by Bobby Adair
“The cruisers will be gone by now,” reasons Phil. “Right?”
“Yeah,” answers Brice. “Our plan—maybe I should say hope—to mount a quick attack on Ceres was predicated on the assumption that the Trog fleet would be there replenishing their supplies. When they’d attacked the Arizona shipyard and bombarded earth’s orbital battle stations, they likely fired most of their railgun slugs, so they’d be nearly defenseless.”
I add, “Unfortunately, our week-long window to exploit that weakness has closed.”
“So, Phil,” says Brice, “to answer your question, it depends on the Trogs’ strategy now. They’ve always had the strength to attack earth directly, yet they never could do it successfully.”
“Why’s that?” asks Phil.
“Because of our fleet.” Brice looks around the empty reservoir, searching for an available seat. “It’s complicated, though.”
It would be more comfortable for us all to sit, but we only have the one chair.
“The Trogs never had more than sixty or so cruisers. Before Arizona, we had twenty-six battle stations orbiting earth, and any one of them was a match for six, or maybe a dozen Trog cruisers, especially with the supporting fire from the other battle stations. So, any attack with a small number of ships was bound to fail. Unless the attackers’ goal was to lose cruisers.” Brice chuckles.
Phil rolls his eyes and glances at me. He doesn’t appreciate Brice’s undeveloped sense of humor.
Brice looks at each of us to ensure we’re following along. “Here’s the important part. If the Trogs had committed all of their cruisers and attacked in force, then our fleet wouldn’t have to engage. They’d have waited until the Trogs ran themselves out of ammo destroying a few stations, then followed them back to their bases and attacked them there.”
“What if they only used half of their ammo before going back to resupply?” asks Phil.
I’m tired of being a silent observer, so I jump to the conclusion. “Same result. Cruiser battles are about attrition. With all the ship designs being very similar, the distinguishing difference between winners and losers comes down to tactics. Either outnumber, outgun, or outlast your enemy. A cruiser with a hold only half-full of railgun slugs will probably lose to one with a full load. I mean, it certainly can’t win, all it can do is hope to maneuver and manipulate its defensive grav fields long enough to run the enemy out of ammunition.”
Nodding to confirm my assessment, Brice proceeds. “That makes the ambush of our fleet at the moon base the turning point in the war.”
“Duh,” blurts Phil, and then he sees Brice’s face turns suddenly dark. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“He’s never had much interest in military history,” I explain to Brice, “or anything having to do with the Grays’ tactics.”
Brice nods at Phil to let him know he’s forgiven, and follows it with, “You’re right. ‘Duh,’ is the reasonable response. I probably should have spoken more carefully and noted that the destruction of our fleet afforded the Grays the opportunity to change their tactics. They no longer have to harass our mining colonies to draw our fleet into engagements. They can attack the earth directly. That works to our advantage.”
“I don’t follow.” Phil is shaking his head and frowning. “Why’s it good for us if they attack earth?”
“We know what they’re going to do,” answers Brice. “They’ll bring their whole fleet in to attack the battle stations. They knocked out three last time. If they can do that every time, then all they have to do is make another dozen or so runs at earth. You figure two or three days of fighting for each battle, and then a week to resupply and—”
“And,” I do the quick math, “in three months’ time, we’ll be right back where we were when the Grays first showed up thirty years ago, defenseless against a space-based enemy who can pound us with impunity from above. The only question is, how long until the Grays surrender the planet? How many more humans will die?”
“Let’s not forget the more important question,” concludes Brice. “How will these new Grays and their Trog slaves treat humans? Better or worse than the Grays we already have?”
That’s not a question I’m interested in wasting any thought cycles on. “All I can say is—”
Phil says this next part right along with me, “—I’m not going to be a slave.”
I ignore his mockery. He’s probably tired of hearing that song from me. It has been a few years. “What Brice is saying is though we missed our opportunity to attack them with their pants down at Ceres, we still have a good idea what the Trogs are going to do. We can wipe them out.”
Chapter 6
Leaving Phil with the Gray, me and Brice exit the reservoir. Under the silent glare of the hallway guards, the watertight door clangs shut behind us. Except for the tall bully with the flat face and a few others, the guards seem respectful as we pass by.
Once we’re well away, Brice says, “Don’t worry so much about them.”
“What?”
“You’re stewing about the way they looked at you.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” Yeah, how? Really. “Do you have a bug in your head you didn’t tell anyone about?”
Brice laughs loudly.
I take that as a no. Of course, Brice doesn’t have a bug. Only a warped sense of humor.
“You spaghetti-heads ever wonder if you’ve come to depend on your bug so much you forget how to communicate like a human?”
No. It never crossed my mind. Seriously, no sarcasm. Yet, I don’t confess that to him. “Why do you say that?”
“We’ve spent enough time swimming in the same sewer. I don’t need a billboard to see it written all over your face.”
“The stewing?” I make the genius guess.
Brice glances at me to let me know I’m on the right track.
“What of it?”
“I told you, don’t worry so much about them.”
“Okay, Grandpa Brice, how about you help little DK out with something more than a pontification?”
“Ooh. Pulling out the big words. Don’t get mad at me. I’m just trying to help.”
“My God, Brice. I think I liked you a lot more before you got comfortable speaking your mind.”
Switching to a formal tone, Brice says, “You can transfer me to another unit, Major.”
“I wouldn’t trade you for the world, Grandpa.” Heavy sarcasm.
“You ever wonder why officers get fragged so much?”
“Never crosses my mind. Tell me why I shouldn’t worry so much about the guards. And everybody else who gives me the stink-eye when they see me.”
Brice shakes his head to dramatize his disappointment. “This thing with you and Blair, you need—”
“This thing?” I stop walking and turn on Brice. We’re pretty far up the hall. So the guards can see us and most likely hear us, but with the echoes bouncing off the rough stone, they probably can’t make out what we’re saying. “Blair has mental problems. She hates me because she sees me as a threat. I’m her competition for center stage. She wants credit for everything we’re doing here. The Queen of the Potato needs to have her needle-y man-fingers up everybody’s ass, controlling every—”
“I agree.” Brice embarrasses me into nipping my rant short with his placation. “She’s a vile woman with her priorities in the wrong place but—”
“And here comes the best part.” I don’t put much of an inflection on my retort, because I know I probably shouldn’t have even said it. Brice is trying to help.
“But,” Brice emphasizes, “she has this base running like clockwork.” He inhales the hallway air deeply. “The breach is sealed shut. We’re walking around in breathable air. Pay attention when you’re stalking through the tunnels like a pissed-off teenager. Everybody is busy. Everybody has a job to do. Not just the military personnel—everybody.”
I have the urge to recite my way through Blair’s l
ong list of character flaws and deflect Brice’s point, however, the truth comes out in an unenthusiastic admission. “She does seem to have an aptitude for administrative tasks.”
To drive the point in a little deeper, Brice tells me, “Armies, navies, any fighting unit you can imagine needs rear-echelon support to make it combat-capable. Officers like Blair, as much as you want to frag them, make our jobs possible.”
I surrender. “What should I do about the nine shades of shit she’s painting me in?”
“We can’t know for sure she’s responsible for all of it. The MSS is always looking for scapegoats to blame their fuckups on. Have you considered the possibility you were just unlucky, and they drew your name out of a hat? You have to understand that as much as Blair wants to be in the spotlight, the last thing the MSS wants is a rebel war hero on their hands.”
I nod. I have considered it. I don’t want to believe it. It’s easier to have Blair’s arrogant face to focus my anger on. “Even if she’s not at the root of this, Blair’s exacerbating the situation here.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“What do I do about it, then?”
“I’ll think about it.” Brice rubs his chin. “For the moment, don’t do anything. Let her administer the base. You lead the combat operations. That’s what you said your agreement was, right?”
“Informally,” I admit. “In the heat of the battle. Who knows where we are now with the division of responsibilities?”
“Maybe get together with her, work it out like big kids.”
I sigh. Brice is right. Again. “I still don’t know what to do about the troops on base. I think most of them are buying the MSS line.”
Brice shakes his head as he pushes me to get moving up the corridor again. “You don’t know what these people think. Like I said earlier, you depend too much on the bug because you grew up with a bunch of bug-heads, you spent your adult life around bug-heads, and all your friends are bug-heads. You people feel each other on some telepathic level and don’t even realize you’re doing it. It’s made you lazy about the way real people communicate.”
“I didn’t forget how to speak,” I argue.
Brice doesn’t let me derail him. “You can’t read people’s faces anymore to know how they feel about something. Hell, maybe you never could. Remember this, morale is good. It’s good because of our victories, and everybody knows that’s because of you and our platoon.” Brice shrugs dismissively. “And our company. Stop chafing your nads about things you can’t control. Let me worry about what the troops around here think. They’re not as against you as you believe.” Brice stops and takes a moment to consider what he just said. “If it gets out of hand—”
The floor shakes and a deafening rumble blasts through the hall.
Brice drops to his knee and gravs tight to the floor as he reaches to unclip his helmet.
Klaxons echo louder than the alarmed thoughts racing in my head. I grav tight and reach for my helmet, too.
Chapter 7
Brice pulls his helmet over his head and seats it as he turns to look at me and make sure I’m following his lead.
I am.
I’m relieved from the deafening clang of the klaxon as my helmet muffles out much of the sound.
Brice has his gloves on and locked at the wrists before my helmet is seated in the neck ring. In a fluid motion that looks natural for him, he raises his railgun to his shoulder and he’s ready to fire, scanning one end of the hall to the other.
It takes me half a rushed minute, but I fumble through shoving my hands into my gloves and locking the wrist rings before raising my rifle.
Using the grav switches buried in my helmet, I bring all my suit’s systems online and comm Brice. “Thoughts?”
“No decompression, yet.”
“Attack!” It’s a voice over the command comm—not Blair, one of her lackeys.
“This is Major Kane.” The flunky on the other end of the comm link should be able to read that off her display, but her frantic one-word warning tells me she’s rattled. “Calm down. Get me Colonel Blair on the line.”
I turn to Brice. “Round up the platoon. I want a squad stationed in the hall outside Phil and Nick’s cell, and I want the rest to meet up with us. Pick a rally point. On the surface, or just inside one of the airlocks up there.”
Brice nods.
“Colonel Blair is busy,” the girl on the command comm tells me. “We’re being attacked.”
“Trogs?” I ask. “How many cruisers?”
“Not Trogs,” she answers. “There’s fighting in the hangar facility.”
I need information. “Is Tarlow in the command center?”
“Who’s Tarlow?”
I turn to Brice. “The main hangar. A firefight of some sort.”
“Follow me!” He runs.
As I follow, I comm Tarlow directly.
“Yeah?” He sounds frightened.
“Are you in the command center?”
“No.”
“Can you get there?”
“No. It’s locked down.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m standing in the goddamn hall outside. The doors are locked. The guards inside won’t open them.”
This situation already has clusterfuck written all over it. “Can you contact Blair?”
“No.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“An attack?” He clearly doesn’t know.
“Is your secret communications closet still operational?”
I hear Tarlow start to pant like he’s running. “On the way there now!”
“I need a tactical picture of what’s happening as soon as you can provide it. I need to know if Blair is okay. If so, what’s she up to. I talked to one of her comm officers, and she said there are no Trog cruisers and no Trogs. Is this some kind of coup?”
“I don’t know.” Tarlow gulps air. “The command center didn’t look under attack, just locked down.”
“Let me know a soon as you’re online.”
Brice reaches a set of lift tubes, peers up and down inside one of them, then yells, “Level one! Stay on my heels!” He jumps inside.
Chapter 8
We pop out on sub level one to see an empty hall. The alarms are still ringing.
An all-hands announcement comes over the comm. It’s Blair’s voice. “A group of SDF loyalists have detonated the explosives shack and have taken control of the maintenance hangar. By our count, there are twenty to thirty of them. Every Free Army soldier needs to arm themselves and converge on the hangar as fast as possible. We can’t allow these traitors to escape with a ship.”
Ironic.
Every one of us on this rock is a traitor who escaped with a stolen assault ship.
Well, except the ones who are trying to re-escape.
Brice isn’t running. He’s looking at me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He’s focused on the tactics while I’m toying with the semantics. I make a guess. “That it’ll be a mess up there?”
Brice nods. “Not right away. Soon enough.”
“All the more reason to rally our unit and go in together. Lead the way, as fast as you can. I’ll try and raise Queen Blair again.”
Brice engages his suit’s grav functions and flies down the hall.
On instinct, I fly behind him, and jump back on the command comm. “This is Major Kane. I absolutely need to speak with Colonel Blair. It’s urgent. It has to do with the SDF loyalists.”
“Uh…” It’s the same girl I spoke with earlier.
“Get her on the comm, now!”
“Yes, sir.”
I comm to Tarlow. “Are you in yet?”
“Powering up my monitors,” he tells me. “I’ll be online in less than a minute.”
Brice speeds around a ninety-degree turn, and I maneuver along behind.
“I need intel, and I need it fast,�
�� I tell Tarlow. “You know the situation. We can’t let those ships escape.” I quickly tell him which hallway I’m in and where I’m headed. “Find me the safest attack path.”
Brice decelerates hard, and I collide with him because I didn’t react fast enough. Neither of us loses our balance. We find our feet and come to a stop as Brice punches an airlock button. The door swings open.
In a few eye blinks, we’re inside with the door closed and air hissing out.
“You have six people, all outside,” says Tarlow.
“Outside this airlock?” I ask, looping Brice into the conversation.
“Our rally point is right through here.” Brice points at the outer door.
Blair connects with me over a private comm. “Make it quick, Kane. If you’re still on our side, that is.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” I snap. “Listen to me, don’t send all the troops in right away. They’ll end up shooting each other, because in case you haven’t noticed, we’re all in the same orange suits.”
“You don’t…” Blair stops because she realizes I’m right.
“Instruct the lieutenants and sergeants to rally their platoons to a jump-off point they select. Once they’re together, then go in. While they’re doing that, figure out some way to identify which ones are stealing the ships, and who is with us.”
“How the hell am I supposed to decipher the loyalty of an officer over a comm link?”
“I can’t answer that one,” I tell her. “Make your best guess. If they have their unit together maybe they’re loyal. I’m guessing there aren’t any full units defecting.” Total shit logic, I realize. “I’ll bet it’s a collaboration of individuals who don’t like where this rebellion is headed.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Wait!
Duh!
I ask, “Why don’t you freeze their suits? Can you identify the loyalists up there individually?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well, issue a global freeze command on all the damn suits, then. That neutralizes everything until we can sort things out.”
“I tried to freeze them,” says Blair, “but they’re wearing helmets outside my chain of command.”
