“Da. You’re good to go.”
As they watched, the Coronado lit up and the main engines fired as it shot away.
Clicking off the com, the pilot shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I just shit myself thinking about FleetCom going pirate.”
“Yah, war’s an ugly business.”
Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
Sitting empty, the landing platform they’d cobbled together from parts stolen from the Hector looked plenty big, but when the first wave of shuttlepods settled onto the mesh deck, it was tight. Not impossible for a good pilot, but if any of them had been sloppy, it might have been ugly.
Fortunately, the current weather was calm. The gas cloud outside had almost reached the density of the Martian atmosphere, and although that wasn’t enough to be damaging to a ship, it could play hell on an approaching pod. It had also made the construction tougher than expected. With every passing day, the surface of L-4 Prime became more like the unpredictable and violent environment of a comet.
As a result, what had been expected to be a weeklong effort to upgrade the docking facilities, had stretched to twenty days and required hundreds of EVA to get the work done. Outside, in the snow and wind.
This brought another problem. Every time someone came in from the construction, a thin film of ammonia and methane snow covered their EVA suit. Pressurizing the airlock vaporized the crystals, but the added burden to the atmospheric filters left the ship smelling a lot like a urinal.
“Are your recyclers malfunctioning?” Dr. Jameson said as he opened the inner door of the docking snorkel and wrinkled his face in a caricature of disgust.
He caught the full brunt of Rocky’s glare and stepped back into the tube before Jeph laughed. “That’s the air outside,” he said. “Pretty ripe isn’t it.”
“Somebody’s obviously not doing their job,” one of the other scientists said. She was standing behind Jameson with her face almost as contorted as his. “If you have that much air transfer you need to check for a hull breach.”
“Is no breach. Not currently,” the engineer said, ratcheting her intensity up at least one order of magnitude and making it clear that if she had to put up with one more comment, she might seek to determine if a human body could penetrate the hull. The woman withered back behind Jameson, clearly realizing she’d pissed off the bear.
Rocky turned away from the door. “All pods are safely anchored to landing deck. Unless is other task for me, I will be in my quarters. I have not slept in five shifts. This will undoubtedly affect survival prospects for some of our guests.”
Jeph nodded, and she launched herself over the railing and down the chute in a perfect slow motion swan dive.
Once she had fallen beyond sight, Jameson stepped back through the inner door and held out a package. “A gift from Chancellor Roja. I believe it is a bottle of her favorite scotch. She told me to tell you that despite the challenges, you’ve done well. And that she wishes you luck.”
“With what?”
He leaned forward and lowering his voice said, “These are all my department heads. They aren’t an easy bunch to manage.”
“Ah, got it,” he said, winking. Clearing his throat, Jeph raised his voice enough to carry all the way to end of the docking tube. “Welcome to Gateway. Let’s get you all down to the CrewDeck and started on your orientation. It will take about two days to get you up to speed and then we’ll get you into the language matrix and let you get to work.”
“We don’t need an orientation,” The same woman said, snorting. “I’m sure you’re not used to dealing with academics, but it’s not the same as dealing with a bunch of ice jockeys. We’ve all read the background brief you provided, so no offense but it would be a waste of time for us to go back over what you’ve already done.”
Jeph shot Dr. Jameson a sharp eye and he nodded. Spank her if you need to.
“So tell me, what’s your name, ma’am?”
“Doctor Arianna Ash,” she said, emphasizing her title with a hint of pomp.
“She just got that fancy degree didn’t she?” he asked, swinging his attention from Jameson back to her. “I can tell you’ve never worked in the field have you, Arianna?”
The woman bristled at his casual familiarity, but shook her head.
“Electrodynamic systems?” he said. “Vesta Institute with honors. Class of 2238.”
She blinked in surprise. “You’ve heard of me?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “But I have been in the field, out here specifically, since just after you got out of school. And I have twenty years of FleetCom command experience before that. Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head again.
“It means I know how to read your personnel file,” he said, rubbing his nose to hide his smile. “It also means I know you’ve been assigned to team four.”
“I’d prefer to lead my own team. I’m sure I can cover more—”
“You will be on team four,” Jeph said. “When you complete your orientation, you will be working with Petra Rocovicz.”
“Who?” she asked, looking around at the other scientists around her.
“Thank you Arianna, you just made my point,” he said, raising his voice so all the scientists could hear him. “The first rule in field work is to know the topography of the environment. In that, you’ve already failed.”
She looked confused and more than a little insulted.
“You don’t know who Rocky is, but she does know you. You’ve already insulted her, and she loves to hold a grudge. Sometimes for decades.”
Office of the Executive Director: Galileo Station:
Derek Tomlinson stormed into his office and tossed his thinpad on his desk with an angry flip. He’d just come from the detention center where he’d been supervising another interrogation session of Paulson Lassiter. After six hours, he’d called it off since they’d not managed to break through his resistance, even with drugs.
The doctor who’d run the session was a specialist in chemo-interrogation and had admitted that continuing was pointless. As far as he knew, the only way Lassiter could resist the neuro-inductive drugs they used, was if he’d been taking Dopastat for years. Somehow, the paranoid old flatch had built up such a level of the illegal drug in his system that he had a virtually impenetrable psychological wall.
No amount of applied chemistry would blast through it.
“You have spent twenty days trying to acquire the information from him,” Odysseus said through his implant.
“I’m trying to get him to cooperate,” he said out loud. Since they had been interrogating Paulson, he had realized that the only privacy anyone had was in their own thoughts, and he no longer had even that space to himself. So as much as possible, he tried to keep Odysseus outside his mind. It was pointless and he knew it, but it was a statement he felt he needed to make.
“Cooperation is not required. Information is what we seek. This information can be extracted through a Brain Engram Scan without his cooperation,” it thought to him. “Or pain conditioned interrogation.”
“A BES takes a legal binder,” he said, throwing himself down in his seat. “It’s not a simple procedure and there are lots of things that could go wrong.”
“A court order is not required,” Odysseus said, finally acquiescing to his need to keep it vocal. “Paulson Lassiter is an enemy of your government. Therefore you can order this procedure without the involvement of the legal system.”
“You don’t understand how this works,” he said. “If I order it done, then I’m breaking the trust of the people.”
“That statement is irrelevant,” it said. “You do not have the trust of the populace.”
That’s probably true, he thought. “But I cannot look like I’m operating above the law or it invites chaos.”
“Chaos is happening without an invitation. It is essential that you act to preempt its expansion into anarchy,” it said. “Decisive action inspires confidence in people.
To do nothing, in the face of this crisis, leaves many wondering if you can be counted on to protect them from their enemies.”
Derek shook his head. “Torturing Paulson Lassiter will not win me any popularity contests. The vast majority of the population is unaligned, and he was their elected representative. We can’t simply flay him for the sake of what he knows.”
“If we do not gain access to the Unaligned Fleet command codes and order it into Zone One, the fear of what FleetCom might do will undermine what little stability remains,” Odysseus said.
“To get the details you’re wanting requires a deep-mind BES. It’s not like a superficial awareness scan.” He leaned back and ground at his eyes with his knuckles. “That’s an extremely high risk procedure. It could leave him brain damaged.”
“As long as his brain retains cognitive cohesion until we get the command codes for the fleet, his mental condition afterward is irrelevant,” it said. “You must order the scan.”
“We may need more from him later,” he said.
“Irrelevant. His value to my success is limited to what he knows,” it said. “After he has provided that information, his continued existence serves no purpose.”
“Are you saying you want him executed, too?”
“It would be more efficient than maintaining him in a detention facility. However, if he mentally survives the process, you may do with him what you wish.” Odysseus said. “You must order the Brain Engram Scan immediately.”
Robinson Colony: Western Athabasca Valles, Mars:
“Is he dead?”
“He sure as frag looks dead. How’d he get here?” The two security officers both looked around at the horizon. They’d parked their rover about twenty meters away and other than their own footprints, the only tracks in the fine red dust were his and looked like he had stumbled in from the east. The haze of the setting sun made the mountains and the crater rim seem like a wall of fire rising into the distance.
“Check his biomonitor,” the first guard said. “Maybe he isn’t dead.”
“I did,” she said. “There isn’t enough juice in his pack to kick the display. He looks frozen.”
“I wonder how long he’s been out here?” he said.
“There aren’t any other tracks and it was less than a week ago when the storm cleared.” She stared down at the body and shook her head. Opening her heads-up display she read the patrol record. “Firstshift rolled by here at 0961 and then again at 1310 hours.”
“You think they’d have seen him,” he said, flipping the arm of the body with the toe of his boot. It arced up lifelessly and covered the man’s faceplate.
“He’s not stiff frozen, so he can’t have died long ago,” she said, kneeling down and clicking her suit lights to get a better look. “His suit doesn’t look right either.”
“It’s an old model,” he said, swaying back and forth in the EVA suit equivalent of a shrug.
“Yah, but it doesn’t fit him. It’s not his suit.” She ran a finger along the neck ring of the dead man’s helmet. “And he didn’t know how to put it on. He snapped the environmental seal on sidewise.”
“Odds are that’s what flatted his battery,” he said. “Pushed too much heater through a bad thermal seal. Noob mistake.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “Sucks to die of stupidity.”
“Let’s get a wagon out here to collect the meatsicle,” he said. “It’s getting dark and we can figure out where he came from later.”
Snagging the arm that had swung over his faceplate, she grunted as she rolled the body over and up on top of its pack. His eyes shot open, and he looked like he was screaming for several seconds before his lids fluttered closed again. “Holy shit! He’s still alive.”
Grabbing her buddy hoses, she plugged them into the emergency ports on the front of the man’s suit. “Get an MT out here!”
“This is patrol-two to Security OpsCom. We’re at lock six-east. Send a Med-Team outside for an emergency retrieval. We’ve got a deadman walking.”
“Copy P-2,” OpsCom said. “Medical Services reports an ETA of six minutes.”
“Hang with me. Help’s on the way,” she said, staring down into the face of the man as she listened to the sound of her EVA pack pushing fresh air into the other suit. The man’s eyes fluttered and he nodded.
“I don’t know who he is, but he sure looks familiar,” she said glancing up at her partner.
“It’s a small planet,” he said. “Everybody looks familiar.”
CHAPTER THREE
FleetCom Military Operations Center: Lunar L-2 Shipyard:
Admiral Quintana sat loosely tethered to his seat, with his feet up on the edge of his desk. Sleep was a distant memory. His department heads had been redesigning FleetCom to turn it from a livery service to a fighting machine, and it wasn’t anything they understood well.
The historical archives contained records of war. Almost all of mankind’s bloody history was there, but it was a subject that few studied. War was a way of thinking that humanity had left behind, with intent, when they chose to abandon the ruined earth.
“Whatcha scanning?” Ylva Visser appeared in his doorway, startling him nearly out of his seat. She had been his first officer on the last three of his ship commands and had followed him to his posting at L-2. He’d carved a position into his command staff for her and, although she didn’t fall within the normal hierarchy for a station command, he considered her his closest advisor. It also didn’t hurt that they also had an occasional physical relationship of convenience that helped to keep them both balanced. It meant that she also had the right to kick him when he needed it. Which he accepted and appreciated on frequent occasions.
“The art of war,” he said, putting his feet down and rubbing his eyes to try to polish them into working condition.
“Ah, Sun Tzu. An excellent book,” she said pulling herself down into the seat across from him.
“What?”
“It’s a bit ancient to apply to space combat strategy.” She closed her eyes and wrinkled her brow as she dug through something in her memory. “I should probably go back and reread it though. Some of it might still hang smart.”
“Alright, I haven't slept in a couple days, but I have no clue what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I thought you meant the book by Sun Tzu.” She grinned. “He was a Chinese general 2500 years ago, and he wrote what was considered the definitive guide on warfare until the second or third world war.”
He shook his head. “Where the hell did you learn that?”
“Before my family got a migration ticket to LEO-Sixteen, I was a reader-geek. The relocation center in Stockholm was close to an old public library, so I spent a lot of time there. I liked studying war history.” She shrugged.
“So you’ve actually studied the science of warfare?”
“It’s more of an art, but yah I’ve read enough to know this isn’t a war, so far,” she said, pushing back from his desk and over to his VAT to get them both a hardball.
“If it isn’t there yet, do you think we can do anything to prevent it from becoming one?” he asked.
“We’re not driving,” she said glancing over her shoulder as she shot their cups full. “If we can get into that position, then maybe we can control which way it plays out. Otherwise it’s entirely up to the other side.”
“You’re saying we should just sit around and wait?”
She snorted and gave him her best hairy eyeball. “Of course not. We need to push back.”
“We just got our ass handed to us,” he said. “We’re not in any place to fight back.”
“Sure we are.” She floated back to the desk and eased into the chair across from him. “We turn our logistical hit and run into full-on Viking-style raids.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“When the ancient Romans were building empires and armies, the Scandinavian countries were waging a war of surprise battles and stealthy retreats. Rathe
r than engaging in massive wars, they traveled light, hit quick, and disappeared before any serious forces could rally against them,” she said. “At one point they were the most feared fighters in all of Europe and without trying to take territory per se, had conquered most of the continent.”
“How does that apply to us?” he said.
“It’s one of the things in The Art of War. Strike where the enemy is weak, and then move out of one zone of conflict and on to the next,” she said. “We attack a target of opportunity and get the hell away before they can push back against us.”
“What good does that do?”
“Securing territory takes a lot of resources,” she explained. “We can’t afford it, and if we’re going to win this, our strategy needs to be putting them in the position of trying to hold their own sectors.”
Closing his eyes, he let out a slow breath and nodded. “It sounds like you’re talking about us being the ones to escalate things.”
“Would you rather let them set the pace? That’s exactly what happens if you sit here and build a castle while their army looms on the horizon,” she said. “Once they reach the point where they think they’re ready, they’ll come for us. If we can make sure they’re expending resources to defend, it will reduce what they can put into an attack.”
“Hypothetically, let’s say I agree with your strategy of offense being the best defense, where do you suggest we start?” he said.
“I’d think we should take everything we can get without a hard fight and haul it all back to our castle, so to speak,” she said. “For now we put our defensive efforts only into holding this station and Tsiolkovskiy. Then when we have the resources, we arm everything that moves and repeat on a bigger scale.”
“They’ll bring the ghost fleet in and beat the fragging shit out of us,” he said. “Our best guess says there are over 500 ships out there somewhere.”
“Not if we give them reasons to keep their assets busy elsewhere,” she said shaking her head. “I know you’ve already ordered a lot of our moving assets into Zone One, but even so we’ve still got at least twenty-five multicruisers spread all over the asteroids. If we leave them out there, we can force Tomlinson to keep a lot of their ships away from here.”
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 60