a digital music database tied to the interstellar network when comms were available. Beside it was a pinball machine. One wall had several printed books and a server for a private database of literature for the crew with a pile of cheap digital readers linked to it. The third wall was taken up by a holoviewer, one of the excellent, high-fidelity models that the entire crew had pitched together to purchase. Currently, it showed a visual of an ongoing ship battle in space with space fighters zooming around.

  Piper was the only other occupant in the room, seated in one of the three recliners. She had a can of something—Tia couldn't make out what—and a plate with crumbs from a sandwich already consumed. For the moment, she was engrossed in the program, but that changed when Tia walked into her line of sight to approach the bookshelf. Piper paused the program and watched Tia pick a well-worn printed volume from the shelf. As she walked by, book in hand, Piper made out the title. "The Failings of Capitalism?" she asked. "What's that about?"

  "It's from New Aragon, written by a trade union leader from two centuries ago," Tia said, sitting down with the book. "It was one of the first books I learned to read English from."

  "Sounds a bit heavy for a little girl."

  Tia shook her head. "I was thirteen. I was just about to get my first job, a cleaning job to help my family feed my younger siblings." Ti
a looked over the text within without quite seeming to read it. "My uncle Guillaume gave it to me as a gift. He had a management job at the ore refinery in Schneiderbourg." She let out a small chuckle. "He rose about as high as a Hestian could in those days. His bosses never knew he was with the movement." Seeing the uncertain look on Piper's face, Tia closed the book. "I didn't mean to interrupt you," she said.

  "You're not," Piper replied. "I was just watching the latest episode of The War Patrol."

  "You mean the Coalition propaganda show?"

  "Fun Coalition propaganda," Piper corrected playfully. "It's so funny to see the things they mess up."

  Tia let out a small laugh at that. She glanced back at the book in her hands, and a worried expression came to her face.

  "Hey." Piper focused on Tia. "What's wrong?"

  "The entire galaxy, really," Tia said. "Why is it that we keep reliving the same cycle?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "For as long as humanity has been around, we’ve hurt and exploited one another," Tia said softly. "We did it before we had spaceflight. Industry. Even when we barely had agriculture. Why can't we live in peace with each other?"

  It was a profound question. Given the sad history of her ancestors, Piper was not incapable of such herself, but she'd long ago decided such issues were not going to be solved, so she didn't worry about them. With Tia, she shrugged. "Could be any number of reasons. Maybe there are bad spirits in us. Or it's just bad parts in each of us, and some of us let them win." Piper folded her hands together in her lap. "What's brought this on? If you don't mind me asking?"

  "Everything," Tia replied, her voice uncertain. "No. Maybe not everything… my friend, then."

  "The one you see for a drink whenever we're in Gamavilla?"

  "Yes." Tia leaned back in the chair and looked to the ceiling. "He's talking about accepting the government amnesty and being able to go home, but he has to support the people in charge and oppose resistance, or at least oppose the Hestian Workers' Party. The League's pet Social Solidarity Party is apparently not covered in the restriction."

  "Would you want to go home?" Piper asked.

  Tia hadn't seen her family in over a decade and missed her parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. Communications were nearly impossible thanks to the government, and sending money nearly so, and there was so much she could have done for them. There were the others she'd known growing up in the mining town, too, friends still alive, and family relations.

  But she would have to surrender, sign the damn amnesty, claim she had been in the wrong to oppose the so-called Republic of Hestia, joke that it was, and swear they were the "legitimate" government and accept the system that exploited her people. There was also the bit about “preserving and protecting” the same.

  She couldn't do that without betraying all of her dead comrades, the men and women who died trying to free the people of Hestia.

  "My world was beautiful. Is beautiful," Piper said. "Sanctuary is lightly populated even by neutral world standards, but we prefer it that way. It gives each tribe a lot of land to live on as we desire." Her eyes grew distant, as if she was lost in imagination. "A wide-open blue sky with a yellow star. Grasslands as far as I could see, distant mountains covered in lush forests. And the desert… I can't even describe how beautiful it is. Stark and silent."

  "Sounds better than Hestia," Tia said. "Our world has too many mines, and the industries are run as cheaply as possible, so there are almost no measures taken to prevent environmental damage to the countryside."

  "I'm sorry. I guess my people are lucky that Sanctuary's mineral wealth isn't so great."

  "Why did you name your world something like that?"

  "It was the first name all of the tribes agreed on."

  Tia grinned. She thought of the origins of her own homeworld. Hestia had been named for a Greek goddess by the initial surveyors. That most of her population would come from worlds settled by the initial wave of Southeast Asian settlers into Sagittarius had not been anticipated by the survey team.

  "You're not ever going to accept the amnesty, are you?"

  Tia shook her head. "I can't. I can't lie like that or debase myself. I'd rather die in exile."

  "I understand," Piper said. "Sometimes, it’s better than surrender."

  Tia nodded and looked to her book again, enjoying the precious memories connected to it in her mind.

  16

  Kepper started his hunt the usual way. Given the cover of his quarry, she was likely to have been staying at the ISU hotel and hostel in the Alien Quarter, so he focused his attention there.

  The main difficulty was that he wasn’t a spacer, nor had he ever been one, and he didn't have union membership. Loitering around the ISU building would draw attention that he couldn't easily deflect with a membership card. Nor could he simply hold out the picture of his quarry and ask passersby. In Sektatsh, that would make him look like a slave-hunter seeking a particular quarry on consignment. It would merely tip his hand.

  Thankfully, there were other options.

  Kepper slid into an alley off the side road, market buildings to each side. A group of small Harr'al children were arrayed around each other in clothing that, charitably, was well-worn. A klimat, a little four-legged reptilian creature, was writhing on the ground as one of them continued to prod the beast with the tip of a knife. It was the kind of petty, sadistic cruelty a particular type of child would engage in. Kepper was not impressed, given he had long ago moved on to greater heights in that department.

  His intrusion was quickly noticed. One child from the group spoke up in broken English, drawing attention to him. "What you want?"

  "Information." Kepper held up a wad of banknotes. "Look for human woman."

  The translator shared Kepper's offer with his compatriots. The Harr'al children were more curious than frightened—the prospect of money clearly appealed to them, as one would expect. He would be on guard for lies and exaggerations meant to get cash for nothing.

  The children each took a good look at the image. One of them chattered excitedly at the others. There was some interplay between them until the translator looked to Kepper. "Seen woman. Will show."

  "Show and get paid," Kepper said in reply.

  The children talked some more and started for the other end of the alley. Kepper followed, satisfied with the success of his approach.

  * * *

  With morning came breakfast and, for Miri, confirmation of a ship from her employer coming to pick her up. She had been forewarned that the New Cornish authorities had a lot of questions. Miri anticipated as much and was well trained to ensure that her answers would be the things they needed to hear without giving away her secrets.

  Additionally, a message from her contact in CIS told Miri that a pickup was on the way from Lusitania, if she ended up needing extraction. The vessel was called the Shadow Wolf out of Darien. It brought a little relief to Miri to know she had an alternative if P&Y's ship didn't show.

  With little else going on, she turned to the news on the interstellar GalNet. Given she might end up there, she checked Lusitanian news first. Most of it was regarding upcoming trade treaty votes, including one with the League, but there were also reports of ongoing political violence against dissenters of the Lusitanian government's policies. A disappointing thing, to be sure, and Miri decided she would be staying away from the planet in the future. She'd had enough of dictatorial governments.

  The main news story breaking was that peace talks between the Coalition and the League were imminent. Commentators from the Coalition and independent worlds both shared views that these seemed the most serious discussions ever proposed by the League, with the promise of the first-ever formal prisoner exchange and other concrete terms for an end to League attacks on Coalition worlds. Reading about it made Miri wonder. She found it hard to believe the Social and Public Safety Committee, that far-off body on Earth that governed the destinies of trillions of souls across two galactic arms, would
ever agree to end the war. The League considered itself the only valid government of humanity, all others being illegitimate. Giving the Coalition legitimacy would probably get the entire council overthrown.

  But it wasn't impossible. If the technocrats or the bureaucracy pushed it as a necessary peace to deal with structural problems or another military threat, well, that might do it. The League's war effort in Sagittarius had always been a problematic affair for them, logistically speaking, and manpower issues plagued their administration and authority in that galactic arm. It was how she could accomplish what she did: the League needed apparently genuine conversions to actually run their system in any workable fashion.

  Will peace come? Could it even mean I get to go home? To live a quiet life again, no more running around?

  More importantly, do I deserve such an ending?

  * * *

  Guided by the kids, Kepper found himself looking at a barely restored building that had once been a mercantile exchange. A stylized cross was built into the face of the building above the front door, with three crossbeams instead of the usual single beam and the lowest slanted so that the right side was higher. Below the cross, text in English, Old Slavonic, Russian, and the Calnin language of the Harr'al read, "Mission of the Orthodox Old-Rite Church of Cyrilgrad."

  "This is where you saw her?"

  After the translator and the witness exchanged comments, the reply came. "Yes. Was here with… with… traitor. I do not know better word in English." The boy openly frowned, both from his limited vocabulary and, Kepper thought, the very existence of this "traitor." The other children were already hissing things in their language. "Is Calnin but traitor of Tashin. Worships human God now, is bad. He come with her."

  Interspecies religious conversion always struck Kepper as a bit weird. But then again, religion in general did, whether alien or human. "So she's got a local friend." He presented the children with one note of money each, much to their delight. "Think you can show me where this 'traitor' Calnin is?"