by Evan Currie
“It’s in your files already,” Mattan said, his tone clearly amused that she would be telling him how to do his job. “I think you’ll find them more complete than you’re used to.”
“That’ll be a nice change,” she said, calling up the files on the American Diaspora vessel. “How come?”
“Enforcement against them was…not always as stringent as one might wish,” Mattan said with a twist of his lips, “but the old FBI did take them seriously just the same. Most of those boys couldn’t fart in the woods without it being recorded, so we know everything they knew the day they left Earth.”
“Alright, I’ll start breaking that down into a cultural brief,” Sorilla said tiredly. “It’ll take time.”
“Well, you can do that, but we’ve not exactly been sitting around on our asses, Sister.” He grinned.
“I’ll do it anyway, before I look at what you have done up,” Sorilla said. “I’d rather approach it cold. How long until we’re in Alliance space?”
“A week,” Mattan told her as he looked out of the vista afforded him by his office on the admiralty deck. “Another reason we wanted you in on this, Sister…”
Sorilla flicked the files off her implants and looked intently at the general. “Yes, sir?”
“The Alliance already assigned that Lucian Sentinel to the mission, the one you faced on Hayden.”
“Kriss?” Sorilla asked, not unpleased. “He’s a solid man…Lucian…whatever…but not who I’d expect to be in charge of this sort of thing.”
“The reports are sketchy, but I think one of the terror groups ambushed some of his boys with chemical weapons. Not too many made it out, if the reports are right,” Mattan told her with concern in his voice. “That gives him a personal stake in this, and maybe an axe to grind.”
“I’ll watch my back,” Sorilla said. “Who’s on the team from this side?”
Mattan smiled and sent another file her way with a gesture. “I’ve operational detachments from the Fifth. A hundred and forty-four men, most of them with some experience in various theatres back home, half a handful with deep space hours in their jackets, and nearly ten percent rookies. The admiral will keep the SOL standing by, so we can use her Marines if we need them, but obviously we’d rather keep this under our berets. There’s another forty in the C-team for operational control. Most of them are experienced, but no real space ops among them, I’m afraid.”
“A C-team seems like overkill on this op, sir,” she commented, a little confused. “Why have a battalion-level command and control handling a pair of detachments?”
“Normally we’d probably second them off to a single B-team,” he admitted, “but that would strain the command a little, and there’s not going to be much help to call on from home for this one. Additionally, HQ is worried that this might expand to a full blown confrontation, and in that case they want an experienced command team already in the slot.”
Sorilla nodded. “Understood. Who’s the op commander of the C-team?”
Mattan laughed at her. “You are.”
“That’s not a captain’s slot,” Sorilla objected. The last thing she wanted was that pain-in-the-ass job. “Lieutenant colonel, at a minimum, sir.”
Mattan pulled a pair of silver oak leaves from his pocket and tossed them at her. “Consider it your last promotion. SOLCOM was going to give you the bump as part of your retirement—would have made great PR from what I understand. Now, I suspect they might be a little less interested in going public, but somehow I doubt that’ll bother you much.”
Sorilla caught them on reflex, looking at the insignia like they were some particularly disturbing species of insect.
“Skipping a full grade, sir?” she asked skeptically.
“Well, you have more experience than most of our full colonels right now,” he told her honestly. “And you blow away their deep space time, as well as other stats, but really it was the retirement bump that decided it. Someone thought it would be a nice gesture for the ‘heroine of Hayden’.”
“The only rank I ever wanted was Top,” she said mournfully as she stared at the lieutenant colonel’s pins.
Mattan grinned rather nastily at her. “Still think officers don’t work for a living, Colonel?”
Sorilla resisted, barely, the urge to flip off her superior.
Chapter 3
USV SOL
En route to Alliance Space
Sorilla made her way through the bulkheads that separated the lower port spire from the core of the ship, a section generally reserved for visiting dignitaries but currently seconded for use by the U.S. Special Forces C-team while they were in transit. Sorilla didn’t know how she was going to handle this level of command, but she supposed it was time to find out.
Prior to this assignment, the most she’d been in real command of was Irregular Forces, or her own A-team. Commanding Irregulars was often more like herding cats: You were better off letting them do their own thing while being as subtly encouraging as you could to get them moving in the general direction you wanted. An A-team was a different bird, of course, but those were composed of highly motivated, highly intelligent people who were generally all on the same page. The barest of instructions was all you needed to get good results and, in fact, micromanaging people like that was as likely to lead to disaster as anything.
A C-team was a headquarters element, and not generally her forte, but Sorilla could see the logic of putting her out front on this one. The Alliance would be building extensive dossiers on the commander of this operation, for future reference in case they met in combat, and giving them plenty of data on her eccentricities would, if anything, just cloud Alliance analysis.
The new oak leaves felt heavy and awkward on her collar as she walked into the observation deck that had been converted over to handle the command and control functions for the C-team’s planning staff. She paused only momentarily, before anyone noted her, to make sure her beret was adjusted properly.
Once she crossed the bulkhead that marked the separator between the observation deck and the corridor, a subtle signal flashed from a sentry to one of the men standing in the middle of the controlled chaos she was observing. Sorilla’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at her briefly, then refocused back on his work.
She got enough off him for a facial recognition scan, however, and had his file up on her implants a second later.
Major Pierce Strickland, she read off the man’s name.
Most of his file was redacted. Not exactly uncommon, but enough to raise her eyebrows a couple notches, as she should, in theory, have access to all the files of everyone under her. That wasn’t always true of a detachment, she knew though, so she was inclined to set that issue aside for the moment.
The sheer amount of what was redacted, however, raised her eyebrows even more. Her own file had less black on it, and Sorilla was well aware that she had been involved in more missions that didn’t happen than ninety-nine percent of the Forces. With a record like that, the man had either seen a lot of action in places the government didn’t like to talk about, or he’d been involved in some highly classified projects.
If he were from most other units, it would be a tossup, but since he had the black flash of the Fifth on the beret he wore, she’d lay her money on the first option.
Eyes were on her as she walked across the deck, directly for the major without bothering to look at anyone else.
“Major Strickland,” she said as she came to a stop a few feet from him.
“Colonel,” Strickland acknowledged as he came to attention and saluted.
Sorilla returned it, acutely aware of the multitude of black flashes on many of the soldiers’ headgear around her, and the nine stars that made up her own flash. In her day, she’d served with the Fifth, but they’d used gold bars across the black flash then. She wondered, idly, when they’d changed back to the solid black, as she’d lost contact with the organization while serving with SOLCOM. It was difficult, sometimes, to get news from hom
e when you were several light years out. The solid black flash, and even the switch itself, wasn’t an unusual affectation for the group, however, so she didn’t think much of it. The Quiet Professionals seemed to alternate between those two designs for their beret flashing with some regularity.
The others present represented soldiers from various other militaries that had specialists in the sort of work that was her chosen vocation. Sorilla recognized them as mostly European, though there were a couple Canucks and an Aussie or two in the group. It was a less mixed group than usual, as it seemed SOLCOM had opted to pull primarily from the Fifth Special Forces Group. Likely the idea was to hit the ground running with an already solid team.
“My orders, Major,” Sorilla said, offering him the chip given to her by Mattan.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, accepting them. “I have been briefed. The team is yours, ma’am.”
Sorilla nodded curtly. “Continue as you have been. I have to bring myself up to speed and prepare a cultural brief on the likely aggressors before I get too involved here.”
“We have that prepared, ma’am,” Strickland offered.
“Thank you. I know, but I want to look at this cold before I go over anyone else’s work,” Sorilla told him with a shake of her head. “Call it a habit, Major. It was my specialty—one of them, at least.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand,” he said.
She looked over the people present briefly before turning her focus back to the major. “I probably don’t have to say this, Major, but it bears repeating so I will anyway. When dealing with the Alliance, I want everyone here to maintain the lowest possible profile. Don’t give them anything. Just send them to me as much as you can. You all will likely be dealing with them well into the future, so let me be your shield for now. This is my last rodeo. They can write up as detailed a profile on me as they like. I’m sure it’ll make for great entertainment eventually, but it won’t do them much good once I’m out.”
The major nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll make certain everyone understands.”
Sorilla nodded, knowing that he would do just that and not concerned about it really. The Fifth were known as the Quiet Professionals for a reason. They didn’t sign up for fame and glory. The Special Forces was the most thankless special operations job the Military had to offer, and you had to know that before you signed up. If you did the job right, no one ever knew you were in a country at all, and if people knew, then you’d fucked up. That meant that the men and women in the room with her all knew the score. Flying under the radar was the way they lived, at home and in the field.
Glory was for the SEALs.
“I’ve been told that the Alliance commander we’ll be dealing with is one I’ve crossed swords with in the past,” she said. “He’s a Lucian Sentinel. That makes him the Alliance version of the SEALs, only tough.”
A few people within earshot chuckled, but a glare from the major shut them up.
Sorrilla ignored them; her comment had been intended to do get just that reaction after all.
“That means he’s likely to favor a direct confrontation,” she said, “which would be fine, if we could find all the targets, but you know how that goes.”
Strickland nodded.
Guerilla forces lived and died on a very few basic factors. One of those was being able to hide from the regular forces they generally fought. While exceptions did exist, of course, in general no guerilla force stood much of a chance against a comparable regular unit. If the regulars could find them, the guerillas would die. Hiding was a survival trait, and any long-time active guerilla force were, by necessity, masters of it.
“I expect to spend most of my time talking him down and trying to keep his Sentinels from stomping all over our operations,” she admitted. “But I’ve been surprised by the Alliance before, so we’ll see how it plays out. When it comes to the real fighting, though, I can vouch for their competence in the field. Just make sure our people watch their backs. I don’t read the Sentinels as holding a grudge against humans, but exceptions always exist.”
“You don’t think they’ll have any problems working with us?” Strickland sounded skeptical.
“Oh, they’ll have problems,” Sorilla said, “but my read is that their main concern will be that we’re horning in on their action. Seriously, treat them like SEALs or Rangers. They’re pros, they’re motivated, and they want to be there…but they signed up for action, not the job. With exceptions, of course, they’re not going to be patient.”
“Right, I suppose I should have expected that,” Strickland sighed, seeming to relax a little.
The job was often a long game for Special Forces. You didn’t generally build, or topple, a functioning system overnight. Not unless you wanted to be really flashy about it, and that was anathema to the Forces. Doing the job right generally took years of nudging a little here and a little there, until everyone involved genuinely believed it was their idea in the first place.
It took time, but it worked.
Flashy solutions were almost always temporary solutions.
“I’m not overly worried about the Lucians, though,” she admitted. “It’s the Alliance intelligence that bothers me. That and the North American Colony.”
“Not the European one?”
She shook her head. “Muslim extremists are flashy, but largely ineffective. They’ll kill some people, sure, but the real damage they cause is going to be the overreactions people have to their methods. Frankly, the brief I’ve seen so far doesn’t sound like them. I’ll need to get more information, but a chemical weapon ambush is unusual. Muslim fundamentalists usually aren’t that competent. I’d have expected martyrs if it were Muslims.”
“Well, you’re not wrong there,” the major sighed. “So you think it’s the white supremacists?”
“Maybe.” Sorilla wasn’t committing to that, though. “But it’s hard to say. They’re more dangerous back home in the States, but mostly just because they fit in better and there are more of them. In other parts of the world, the Muslim Extremists are the real threat, so I suspect it’ll come down to which group is more desperate, so we’ll have to see once we get in the field.”
The major nodded and made a couple notes. Desperation was the single most defining feature of effective terrorist groups. Without desperation to fuel their recruitment campaigns, those sorts of groups generally withered on the vine. Few people were truly fanatical enough to sign up to kill or be killed, unless they were desperate.
“Honestly,” Sorilla went on, “I’m not writing off the third option.”
“Third option?” The major looked up at her sharply. “That wasn’t in the brief.”
“That’s because I haven’t given that brief yet,” she said. “The Alliance has their own terror groups and resistance cells. The use of chemical weapons no one can identify makes me wonder if one of them isn’t backing the human groups, using them as a front.”
“Jesus,” the major swore, leaning his head back. “As though this wasn’t complicated enough.”
“Welcome to interstellar politics, Major,” Sorilla said with a wry smile. “And this is still the 101 class. My money says it’s only going to get worse from here. So once we’re in the muck, stay close but stay behind me. Listen, don’t speak. SOLCOM needs you to know everything I know, but to be invisible. I went and made myself famous, at least to the enemy. Don’t do that.”
He snorted, amused, but nodded. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She grinned suddenly. “And on that, I’m going to need to know where my office is. I have a brief to prepare.”
“I’ll show you,” he said. “We have space waiting for you.”
*****
Kriss hissed in pain as he woke from the drugged stupor he was in, attracting the attention of a nearby medic.
“Hold on, Sentinel,” he heard a voice order him. “You were caught in an ambush.”
“Ambush, Abyss,” he gritted out. “The cowards weren’t even on-world, were
they?”
“No, we don’t believe they were,” a second voice said.
Kriss turned painfully, glaring at the speaker. “Your vaunted intelligence was wrong, then.”
“So it would appear,” Seinel told him dourly. “I do apologize for that.”
Kriss looked away from the Sin Fae, his expression unchanging, though he did grunt and grit out a response.
“Mistakes happen,” he said.
“I would that this were merely a mistake,” Seinel said. “However, I believe that somehow these agitators have turned someone within my organization.”
The Lucian turned back, his gaze piercing the other with a look both incredulous and questioning at once.
“I can think of no other way that our intelligence could have been so completely wrong,” Seinel said, starting to pace. “We are not perfect, of course, far from it…but we should not have been this far from the mark, Sentinel Kriss. Not remotely.”
Kriss drew in a painful breath, the burn from the chemicals he had breathed in infusing his body with pain, and from that pain he drew determination.
“Then we find the traitor, use him to discover the enemy, and then execute him for his crimes.”
Seinel paused, but nodded. “In that I believe we are in agreement. However…things have changed. The Alliance governor of this sector has decided that the situation has become…dangerously untenable, as it concerns the humans. He’s elected to allow the Terran government to send a group to help root out the agitators. This has become something of a joint mission, I’m afraid.”
Kriss slumped back, wallowing in his pain briefly.
“This will complicate matters,” he said painfully.
“I know,” the Sin Fae said. “Though it is a good chance to get further intelligence on the Terrans, I could wish that the situation were a simpler one.”
