Vanguard

by Jack Campbell

  “Do you have names of ships?” House Leader Ottone asked.

  “Yes,” Carmen said, blessing the fate that had led her to speak with the sailors. “Three destroyers I know of. The . . . George Washington . . . the Simon Bolivar, and . . . the Joan of Arc.”

  “Destroyers.” Safety Coordinator Sarkozy was tapping her comm pad rapidly. “Founders Class. Those are newer and better than the old destroyer that attacked Lares! This data is old, but it says they were expected to remain in service for another three decades!”

  A smile slowly formed on the face of First Minister Hofer. “How about that? We get the work started to outfit the Pulaski and tell everyone we’re going to acquire at least one modern warship directly from Earth Fleet. Get something done fast to fill the gap, defend this planet, and pursue a long-term solution.”

  “Our citizens will be vastly reassured,” House Leader Ottone said. “And this course of action will probably be a lot less expensive than any of the alternatives we’ve been discussing. You’re certain, Citizen Ochoa, that we can get one, or maybe two, of those ships cheaply? Along with trained sailors ready to handle them?”

  “Absolutely,” Carmen said. “I can help you get your request for the sale phrased properly and addressed properly so that it will clear the bureaucracy quickly.”

  It looked like her apparently futile years working for Earth gov might have given her the experience to do some real good out here.

  • • •

  Kosatka’s oldest city (founded eight years before) boasted its newest hotel, an optimistically luxurious resort anticipating more and more visitors in years to come. Carmen found herself put up in a suite far nicer than any place she had ever lived.

  “Did I understand right that you and I are going to Drava to help cool things off?” Lochan Nakamura asked her. He had the suite across the hall from Carmen’s and seemed just as bemused as she was to be living in such grand quarters.

  “Along with the leaders of the government, yes,” Carmen said. “But it’ll take a little while to set up the visit.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m contributing to this process,” Lochan said, sounding perplexed rather than angry.

  “You’re doing a lot,” she assured him. “You’re really helping me understand how Old Colony and new colony people approach things. The way I think was formed back in the original solar system. We did some good work today, Lochan.”

  “And we survived the day!” Lochan Nakamura laughed. “I’m going to have nightmares about that shuttle crash someday, but today I’m still just amazed to be alive! And to think I was worrying about Mele before that bomb went off.”

  “Mele? The Marine from Franklin?”

  “Yeah. Mele Darcy. She was good people.”

  “She struck me that way,” Carmen agreed. “But she also struck me as someone who could take care of herself no matter what.”

  Lochan wandered over to the window and looked up at the stars. “Yeah, but also the sort who could find trouble in paradise. Or make trouble if paradise felt too boring to her! I wonder where she ended up? I hope she hasn’t gotten herself into anything too hazardous.”

  Chapter 9

  “Darcy, you do stupid better than any other smart person I ever met.”

  The words of her old drill instructor came back to Mele as she tried to figure out how one Marine was going to defeat Scatha’s base and why she had agreed to volunteer for the job.

  Fortunately for Mele’s attempts to plan operations against the invasion, Lieutenant Geary had made good on his promise to drop satellites in stationary orbits over Scatha’s new base, so Mele had been able to accumulate a lot of information pretty quickly.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of Rob Geary’s helpfulness. In her experience, fleet support to Marines usually came only grudgingly and after all proper channels had given all proper approvals. But maybe Alfar’s fleet was different from that of Franklin. Or maybe the lieutenant hadn’t been in Alfar’s fleet long enough to learn all the ways to not be helpful in a timely fashion.

  Unfortunately, all of the information she was picking up revealed that her task would be even harder than expected. The soldiers that Scatha had landed were conducting patrols in full battle armor around the outside of the base and appeared to have a decent number of military energy pulse or slug thrower rifles. From the numbers seen on the patrols and in other locations, there did indeed appear to be about a hundred soldiers. Four barracks had been placed separate from each other, each in the middle of what was clearly housing for the civilian families, so that taking out a barracks would almost certainly cause civilian deaths. Machinery had quickly excavated entrenchments around the perimeter that would make any attack on the base even more difficult. One of those entrenchments was a big bunker that clearly served as a command post. Warning sensors were planted a ways out from Scatha’s base to provide notice of anyone or anything approaching it. And a few days after the Squall had departed, Mele saw the manta shape of an aerospace craft rise from the base and swoop around on a test flight. Eventually, a second aerospace craft appeared as well.

  Granted, the equipment appeared to be older and secondhand. But that still left her facing a hundred soldiers with battle armor and military weaponry, dug in and protected by sensor fields, with two aerospace craft providing air support.

  And all she had to counter them were some volunteers, whatever weapons could be scrounged up, and whatever equipment the colony already had that could be used to also support the sort of raid Mele would need to carry out to destroy that antiorbital weapon Scatha’s people were working on.

  But she also had the skills she had learned as a Marine for Franklin. And her experience dealing with the sort of soldiers that Scatha had probably sent.

  She would need more, though. Fortunately, from all Mele had been able to find out from asking around, Lieutenant Geary’s advice to seek out a certain hacker was on point. Mele had left the open field just outside of the city where a rudimentary training ground was being thrown together by machinery and workers diverted from other tasks, and now paused outside a newly constructed office in a newly constructed building. NINJA IT CONSULTING had been traced in silvery letters on the office door. Mele knocked, then tried the door and, finding it unlocked, went inside.

  A slightly disheveled young woman seated before an array of displays and panels looked over at her. “Yeah?”

  “Lieutenant Geary sent me,” Mele offered, figuring that would make the best opening.

  “He did?” The woman frowned at Mele. “Oh. You’re the grunt. Hi, General.”

  Mele shook her head at the other woman. “Sergeant. I work for a living. You’re Lyn Meltzer?”

  “Uh-huh. My friends call me Ninja.”

  “What do I call you?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. The lieutenant told me you’d be stopping by.” She looked Mele up and down. “You were a grunt for Franklin? I only met a few grunts before I got kicked out. They were kind of difficult to deal with.”

  “I met plenty of sailors before I got kicked out,” Mele said. “They were also difficult to deal with. Knew their jobs, though.”

  “Yeah. So did the grunts. Why’d you leave Franklin?”

  “Too many offenses against good order and discipline,” Mele admitted, having come up with a personal appraisal of Lyn Meltzer.

  “You got caught, huh?”

  “Only when I wanted to be,” Mele said. “Or when I had to take the heat for my red shirts.”

  “Your buddies in your unit?” Ninja smiled. “You got booted for the right reasons. Call me Ninja, sister.”

  “Thanks.” Mele sat down on the packing container that constituted the other chair in the office. “I got stupid and volunteered to help handle the Scatha mess on the ground here. Lieutenant Geary told me that if anyone can provide me good backup, it’s you.”

  “Maybe.
What do you need?”

  “Anything you can give me. The endgame is to get inside their perimeter and cause a lot of damage. I’ve got basic situational data from overhead collection, but I’m going to need more than that to get the job done right.”

  Ninja nodded, her mouth twisted as she thought. “The freighters and shuttles that dropped off Scatha’s people maintained total silence, so I couldn’t get into their systems. What about these guys on the ground? What have they got in the way of protection?”

  “An alarmed perimeter. Sensors planted out about twenty kilometers beyond the boundaries of their camp. Foot patrols along the perimeter day and night. A couple of warbirds that fly out a little farther on regular sweeps.”

  “Foot patrols? Battle armor?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ninja gave another nod, grinning. “Outstanding. Most of their security comms will be ground lines to prevent intrusion or detection. But if they’re using foot patrols in battle armor they have to have a wireless net for command and control, and that gives me something to break into. And when I do get in, I should be able to figure out how to get at just about anything in that base. When I dug through the files on the Bucket that the lieutenant captured, I found out that Scatha is big-time into surveillance and monitoring. If you can get access to their secure landline network with a physical tap, I’ll be able to give you the tools to do a whole lot of messing around. Scatha’s secure surveillance network will have a finger in every important system in that encampment of theirs.”

  “I like the way you work, Ninja. So you think by monitoring Scatha’s net you’ll be able to help me get in close enough to take out sentries?” Mele asked.

  “Think so,” Ninja said. “I’ll give you what I can get after you’ve planted some taps to intercept their net, and you’ll have to decide if it’s enough.”

  “That’s a deal,” Mele said. “Can you help me get the taps we need with the right parameters? I’ll see to getting them planted.”

  “Good,” Ninja said, grinning again. “Because I am not the crawling through the underbrush commando type. I do my damage online.”

  “That’s what I need,” Mele said. “The council must have given you a really good contract.”

  Ninja waved a dismissive hand. “It’s okay. The important thing is that Rob Geary asked me to look out for you.”

  “He talked a good game.”

  “He doesn’t just talk,” Ninja said. “He’s the best in the business.”

  Mele heard something in Ninja’s voice and raised her eyebrows at the other woman. “Are you two a thing?”

  She smiled again. “Yeah. He hasn’t quite figured it all out yet, though. Do you know who to lean on to get construction of those pickups we need prioritized? No? I do. Leave that to me. Someone owes me a favor. I’ll bill the council for it.”

  “Are you sure you’re a sailor?” Mele asked. “You’re acting way too nice to this Marine. Oh, I’ve been talking to some people about getting a few drones built that should be stealthy enough to be able to drop the pickups close enough to listen in on Scatha’s net. I think that’s going fine because the drones are cool toys, so the engineers want to get them built and play with them. Do you think you’ll be able to break whatever encryption Scatha is using?”

  “Piece of cake,” Ninja said with another dismissive wave. “I got access to Scatha’s encryption tools when we captured their Bucket. They’ll be using different encryption here, but following the same protocols, so breaking it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Won’t they have changed the protocols, too?”

  “Uh-uh.” Ninja spread her hands. “We’re dealing with a bureaucracy. You know how those work. Change takes a lot of thought and evaluations and getting past the people who like the existing system and the people who run the existing system and hey it’s an emergency so maybe in a few years? And these are ground apes, so whoever they work for will blame Scatha’s space squids for the loss of the Bucket. Not the systems themselves. Blaming other people is a lot easier than trying to replace critical systems. What’s my timeline?”

  “Scatha has landed an antiorbital system. They’re getting it set up, but it’ll probably be a few weeks yet because of the construction challenge of emplacing the weapon and getting their main power reactor online.”

  “So you want this stuff before then? You want to hit them before they get the antiorbital big gun working?”

  “Nope.” Mele flashed her grin at Ninja. “I want to be ready to roll the day they finish getting that antiorbital system operational.”

  • • •

  The field that Glenlyon’s governing council had given Mele lay just outside the current boundaries of the rapidly rising city. It wasn’t much in the way of a training facility, but the field was split by a small creek with steep sides that offered a natural site for obstacle work and a couple of small buildings had been hastily thrown up to offer offices and inside instruction spaces.

  She had hoped for fifty volunteers, but only forty men and women had responded to the discreet request for volunteers floated through the colony’s social media. A few of them Mele had been able to dismiss right away because they were too old, too young, or in too bad shape to handle the rigors of training and action. A few others tripped off warning signs during the routine psych screening and were also let go with plausible excuses for why they weren’t needed.

  To Mele’s surprise, there had been two ground forces veterans among the volunteers, both former enlisted, both having come from Taniwha like her. One, a man named Grant, had been with the ground forces at Amaterasu, and the other, a man named Spurlick, with the ground forces at Brahma.

  Others of the volunteers were techs who might not make great ground soldiers or Marines but whose skills might be critical to carrying out the sort of attack that Mele was envisioning. More importantly, they were willing to volunteer and to work.

  She divided her remaining thirty-some volunteers into two groups and started running them through basic conditioning exercises and drills, rotating different men and women through responsibility for leading their group and watching to see who appeared to be a natural leader and anyone who did particularly poorly.

  “Why are we bothering with this?” Spurlick demanded of her midway through the second day. “You’ve got me and Grant, so you know who should be your squad leaders.”

  “I like to see how people perform,” Mele said, not happy with Spurlick’s tone but keeping her own voice level. She hadn’t been impressed by what she had seen of him so far but didn’t want to rush to judgment.

  “I’d be happy to show how I can perform,” Spurlick said with a knowing grin.

  “Not interested, even if you weren’t working for me.” Mele thought it didn’t say much for Spurlick’s professionalism, or his brains, that he’d hit on his boss.

  “Oh?” Spurlick didn’t hide his unhappiness at the rebuff. “Look, you need me. You just don’t know it. What are you planning, some typical Marine charge at the fortifications head-on and take heavy casualties in a glorious battle? That won’t work.”

  “My plans are still being developed,” Mele said, her temper rising. “Where did you get your impression of Marines?”

  “Everybody knows about them! Marines all think alike and act alike. I’ll tell you what you should be doing—”

  “If I need advice,” Mele broke in, putting force into her voice, “I’ll ask for it.” Without even realizing she had done it, she had straightened as she spoke, taking on an aggressive stance.

  Spurlick frowned, changed that to a glower, then stomped off to rejoin his group.

  The day was almost over, the two teams running through their last set of drills, when Mele noticed the second team had come to a halt amid arguing loud enough to carry across the field.

  It didn’t take a genius to spot the problem. Spurlick was standing by himse
lf, his expression a mix of defiance and smirk. The others in his group were huddled together, either looking angry or trying not to look angry. “What’s going on?” Mele asked a volunteer named Riley as she walked up.

  Riley jerked his head toward Spurlick. “He won’t do what anyone else suggests and refuses to suggest anything himself.”

  Mele shifted her gaze to Spurlick, keeping her expression unrevealing. “What’s your story?”

  Spurlick shrugged. “I’m just trying to do things right.” He didn’t outright say, What are you going to do about it? But his tone and attitude made that extra part clear enough anyway.

  “Have you ever heard the old saying ‘Lead, follow, or get out of the way’?” Mele asked, wanting to give him one last chance.

  This time he did put it into words. “So?”

  “So I’m leading, and you’re in the way.” This latest incident was enough to crystallize her earlier misgivings about Spurlick. “Thank you for volunteering,” Mele recited without putting any feeling into the words. “Your service won’t be required.”

  “What?”

  “You’re dismissed. Go.”

  “Dismissed?” Spurlick glared at her. “I’m the only one here who knows what he’s doing!”

  “No,” Mele said. “I think, of the three veterans here, you’re the only one who was kicked out of the service for the right reasons. Now get out of here.”

  “The hell I will! You don’t have any power over me!”

  Mele had already sized up Spurlick and had no doubt she could take him down, but this was supposed to be a military organization she was building, and in her experience officers didn’t enforce their authority with physical blows. On the other hand, her new recruits weren’t ready for the challenge of dealing with Spurlick if she ordered it.