by C H Gideon
“Admiral?” Major General Kavanaugh scowled, tearing Zhao’s gaze from Jenkins. “A word?”
“Of course,” Zhao replied, and Jonny Villa moved to crouch beside them as the trio conferred in private for several long, agonizing minutes.
Every few seconds, Admiral Zhao would send a sharp look Jenkins’ way, but the Armor Corps Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins remained stoic throughout the sub-conference. He was so close to getting through this meeting that he could taste it, and once the conference room doors closed, he knew his turn on the grill would be over.
For now.
Eventually, the review board’s private conversation ended, and the trio returned to their respective places on the bench.
“Why don’t we cut through this façade, Colonel?” Zhao urged, the intensity of his gaze belying the gravity of his tone. “Tell us, right here and right now, what really happened down there. You’ve got one chance, so don’t just make it good…” He raised a finger pointedly before placing it, tip-down, on the bench before him. “Make it the truth.”
“The truth, Admiral Zhao?” Jenkins repeated, legitimately surprised by the admiral’s sudden shift in direction.
“So help you God,” Zhao replied grimly.
Jenkins drew a long breath, which he exhaled audibly while lowering his eyes to the floor in front of the bench. He silently kept his gaze fixed there for a full minute, before finally saying, “The truth, as far as I can tell, is that the Jemmin didn’t want us to contact the Vorr or the third species. They did everything in their power to prevent us from making contact and achieving our objective, and it worked. We killed the very creatures we were sent to meet with, and we did it because the Jemmin manipulated events and information with such expert ability that we didn’t even realize we were being manipulated. The truth, Admiral Zhao—” He lifted his gaze to meet the admiral’s, meaning every single word he next spoke. “—is that the Jemmin don’t want the Terran Republic to survive out here, and the events of Shiva’s Wrath prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt.” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in bitter resentment as he wrapped that truth in perhaps the most important half-truth of his entire report. “We only made it off Shiva’s Wrath due to Colonel Li’s resourcefulness in neutralizing the Jemmin computer virus at a key moment of the engagement. Without his efforts, I wouldn’t be here today and neither would my people.”
Admiral Zhao was unconvinced, but something in his expression suggested that Jenkins might have bought himself enough time with what he hoped were his closing remarks. The admiral looked down from the bench, looming imperiously as he studied Jenkins from head to toe in silence while Major General Kavanaugh and Colonel Villa looked on.
“Thank you, Colonel Jenkins,” Zhao finally said. “You are dismissed.”
“Thank you, Admiral.” Jenkins stood from his chair, turning to the other members of the board in turn. “Major General. Colonel.”
He turned on his heel and made for the door, half-surprised that the admiral failed to call after him before he exited the room.
“Nuts flush,” Xi declared triumphantly, laying down her king-high flush. “All right, pubes, pay up.”
“Aww, man,” Lieutenant Winters groaned, throwing his hand in while snickers echoed around one of the sickbay’s bedside-tray-turned-card-table. “How the hell can you be so lucky?” he muttered as Xi raked in the pile of makeshift currency, most of which consisted of coffee cream packets and other condiment sachets.
“She’s not lucky, Winters,” Lieutenant Ford chuckled. “She’s plain good. And mean,” he added, dramatically cradling his crotch.
“What’s the matter, Ford?” Xi quipped. “Can’t handle a little game of footsy with a chick?”
“You’re not a chick, Captain.” Ford shook his head. “You’re a Goddamned buzz-saw.”
“Aww…” She pursed her lips in her best, sickly-sweet pout. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Jesus…” Ford backed away, his hands held up in mock surrender. “When she starts talking like that, it’s time for me to run fast and far. I can’t handle another ruptured testicle.” Styles and Winters’ laughter was joined by Private Staubach, who to this point had been an onlooker in the four-hand game.
“Men these days.” Xi sighed as Ford collected his things, patted the sleeping Lu on the leg, and made for the sickbay’s door. “You guys really don’t know how to deal with women, do you?”
“I have to side with Ford on that front, Captain.” Styles grinned after Forktail’s Jock had gone. “You’re not a woman. You’re the angel of death. A guy’d have to be suicidal to make a move in your direction.”
She cackled with glee before gesturing to the empty seat. “You’re up, Blinky.”
“Really?” he asked, his eyes lighting up as he rummaged through his pockets for two handfuls of currency. “Thanks,” Staubach gushed as he set up his stack and checked his cards.
Before Xi was set to start the bidding, Lu stirred in his hospital bed. The Bonhoeffer’s doctors had kept him sedated for two full weeks longer than Fellows had thought, but Xi was convinced it had been the right call. Just a few hours earlier, they had removed the sedation drugs, and the card-players had gathered to welcome him back to the world.
“Heads up,” Xi said, moving to Lu’s bedside while everyone else did the same. Even Blinky, whose prior excitement at entering the game vanished in the blink of an eye, made his way to the foot of the bed.
Lu looked up, his puffy, pink face no longer bandaged as the replacement skin had finally gotten strong enough to be exposed to light and air. “What…” he croaked, and Xi offered him a sip of water that he gladly accepted. “Where are we?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Back on the Bonhoeffer,” Xi replied, looking around at the other mech crewmen present. “We made it off Shiva’s Wrath.”
“Mission accomplished?” he asked, wincing in pain as he shifted in the bed.
She nodded. “Mission accomplished. All thanks to you.”
Lu gave her a muted look of disapproval, but Winters jumped in. “It’s true, Chief. When that thing dropped the thermite on Elvira’s topside, it would have poured straight into the ammo cans without you closing the emergency slides.”
“We’d be dead if you hadn’t stuck your nose in there and closed that breach, Lu,” Blinky said solemnly, patting Lu on the foot.
Xi gripped Lu’s one good hand and made firm eye contact with him as she said something she had felt since the very moment she saw Lu’s burned body in Elvira’s rear compartment. “I failed you, Lu. I’m sorry.”
Lu’s brow creased in confusion, along with everyone else’s, as he said, “What?”
“I failed you,” she repeated firmly, remembering all the times she had longed for Podsy’s presence during her deployment on Shiva’s Wrath. “As commander, it was my job to deploy my people to the best of their abilities. I didn’t do that…I tried to hold you up to some kind of arbitrary standard. I acted like there was only one way to be my Wrench, but that’s not right,” she continued with feeling. A pair of tears ran down her cheeks as she continued to hold his good hand tightly in both of her own. “You deserved better than what I gave you. I know that now. And when you’re well enough to ride, I hope you’ll give me a second chance. I’d be proud to have you as my Wrench.”
Lu returned her grip with a weak squeeze of his own before surprising everyone with his reply. “You were right, Captain. I needed a boot up the ass.”
The quartet at Lu’s bedside erupted in laughter, and Xi wiped the tears from her cheeks as she patted his hand. “Maybe you did,” she agreed as Winters clasped her approvingly on the shoulder.
“I’ll ride with you any day,” Lu assured her, “but right now…could you people please clear a path for the busty nurse brigade?”
Laughter filled the room before Xi gestured to the door. “You heard the man. Roll out!”
“General, you asked to se
e me?” Jenkins greeted after rejoining the Dietrich Bonhoeffer in orbit of Terra Americana, his homeworld.
General Akinouye was standing beside a viewing portal on the observation deck, his hands clasped behind his back. “Colonel,” he greeted without turning, “take in the view with me.”
Jenkins approached, unable to avoid looking down on the rocky, frozen world below. In the midst of a thirty-thousand-year ice age, New America was still in the relatively early stages of terraforming. The coastlines were lush and green, and just this year, a thin band of green stretched across the equator for the first time since humans had arrived in the system.
That band would grow at a painfully slow rate over the coming decades before the planet’s climate was Gaian-class like Earth, but the heavy lifting of that project had already been done as orbiting reflectors redirected the system primary’s radiation back down to the world’s surface, slowly but surely melting the ice until the planet’s natural climate systems began to augment the jumpstarted process a full ten thousand years before it would have naturally occurred.
Looking down on the rocky, water-rich world, Jenkins could not help but feel pride at his forebears’ accomplishments in transforming the previously uninhabitable planet into the second-most prosperous in the Terran Republic. Home to nearly a hundred million hard-working, ruggedly independent colonists, the surface of New America was home to the second-most-populous human society in the Republic, behind only the world of Terra Han.
The coastlines below the Dietrich Bonhoeffer were dotted with tidal settlements, half-submerged and half-exposed as fusion reactor waste heat cleared the shoreline of ice. Those settlements cultivated tremendous amounts of food from New America’s five major oceans, and nearly a third of the planet’s population lived in underwater habitat modules that oversaw the expansion of the bio-rich coastal shelves.
Standing there at General Akinouye’s side, Jenkins saw his birthplace, New Boston, nestled on the northern edge of a massive tributary unimaginatively named Three Rivers Delta.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Akinouye asked reverently.
“It is, indeed, General,” Jenkins agreed.
“You did good with Admiral Zhao,” the general congratulated, though his tone was far from jubilant.
“I hope I didn’t cause you any undue duress, sir,” Jenkins said, knowing that several of his maneuvers had been purposefully kept from the general so that they would have the maximum desired effect.
“You played your hand perfectly, Colonel,” Akinouye chuckled. “The look on that bastard Zhao’s face was the most satisfying thing I’ve seen in a long time. Except, of course,” he added pointedly, “the fast-approaching surface of Shiva’s Wrath as the Zero dropped to the deck.” He sighed. “I hadn’t thought I’d ride the old girl into battle again.”
“Havoc made his presence known on the field, sir,” Jenkins said with feeling, knowing that everyone in the battalion felt likewise.
“Enough pleasantries,” Akinouye said, pointedly turning his back on the viewing portal. “Fleet’s not going to let this thing go, and it sounds like they’ve got enough support to spur a full-on Senate investigation.”
Jenkins winced. “I’m sorry to have let you down, sir.”
“I said you played your cards perfectly,” Akinouye grunted, “and I meant it. But it seems clear to me, now more than ever, that the Zeen were right. There is a rot in the Republic, and I’d bet my fast-fleeting ability to take a satisfying morning crap that the Jemmin are behind it.”
“Yes, General,” Jenkins agreed.
“Unfortunately,” Akinouye sighed, “we might be outgunned here. I’ve stonewalled as long as I can, but the next Senate session kicks off in three days, right here in orbit of New America. If something doesn’t break our way before then, we can expect the Legion to be buried so far under paperwork and reviews that we’ll never drop another can before Armor Corps is officially reorganized under Fleet.”
Jenkins recoiled in surprise. “I’m sorry, sir?”
“Everyone knows Armor Corps has been on the ropes for decades,” General Akinouye explained. “What no one outside of the Joint Chiefs and their staffs know is that gears have been in motion for a long time which would fold the Metal Legion into the Fleet. Not only would that remove Armor Corps’ seat at the big table, but it would consolidate even more power into the Terran Fleet. Once the Legion folds, it’s only a matter of time before the Marines follow suit.”
Jenkins nodded slowly, finally taking the general’s meaning after contemplating the situation from a tactical perspective. “You think the Jemmin are behind the consolidation of the various Terran military branches.”
“I do,” Akinouye agreed. “And their efforts have intensified in the last few months, ever since word of your victory on Durgan’s Folly reached the Senate’s intelligence committee. The political machine is picking up speed, Colonel,” the general said, fixing Jenkins with a hard look, “and if something doesn’t break our way in these next three days, I’m afraid that nothing will be able to stop it. And if that happens…” He turned and cast a haunted look over the icy sphere of Terra Americana. “God help us all.”
20
The Exclusive Report
“It can’t be that bad…” Styles said in disbelief after Jenkins had brought him and Xi up to speed on the political situation. He looked back and forth between Jenkins and Xi before finishing with less than his usual confidence. “Can it?”
“The general’s convinced it is,” Jenkins replied flatly. “He’s been doing this for nearly a century, and has served with the Joint Chiefs for four decades.”
“How?” Xi demanded. “How can we be so successful, do so much good, and still end up on the chopping block?”
“The problem is a lot larger than that, Captain,” Jenkins said heavily. “Our careers, and even Armor Corps’ future, are less important than safeguarding the Terran Republic. The politicians have a different idea how to do that than we do.”
“Hear, hear,” Styles agreed with conviction, and Xi frustratedly nodded in agreement.
“But we’re out of moves,” Jenkins continued. “We’ve been cut off, our supply lines frozen, and even our communications restricted following our extraction from Shiva’s Wrath. The Bonhoeffer is under strict orders not to break orbit, so we’re stuck here until the higher-ups decide our fate.”
“The next Senate session convenes in two days,” Styles said, rhythmically rubbing his temples with his palms. “Are we really going to sit here and do nothing?”
“What can we do?” Xi asked in bitter resignation.
“Hack New America’s data net,” Styles said fiercely. “We dump whatever information we think might help our cause straight into the feeds. Let the people decide if this Jemmin conspiracy is an actionable threat or not.”
Xi nodded approvingly, her enthusiasm growing with each word to pass Styles’ lips. “We can use the Bonhoeffer to go and physically upload files to one of the main comm satellites. From there, it would only take a few minutes to spread the files across the whole planetary network...”
“We’re not doing that,” Jenkins interrupted with finality. “Not only would it breach protocol at near-treasonous levels and land everyone aboard this ship in the brig, but frankly?” He let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I’m not sure it’s what the Terran Republic needs right now.’
“The Jemmin are undermining our entire society!” Styles cried. “How can we stand by and do nothing while an enemy who had zero compunction about opening fire on us actively manipulates the Republic for its own benefit?”
“We still don’t have all the answers, Chief,” Jenkins said emphatically. “We think we know that humanity was uplifted by some other species, and we have reason to suspect that if we’re right about that—” He held up a hand, forestalling Styles’ protest. “—it was the Jemmin who uplifted us. But if that’s true, why would they attack us?”
“They didn’t uplift us, Colonel,” Xi s
aid pointedly. “They uplifted Sol. When the wormholes closed, cutting the colonies off from Sol for the better part of a century, humanity’s role in whatever plan the Jemmin are playing out was thrown out of alignment. The Terran Republic is clearly an obstacle to that plan, whatever its end goal might be, and they’re trying to neutralize us.”
“That’s our best current theory,” Jenkins allowed. “But we don’t have enough proof to justify throwing the entire Republic into chaos, and possibly outright war, with the entire Illumination League. We barely managed to fight off that last major Arh’Kel offensive, people,” he said, snapping his eyes back and forth between Xi and Styles. “How do you think we’d fare against the League? For that matter, how do you think the Terran Republic would handle being cut off from the Nexus and, by extension, from itself? We only think the wormhole gates are two-way and two-way only. What if the Jemmin have a back door? What if, within five minutes of declaring war against us, our wormholes go offline—again,” he said pointedly, “and the Jemmin move a fleet of two or three hundred warships into the colonies, sweeping through them one by one until there’s nothing left of the Terran Armed Forces but a few tattered flags waving beneath flaming skies? Is that what any of us wants?”
The duo was silent for several seconds before Xi leaned forward intently. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing, sir.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Jenkins admitted. “But we’re backed into a corner here, and the last thing we should do is lash out in desperation. We still have time, and we still have allies,” he added with a knowing look that suggested confidence he in no way felt. “This isn’t over. Not yet. Right now, we need to keep our heads down and our foxholes in order so that when something breaks our way, we’re ready to take maximum advantage of it.”
