by CH Gideon
“Mr. DuPont.” Xi gestured to her mech’s interior. “Please come in.”
The man removed his radiation-proof rebreather helmet, revealing a face with sharp, angular features and a long hawk-like nose. He looked to be in his mid-sixties, but Xi suspected he was not much more than half that age. It depended on how hard life had been for the humans who lived on the Brick.
DuPont drew in a long breath through his nostrils, seeming to sample the cabin’s air before smirking. “The French and Chinese, meeting before battle as we did over two hundred years ago.”
“I’m not Chinese, Mr. DuPont,” Xi said, momentarily puzzled by his suggestion as she gestured to a nearby bench. “I’m Terran.”
“You are what you are, Captain,” DuPont replied flatly in that thick French accent as he looked over his shoulder at the troopers. “Are they truly necessary?”
“No.” Xi shook her head, having received Trapper’s assurance that DuPont was unarmed after subjecting him to a full-body scan. She gestured to the troopers. “Wait outside.”
“Yes, Captain,” they acknowledged before she shut the hatch behind DuPont.
The man cast an annoyed look at Gordon, who manned his station while making no attempt to hide the sidearm lying on his lap. DuPont seemed not to mind the weapon’s presence and nodded at Xi approvingly. “That was an especially clever touch, invoking Jean-Baptiste DuPont’s legacy and manipulating my people to urge this meeting.”
“History tells us about ourselves,” Xi said with a shrug, “but only if we’re willing to look at it honestly.”
“Honestly?” DuPont scoffed. “Jean-Baptiste DuPont was not an admiral. He was a terrorist, a rogue military man who absconded with French assets which he used to take matters into his own hands after the French government capitulated to the Chinese invaders.”
“The French weren’t the only ones who capitulated to China after the Third World War, Mr. DuPont,” Xi observed. “Not many nations that stood against them survived longer than a few decades.”
“What is your homeworld, Captain?” DuPont asked, putting her off-balance with the sudden question.
“I was born on Terra Han,” she replied deliberately, “but they threw me in prison when I was fourteen. I don’t consider Terra Han my homeworld any longer.”
“Fourteen?” His brow furrowed in seemingly genuine confusion. “Pardon me for saying so,” he visibly regathered his composure, “but you do not look so very much older than that.”
“My twentieth birthday is next week,” she replied, doing her best to hide her annoyance at the jab.
“You do not have family?” he pressed.
Xi hesitated, knowing that this seemingly pleasant dialogue might be nothing more than an attempt to stall on DuPont’s part. “No,” she eventually replied, “I don’t. I’m a can kid, and my father died when I was three years old. I never got to know him.”
“’Can kid?’” he replied with evident interest. “This is what you call a child born of an artificial womb?”
“Yes,” Xi agreed, becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation’s direction.
“We considered these devices,” DuPont said with a knowing sigh. “They were very affordable and would have provided a steep increase in the early efforts to populate our home, but…”
“But?” Xi pressed.
“But,” he reluctantly continued, “we decided it would remove a part of us if we used them. Bearing a child is perhaps the most difficult thing a human can do, and it is certainly the most difficult thing a human body was designed to do.”
“You wanted to make things difficult for yourselves?” she asked with mixed confusion and disdain.
DuPont chuckled. “Look around you, Captain. Do we look like people who are averse to hardship? Quite the opposite.” He shook his head proudly. “As frontiersmen, we seek hardship. We yearn for it. And we do this because we know that without trials and tribulations, without the constant threat of failure, asking a human being to be strong is like…asking a plant to grow in zero-gee,” he finished, splaying his hands wide in conclusion. “The plant needs to overcome the forces of gravity to become what it was meant to be; otherwise it is a misshapen and pitiful thing which only vaguely resembles that which preceded it.”
“What a load of bollocks,” Gordon quipped.
DuPont sighed dramatically, slicing an annoyed look at Elvira’s Wrench as he condescended, “Whatever happened to manners?”
“They went up in a fission-powered cloud,” Xi retorted measuredly, “when you hit what you thought was my mech with a nuke. Seeing as my mech is also his mech, you can understand the irritation.”
“Ah, yes.” DuPont shrugged as he lowered himself to the fold-down bench opposite the one Xi occupied. “For that, I must apologize. It was rude.”
“Why did you do it?” she asked, seating herself opposite the Brick’s rebel human leader.
“You do not understand, Captain.” DuPont sighed.
“Then help me understand, Mr. DuPont,” Xi pressed. “Make me see this situation from your perspective, because right now I’m having a hard time making all the pieces fit. It’s almost like…” she hesitated, knowing that if she pushed too hard he might clam up and that would be the end of the negotiations. But if Xi Bao had learned one thing from her CO, Colonel Jenkins, it was that hesitation had no place in the Metal Legion. She drew a breath before resuming. “It’s almost like you’re dancing to someone else’s tune.”
DuPont arched an eyebrow. “Oh? And whose tune might that be, Captain Xi Bao?”
“I think we both know,” she said, casting a pointed look at his Solarian-made envirosuit. “But that’s not the interesting question. The interesting question is why? Why work with them to establish a colony on this worthless hunk of rock when there are a dozen better colony sites in the Republic to choose from? Your people left the Republic a century ago, Mr. DuPont, and back then the opportunities for determined frontiersmen were even greater than they are now, so I have to ask myself two questions. First, why would your people come to a world located in the territory of another species when you could have benefited from Republic support by staying in one of the seven colonies? And second, why take Sol’s assistance in the form of material and military support but not ask for Terra’s? Help me understand, Mr. DuPont,” she asked, an unwanted pleading note entering her voice. “Because right now none of this makes sense to me, and in twenty-one hours, the Finjou are going to stop targeting your automated facilities and start targeting your homes. I don’t care if you’re under fifteen kilometers of rock; they’ll dig you out. And when they start, they won’t stop until there’s not a single human left alive on this planet.”
DuPont seemed reluctant, but she had gotten through to him on some level. He wasn’t scared or even resigned to a cruel fate, but something in his visage seemed extraordinarily tired. He knew he had gone too far and crossed too many lines, but he also seemed aware that more than just his fate rested on his actions.
“I cannot explain,” DuPont said with a surprising degree of frustration. “It will be better if I show you.”
“Fat chance of that,” Gordon chortled.
“Gordon,” Xi snapped, fixing her Wrench with a hard look which, to her surprise, immediately backed him off. “How long will it take?”
“In one of your all-terrain vehicles? One hour,” he replied. “In mine, close to two.”
“Captain,” Gordon objected respectfully, “you can’t seriously be considering a joy ride into enemy HQ.”
“It’s not enemy HQ, Chief,” Xi said, her eyes locked on DuPont’s as she spoke. “It’s the colonists’ home.”
“You’re the battalion CO,” Gordon insisted. “You can send someone else if you think it’s vital, but you can’t leave your post to go haring off with the enemy. These people already dropped a nuke on what they thought was your command vehicle. What’s to stop them from taking you hostage?”
She arched an eyebrow in DuPon
t’s direction. “It’s a fair question.”
“Fuckin’ A, it is,” Gordon blurted.
DuPont nodded in agreement. “It is indeed. I cannot guarantee your safety, but I can say with absolute conviction that if you wish to evacuate my people with a minimal loss of human life, this is your best chance to do so.”
“I agree,” Xi declared, activating her wrist-link and raising Lieutenant Winters. “Winters, this is Xi.”
“Winters here,” he promptly acknowledged.
“I’m going to inspect the forward lines,” she said, using a code phrase they had developed in the pre-mission prep to indicate she was going to parlay with the colonists. “With Ford on guard duty, you’re in command until I return.”
“Copy that, Captain. Forward lines,” Winters agreed. “How long will you be out?”
“Four hours,” she replied confidently, drawing a nod of approval from DuPont.
“Four hours,” Winters confirmed. “We’ll keep the stove lit. Will you need an honor guard?”
“Keep the stove lit” was code to indicate that he already had priority targets painted and missiles assigned to take them out. “Honor guard” asked if he was to engage populated targets, of which they had already identified three.
“No honor guard necessary,” she replied. “I’ll have Trapper’s people provide the escort.”
“Roger,” Winters agreed. “Don’t get lost, Captain.”
She cut the line and gestured for Gordon to follow. “Let’s go, Chief. I’ve got a feeling I’ll need you on this one.”
Gordon grimaced as he stood and holstered his sidearm, making a point of going to the small arms locker and retrieving Xi’s pistol. She accepted it, slapping the holster to her hip where it stuck via micro-hooks similar in design to Velcro that would require five hundred pounds of force to remove from her jumpsuit.
They slid into sleek envirosuits, and a few minutes later were aboard one of the Legion’s ATVs with a quad of infantrymen serving as escort.
DuPont guided them to a rocky outcropping ten kilometers from base camp, and as they approached, he keyed a command from his wrist-link.
A boulder slid aside from the rockface, revealing a steep tunnel which was more steel than rock. The ATV’s lights snapped on, illuminating the cramped passage as they drove forward at speeds in excess of a hundred kilometers per hour. The tunnel was remarkably straight and smooth, with only a few intersections that DuPont guided them through during the ride.
“These weren’t made by TBMs,” Gordon said over the private link. “The walls are too smooth.”
“And they weren’t carved by lasers,” Xi commented, “since there’s no spiderwebbing or glazing on the rock.”
“They’re not old,” Gordon mused. “I’d guess less than a hundred years.”
The rest of the trip proceeded in relative silence before they passed through a heavily-fortified intersection featuring two dozen chain guns and other weapons built into the walls. Those guns could have easily shredded them on approach, but they remained powered down as the Legion vehicle sped past.
Less than a kilometer from that intersection was an open set of blast doors seven meters tall and a meter thick, beyond which was a square room fifteen meters on a side and seven meters high. The vehicle slowed as the tunnel’s end finally arrived, and when it did, it was with a second set of blast doors, though this inner set was considerably less robust than the outer ones.
They disembarked the ATV, with the troopers securing the area, noting a pair of automated gun placements built into the walls.
Mr. DuPont patiently waited for Xi’s people to complete their sweep of the room, after which she turned to him and said, “All right, Mr. DuPont. Let’s see it.”
DuPont nodded, raising his finger and making a whirling gesture that prompted the giant blast doors behind them to slowly close. Alarms blared and lights strobed as the massive panels closed, and when they finally clamped shut, the chamber was filled with the hiss of incoming gas as the giant airlock pressurized.
When it had finished, DuPont removed his helmet and gestured for Xi to do likewise. She obliged, gesturing for Gordon to do the same, but the troopers knew they were to remain in their self-contained suits throughout this operation. With six hours of breathable air left in their systems, they had plenty of time to return to base, assuming things proceeded on schedule here.
Xi breathed in the air and was momentarily confused, then surprised, and finally exhilarated when she recognized the cavalcade of scents filling her nostrils. The powerful and distinctive smells of roses, blackberries, citrus, sweet grass, and a dozen other familiar odors assaulted her senses. Unlike the recycled air of Elvira’s cabin, which smelled faintly of grease and cleaning chemicals, this smelled like a private garden where people on Terra Han would pay good money to indulge their olfactory centers.
The link between smell and memory had long since been recognized by humanity, and for Xi it was no different. The smell of ripe blackberries in particular conjured a memory of walking beside a man she assumed to be her father as they strolled through a rooftop garden in one of the sub-cities in which Xi had grown up. The rough texture of his hands and the sharply contrasting imagery of the mixed green and blackberries on the thorny vines filled her mind, and she fought those memories down while re-focusing on the task at hand.
As she processed the fragrant aromatics, the inner doors of the oversized airlock parted, and what Xi saw beyond nearly took her suddenly-enriched breath away.
A curved walkway stretched right and left, with an artistically carved solid-stone rail ten meters from the doors. Beyond the hip-height rail was a cavern that spanned several kilometers, with a raised dome at least half a kilometer tall at the center. The bowl-shaped floor of the cavern, the lowest point of which was at least two hundred meters from where Xi stood, was carved into terraces, all of which were overflowing with luscious flora. The greenery wasn’t only life-sustaining, but it brought a certain peace reminiscent of any Zen garden.
People worked throughout the verdant paradise, with dozens of gazebos and other small structures scattered throughout where people gathered.
But the floor of the cavern was less remarkable than its roof. The dome-shaped ceiling, far too perfect to be natural, glowed with a pale-blue light that seemed an almost perfect copy of Terra Han’s skies. Fluffy white clouds gently glided across the dome, and a miniature sun shined its light down from a point approximating eleven o’clock in the sky.
Xi knew they were merely images and that the light which created them was almost certainly powered by a fusion reactor somewhere, which in turn provided the plants with the ultraviolet rays they needed. For a moment, though, she allowed herself to think she was standing on a Gaia-class world.
“Captain Xi,” DuPont said, proudly gesturing to the cavern and breaking her from her reverie, “welcome to my home.”
As Xi looked out, she estimated no fewer than three thousand people were in the cavern, and that only accounted for the groups she could see. A dozen tunnels led out of the circular walkway where she now stood, and people moved purposefully throughout those tunnels, going about the work of their daily lives.
Things were a lot more complicated than she had expected, and Xi knew she had precious little time to get to the bottom of this situation before it spiraled out of control.
“All right, Mr. DuPont,” she said grimly. “Let’s talk.”
12
Bad News & Tries Against Our Interests
The DC04 and the Red Hare, moving in formation, approached the New Africa jump gate leading to the Nexus. Jenkins had opted to remain aboard the DC04 in order to comply with his orders to the letter, which made the legality of transferring to another vessel, even one nominally pledged to the Metal Legion, murky at best.
The DC04 slipped through the jump gate and was immediately hailed by a nearby Terran vessel. It was another courier, although this new courier was with the Terran Fleet.
“I�
��ve got an incoming priority linkage request addressed to you, Colonel,” Oxblood reported. “Shall I patch it through?”
“Go ahead.” Jenkins nodded, strapping on a comm visor which soon projected the image of a Fleet Naval lieutenant with the name badge Mugabe on his chest. “Lieutenant Mugabe,” Jenkins said.
“Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins.” The lieutenant nodded officiously. “I’ve been tasked with delivering a secure document for your eyes only. The encryption is Theta-Theta-Two-Five-Niner-Bravo. Acknowledge, and I’ll send it over.”
“Theta-Theta-Two-Five-Niner-Bravo,” Jenkins confirmed, and a secure packet was transmitted to his visor.
“I’ve been instructed to await your official acknowledgment of these orders,” Lieutenant Mugabe said. “Take your time, sir.”
Jenkins eyed the other man before decrypting the packet using the indicated protocols, and a one-page memo filled his visor’s display with order revisions direct from Armor Corps HQ.
To: Lieutenant Colonel Lee Jenkins, TAC
From: General Mikhail Pushkin, TAC
Priority: Immediate
Subject: New Orders
You are hereby ordered to return ASAP to TAC HQ for a full debriefing on your support mission and to receive new orders. You are no longer attached to Operation Brick Top. Do not rendezvous with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Return to TAC HQ with all gathered resources. Do not deploy resources prior to a complete inspection at TAC HQ.
Jenkins slumped back in his chair. General Pushkin was one of General Akinouye’s closest friends and allies. He would never have called Jenkins back while Akinouye was still out there, which meant it was possible that Operation Brick Top had already concluded.
Jenkins reread the document several times before his eyes snagged on one line in particular: Do not rendezvous with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Why tell him not to rendezvous unless the Bonhoeffer was still on active deployment?
Something wasn’t right. No, that didn’t go far enough; something was terribly, terribly wrong. General Pushkin was trying to tell Jenkins what it was with his cryptic missive. The note was desperate instead of commanding. Anxious instead of composed.