by C H Gideon
He hastily withdrew his hands and cracked a weak grin. “Sorry…but if it’s any consolation, you’re not my type.”
“So I’ve heard,” she grunted, and Podsy felt a firm hand grip his shoulder.
He looked up to see Chief Rimmer looking down at him approvingly.
“How many did we lose?” Podsy asked.
“Eight,” Rimmer replied grimly, and through the control room’s main window, Podsy saw a flash of light from the void beyond the gash in the hull.
He blinked hard enough to clear the cobwebs and re-focused on the hole just in time to see the sleek, curved hull of the Jemmin warship erupt in a series of rapid explosions that swept it from stem to stern. The Bonhoeffer was laying into the damaged enemy with missile after missile, tearing massive wounds in the advanced warship’s hull.
After at least forty distinct impacts, those relatively minor explosions were dwarfed by a blinding flash of light that caused everyone in the control room to reflexively shield their eyes. When they turned their attention back to the hole, the Bonhoeffer had rolled to an orientation that would not permit them to see the Jemmin warship.
But if Podsy knew anything about anything, the Jemmin warship had either gone reactor-critical or been struck by a nuke.
Either way, it was off the board. Permanently.
“Thanks for the assist, Colonel,” General Akinouye greeted after the Jemmin warship had been destroyed, finished by the last of Preacher’s nukes. “We couldn’t get any of our fusion torpedoes out of their launchers.”
“How’s the Bonhoeffer, General?” Jenkins asked intently.
“Our forward armor is down to twenty percent, and we took severe damage to our main propulsion, port drop-deck, and power systems,” Akinouye replied. “We’re maintaining support posture, but I’m going to be frank. If the Jemmin return with even one more warship like that one, we’ll have no choice but to withdraw. I’m of a mind to scrub this mission right now, Colonel.”
“I advise against that, General,” Jenkins said firmly. “I think we’re on to something big down here, and it’s obvious that the Jemmin don’t want us to find out what it is. And without that Jemmin warship up there, we should be able to coordinate between the Bonhoeffer’s sensors and our surface-based systems to locate and neutralize the Jemmin in future engagements. In my opinion, we’ve come too far to pull out now, General.”
Akinouye leaned toward the pickup, causing his image to loom on the display, “Colonel Jenkins, we’ve already crossed several lines I hadn’t thought we would come within sight of, let alone brush up against. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this situation is nearly out of control. This might be our last opportunity to prevent it from devolving into outright chaos, and I don’t think I need to remind you of the consequences for the entire Terran Republic if the entirety of the Metal Legion is destroyed.”
“I understand, General,” Jenkins said with conviction, “but we’ve got a theory we’re working on down here, and if we’re right about it, then we absolutely cannot withdraw from Shiva’s Wrath until we’ve seen this mission through.”
“A theory?” Akinouye repeated with mild disapproval. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
“We didn’t have enough supporting evidence to present it, General,” Jenkins replied guardedly before adding, “and we couldn’t jeopardize sensitive, mission-critical information security.”
Akinouye nodded slowly as he seemed to take Jenkins’ meaning. “All right, Colonel,” he said, seeming to arrive at a conclusion, “I’ll oversee repairs up here until we’ve got the other drop-deck up and running. When that’s complete, I expect you to deliver a personal debriefing on this ‘theory’ of yours.”
Jenkins cocked his head in concern. “General…are you ordering me to return to the Bonhoeffer in the midst of deployment in an active combat zone?”
Akinouye smirked, and even at his venerable age, the expression was every bit as savage and primally-disconcerting as it had likely been a century earlier in the general’s life, “No, Colonel Jenkins, I’m not bringing you up here.”
At that, the line went dead, and Jenkins leaned back in surprise.
“Did I hear that right?” Styles asked under his breath.
“I think you did.” Jenkins nodded seriously, gesturing to the privacy of his cabin. “You’d better prepare a top-sheet.”
“On it, sir.” Styles nodded, standing from his station and making for Jenkins’ private cabin at the rear of Roy’s compartment.
“Captain Xi,” Sarah Samuels insisted, “the people have a right to know.”
“Right now, you know as much as I do, Ms. Samuels,” Xi replied irritably.
“You won’t give me a straight answer,” Samuels snapped, her usual veneer of total control melting away in the aftermath of the devastating attack. “I just lost my uplink with the Bonhoeffer. Is it still in orbit or did the Jemmin destroy it?”
“Wait.” Xi rounded on the reporter. “You have a direct link with the Bonhoeffer? Do you have any idea how many regs you violated by not informing me about that?”
“My data-stream’s integrity is protected by the most fundamental laws of the Terran Republic’s Founding Articles,” Samuels retorted. “Don’t change the subject, Captain Xi. Is the Bonhoeffer still in orbit or did the Jemmin destroy it?”
“Honestly?” Xi did her best to control her temper, which she suspected would soon tear loose of its moorings no matter how hard she tried to lock it down. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
“My drones picked up multiple EMPs indicative of Terran nuclear warhead detonations,” Samuels continued. “Under the Terran Military Doctrine, tactical nuclear devices are only authorized for deployment in wartime, Captain Xi...”
“I think you need to sit down, Ms. Samuels,” Blinky said, taking the reporter by the arm and trying to gently drag her from Xi’s cockpit.
“Get your hands off me!” Samuels snapped, rounding on Elvira’s Monkey before returning her focus to Xi. “Terran humanity has a right to know, Captain Xi. Is the Terran Republic now officially at war with the Jemmin—or with the entire Illumination League?”
“First off,” Xi said steadily, clenching her fists so hard that her nails dug into her palms, “tactical nukes are only authorized for deployment on inhabited worlds during wartime. Those restrictions don’t apply to uninhabited worlds like Shiva’s Wrath.”
“You’re evading my question,” Samuels retorted, her professional veneer reasserting itself with each passing second. “Is the Terran Republic at war with the Jemmin?”
Xi thought about playing word games or invoking operational security as was technically her right during combat conditions. But for reasons she could not immediately identify, she declined the chance to dance around the question and instead answered as honestly as she could.
“How in the holy fuck would a mech driver know something like that? You know more of what’s going on outside this tub than I do, so why don’t you ask one of them. Do you want to know all that I know, Ms. Samuels?” she asked.
“Yes,” the blond woman snarled, her eyes lighting up in anticipation.
Xi shook her head darkly. “Then here’s the truth: I don’t know. All I know is they openly antagonized us without cause, and we didn’t return the favor. Then when they shot at us, we defended ourselves like we’ve been trained and authorized to do, but we didn’t chase them down to retaliate. Then they fired from orbit on a position danger-close to my unit, and again we declined to escalate the situation since no damage was done. And just now, they opened fire on our APCs from orbit, killing at least a hundred Terrans before launching a multi-pronged attack on our HQ,” she growled, thumping her fist against the arm of her pilot’s chair. “You’re Goddamned right we fired back with everything we had! But are we at war? Officially?” She snorted in derision. “That’s a question for the politicians, Ms. Samuels. My job is to locate and engage threats to Terran sovereignty…and that’s exactly what I
intend to do for as long as I live.”
The reporter seemed genuinely conflicted. It was clear that Xi had not given her the sound-bite she wanted, but it was also clear that she was far from disappointed by what Xi had given her.
“Now…” Xi gestured to Blinky. “Private Staubach will escort you back to your station. I suggest you comply with his direction because I can assure you mine will be nowhere near as gentle if you make me unplug from this chair.”
Samuels’ mask of professional detachment once again covered her face, and she wordlessly exited the cockpit with Blinky at her back.
After she had gone, her question rang in Xi’s ears like the aftermath of a fifteen-kilo gun’s report:
Are we at war with the Jemmin?
11
Aftermath
“Here’s what I’ve got, Colonel,” Styles reported after Jenkins closed the door to his private cabin two hours after the Jemmin assault on Terran headquarters. “Using the Bonhoeffer’s sensor logs—” He handed Jenkins a data slate. “—the Jemmin completed their deep dive to the Vorr transceiver’s location, and that three minutes after they reached the site, they opened fire on us from orbit.”
“But those fighter platforms didn’t tunnel under the ice instantaneously,” Jenkins grunted.
“They’d been prepping this attack for days,” Styles agreed.
“Why didn’t any of our thermals or seismics detect them?”
“That, I can’t tell you,” Styles said with open frustration. “There is no way they should have been able to tunnel that many times, that close to us, without our seismic scanners going off. Xi and I have been working on a theory, and you’re not going to like it.”
“Let’s hear it.” Jenkins sat down in the chair opposite Styles.
“We think they’ve corrupted every single sensor and targeting system in the battalion,” the technician explained. “We also think that we prevented them from a complete takeover of our information-processing systems by disconnecting every RF transceiver in the unit. Our guess is that their remote takeover has to occur in stages, either to prevent it from being detected or because it simply takes a certain amount of time for each takeover to complete.”
Jenkins’ hackles rose as he realized that, as usual, Styles was right: he did not like that theory.
“We’ve run diagnostics on every piece of gear multiple times since we’ve had targeting issues,” Jenkins observed. “They’ve all come back green.”
“We think the first stage of this takeover is to re-write the diagnostics, so they’re blind to the effects of later stage modifications,” Styles explained. “I’ve looked as hard as I can, using every trick I know, but I still can’t see where they re-wrote our code. I’ve got the base firmware settings for every piece of hardware in the battalion stored on hard, unmodifiable systems up on the Bonhoeffer,” he explained. “I’ve already compared Roy’s systems to those on the hard copy and can’t find anything wrong, which means the problem is beyond my ability to see.”
“Recommendation?” Jenkins asked grimly.
Styles sighed in frustration. “A total reboot of every sensor and targeting system in the battalion, which means each mech needs to have its main computer rebooted as well.”
“That could take two hours per mech—” Jenkins shook his head adamantly. “—and would return all custom neural link settings to default. It would take our pilots days of constant practice and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo to dial-in combat-ready settings.”
“It’s what I’ve come up with, sir,” Styles said heavily. “We could switch everyone over to manual inputs and rotate the reboots through a modified off-duty schedule?”
Jenkins shook his head. “Including Xi and Chaps, there are only five or six pilots in the battalion who could operate near-peak effectiveness on manual controls, and maybe that many more who would clear combat-readiness tests across the board. We simply haven’t had enough time to train everyone on their rigs.”
“It’s what I’ve come up with, sir,” Styles repeated, a rare helpless note entering his voice.
“All right.” Jenkins decided to change subjects. “What about the deep dive? Have we got any idea what they found down there?”
“Not yet.” Styles shook his head. “But using the Bonhoeffer’s sensors, I’ve been able to locate several half-kilometer spheres of liquid water a kilometer or so below the surface. There are five of them, and they appear to have been Vorr staging areas of some kind, but the Jemmin have overtaken these sites. I can’t get a clear look at what the Vorr were keeping there.”
“The Vorr are aquatic,” Jenkins mused. “They might have been storing perishables or something there.”
“That would hold,” Styles agreed. “I just can’t confirm or refute that theory since I can’t get a good picture of what’s there. There are bits and pieces of Vorr machinery, but again, it’s too deep to get accurate information of what, exactly, that machinery does.”
“All right, forget about the pools,” Jenkins decided. “Focus on the attack. Why assault us mere minutes after reaching the Vorr transceiver?”
“That’s complicated.” Styles sighed. “Either they found what they were looking for and decided to eliminate us, which doesn’t seem logical…”
“Agreed.” Jenkins nodded urgently.
“Or,” Styles continued, “they didn’t find what they were looking for and decided that the risk of us having it was too great to ignore—and that, if we did have it, erasing us and it while risking an interstellar conflict was preferable to letting whatever it was get out in the open.”
“Your theory’s looking better,” Jenkins mused. “It seems like whatever the Vorr came here to retrieve is something the Jemmin can’t risk letting us see, or heaven forbid, remove from this rock.”
“I agree.” Styles nodded. “But I still don’t have any evidence. It’s all speculation at this point.”
“It’s the best we’ve got to go on.” Jenkins shrugged. “Never let perfect be the enemy of good.”
Styles snickered. “I’m not sure that saying applies here.”
“I think it does,” Jenkins said matter-of-factly. “Information is just one variable in conflict resolution. It’s an important one, but anyone who thinks the best way through a difficult situation is always to have the maximum possible amount of information doesn’t understand the way this universe works. Indecision kills a group faster than any enemy could. In a choice between risking paralysis from lack of information, or risking failure because of ill-informed action, I’ll take an unproven working theory that keeps things rolling every time.”
“More is lost to indecision than wrong decision?” Styles cocked his head skeptically.
“Definitely.”
Styles seemed comforted by that, which was Jenkins’ primary objective. “All right, then I’ll keep scouring for evidence,” Styles declared with seemingly renewed energy.
“And see if you can come up with an alternative to mass-reboots of our mechs,” Jenkins added after the other man had made for the hatch. “If you can’t come up with anything in the next sixteen hours, I’ll need to make a decision on that front.”
“Yes, sir,” Styles acknowledged.
A few minutes later, Jenkins’ wrist-link chimed. “Jenkins, go.”
“Colonel,” came the voice of the comm stander temporarily taking over for Styles, “I just received a coded message on White Band.”
“Put it through,” Jenkins ordered, and the encrypted file appeared on his link. A quick series of inputs decoded the file’s contents, which were comprised of just two words:
Havoc Inbound.
Jenkins immediately connected with Captain Xi. “Elvira, do you copy?”
“Elvira here,” acknowledged Xi.
“We have a delivery en route bearing mission-critical supplies,” he half-lied. “Proceed to the following rendezvous coordinates and await further instructions.”
There was a brief but pointed delay. “
Copy that, Colonel. Who should I take as escort?”
“No escort, Captain,” Jenkins replied firmly, knowing that Xi had yet to formally re-structure her battered company following its repeated encounters with the bugs. Three other platoons had engaged with the bugs since their first appearance, with each suffering serious damage, but only Xi had encountered the bizarre aliens more than once. “Take Elvira out there, and I’ll ensure you’re covered in-transit.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, making clear she disliked the idea of running out on the ice field alone and exposed. But while Havoc was inbound, he knew that its LZ was the safest place to be on Shiva’s Wrath.
Elvira was less than three kilometers from the rendezvous point, but nothing was showing up on the scanners. “No escort,” Xi muttered irritably. “If this is some kind of game, Colonel…”
She temporarily stopped herself from finishing that particular thought, and a moment before she was about to finish it with gusto, a flicker appeared on the edge of her neural-linked “vision.”
“Finally,” she grunted, “a drop-can…”
She trailed off as she realized what she saw was not, in fact, a drop-can. It was coming in on an aggressive approach vector and was too small to be a can. Then another icon appeared, followed by another, and another, until ten of the things registered at an altitude of thirty thousand meters.
“What the…” She finally realized what she was seeing. “Aerospace fighters?”
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer was outfitted with sixty void fighters and twenty aerospace fighters. The void fighters were only capable of maneuvering in space, but the aerospacers were able to come all the way down to the surface if atmospheric pressure wasn’t greater than three standard units.
The fighters, flying an offset diamond formation, were soon joined by an eleventh icon, which approached at an angle far more aggressive than any drop-pod could survive.