by Kali Altsoba
Those ordered to leave fear the image of loved ones left behind dying by fire or maser. Those who must stay fear that tens of thousands of dead fighters might be stopped and splayed in orbit overhead, to later fall as cold meteors then ash rain over the seas and fields and woods.
“Better than dying in fire as Toruń burns,” one marine says to mummers of assent from other untested members of her squad, just mobilized from one of Toruń’s high schools.
“Or worse,” adds an army veteran of the defeats in Southland and at the MDL.
“What could be worse than burning alive in a great fire that destroys Toruń?”
“Worse,” says the older NCO, “is being wounded or captured by the damned locusts after the fire burns out. You don’t wanna find out what ‘worse’ means, kid.” On that there’s grim and universal agreement by all vets, and white-knuckled fear among the rookies.
Fusion boosters and cannon mounts on the troopships are ready three days before Z-Day, counting down on a relentless orange digital clock on the graphene-vid pinned to General Constance’s chamber wall thirty stories above the Shipyard. Counting down also on a large green departure clock atop the spire on Old Towne Hall. Counting down wherever clocks hang in Toruń, sealed and blinded to the enemy. In each wooden tower and every humble room.
The last bunks are bolted in with two days to go. The ice-gun with just one. General Constance goes to the Shipyard one last time that evening, to say goodbye. She makes her farewell to Magda Aklyan in private, after passing along the last and latest intelligence from Aral telling of more lost battles and of the Imperium’s new invasions of more Krevan worlds.
Their brief meeting over, Amiya Constance stands and silently and respectfully gives Alpha’s captain the crispest of salutes, but in the navy fashion. Magda snaps off a return salute, but army-style. The two women then extend their arms and shake hands without ever speaking. There is nothing left to say. The general walks back to the Governor’s Office to await the dawn and her death. The ship’s captain rises to the Bridge of Resolve to await the launch and to live.
That night, with less than six hours left on the countdown clock on the wall behind her, from her open tower window Constance stands in the dark to watch the last troops loading on the Alpha ships. They just happen to be Wysocki’s Wreckers. She can’t make out Jan from so far away, but she knows he’s down there. That he’s leaving Genève on an odyssey for them all. Then she steadily walks down 30 stories of stairs to silently honor Dylan Byers, and makes her way without pause to the inner berm where the last fighters of Toruń gather for their last battle.
Final farewells are also said over last night hours by comrades-in-arms and old school friends. By scared teens wearing over-starched first uniforms, hugging their crying parents and grandparents who stay behind. By siblings too young to wear an older brother’s or sister’s gold or silver sheaves, too small to pull on a parent’s marine suit or fit into simple sailor cloth. More intimate farewells entangle a thousand different pairs of lovers. Last kisses are pressed to faces of the dear departing by many, many more bound to stay to meet fire and death or captivity and occupation by merciless enemies. Few believe a reunion will ever come. Not this side of death.
In the last hours before launch, sealed off from the city, fighters who must stay behind prepare to meet death in the coming ground battle in whatever way makes most sense to them. In prayer or drink, in silent solitude or the loud company of close friends in the ranks.
The very young and those too old to fight along the berm are moved by martial law and subdued police into vast underground shelters beneath Toruń’s twin lakes. A few civilians go home in vulgar despair to prepare poison meds, then quietly kill their children and themselves.
Those taking berths on Alpha scoop little tufts of turf into a kit bag or slip a blunt sliver of scented wood into a pocket before boarding, to remember the smell and touch of home in the long exile that’s coming. Then all seals on all the airways of the nine ships are closed. Motored gangways pull away from the hulls. Chemical boosters mix fuel, hydrogen fusion engines come online, and all is ready. Amiya Constance at last releases Alpha command to Magda Aklyan.
***
If the escape plan works and the nine little ships get away they’ll carry 165,000 fighters aloft. If it fails, all know that everyone onboard Alpha will die in the unforgiving cold of space.
No one knows that better than the nine captains and their XOs and Weapons Officers, gathered on Resolve for a final briefing. The room is crowded and hot. The captains and other officers can hear the big RIK ground guns booming outside, and answering fire from the KRA.
“OK captains, ships’ officers. One last time. Let’s review the flight plan. Mr. Fontaine, you will conduct the brief.” A glowing, dynamic holo map rises over the nav table. It shows Toruń below and the expected and known patrol routes of the Kaigun orbital squadron above.
“Yes ma’am. Once we get the signal from the general that she’s opening the fight at the Berm Gate, along with many feints and probes all around the perimeter, Alpha will leave.”
Nothing but silence greets the grim mental image of all the death and suffering they’ll leave behind on the ground as they burn white hot seeking escape velocity, and to live. Émile doesn’t dwell. He continues in a measured, professional voice.
“Warsaw and Jutlandia will lift under main power, with their chemical assists adding boost phase speed. That should give Alpha an initial advantage, mainly of surprise. We hope to use it to scoot past the Kaigun overhead patrol.”
“It will work if I've read their daisa right, but be ready to shoot our way out as well,” Magda cautions, looking especially to the nine Weapons Officers. They all nod affirmation.
“The escort of five destroyers and two frigates will fly close and tight alongside,” Émile adds, “all nine ships rising together, all firing full main engines and the additional boosters.”
Captain François Archambault on Le Terrible chimes in, trying to break the tension and his own dark mood. “I’d like to see that from the ground myself, and not just because it will look so damned impressive.” Some nervous laughter moves around the room, but quickly dies.
“When the signal comes, Toruń Shipyard batteries will shoot until they overheat and fail. They’ll hold back nothing. They’ll part the waves for us and hold open an ascent path. If we hold tight formation, that will allow Alpha to breach orbit and fly past the first picket line.”
“Toruń’s batteries prevent bombardment by the largest Kaigun warships, ever since three cruisers tried to ‘fly the zone’ in the first week of the siege, to pound our shields from orbit. As you know, they paid a terrible price. Zerstörers are faster but their guns aren’t big enough to do serious damage, and their captains are skittish after what happened to the cruisers. Or at least, their admiral is. So the Kaigun is sitting in what we think is a too close blockade.”
“That’s bad for the city, of course, but good for Alpha’s chances in Phase I. It means their patrols and sentries form a hard orbital crust, tactically speaking. Once we break through with speed or firepower we can do some open-field running, as we mercury ballers like to say.”
Émile Fontaine resumes.
“After that, as soon as that, Alpha will be entirely on its own.”
The holo map shifts scale and color, showing Genève as a small green-blue orb close to the system’s parent star. At 60 times its distance flies the only other planet, a cold jupiter with two larger moons and several dozen small ones. The big moons race around Wasp 2B in near-synchronous orbits that take months to widen. This close-in cycle repeats every seven years.
“Once we break past the orbital patrol we’ll kick in the Type-3 cruiser boosters. This is critical to the second phase of the flight and escape plan. Only they can hurl the modified liners, our newly designated troopships, at military velocities to the leeside L2.”
“What if Alpha is intercepted by more pickets on the way to that far-off bo
hr-zone?”
Captain Tura Dan of the Warsaw was only just promoted and reassigned from Asimov. She’s a confident, highly competent young black woman from Brno. Her hair is finely braided, stopping just shy of her high yellow KRN collar. She wears her peaked cap slightly to one side, which gives her a cocky look that fits her, too. She’s tall and slender, sliding inside her uniform rather like a panther fits into its own skin. That’s her nickname, in fact: the Black Panther. She was always going places, prewar. The advent of battle is just getting her there a lot faster.
‘Gods, she’s young! Was I ever that young? When I was, I never had her responsibility.’
Magda takes over the brief. “The escorts are ready to sacrifice themselves, to allow the two much more vulnerable and valuable troopships to escape. But you must keep up at the hard start. It’s the most critical leg of our centipede of an escape plan. Hence, all the extra boosters.”
If the flotilla can somehow evade Kaigun inner system patrols, even civilian quantum-drives on the converted troopships are good enough to bohr to a neighboring system. After all, a bohr-jump is a bohr-jump. Whether prewar markings on an outer hull are military or civilian, quantum-drives are all good to go. It’s only in-system that the troopships lack military speed.
“The sublight gap will be addressed in Phase I by the metallic-hydrogen boosts, and in the Phase II dash-for-the-LP by Type-3 fusion-boosts. If either assist fails to speed us past the enemy, disaster may ensue. Then we’ll have to fight it out, against whatever strength we face.”
“What kind of warships will they have that far out?” Its Rutger Metsalaer of the destroyer Guépard. A green captain, also newly promoted and making his first war patrol.
“We can’t know that. We have no solid intel on their deployments, only best guesses. We do know that we must evade any Kaigun ships in low or high orbit, fusion-boost away from Genève, then stay ahead of any pursuit as we race to the outer Lagrange. There, we’ll have to deal with unknown types and numbers of picket ships. With no outside assistance possible.”
“I see. Thank you for the honest reply, Captain Aklyan.”
It’s a sobering answer from their leader. To drive the point home, she deploys her most severe commander’s gaze and repeats it, looking each of her captains and XOs right in the eye.
“Intel is down and not coming back. The enemy is more numerous and has bigger and more powerful ships than us, and we simply don’t know where he’ll put them. We’ll be on our own, all the way to the outer bohr-zone. And after that, if we make it. Any more questions?”
No one flinches or breaks her gaze. They already more-or-less know what she’s telling them, that Alpha is a faint hope. The room is silent. Disciplined. Determined. Defiant. Not of her words or her authority over them but of the Fates, of the Gods, and above all, of the Enemy.
“Another known unknown is whether enemy picket ships guard the uninhabited system to which our escape flotilla will travel first. Hence, any ship that can get away after the first all-together jump is under strict orders to do so, to escape alone by means fair or foul or fortunate.”
“Where is that system, ma’am? Where will we jump to?” It’s the XO on Jutlandia.
“Never mind about that now. I’ll tell you en route. I want you all to focus on getting us to the bohr-zone first, and then you can ask about the out-of-system destination. Rest assured, however, that General Constance and I have thought it through carefully. Your immediate and only problem is not where to jump, but getting your ships and cargo to the jump zone intact.”
“Understood.”
Magda wants this point driven home, real hard. So she says nothing, daring a response. Again a judicious silence rules the room.
“If for any reason Alpha breaks up, survivors are to scatter. Jump from any open LP to any system you can. Run and hide, then run again, until you reach one of the five sanctuaries in Calmari space. Those are your orders, captains. I’ll nova-fry anyone who disobeys and stays.”
Magda closes out the briefing “Alright captains, let’s do this. Return to your ships. Stay on your Bridges. XOs, lock in navs. Weapons Officers, get warm and ready. The signal will come tonight. Watch the countdown clock, but be ready to go anytime up to three hours ahead of Zero Hour. Knowing the general, I’d say that’s likely. Bon chance, mes amis. Bon chance.”
The escape plan is at high risk of breakdown at all major points. It’s also the only hope that Genèvens have of joining the larger Krevan exodus, there to make war among the stars.
***
Only Amiya Constance knows the dread price paid in the last hours by the bravest man on Genève. Weak optical codes and incongruous Ops Secret coms carefully leaked over the past two weeks got the idea rolling among enemy intelligence officers. But she knew that false sigint gleaned from her planted intercepts would never be enough to satisfy the bloody-minded and cynical analysts of RSU. So on the penultimate day she played her ace.
She secretly allowed her best Special Branch officer to let himself be captured while “probing enemy coms” outside the berm. He knows he’ll be drugged and tortured. They think his SB training will let him hold out long enough to mislead his interrogators, just enough, even under the worst of RIK torments. It’s the single hardest parting of them all for Constance.
As his terrible tortures climax that last night he lets out with a scream that an escape flotilla carrying the general and 20,000 elite troops will make a run for it.
“When? When, you Gelben bastard?”
“Arrrrrhh!”
“When?”
“Ohhh, urrr ... stop, I beg! In two days, two days ... two!”
“Good, that’s better. Now tell us where they’re headed or you’ll lose the other one.”
“To Aral! They’re going to join the War Government on Aral.”
He’s talking freely now, as fast as he can, trying to anticipate the next question before they cut or burn him again. Before they take his left foot and cauterize the gash with flat red irons they used to burn his chest and arms and back. It’s what they did to his missing right foot.
“How does the bitch plan to get out of Genève system?”
“With a ruse, she’ll make a ruse de guerre!”
“What? A what?”
“A feint to the Wasp. They’ll fly toward the blue giant to start, but then they’re going to double back and whip around fast to the farside stellar L3.”
“How do you know this?”
“I was in the room when it was decided. It was the Ghost who told her to do it, it was his idea. He said the double-back worked in Pilsudski Wood.”
It’s a very well-conceived lie. Psychologically acute, unlike their crude tortures.
It gets their attention. If this came from the ‘Ghost of the Wood’ they have to take it seriously. Too many staff officers and RSU paid the ultimate price when Brusilov blamed them for being wrong about the Ghost. And he’s not the only callous RIK general they must please.
“It’s not enough. Burn him again! We need confirmation.”
“Arrrrrhh! Please no, stop, no more. I’ll tell you everything.”
“How do you know when they’ll leave?”
“I’m the general’s senior intel officer. I’m to go with her on the first ship out. I’ve been with her for 13 years. She’d never abandon me. We leave in two days!”
“You’re going nowhere!”
“You’ll stay in here forever, alone with us!”
“We’ll come back and visit again, after we kill your bitch general.”
They believe him because in the last 17 hours he’s lost half a foot and taken electric and hot steel burns to half his body. And because they believe in their own crudely brutal methods. So they pass his forced confession upstairs to Main HQ marked Authenticated, and recommend that the Kaigun urgently stack its assets at the closest LPs, “especially around the farside L3.”
All her hard duties done save one, General Amiya Constance dresses in simple combat weav
es, removes all her rank insignia, and strides through the tunnel to reach the first assault unit waiting just inside the Berm Gate. Come dawn’s incarnadine rays, she’ll lead Genève’s last army out to meet the foe. She doesn’t hope for victory. She hopes only to hear before she dies the roar of heavy boosters rising overhead, as she holds her enemy in place and by the throat.
She will fight for hate’s sake. She will die so that Jan and Alpha bring her hatred to the stars. She will die so that Krevo may live. Thereafter, she will lie content in an honored place. She will repose with murdered martyrs like her intel officer. Not with more cold or timid souls.
Regret
Jan doesn’t say goodbye to anyone. He doesn’t know anyone in Toruń anymore, and what’s left of his family is behind enemy lines. His cold, taciturn, disappointed father died five years after Jan came home from the Academy as a frosh washout. He has no siblings to worry about. He has only his mother, but no idea where she might be this night. His last on Genève.
