The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Probably, she thought, as she slipped through the hatch and headed down. The station was gradually filling with people, making it harder to find a place that could be isolated from the security network. They certainly don’t seem interested in developing their personnel.

  She snorted at the thought. The training modules she’d endured, with Commander Archer breathing down her neck, had been laughably easy. She’d faced harder problems when she’d been a child, playing with computer games. She had no idea how the vast majority of the anchor station’s personnel would cope, when faced with a real emergency. They should be running emergency drills time and time again, just to ensure their people knew what to do. Her lips quirked, humourlessly. Perhaps Commander Archer had argued against emergency drills. It would certainly showcase his department’s failings.

  Phelps met her as she stepped into the compartment. “The others can’t make it,” he said, shortly. “They’ve been assigned to a different section to make up a numbers shortfall.”

  “Ouch.” Rachel cursed under her breath. They could have found a privacy tube and pretended to be lovers, although even they weren’t safe. Or maybe not ... someone might have asked questions if they couldn’t watch the act. Damn it. “How did you get out of it?”

  “Luck of the draw,” Phelps said. “That ... and my supervisor seems to like me.”

  “Lucky you.” Rachel shook her head. “I’ve collected a ton of information. I couldn’t get at anything classified above a certain level, but there’s enough to help plan the operation.”

  Phelps nodded. “Does your supervisor suspect anything?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rachel said. “He’s an asshole who seems to have dedicated his life to making his staff miserable. I don’t think he’s paying anything like enough attention to his duties.”

  “How terrible,” Phelps said, with heavy sarcasm. He took the datachip she passed him and slipped it into his pocket. “When are you expected back?”

  “Technically, I’m off duty for eight hours,” Rachel said. “Practically, I should probably get back before someone asks what happened to me.”

  “Or spots that you appear to be in two places at once,” Phelps agreed. “I’ll send the datapacket in an hour, then ... we’ll be alone.”

  “Again.” Rachel had to smile. They’d been alone from the moment they’d boarded Botany Bay. “At least we could probably steal a starship and make a run for it here.”

  “Yeah,” Phelps agreed. “It could be a lot worse. We could be at the bottom of the gravity well.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Check in with the others when you get a chance,” she said. “I’ll try and be here tomorrow at the same time.”

  “Two days from now,” Phelps said. He waved a hand at the bulkhead, his mouth twisting as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Better not to let them see us close together.”

  “Understood.” Rachel made a face. “Good luck, sir.”

  “And to you,” Phelps said.

  Rachel nodded, then turned and walked back to the command core. Phelps was right. If someone noticed her and the other three together ... who knew what sort of conclusion they’d draw? The corprat system was as caste-ridden as some of the less developed worlds she’d visited, back before Earthfall. They seemed to believe command staff, even very junior officers, shouldn’t have relationships with yarddogs and stevedores. Better to have her groped by Commander Archer than allow her to have a perfectly consensual relationship with someone below her ...

  It makes sense, she told herself. She could see the logic. She just didn’t like it. They don’t want people from different departments talking.

  She felt her heart sink as she reached her bunk and carefully linked herself back into the security monitors. Havoc would be leaving the system shortly, once she received the final datapacket from the Pathfinders. And then ... she’d go to the RV point, carrying with her the information Rachel had painstakingly collected. She knew it would be useful. She just hoped it would be enough. There were so many things she didn’t know, so many blanks she’d had to fill in through educated guesswork ... she’d made that clear, in the report she’d put together when she’d been pretending to sleep, but she knew too many of her superiors had Optimists Selective Hearing Syndrome. They wanted to believe ...

  Her mind raced. She’d deduced a lot, from the location of some of the planetary defence centres to the capabilities of the orbital defence network. It certainly looked as though the corprats had blundered when they’d sent most of their available ships to Hameau. The fleet lists were intimidating long, but most of the listed ships were nowhere to be seen. Were they on deployment? Hiding under cloak? Did they even exist? Her superiors would want to believe they were far away, that they would be unable to intervene before the matter was settled one way or the other. She understood the impulse, she admitted silently. She wanted to believe, too.

  Anderson knows better, she thought, as she closed her eyes. She’d served with Major-General Anderson before. The man knew not to believe everything he read in the reports. And he’ll make sure the others know it, also.

  But it was a long time before she finally managed to fall asleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Now, the carpenter increased his potential wealth by chopping up the trunk. That’s obvious. But there’s a second factor involved. Planks and firewood are simply more useful than trunks. There are more potential buyers for planks than there are for uncut trunks. The carpenter has not only prepared the wood for sale. He’s increased the number of potential buyers.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

  There was something fundamentally wrong, Kerri had often thought, about interstellar space. It was an illusion - there was no way to tell, with the naked eye, if she was in interstellar or interplanetary space - and yet it was painfully hard to shake. The fleet was completely alone, over five light years from the nearest settled world. There would be no hope of assistance if they ran into trouble; there would be no hope of signalling for help if the phase drives failed, leaving them stranded in interstellar space. Even if they powered up the sublight drives and pushed them to the limit, it would be over a decade before they reached safe harbour. If, of course, they reached it at all.

  The fleet floated in the darkness, illuminated only by running lights and signal beacons. She smiled, despite the chill, as her eyes picked out the giant MEUs, the handful of escort ships and the small cluster of captured starships. They weren’t practicing signals discipline, something that both amused and irked her. There was little chance of detection, so far from the enemy homeworld, but it was a bad habit. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense. They were so far from safe harbour they needed the beacons. It was easy to believe someone could get lost in the darkness and never find their way home.

  She shivered, then put the thought aside. “Communications, transmit the datapacket and the analyst reports to the MEUs,” she ordered. “And get me a laser link to Commander Halibut.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ensign Susan Perkins said.

  Kerri stood. “I’ll be in my ready room,” she said. “Put the link through when it’s established.”

  She felt her heart beginning to race as she stepped into the ready room, leaving her XO in command. They were about to launch an invasion ... their second invasion. She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat at her desk, her eyes moving automatically to the near-space display. Haydn was on one of those MEUs, preparing his unit for deployment ... she felt a flicker of amusement, mingled with irritation. The urge to have sex before she went back into harm’s way was overpowering, but it had to be ignored. She was an experienced officer, not a teenage girl.

  The terminal bleeped, displaying the latest reports from the analyst deck. They’d gone through everything the Pathfinders had sent, putting together a surprisingly detailed assessment of the enemy system. Kerri couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t anything like comprehensive enough. They knew a lot about how the s
ystem worked, by connecting the data from the Pathfinders to the reports from the prisoner interrogations, but they didn’t know how the system was defended. Kerri’s survey reports had noted hundreds of defences - and orbital stations she assumed were armed - but there was no overall picture. There was just too much they didn’t know.

  And what we don’t know can hurt us, Kerri thought. She took a sip of her coffee, morbidly contemplating the possibilities for outright disaster. If we’re wrong about how many ships they have in the system, we could lose.

  The terminal bleeped, again. “Captain,” Ensign Perkins said. “Major-General Anderson is requesting a conference.”

  Kerri nodded. “Put him through.”

  She sat upright as the Major-General’s image appeared in front of her. “Sir.”

  “Captain,” Anderson said. He nodded to her. “Congratulations on the success of your mission.”

  “It was relatively easy for me, sir,” Kerri said. She had no intention of claiming credit she didn’t deserve. “It was the Pathfinders who did the real work.”

  “Regardless, you’ve told us a great deal about their defences,” Anderson said. “We’re currently refining one of our operational plans for invasion. When the planners have finished putting everything together, I’d like your opinion. You’ll be in command of the first part of the operation.”

  Kerri nodded. “We’ll be going with one of the Romeo concepts?”

  “A variant on Romeo-4,” Anderson agreed. They’d drawn up the rough concepts before Havoc had shadowed Botany Bay to Onge, but they hadn’t been able to finalise the plan until they knew what they were facing. “The goal will be to put a major force on the surface as quickly as possible, while launching a major propaganda offensive.”

  “And doing enough damage to convince the locals to rise up in support,” Kerri said. She had her doubts. The Pathfinders had made it clear that Onge was a seething cauldron of bitter resentments, but there was a sizable gap between mute resentment and outright rebellion. As long as the locals feared their government would retain power, they would be reluctant to put their lives on the line. “We’ll have to move fast, sir. Those missing ships will return, sooner or later.”

  She made a face. The POWs had been very talkative, but there was a great deal they simply didn’t know. Where had the enemy sent their ships? When would they return? They clearly hadn’t been expecting to find themselves fighting a full-scale war and yet intelligence had been heavily compartmentalised ... she frowned as she considered the possibilities. There were just too many ways things could go spectacularly wrong and yet ... the projections were clear. The Onge had to be stopped now, while it was still possible. Given a year or two, their position might become impregnable. The corps couldn’t hope to match their production, even if it maintained a qualitative edge.

  “I am aware of the risks,” Anderson said. “And I have advised Safehouse of my decision.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kerri said. “I understand the logic.”

  Anderson gave her a look that suggested he knew what she was thinking. In the old days, a commanding officer might time the notification to ensure his superiors couldn’t put the brakes on before it was too late to keep the operation from going ahead. In the old days ... she swallowed, hard. In the old days, even a complete failure wouldn’t prove fatal to the corps or the empire itself. Now ... losing an entire division - two entire divisions - would be a disaster beyond imagination. The corps might never recover from the loss of so many trained men and their equipment.

  “Prepare your ships,” Anderson ordered, curtly. “Once the plan is finalised, I want you ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. We’ll move in two days.”

  Kerri nodded. That was fast, but they’d already laid most of the groundwork. The MEUs were loaded, the enemy ships rigged with slave circuits ... she made a mental note to ask for volunteers to crew the captured ships. They’d draw immense fire, once the enemy realised what they were doing. The battlecruiser was tough, but she wasn’t designed to soak up so much fire on her own. And there was nothing she could do about it either.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Will we be alerting the Pathfinders?”

  “No.” Anderson grimaced, suggesting he wasn’t pleased by his decision. “They know what to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kerri said, again. “With your permission, I’ll get straight to work.”

  ***

  Major-General Gerald Anderson leaned back in his chair the moment the image vanished, trying to clear his mind. Senior officers could not afford to let themselves get bogged down in details ... that way led micromanagement and a tendency to miss the forest for the trees. His staff could handle the logistics, taking the plan they’d devised and adapting it to fit the intelligence they’d obtained from Onge. Havoc and the Pathfinders had done well. They’d learnt a great deal about how the enemy society actually worked.

  It has two weak points, not one, Gerald observed. And we only need to take advantage of one of them to win.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment. It was obvious Captain Stumbaugh had doubts. She wasn’t the only one. They’d grown up in a universe where they could lose battles - they did lose battles, no matter what the spin doctors and PR specialists claimed - but never lose the war. There’d always been a hard limit on just how much they could lose ... until now. He wasn’t blind to the risks. The stakes were incredibly high. He was gambling with an entire division, with hundreds of thousands of full-fledged marines. Losing even half the force would be a disaster that would make Han look like a child’s temper tantrum.

  And yet, he didn’t see any choice. The corprats had evolved a government ... an extremely repressive government that would not, that could not, allow any other form of government to exist. Corporations had their place - capitalism was so much better than anything else that it was hard to put it into words - but they couldn’t be allowed to dominate the galaxy. They’d crush competition and doom themselves - and their people - to stagnation and death. He’d read reports suggesting the corprats had killed breakthroughs in everything from FTL drives to fabrication nodes, just to ensure they stayed on top. He believed them. The reports from the first planet they’d invaded were all too clear. The locals had been trapped in a living death.

  Which means we gamble everything on one throw of the dice, he thought. And if we lose ... I take full responsibility.

  He snorted, rudely. No one outside the corps, at least in the Core Worlds, had ever taken full responsibility for anything. The Blame Game was a demented version of musical chairs, with chairs added or taken away at random while the music threatened to die time and time again before it actually did. Who could blame them, when the rewards for success were so low and the consequences of failure - or at least being saddled with the blame - were so high? And yet ... he shook his head. It didn’t matter who accepted the blame. The corps would be staring down the barrels of a disaster fully as great as the nuclear screw-up on Parris, without the ability to regenerate itself. Hell, this time there would have been plenty of warnings about potential disaster. The red team had taken a sadistic delight in drawing up hundreds of disastrous scenarios.

  His intercom bleeped. “Sir, Major-General Foxtrot is on the line.”

  “Put him through,” Gerald ordered.

  “Gerald,” Foxtrot said. “You should have let me put my name on the plan.”

  “You can share the credit if it works,” Gerald said. It was something of a pointless exercise - a disaster wouldn’t be redeemed by putting the CO against the nearest bulkhead and shooting him - but he’d do his best to spare his counterpart the shit sandwich that would be coming his way if the operation failed. “If it fails, you can swear blind you never knew me.”

  “And that I was in the bath, singing noisily, while my division went into action,” Foxtrot said, dryly. “Somehow, Gerald, I don’t think the Commandant would buy it.”

  Gerald laughed. “Maybe you could claim you were having an orgy,” he said. “It would
be a little more believable.”

  “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Foxtrot countered. “Seriously, though, I have signed off on the plan. I’m not going to let you take all the blame. Just two-thirds of it.”

  “I love you, too,” Gerald said, dryly. “How about you take half the blame?”

  He shook his head. “Miguel, if this goes wrong there will be quite enough blame to go around.”

  “Yes.” Foxtrot studied him for a long moment. “Gerald, like I said, I have signed off on the plan. If I had doubts, if I thought the plan needed to be modified or cancelled before it even got off the ground, I would have said so. I would have demanded we check with Safehouse before going ahead. But I didn’t, because I believe the plan will work. And I will not let you share the blame alone.”

  “Then we can share the same firing squad,” Gerald said. “Or the same pod as we get dumped on a penal colony.”

  Foxtrot laughed. “Yes, sir,” he said. He made a show of consulting a datapad. “The first wave of landing forces have been transferred to the dumpsters. Your units have been reinforced by elements of mine ... I’ll make you pay for that later.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Gerald said. He would have preferred to spend more time integrating the two divisions, but they simply didn’t have time. “Thankfully, there’s been no FNG nonsense.”

  “There aren’t any FNGs here,” Foxtrot reminded him. “Every bootneck is an experienced man.”

  “And we’re about to drop them into hell,” Gerald said. He looked at the terminal. The plan looked bloodless. He knew it would be anything but. The loss projections were just numbers, yet each and every one of them represented a living, breathing marine. And the casualty calculations for the local population weren’t much better. He knew they were partly based on guesswork, but ... “This could go horribly wrong.”