by Marko Kloos
“My wife’s the squadron commander of ATS-13. They’re training at Goose Bay right now for their deployment in two months. I want to check with her before I commit myself to blowing off our joint leaves for the next year. I like being married. I want to remain married.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” Masoud says, with an expression that tells me he doesn’t understand it at all.
“Are you staying on base for the night?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I told the twirly-bird crew to refuel and keep their ship on standby for the hop back to Keflavík. I need to make Faslane by the end of the day. But I’ll be busy with other stuff for the next seventy-two hours. I don’t have to put a name into those movement orders until Monday morning. But I’ll need your go/no-go by 1800 hours on Sunday. Understood?”
“Copy that, sir.”
We finish our food and put our trays on the counter for the mess orderly to police. At the door, General Masoud puts his beret back on his head, yanks down the right side over his eye, and flattens the wool against his skull with the palm of his hand. Then he nods at the mess hall behind us.
“This is the sort of place that dulls our edge. Makes us soft. Gives us too much time to worry.”
He opens the door to step outside, and the blast of cold air that blows into the entryway carries thick snowflakes that settle on our uniforms. General Masoud doesn’t even flinch.
“I know you, Major Grayson. You enjoy the perks here. But you think about how it feels to be back on the sharp tip of the spear. Because deep down inside, you miss the war.”
The low-grade irritation I always feel in Masoud’s presence turns into anger in my chest.
“That’s one hell of an assumption.”
“But I know it’s the truth. Because I miss it,” he says. “And I know you’ll deny it with your last breath, but we are very much alike, you and I.”
He walks out into the driving snow before I have to stifle an insubordinate reply.
CHAPTER 5
A FISHHOOK IN THE STEAK
In the morning, the combat controller and forward observer trainees have comms gear instruction. I stop by and watch for a little while as my sergeants familiarize the Eurocorps soldiers with some more of our signals and communications equipment. Even after four years, the battlefield integration of units between the NACDC and the Eurocorps isn’t seamless yet. We have spent half a century on weapons and tactics development in sharply diverging directions. The Euros have mostly been keeping the peace on their continent and safeguarding against Sino-Russian Alliance expansion, so they were geared to fight land wars on Earth. The Corps has been out on the colonies in a resource contest with the SRA among the stars for decades, so we were set up to fight small-scale colonial actions in other star systems. When the Lankies arrived, everyone had to radically change their R&D approach, but we were already proficient in space combat. The Eurocorps had to start their effort almost from scratch. But for a nation bloc that only started training space infantry less than half a decade ago, they’re doing quite well already.
I don’t linger in the classes to observe for long because it makes the instructors twitchy. When the boss is in the room, the teachers can’t help but think that I’m there to evaluate them in some way, and I can always tell that it throws off the flow of their lecture. So I make myself scarce again, satisfied that my experienced SOCOM sergeants have things well in hand whether I am hovering over their shoulders or not. When I check my chrono after leaving the classroom building, it’s only the middle of the morning. The snow squalls have lifted in the night, so with nothing better to do right now, I head back to my quarters to change into exercise clothes and go for a run.
Over the years, I have found that my brain works best when I give my body a mindless physical task that can be accomplished entirely on autopilot, in an environment where I don’t have to pay much attention to my surroundings or get bombarded by external stimuli. Running out here in Iceland fits all those parameters better than anything else. As I make my way from the base up the trail that leads through the hills, I don’t have to consciously think about anything, and there’s nothing in my field of view but snow-frosted mountains and the vast lead-colored expanse of the North Atlantic off in the distance to my left.
I don’t want to leave Iceland just yet. It’s a serenely beautiful place, and I’m as far away from people as anyone can get in this hemisphere without pitching a tent on what’s left of the ice shelf on Greenland. With all that good food and the light duty, it’s easy to forget that there’s a whole universe out there beyond the gray winter clouds. And with four years of no run-ins with the Lankies, it’s easy to pretend that they’re not still out there among the stars. Maybe they are scared of us now. Maybe they’ve learned to avoid us like a woodlands creature has incorporated the fear of fire into its instincts. It’s possible that we bought the Earth some lasting peace—for a century, or a millennium, or even an eternity. Maybe they’ll leave us alone for good, now that we have taught them to fear our nukes and our Orion missiles. With every month I spend here, the memory of their incursion grows a little more distant.
But as I pant and huff my way across the austere landscape of the eastern coast of Iceland, I suspect that all of those maybes are wishful thinking, not sober reflection. I’ve learned that as a species, we are exceptionally and universally good at rationalization, at accepting facts that support our biases, and explaining away or ignoring the ones that contradict them. And I know that much of my anger at General Masoud’s unexpected visit comes from the fact that he told me things I did not want to hear in the moment.
A thousand years of peace, I think as I look at the sky. A few seabirds are hovering in the breeze above the coast, flapping their wings every few seconds to maintain station in the headwinds coming in from the ocean.
Or maybe they’ll show up in the solar system again next week, with more seed ships than we have Orions to throw at them. We have regrouped and worked out new tactics. Who’s to say they can’t do the same?
I try to think about what would happen if we got an incursion alert right now. Our contingency plan still calls for all personnel to report to the nearest Corps facility to stand by for emergency deployment. I’d probably get moved to a podhead detachment on a Fleet unit somewhere, to get ready for surface action against the invasion spearheads, just like we have been practicing for half a decade now. But it would be a purely reactive action. I’d be suiting up in armor, yanked from a desk job into battle preparations without warning, tossed into a line unit with unfamiliar troops, people I’ve never trained or deployed with. And I realize that I am not prepared for war, even though I’ve kept my marksmanship skills honed and my body in fighting shape. I’m not prepared for war because I’ve let myself pretend that the fight is as good as over, that a desk job and three meals a day from a chow hall buffet are going to be my normal state for the rest of my days in uniform.
When I finish my run and trot back through the main gate of the ISTS base, I am angrier than I was when I left—not because Masoud was wrong, but because I have to concede the possibility that he wasn’t.
“If he is offering it, there’s a fishhook in that steak somewhere,” Halley says when I have finished telling her about General Masoud’s visit. We’re talking on a high-bandwidth video link via MilNet. It’s evening, and we’re both in our respective quarters. She’s in Goose Bay, the Fleet’s big training base in Labrador, where drop ship and Shrike crews practice low-level flight over unpopulated areas.
“Oh, I know there’s a catch somewhere,” I say. “But if he knows the deployment plan, he’s not sharing it.”
“‘Deterrence patrol’ could mean anything. Could be taking up garrison orbit around Mars for three months.”
“Could be going out to Arcadia with a task force. Or making the loop past Saturn’s orbit. With some FleetEx at Titan thrown in halfway through.”
“You don’t think he has anything cooking on the side, do you
? Like he did back when we went into Leonidas?” Halley asks.
I shake my head. “This isn’t going to be a SOCOM mission. They wouldn’t give him a whole Avenger task force. Whatever this is, it’s got to be a Fleet thing. Not some off-the-books cloak-and-dagger shit.”
“I would agree with you. But this is Masoud we’re talking about here,” Halley says. “Remember Leonidas?”
“I remember,” I say, and I know that Halley won’t ever need reminders, either. She almost died in the battle we fought at the end, when we had the renegade president of the NAC cornered in his underground bunker. The truth is that our entire team would have died that day if Masoud hadn’t sprung his trap and strong-armed an entire planetary garrison into surrendering to an SI company and an understrength SEAL team. He was smart and ruthless, and he got the job done with a minimal amount of casualties. The assets he reclaimed from the renegades were instrumental in fighting the Lankies to a draw on Mars. Without his audacious plan, we wouldn’t have been able to kick them out of the solar system. But I know without a doubt that if I had lost Halley that day, I would have killed him on the spot when he stepped off the drop ship with his SEAL team after the garrison surrendered.
“How do you feel about going on another deployment?” Halley asks.
“I’m fine with it,” I say. “In all honesty? I’ve had three shore-duty assignments in a row. Chances are better than ever the next one would have been a combat billet anyway. And it’s a deterrence patrol. We’ll be dashing to some colony, or maybe one of the Jovian moons. Figure we’ll do a live-fire FleetEx or two, put on a show for the colonials. It’ll be good to get out into the field again.”
“And if you don’t take the slot, Masoud will write you off as a burnout,” Halley says.
“I don’t give a shit what he thinks of me. I just don’t want to spend the next few years in charge of a SOCOM ammo dump somewhere in the outer system.”
Halley chews on her lower lip for a moment as she considers the scenario.
“Well,” she says. “I’m going on deployment in two months anyway. I can’t ask you to stay home and play it safe if I’m not. And if we both do a combat tour at the same time, at least we’ll be eligible for extended leave after. We can sync up our schedules.”
“I’m glad you don’t think I’m out of my mind for going,” I say.
“That would make me such a hypocrite, Andrew. When I am just itching to get back onto a carrier deck myself.”
She shakes her head with a smile. “I can’t believe we are actually looking forward to this shit again. The Corps has messed with our heads more than I thought.”
“If there’s fighting to be done, I’d rather be up there in armor than down here holding a coffee mug. And if there’s no fight, then it doesn’t matter anyway. Then I’ll just be doing a training cruise with live ammo.”
With the thorny business of the impending deployment out of the way, I feel a sense of relief that General Masoud didn’t manage to put a ding into my relationship with Halley, that there won’t be seeds of discontent that will have a chance to blossom into arguments or bad feelings weeks and months down the road. Now that Mom is gone, the two most important things in my life are my marriage and the Corps, but if I had to sacrifice one to save the other, I would not hesitate for a moment to leave the military and hang up the uniform for good.
“How soon will you have to head out?” Halley asks at the conclusion of our nightly bedtime banter.
“Masoud said I have to give him word by Sunday evening,” I say. “I expect I’ll have movement orders by Monday morning. He doesn’t wait around.”
“You might as well start packing your shipboard bag, then.”
“We won’t have a chance to get together before I leave,” I say.
“We’ve been there before,” Halley replies. “Many times. I don’t have to like it. But it’s the life we chose, right?”
“I’m sure I’ll be in-system for a while. Even if it’s a colony run. Takes a few days just to get to the node for Arcadia. I’ll check in once I get to the ship and settled in.”
“Go, then. Have fun sweating with the other podheads. And make sure you get back in one piece. I’ll see you in six months. And then we’re taking a few weeks off.”
“Count on it,” I reply. “I love you. Remember to keep the number of landings equal to the number of takeoffs.”
“That’s the general idea,” she says. “Good night. I love you, too.”
The two-line message to General Masoud only takes thirty seconds to write, but my finger hovers over the “SEND” field for a good while as I pace the room. Halley is on board with the plan, and she’ll be on deployment herself in eight weeks. This should be an easy call at this point, and I don’t know why I am hesitating. Maybe it’s the knowledge that Masoud has never sought me out with an assignment that did not have invisible strings attached to it somewhere.
Leonidas was seven years ago, I think.
We had the Lankies on our doorstep, and the renegades were on the run with our best gear. Now everyone is pulling on the same rope again, and there hasn’t been a seed ship in the solar system in over half a decade. There’s nobody left to deter with that patrol.
I send the message off to SOCOM command and put the personal data pad back onto the table. Then I take off my uniform and step into the shower for a quick pre-bedtime rinse.
When I am finished ten minutes later, the PDP’s notification light blinks with the pulsing red of a new priority message. I pick it up and activate the screen to find that Masoud’s reply consists of a standard transfer order, sent via the SOCOM administrative system. It’s as clinical and impersonal as a reply can get, only a few terse entries in the relevant data fields.
ASSIGNED UNIT—SPECIAL TACTICS TEAM 500. DUTY STATION—CVB-63 NACS WASHINGTON. REPORT TO NEW PDS BY—1800H ZULU, MON 19 FEB 2120.
I click my tongue and toss the PDP back onto the table, where it lands with a dull clatter.
“You’re fucking welcome,” I say.
CHAPTER 6
WASHINGTON
I’ve seen Avenger-class ships close-up dozens of times, but somehow the sight never gets old to me. They are enormous, the better part of a kilometer in length, but they have a sleek appearance that belies their size and weight, all organic curves and flowing shapes. When the Fleet only fought other humans, warships were painted in flat black and gray, to make them less obvious against the background of interplanetary space. The Avengers are all painted in titanium white, and the hull markings are fluorescent orange, in blatant defiance of the old low-observance protocol. But these are new weapons, designed to fight new enemies, and the tactics had to change radically. Our foe is sensitive to active radiation, so the new gear is built around optical tracking and comms, which requires a high-visibility paint scheme to let the optical sensors pick up friendly ships more easily.
NACS Washington sits in her docking slip like an image from a defense contractor brochure, human warfighting prowess distilled into half a million tons of titanium and carbon composites. On the other side of the T-shaped docking outrigger, a space control cruiser is tied to the station with dozens of service lines and gangways, utterly dwarfed by its immense neighbor. We have three Avengers in the Fleet, and three more are under construction. The SRA has three as well, and there are six more distributed between our various Alliance nations. A dozen battlecarriers are now the thin white line between us and the Lankies, but the line is getting a little thicker every year. By the middle of the decade, there will be twice as many Avengers in service.
The shuttle makes its way to its own docking port at the inner ring of the station, and the pilot has to make a slow pass alongside Washington, so I get another opportunity to study the hull from stern to nose from just a few hundred meters away. The Avengers are too large to dock at Gateway or Independence stations, so the Fleet expanded the new battlecarrier base at Daedalus, on the far side of the moon. Now it’s almost the size of Gateway, and the F
leet has steadily shifted its operations to the new station, leaving the old and capacity-strained Gateway to the orbital defense ships and the nascent combat fleets of the allied nations. It’s a bit of a pain to get to the new base because it requires a transit from Earth to Luna and then another ride around the moon on a separate ship, but I rather enjoy the scenery every time I get to do that run. Something primal stirs in my chest whenever we come around Earth’s moon and see the station and the gigantic battlecarriers rising above the lunar horizon in front of the shuttle. Fleet Base Daedalus has no civilian ships docked, and no cargo or passenger traffic to clutter up the approaches.
“Passengers, prepare for arrival and gravity ops at Daedalus,” the flight deck announces as we approach our docking clamp. I double-check my harness and return my attention to the viewport next to my seat, where the angle of our approach gives me a good view at the forward ventral gun batteries on the hull of Washington, rows of armored turrets with triple rail-gun barrels for orbital bombardment and close-range ship-to-ship barrage fire.
I’m the ranking officer on the shuttle, so I get to leave the passenger deck first, a small but welcome privilege of my new seniority. When the green light comes on and the crew chief opens the hatch to the docking collar, I get out of my seat and gather my personal bag from the cargo bin. Then I return the crew chief’s respectful nod and step through the hatch and onto Daedalus.
The new Fleet base is fully geared for military use, not an ounce of weight wasted on accommodating civilian and commercial operations. Everything is new and shiny. The deck liner under my feet is spotless, without the centerline rut that’s evident on the decks of ships and stations that have seen the foot traffic of decades in active service. The corridors are well lit and wide enough for heavy equipment transfer between capital ships. There are clear direction markings on the bulkheads, and the paint isn’t all faded and scuffed like on Gateway. It’s been a long-running joke in the Fleet that we would come back to base one day and find that Gateway had finally de-orbited and crashed into the Pacific while we were on patrol. Now that Daedalus is a fully operational Fleet base, we may finally be able to decommission the eighty-year-old station and recycle it for scrap. But knowing the military, they’ll keep using it until it falls apart completely.
