Exodus: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

  “Fair enough.” Jan is deeply relieved that Zofia immediately asserts her old rights as his Number 2. “You’re the officer in charge of weps for 10th Combat Brigade, from here on out.”

  “For Wysocki’s Wreckers, you mean.” She can’t resist the dig at his proud modesty.

  “Yeah, right. Them too.”

  The enormity of a common task throws all new Wrecker officers together, awkwardly at first but urgently. None will sleep all week. Dylan Byers sees to that, providing Jan and all the brigade’s officers with a riskily high-dose of moda, the powerful combat psychostimulant.

  “You sure we should take this, lieutenant? It’s against all the regs and medical advice.”

  “No choice, if we want to get the brigade ready and loaded in seven days. I’m taking it, too. See?” He pops four yellow pills into his mouth and swallows ostentatiously.

  “Moda at this dosage will not just keep us alert and wide awake until the Exodus ships strain for orbit, it will actually improve short-term memory and mental acuity. OK, we’ll have real bad jitters after that and the worst damn hangover you can imagine, to the power of ten. But going bug-eyed won’t matter once the troops are safely onboard and we’re all passengers ourselves. Trust me. How do you think I aced exit exam week at Aral Academy?”

  It’s the confession that this creased and perfect officer kinda, sorta cheated on Aral that convinces them to pop the pills. That and Jan’s snapped order to “shut up, swallow the fucking moda, and get on putting your battalions together and getting them on the ships.”

  ***

  Z-Day, H-Hour. It’s only four days away as they sign up the last brigade fighters. Days that are spent in frantic equipping of 8,000 men and women. In handing out gear and securing weapons and getting live ammo crates onboard. Days spent introducing veterans to newbies and the whole brigade to the youngest-looking set of NCOs and officers any trooper has ever seen. It’s always thus in war. The longer fighting lasts the younger are those who fight, and younger also all those who lead the fighters. Long wars always end up as children’s crusades.

  Dylan hands Jan his design for a flash. It’s an old-fashioned fighting sail, a man-of-war firing a full broadside in white-and-red. Above is the constellation Orion, and three white sea birds circling. Bearing it to the stars are two foam-topped waves shaped from stylized ‘Ws’ that stand for Wysocki’s Wreckers. He approves and troopers start adding it to their uniforms.

  ‘How the hell did he know? Can everyone read me so easily?’

  As a late and hasty unit, 10th Combat Commando has no priority on ships’ berths. Despite Dylan’s best efforts and contacts, it’s assigned bunks real late, just two days before the Exodus launch. Far too late to get the Wreckers on one of the packed troopships, which means Jan can’t keep the outfit all together.

  He’s told he has to break up and squeeze his just formed brigade onboard three separate ships: Asimov, Resolute and Resolve. The Asimov is a frigate. Resolute and Resolve are older-class destroyers, modestly larger than the frigate. He tells Zofia the bad news later that day.

  “Not the best way to start building unit identity and morale, broken apart like this.”

  “No sir, I don’t imagine it is.” Her tone is flat, as it almost always is these days. Neutral and professional, but just a little curt as well.

  ‘Does he think I want to bunk with him? Well, I don’t!’

  “We’ll berth as much as possible by battalion, so you’ll stay with Madjenik on Resolute. I’ll find a berth with Byers and my other junior staff officers and all the medics, on Asimov.”

  She wants to show him only coldness, but her feelings are running too hot to always control. She still needs to hurt him, though another part of her wants to hold him close and cry instead. He catches the uppercut she throws at him square on the chin, as she means him too.

  “Wouldn’t want it any other way, sir.”

  “That’ll be all, major.”

  Their conversations are like this now. Short, official and only to the point. Never warm or personal or intimate or longing or sweet, as they were on that one night of no restraint at all. They slipped into intimacy and out again, in a way that they may never recover. It’s one more regret Jan tucks deep inside his kit bag, alongside his extra socks, as he packs to leave Genève.

  When he finishes he looks to the bed where Samara lies curled, naked and asleep atop white cotton sheets. The sight of her consoles him. ‘I’ve lost Zofia, but at least now I have you.’

  ***

  Seven small escorts are all that remain in-system of the prewar KRN flotilla based at Genève. The squadron was taken by surprise on the near side of the gas giant when the Kaigun invasion convoy jumped in. The flotilla fought back hard, but was quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers and superior ships. Genève flotilla was smashed to bits, losing 60% of its complement of ships and sailors before it broke off the fleet-to-fleet battle.

  Once the fight was lost around the two twinned moons of Wasp 2B the badly damaged battleship, KRN Goliath, fled with only secondary silos still shooting. Leaving with the limping cripple were five heavily damaged cruisers and a handful of destroyers and frigates.

  That’s it. Those were the sole survivors from three older KRN battleships, six cruisers, and four dozen small escorts that began the battle the Kaigun calls ‘Genève Obliteration.’ The rest of the KRN flotilla form clouds of flotsam around Wasp 2B’s close-in moons. Chunks of ship’s plate and smashed bulkheads and thousands of rigid bodies bolo on gravity strings where ships and sailors died.

  Five destroyers and two frigates remained, cut off from escape LPs by roving squadrons of Kaigun warships. Since these small ships could make planetary landfall, Captain Magda Aklyan led all seven in a dive to the surface of Genève. Ever since, they have been protected by Toruń’s shields and the Shipyard’s huge white plasma pulse cannon. The heavies at the yards are more powerful than any battery the Kaigun mounts even on its battleships, and all of those have left for other systems. The ground guns deterred close orbital patrolling when several wrecked Zerstörers and three badly damaged cruisers learned the hard way a month ago.

  Magda Aklyan is a slender and confident professional, with hard eyes as blue as arctic ice. She’s not technically the senior officer still with the KRN, but under her emergency and martial law powers Constance overruled the last peacetime admiral on the ground, told him to shelve his argument from rank, and put Magda in charge of what was left of Genève Squadron: five destroyers and two frigates she saved with a quick-thinking, emergency dive to the surface.

  Magda has never commanded a full squadron or battle group. She’s only a destroyer captain. A good one, but skipper of a small warship without any prospect of making admiral in the prewar Krevan Republic Navy. Now, none of that matters anymore. Like everyone else in what’s left of the KRN, she must rise daily to fresh challenges of command, to responsibility far beyond her training or experience.

  ‘I think I can do this job, but we shall just have to see. In any case, there’s no one else to give it to. Most surviving KRN officers in system are too young. They’re not ready. Not yet.’

  She quickly found that she fit the role of flotilla commander. And more, that she likes it. Tall and lean and wearing a snug-fitting uniform as she sits in the command chair, with black hair pulled off her face into a tight bun at the back, she looks far more severe than she is in fact. She’s aware of it and uses it, wearing a harder visage that she thinks her crews need to see and believe in, after peace vanishes into plasma blossoms at the outer moons and war comes to stay.

  Privately, she’s more like an earthen vase made of reliable clays: kiln-dried with a hard glaze, but homey and helpful underneath. She smells like fine clay, too. Not quite musty, but with a whiff of deep-rootedness born of the rich black humus of her homeworld. Her ability is matured by considered experience. She’s slow aging into wisdom like whiskey wrapped in oak.

  Once the Exodus order arrives from Aral everything ch
anged for her and the warships waiting on the surface of Genève. Changed for all the captains and crews. She and Constance had planned a final suicide run into the enemy orbital patrols. KRN sailors accepted that would be their fate, just as KRA soldiers accepted that they would die at the berm. Now that’s off.

  Magda must instead figure out some way to get past patrol ships with two vulnerable civilian ships along for the ride, and her fighting escorts packed with KRA. Then she needs to find a way to get the flotilla out of Genève system, where every bohr-zone is heavily guarded by the Kaigun. Her longer-term task is to get everyone to sanctuary in Calmari space. There the flotilla will disgorge lives, then await arrival of the government-in-exile from Aral.

  The flotilla needs a name. Magda decides to keep it simple: Alpha. If there’s a partition along the way, her flagship will retain the tag Alpha while the splinter shall become Beta. All together, or divided by fate or the enemy, the little ships must make it past Kaigun pickets both in orbit and at the first LP, the windward L1 of Wasp 2B. Magda and Constance agree that the target and escape LP will be Wasp’s leeward L2 bohr-zone, the farthest possible from Genève.

  “Won’t that be the hardest jump zone to reach? Why not go for the nearest bohr-point instead?” Constance asked Aklyan the day she brought her plan in for final approval.

  “You’re right: it will take extra hours of boosting to reach so far, with potential disaster and Kaigun warships after us all along the way.”

  “Yes? So why go there?”

  “Because it will be the least well-guarded, since it’s the hardest and most unlikely one for us to try to reach. I know, it’s a backwards logic. But it works if you think about it.”

  “Yes, I see it now. Fine, approved. And I think I may be able to help thin the ranks of the patrols and picket ships you’ll encounter en route.”

  “Really? That would be grand, general. But how?”

  “I can’t tell you that, captain. Let me just say that it involves the bravest man I know, and that he’s volunteered to do whatever’s necessary to help Alpha get away from Genève.”

  ***

  Nine ships will make the mad run for the outermost bohr-zone. The last seven small escorts and two commandeered civilian cruise liners, still being hastily converted to working troopships. All family of departing fighters and crews will stay behind in Toruń, or wherever else they may be on overrun and occupied Genève. In this war there’s no room left for family.

  Each ship in Alpha has on its prow a hewn and carved, teak rondelle in the form of a bright yellow sunflower. This signature emblem of the Krevan Republic Navy is encased in transparent armor and positioned just above the upper dodger and forward missile tubes. In any prow-on view in battle, it’s the first and often also the last thing an enemy warship will see.

  Before the war, the Royal Cruising Line operated a sizeable fleet of tourist luxury liners carrying rich Grünen of the upper three classes of citizens from various Imperium systems to favored vacation spots in the Krevan Republic. Liners Wilhelm Rex and Meiji were regular visitors to Toruń, plying a circle route from the frontier systems of Koblenz and Manmō to Genève, Aral, and Lwów, then back home. Both cruise ships were familiar sights to greeters at Toruń’s elevator docks, making the tourist run for many years before the start of Pyotr’s war.

  The liners spilled rich passengers and Imperium credits into the local economy before carrying back to Imperium space tens of thousands of happy, socially elite Grünen who thought they had experienced something like an adventure. They left with memories of long walks in golden and silver woods unlike anything anywhere in Orion, carrying lutes and flutes and small wood carvings of ambiguous gender or shape, meaning and purpose. Genève’s many artisan towns attracted plenty of farfolk carvers and musicians, in addition to locals and other Krevans. Most made little tourist versions of famous and much larger art works sold at off-world auctions to part rich folk from their fortunes, which is the purpose and justification of nearly all high art.

  The liners were docked at elevator platforms waiting for their passengers to return when they were trapped by the sudden start of the war and then an escort vs. escort smaller battle at the Genèven moons. Their captains soon rued that they lingered overlong at safe wharves 100 klics vertical apart, ignoring odd and too cryptic orders from Kestino to “Immediately leave Krevan space.” The imperial edict came less than a day before the Kaigun war fleet arrived. It was not enough time to gather passengers, clear through customs and leave the system.

  Besides, the captains thought the directive was just diplomatic foreplay in the ongoing quarrel between Krevo and the Imperium over border rights. Even the shocking vid piped out by official propaganda from Kestino, showing a Krevan commando attack on Bad Camberg, couldn’t force their early departure. The passengers were far too important to leave behind.

  So the captains and liners stayed docked. Like everyone else they watched on huge viewscreens the strange images of a naval battle at the outer gas giant, then a smaller fight at Genève’s own moons. They stayed there until forced down to Toruń on the surface by Aklyan.

  She scudded and staggered into synchronous orbit with the elevator, flying in at speed on KRN Resolve, steering sheer in a badly damaged destroyer before braking recklessly. She came scarred from destruction of Genève Squadron at the LP egress by a superior Kaigun fleet blocking all Lagrange points, and from her own separate fight at Genève’s small moons.

  With the last surviving KRN escorts alongside, Magda persuaded the reluctant liner captains to make clumsy planetside landings. She did it by firing decidedly tourist-unfriendly blue lasers right across each of their prows in turn.

  “Snout shots,” her XO Émile Fontaine called them. He’s just 24 years-old and a year out of the KRN Academy on Katowice, frocked but not yet formally commissioned due to the rapid and unexpected onset of war. Yet he’s made a name for himself already, during the opening fight around the inner moons. Captain Aklyan trusts and relies on him.

  She threatened the stupidly stiff, legalistic skipper of Wilhelm Rex, who dared quote interstellar commercial law to her while a Kaigun war fleet was hammering Genève system.

  “I’ll blow your damned Neo Grotius and his ‘law of the stars’ to particles if you don’t shut up. I’ll blast your bâtard ass and that fat liner out of the sky in 30 seconds if you don’t do as I ordered you. Release clamps and drop to a surface landing pad in Toruń City. Do it now!”

  He released all magnetic grips in a moment, then emergency blew the explosive bolts securing back-up cables reeving the Wilhelm Rex to the elevator platform. He descended the liner at reckless speed for so ungainly a ship. What convinced him to do it wasn’t Magda‘s verbal threats but her visage on his vidscreen. The warning shot of a blue laser that scuffed his bow also suggested that she certainly meant to do what was written on her face. He was met by armed guards upon landing and locked up along with all his crew and most of his passengers.

  The prim captain of Meiji, parked at a wharf 100 klics farther down, was told a tad more bluntly: “Land your fucking ship now or you’ll never see your family or home port again.” Without waiting for a reply, she fired a blue laser cannon past his Main Scuttle. He complied.

  All Grünen crew and any passengers with military or government ties were arrested and interned within an hour of touch down. Calmaris, citizens of the Three Kingdoms, Helvetics and other non-Krevans who disembarked were vetted, then admitted but also closely watched.

  Grün tourists already on the ground were tightly screened. All those who failed found themselves on shuttles heading to holding pens hastily set up in marginal districts of the city. The others were put under curfew and other restrictions, and faced daily security and personal harassment. They also found that the price of good rooms for loyal subjects of Pyotr Shaka III quintupled in just the time it took to reach their hotel from the City Police interrogation lines.

  The elevator ribbon was cut by a Zerstörer a few days late
r, one of a schwarm of four that skimmed and skipped across Genève’s upper atmosphere unchallenged by the seven small KRN escorts now huddled on the ground under protection of the city’s main naval batteries. With the cruise liners and all other civilian ships grounded, then commandeered by General Constance, there was no way to get off-planet or out of system. For anyone, farfolk or Krevan.

  The unwelcome guests were trapped by the siege of Toruń on land and the blockade in orbit overhead. So prices quintupled again, and kept doubling every week after that. Even full advance payment of exaggerated rates didn’t assure a room or dry roof to these hated farfolk. When Madjenik arrived, 600 unloved Grünen civis were ordered to vacate four floors of a big hotel to make way, expelled like common refugees into crowded row tents in Lakeside Park.