She broke off when Rizer slashed her left ankle, dropping her to the deck beside him. Somewhat cushioned by her braid, her helmetless head hit the concrete. A normal person might have been stunned or knocked unconscious; the enraged DI immediately rolled to face him. Rizer dropped an elbow on her right wrist that knocked the vibro-blade from her hand.
You fucking bitch!
Rizer raised his blade, but she caught his wrist in two hands as he slashed downward and utilized a wrenching hold that forced the weapon from his grasp. Fiercely animated, his hatred finally unleashed on this woman who had made his life hell for weeks on end. He straddled her and smashed his left fist into her chin. His next punch grazed her cheek before hitting the concrete. A bolt of pain shot up his arm and battered his brain. Then a lightning bolt to his balls trumped his aching knuckles, courtesy of the knee she drove into his crotch as she flipped him off her.
He fell on his side, tried to roll and face her, yet she’d already reversed him. Now on top, she pummeled his face, blackening an eye and breaking his nose. Dazed and defenseless, wracked with pain, he could only lie there as she wrapped her fingers around his throat and squeezed.
The last he saw of her, she was smiling…
He came to slowly over a period of several minutes. Med bots knelt over him, and flickering memories of the fight rushed through his mind as he stared skyward.
Wow, it’s sunny out!
The med bots disappeared. The muscular figure of SSgt Mack then eclipsed the rare sunlight. He noticed she had a fat lip, though he didn’t dare betray his satisfaction with a smile.
“Get up, Rizer.” Mack said, not yelling at him for once. She addressed the med bots: “Come on, get him up already! We’re fucking late for chow, not that you gearheads give a shit!”
He began to rise with the bots’ aid, though he really didn’t need them. That Mack hadn’t thrashed him when he regained consciousness surprised him. He ran from the bots, his legs still a bit wobbly, to rejoin the platoon.
Before lights out, Rizer, Stubs, and Carelli, three champions of three disciplines during close-combat training, enjoyed the rare privilege of handing their weapons to someone else for cleaning.
“My guide should be the best at everything, Abek,” Mack said. “Winners survive, losers die. Now get on the quarterdeck and clean these rifles! They better sparkle like a whore’s eyes on payday, or I’ll send you home in a bag tomorrow!”
Rizer retired to his rack. He and Stubs gloated in whispers over Abek’ fate. Soon Rizer fell into dreamless sleep as he listened to the subtle brush of Abek cleaning his rifle.
CHAPTER 8
General Aaron Hella rode encased in the luxurious rear compartment of his command craft, the windows blacked out so he could devote his full attention to the briefing report. He’d read it several times already. He knew better than to venture unprepared into a meeting of the Joint Defense Council; that amounted to career suicide. He hadn’t earned four stars in only twenty-nine years without learning a few things along the way, such as the difference between second-guessing himself and simply being thorough.
Verdant…
He’d heard of the place but had never given it much thought. Just another obscure moon with little value other than its convenient location along a major trade route. Five years ago the moon’s strategic value skyrocketed after discovery of a widespread network of narrow and meandering tridinium veins deep under its surface. Roughly six thousand kilometers in diameter, Verdant orbited the giant gas planet Tantus-4. Land made up four-fifths of its surface. Environment: lush jungle, hot and humid but for the polar areas. Its gravity measured 0.98, barely lower than the Terran standard.
As for its political and economic state—
“Approaching destination, sir,” said his driver, Master Sergeant Rocco, over the intercom.
Hella closed the top-secret file, then secured the data pad in his briefcase. “Clear vision.” The windows quickly faded from jet black to clear, flooding the hover car with fulgent vermillion light.
Aldebaran, the gigantic red ball overhead, hung in the green-hazed sky for sixteen Terran days before finally giving way to an equally lengthy night. Explorers and traders from Terra had made the conveniently located Aldeb-3 an outpost almost a millennium before, when man had taken his first tentative steps into deep space. It was still a strategic world in the United Systems Alliance, both as an economic and military hub. Though Eden Prime remained the Alliance capital, a lot of military planning and preparation occurred on Aldeb, serving as the Coreward regional headquarters of the Navy and Marine Corps as well as the Joint Defense Council.
The hover car approached the neo-classical, multi-winged structure of Alliance Headquarters Coreward along a boulevard running between grandiose fountains and marble statues of military heroes, some several stories high. Hella thought, half amused and half serious, that perhaps one day his own scarred mug might be cut in marble on the plaza.
In the underground garage, Rocco opened the door, and Hella alighted from the car, donning a gold-banded barracks cover with many eggs scrambled on the visor. Like his boss, Rocco wore the green Marine Corps uniform designated Service-A.
“I’ll likely be a while, you know the drill,” Hella said.
“Yes, sir,” replied his driver as he saluted. Rocco would spend the next couple of hours in the nearby enlisted gym maintaining his gargantuan physique. He had a bionic right arm, yet the rest of his limbs were damn near as strong.
“Carry on.”
Bodies locked at attention greeted Hella as he entered the building and during the trip to the rotunda atop the north wing. He uttered, “Carry on,” roughly three-dozen times, lastly to the two Army sergeants in black berets guarding the rotunda doors. They saluted—he despised the Army custom of saluting indoors—before pulling open tall double doors covered in buttoned leather over soundproof padding.
Daylight beamed through crystal windows encircling the rotunda between the mahogany-paneled walls and the golden dome overhead. Oil portraits of presidents, board members, and military heroes sternly scrutinized the room and its occupants. Hella arrived last to the long table of gleaming mahogany lined with high-backed leather thrones, and he damn well liked it that way. Other ranking military leaders made a habit of kowtowing to the seated men; not so General Hella, who was content to let them wait on him. They all relied upon one another to keep the Alliance secure and the economy robust, yet today they needed him more than he needed them.
Before sitting he greeted the assemblage of five men and one woman, all familiar and most he’d met previously. Some he respected; some he did not. In addition to the four military commanders, each the most senior in their branch, two civilians occupied opposite heads of the table: Defense Secretary Lloyd Barrington, a recently appointed think-tank wonk who had never served in the military, whom Hella recognized only from holograms; and Alliance Security Administrator Willis Zheen, nothing less than a corpse-gobbling vulture.
Council Chairman Grand Admiral Deely introduced Hella to the defense secretary. With the formalities over, Hella took a seat next to General Shay Markham of Alliance Intelligence Service, a skinny, wrinkled battle axe who retained her scruples, unlike most in AIS. Across the table sat his old friend and current boss, General Harlan Storek, Commandant of the Marine Corps. They had attended the naval academy together, Storek graduating two years before Hella.
“Let’s get this started,” said Zheen in a perpetual grumble that escaped from beneath a drooping gray mustache. “I need to be back on Eden in two days to brief the president and the board.” Hella laughed on the inside. War waits for no man, especially a cheesedick like him. The media portrayed Zheen as some glorious war hawk; more like war chicken, but he kept the armed forces busy either way.
And the corpses are necessary. During mankind’s early forays from Terra into the galaxy, newly colonized worlds attempted to revolt and declare independence from their Terran overlords. In wh
at was dubbed the Unification Wars, armies formed almost entirely of robots and autonomous weapon systems had fought for control of Terra and attempted to subjugate the newly colonized worlds, relegating humans to remote leadership roles. But it soon became evident that such autonomous weapons could be hacked by the enemy and turned against their masters, so the need for a human military component remained. With the spread of transhumanism in the 23rd Century, the line between human and machine began to blur, so much that eventually synthetic humanoids possessing advanced artificial intelligence began to vie for a dominant role in society. Sensing danger, humans put laws and prohibitions in place against synthetic beings, referred to as snyths. At the breaking point, synths, supported by transhuman sympathizers, saw humanity as an existential threat. In what was dubbed the Singularity War, the automations had mutinied, launching thermonuclear weapons in an effort to exterminate humanity.
The synths almost succeeded.
After a long and protracted war, the majority of synths were rounded up, tried, and executed, while other rebels fled with their followers to deep space, fate unknown. The few who hadn’t supported the rebellion were discriminated against by their fellow denizens, so they sought asylum in the far-flung worlds of the periphery.
With time humanity recovered, rebuilt on the ashes of their fallen civilization, sparking another great period of colonization and discovery. War remained, but the powers agreed on the abolition of bot armies and strict regulations on biological synthetics, cybernetics, androids, and advanced AI systems. Some believed it was only a moratorium, certain the development of AI war machines continued in dank labs hidden from prying eyes and that synths still pulled strings behind the wheels of power. Bots and computers still provided useful service and support, but humans were now kept always in the loop and did the dirty work of warfare themselves. Despite advancements, the weapons, armor, and tactics over the centuries demanded soldiers be of the highest caliber, both physically and mentally.
On that score, Hella knew his Marines were second to none.
Deely, resplendent in his gray dress uniform, opened the briefing with a geographical overview of Verdant before getting to the meat of things. “As some of you know, Verdant is our number-two source of tridinium, right behind Theseus-7. But that’s likely to change in the next couple of years.”
“Sooner than that, admiral,” Barrington said. “According to the chairman of Babcock-Mauer Industries, Theseus is nearly depleted of tridinium.”
“Let’s not get carried away, Lloyd,” Zheen said. “Lucian Babcock has an inflated sense of self-worth and a penchant for drama, and that’s putting it mildly. But we’ll know the truth of it when we see his production figures for Verdant and Theseus, along with those of his competition. Continue, admiral.”
Hella had taken up arms to secure just about every resource in the galaxy. In that time tridinium went from a waste byproduct to a precious resource more valuable than conductive metals, fuel ions, or even Terran wood. Twenty years ago scientists built the first tridinium-compatible reactors for space flight. Ships equipped with the catalyst in their reactors made faster and significantly longer jumps with fewer core swaps. The advantages of this, both commercially and militarily, had every system in the galaxy scrambling to secure a steady supply.
Unfortunately tridinium was extremely rare, costly to mine, and time consuming to refine.
“As most of you know, Verdant was once a part of the People’s Galactic Union, lost to them during the revolution along with the entire Tantus system. It is presently an independent world with an elected government under Alliance protection. The president firmly supports Verdant’s Governor Misawa; his citizens however largely disapprove, claim he’s a puppet installed by the Alliance through a fraudulent election.”
Funny how the false pretenses continued even at this level. Everyone in this room knew the president and board crafted puppet leaders instead of conquering worlds outright, mostly to deflect accusations of colonial aggression.
“This low opinion of the Alliance comes as no surprise; many of the locals lost power and money when the Union pulled out, leaving the Alliance to support their government. Misawa maintains control in the few urban areas, but insurgent factions have seized several remote tridinium mines. These factions are demanding total independence from the Alliance.”
“We have confirmed reports that insurgents are receiving aid from the Union: weapons, money, and drones,” said General Markham. “We have also confirmed the presence of Union technical advisors in their camps.”
Even after the Singularity War, an inevitable division had occurred when humanity branched out on further treks of discovery and conquest through space. What had been the mighty Terran Federation, splintered into several governments that now ruled different sectors of the known galaxy, which often came into conflict over control of the most desirable star systems. The United Systems Alliance had a long-standing rivalry with their large and powerful neighbor, the People’s Galactic Union. They hadn’t fought openly in over a century, not since the last Expansion War, but often faced off in covert military operations in remote corners of the galaxy. During a costly revolution decades before, fomented by common workers and backed by the military, the Union had vast lost swaths of territory to other systems as it concentrated on preserving its government at the cost of maintaining its holdings. They had shown no interest in regaining control of Verdant until the discovery of tridinium.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” said the Army representative on the council, General Lonacker. A capable administrator and career officer, Lonacker led from the rear and typified the risk averse and politically connected staff officers that dominated the highest rung of military officers. The man had never seen much action. A product of nepotism, his late father had been a powerful senator. Nothing personal, Hella, a career infantry officer, disapproved of his credentials. With so many engagements raging across the galaxy, the Alliance needed proven battlefield commanders in charge.
“Those insurgents are going to be disappointed,” said Markham, “if they really believe the Union will grant them independence once they overthrow the government.”
“They don’t sound like an educated populace,” Lonacker commented.
“Probably not,” Hella said. “Most of them are farmers and miners. But they’re smart enough to see the strings attached to their stuffed-shirt-in-chief. Never underestimate the poor and uneducated, general, especially in a situation like this. They have nothing to lose.”
“And likewise, General Hella, you should not underestimate the power of propaganda in these situations. A concerted campaign of—”
“It’s a little too late to pacify this with bread and circuses.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re here, General Hella,” Zheen said. “But let’s finish the briefing before we move onto resolving this. Admiral?”
“Yes, sir. Intelligence estimates the insurgent forces number fifteen to twenty thousand, spread out in hundreds of pockets of resistance, and warn that their strength is ever increasing. Misawa employs about five thousand soldiers in his Verdant Guard, but the majority are conscripts from the various provinces, some of them with suspected insurgent ties. Their loyalty is to be considered dubious at best. His local security forces are the only troops who seem entirely loyal to him. Therefore, the board recommended, and the president approved the deployment of additional military forces against the Verdant insurgents and any Union personnel who might be aiding them.
“That’s where you come in, General Hella. After careful deliberation, General Storek and I have decided to utilize Third Corps to secure Verdant. You will relieve a division of Seventh Corps Marines currently on rotation there. You will deploy with Sixth Fleet, which will provide the necessary air cover and logistics, making this no longer a naval operation. Which means Army units at Sumar Prime will be on standby in case this gets out of control.”
Thirty-two light years away.
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“I have two army groups deployed as an occupation force in the Silex System at present,” Lonacker said. “There aren’t a lot of units to spare, combat or support.”
Doesn’t matter; we don’t need you. “I’m certain that Third Corps and Sixth Fleet are more than enough to secure Verdant.” Hella mentally positioned the troops now under his command as he spoke and found the field lacking. “But I’ll need my entire strength to assure a timely victory. I’ve been stripped of three service and support groups to run humanitarian missions and two of my combat divisions, deployed in the Silex occupation. I have no problem securing this world and getting the tridinium flowing, but don’t expect me to do it with one arm.”
“The Navy has your support covered, general,” said Secretary Barrington.
Hella fixed Barrington in his sights. “On the ground as well, sir?”
“If need be,” Deely answered for him.
“The need is a reality. I prefer to have my own support teams backing me on the ground. With all due respect.”
“The humanitarian aid effort in the Rigel system is one of the president’s top priorities,” Barrington said. “Those three support groups cannot be spared. It would be a public relations disaster if that operation went sour.”
“Sir, you’ll have a bigger disaster if the Verdant operation bogs down. We’re fighting for tridinium here. Don’t be surprised if the Union decides to send more than just weapons and advisors. There is a real possibility of this escalating into something bigger. There has been a considerable build of Union forces in the region, and they have conducted some of the largest full-scale war-games to date. We’re putting ourselves in a vulnerable—”
“The computer models don’t support that possibility,” Markham said. “Current estimates predict only a 1.9 percent chance of direct intervention by Union forces.”
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