by John Lumpkin
She was broad-shouldered and matched Neil in height. Her high-cheekboned face was oval and bold, and her hair, somewhere between blond and brown, was cropped short for freefall but still longer than many women on Apache cut theirs. Her blue eyes were bordered by nascent laugh lines.
She had taken to Neil during his first briefing after coming on board; he had referred obliquely to having had seen action, which was unlike the crew of the Apache, who had spent the war in places that the Hans had not seen fit to attack. He was unremarkable to look at; she was attracted to what she saw as a desire in him to understand, to figure things out. He has some depth. I wonder what’s in there.
She had approached him the following Friday evening during the junior officers’ social hour, both surveying and marking him before any of the other young women aboard could take their shot. She learned he was mooning over another Space Force officer from his previous assignment, a difficult-sounding woman who was now light years away, at the GJ 1105 blockade. An obstacle to overcome. The following Friday, their weekly alcohol ration quickly consumed, she made a suggestion in a low, husky voice. He actually blushed! It hadn’t happened that night – he had hesitated, worried he had misunderstood or was being pranked by his new shipmates – and she didn’t press him, wondering if she had misjudged his preferences. But she caught him stealing glances at her for the remainder of the social hour, and she knew he would consent. The next week they did the same dance, and he didn’t hesitate.
For Neil, it was a strange time. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship when he came aboard, and the near-effortless entry into one with Jessica had left him feeling a little dazed over his good fortune. They made each other laugh, and he found her easy clarity in her sense of right and wrong something he wanted to be near.
And the sex: It was frequent and pleasant if usually quick and purposeful, a half-undressed encounter with one eye on the nearest hatch. Privacy is in short supply on a warship; it was impossible to predict when one’s roommate or another officer might stop by, leading to hurried encounters. But it was fun all the same, and different. Neil’s only prior partner was a college girlfriend with whom such intimacy had been rare, an event that might take place after a long evening of decoding her mood and saying the right things at the right time. And he had never been so close with Erin Quintana, his not-quite-lover from his previous assignment, the San Jacinto, and he had distanced himself from her after deciding she would have disapproved of his role in a professionally questionable, if ethically correct, act.
It didn’t occur to him that he hadn’t felt the need to discuss that act – passing some information to an NSS spy who wasn’t cleared for it – with Jessica. With her, he felt a kind of relief he had not felt before. His dreams became markedly less erotic, and he found he could focus on his work with a new clarity. But he worked less: His job not quite as important; he still carried out his tasks, but when his shift was over, he rarely stayed late, to, say, read less-immediate political intelligence or news reports, opting instead to spend his free time with Jessica.
So it took some effort for him to will his thoughts away from her to the mission at hand: to root around the wreckage of the Gan Ying and find secrets worth stealing. This wouldn’t be a deep investigation of the weapons or construction of the ship; if the admirals at Space Command deemed it worthwhile, they would send a tug to tow the hulk to a space station for such work. Instead, Neil and Apache’s senior system tech were to raid the computers for time-sensitive information: fleet and personnel movements, codes, plans. It was likely they had been wiped, but here and there some fragments of data might still be intact in the ship’s memory.
Unlike warships, intership jumpers had windows, so Neil actually saw Gan Ying growing larger as he watched from the pilot’s cabin. He sat behind the pilot and Apache’s assistant engineer, who had been brought along to determine that the jumper’s chosen docking site was safe. Neil reflected that there was some risk in this mission – the Gan Ying was breached in several locations, and an inattentive collision with some wreckage could cause a ripped skinsuit or bulkhead collapse. It was also possible, if unlikely, given the extent of the damage, that some armed survivors lingered on board. Apache’s tiny Marine detachment was along for that eventuality.
“Where to, L.T.?” the pilot asked.
The assistant engineer held her handheld up to the window, comparing the schematics on her screen to the visible portion of Gan Ying’s hull.
“Best place would be here, just below the sphere,” she said. “Strongest undamaged spot that’s far from the drive.”
As they approached, however, the jumper from the Kiyokaze darted in and docked in that exact location.
“No consultation, nothing,” the pilot said. “Fucking Sakis. You’d think we weren’t on the same team.”
You could have called them, Neil thought, but said nothing. It took a half-hour for the engineer to locate another safe location, further down the hull. Open to vacuum, but structurally secure, and they wouldn’t catch too many neutrons from the wreckage of the fusion drive, she claimed. For the moment, it would be only the Apaches and the Japanese exploitation team on board – Ajax’s team was delayed, and Edmonton had taken damage to her small craft bay and would not be able to send a team over at all.
The jumper maneuvered to a side of the ship partially shielded from the dusky orange light of Wolf 359. Beams of rent metal twisted before them. Long spikes of shadow ran along the hull. The size of the ship – more than 200 meters long, more than 25 meters wide – dwarfed their little jumper.
The pilot pulled the nose up, showing the hatch on its belly to the wreckage, and the ship swung out of Neil’s view.
“Prepare for vacuum,” the pilot said.
Near Cottonwood, Sequoia continent, Kuan Yin, 11 Leonis Minoris A
They crouched in a ditch along the railway, waiting.
Rand reflected that if Sequoia was any more or less advanced in its technological progress, this would end badly. A more primitive colony would require crewed trains to shuttle cargo between its various outposts, and a better developed one would have some security along its automated rail lines. But on Kuan Yin, they did not have to contend with either.
They were leaving. They were heading north, to the region around Sycamore, the occupied capital city of occupied Sequoia. Cottonwood was overrun and pacified; all the Americans had been shipped off – almost all on this very railroad – and a few thousand Chinese colonists brought in from Han territory across the ocean, to solidify China’s claim on this continent.
They had done all they could in this area, Rand kept telling himself. They had been in hiding for months, unable to move freely, unable to launch an attack. They were running low on sources of food, water and power – the abandoned homes they used to raid were either occupied by Chinese colonists or set with alarms.
At least no one else has died, Rand thought. Their band was once larger, but some disastrous encounters with Chinese forces had winnowed down their numbers. He made sure he thought of his dead daily: Yancey, McKay, Pravitz, Ramirez, Torren. I won’t lose another. His diminished band consisted of Sergeant Hal Aguirre and Private Rachel Lopez, the last two survivors from his pre-war artillery platoon, and the NSS operative, Violet Kelley, who had joined them after they turned guerrilla. Rand and Kelley shared command, sort of – Aguirre and Lopez wouldn’t follow her without his say-so, but she was trained for the sort of covert operations, the bombings, ambushes and so on, that they had carried out.
Still, leaving felt like running from a fight, ceding Cottonwood to the Hans. Vincennes, their angel in the sky, had messaged that the resistance to the occupation was at last getting organized in the area around Sycamore, under the guidance of some Special Forces who had survived the initial invasion. Kelley insisted they go at once, and Rand couldn’t come up with any reasons to argue. They were just scraping by here, not contributing to the war.
Around them were the highlands northeast of occu
pied Cottonwood. Tall, thin trunks of dead trees surrounded them, victims of poor terraforming preparations and a beetle that unexpectedly thrived in Kuan Yin’s hot temperatures. At this particular spot the train tracks made multiple switchbacks as they climbed out of the volcanic bowl that contained the town, and trains were required to decelerate to a few kph, slow enough where a running person could jump on.
Aguirre heard it first: the hollow, metallic hum of the maglev’s approach.
“Get ready,” Rand said, feeling a surge of adrenaline. “No one gets left behind.” Kelley shot him a dark look for making unnecessary noise.
The train grew louder. But Rand detected another sound, a low buzz, barely distinguishable from the maglev noise.
“What’s that?” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. Kelley shook her head, as did Aguirre.
But Lopez nodded, hear face suddenly fearful. “I hear it. That’s a …”
“… drone!” Rand finished. “Everyone down!”
They complied. Rand curled himself into a ball and tried to brush some leaves on himself – anything to make the shape of his heat signature look less like a human and more like a warm lump in the landscape.
The sound of the drone’s turbofans changed as it emerged into the open. It cruised slowly above them, a small sensor pod rotating from side to side underneath its nose. It didn’t see them, or, perhaps it did but decided they weren’t a threat.
The train glided by, and Rand saw flatcars, their backs burdened with green Chinese LAVs. A military train. We’ll have to wait for a civilian freight carrier. He let out a long breath. I guess we’re not the only ones going north.
Gan Ying, Wolf 359
With only the team’s headlamps to cut through the darkness, Neil observed that the gunmetal gray corridors of Gan Ying somehow seemed starker than the exterior. But he had to appreciate the absolute efficiency of the design; creature comforts wasted kilos. Many of the corridors in this section were damaged, with matching holes on some opposite walls indicating where a laser had burned through. They saw no bodies.
Their party consisted of Neil, an enlisted systems tech from Philadelphia named Bradley, and two Marines. It was Neil’s first mission in a skinsuit, and he was surprised how comfortable he felt in it. The only real bulk was in the helmet, and he took care when moving his head to look at something.
They moved from room to room, hunting for intact consoles. When they found one, Bradley hooked up a portable power supply and tried to turn it on. None had worked so far.
A voice boomed in Neil’s helmet.
“Lieutenant Mercer, this is Lieutenant Endo,” the voice said. Something wasn’t interfacing well between the American and Japanese short-range communicators, and the Japanese exploitation team leader’s voice came in at a skull-jarring volume. Neil pulled out his handheld and adjusted it, and Endo’s voice dropped as he continued. “We have a working terminal attached to their computer core. They scrambled their data, as we expected, but our technician says they are detecting some patterns. Join us as soon as you like, and you will be able to download the core’s contents.” He gave directions and added, “Also, we found something else you might like to see.”
Neil rolled his eyes. Why can’t people just be direct over the comms? Neil had met Endo after the Battle of Kennedy Station several months prior, but he did not know him well. Rather than argue, he led the team up to the Japanese officer’s location, seven decks above.
They were in Captain Qin’s quarters. Two Japanese Naval Infantry floated outside; inside was Endo and the body of Captain Qin.
“She must have scuttled the ship herself,” the Japanese intelligence officer transmitted. “Too bad for her she needed her computer working to do it, because she left us some intact data. I’ll say this, though. The Chankoro went out with more style than I would have expected from one of them.”
Qin was seated, upright, with her magnetized boots attached to ferrous strips in the floor. She was wearing the slate blue full dress uniform of the Chinese Space Navy. She had been wearing no pressure suit and had not inflated an emergency bubble.
Neil regarded Qin sadly. He had come to know her during his time studying her. You did your best, fought within your code, for all the good it did you. He wondered how Qin would have regarded him. Would you have suggested sacrificing a half-filled troopship so the rest of the convoy would survive? Or would you have thrown me out the airlock for thinking of it?
Endo bumped helmets with Neil for a private conference. “You know we were on the comms during the discussion about how to protect the convoy. I must say, Metcalf reacted emotionally. Foolishly. Captain Qin should have easily defeated three frigates; she was just unfortunate in the damage she took to her drive so early in the battle. Captain Genda wanted me to tell you that your reputation was not lowered in our eyes for being bold enough to raise such an unpleasant but logical option.”
Neil would like to have just nodded in acknowledgment, but he doubted the gesture would be apparent in the darkness, so he said, “Thanks.”
Endo went on, “If you’re going where Genda thinks you are, perhaps you’ll meet Kitsune, who is a friend of hers.”
Where I’m going? What does that mean? But he asked the question Endo obviously wanted him to: “The fox?” He knew enough Japanese to know that the term also stood for a clever demigod from Japanese folklore.
“Kitsune will provide you with another name if it is important,” Endo said. “Captain Genda wanted me to relay a message to you. She is worried about the lack of cooperation between our senior commands, and she fears the alliance between Japan and the United States is becoming a mere coalition of convenience. She wanted me to tell you that Kitsune is skilled and intelligent, and can be trusted not to let ego get in the way of doing what must be done. If the opportunity arises, perhaps you and Kitsune can move our nations in the right direction.”
The Punjab, Earth
It was a good sign for the mission, Donovan supposed, that they didn’t sequester him and the other Americans in the aftermath of the attack. None of Senator Gregory’s party had been hurt, but the Indians had suffered four killed and several dozen wounded. Counterbattery fire and a squadron of drone gunships had silenced the attackers.
Donovan and Ramesh wandered along the flightline, surveying the damage. Ramesh had an unlit cigar in his mouth, a salve for his agitation, but the officer had otherwise regathered his composure.
He kneeled at a small bruise in the tarmac and pointed at some debris a few meters away. One of the anti-laser rockets had landed near them without exploding, instead shattering into several large pieces. Donovan walked over, leaving footprints in a thick film of glittering dust – the material used to bollix the Indian lasers.
“This hot? Dangerous?” the spy said, pointing.
Ramesh shook his head, so Donovan picked up a large piece, a chunk of the olive-colored main body, about twenty centimeters long, with a silvery fin assembly still attached. He turned it over in his hands … some of the paint had been scraped away by the impact, revealing a slightly different shade of olive underneath. Odd. Who repaints rockets?
“Mind if I keep this? It would make a good souvenir,” Donovan lied.
Ramesh’s head bobbed, a distinctly Indian gesture, and he chewed his cigar. “It’s all yours.”
USS Apache, Wolf 359
Neither Neil nor Jessica needed to declare the just-concluded encounter had been intense; they knew it, and they knew the other one knew it as well.
“I guess we should have close brushes with death more often,” Jessica said, floating gently downward as the Apache went under thrust.
“I guess we should,” Neil agreed. “Although I’m going to need to wrap these next time.” He showed her his palms, still red from gripping the handhold behind him. She smiled her killer smile and playfully pushed herself off the floor, and twisting in the air and giggling at her own brazenness. Neil let his eyes linger on her form, enjoying the freedom to do so.
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br /> Normally, they would fall into a particular sort of conversation at this point, one in which they shared little observations, sometimes absurd and sometimes meaningful, about the ship, or Space Force, or one of their colleagues. Tiny intimacies, Neil knew, but they entertained Jessica, kept her close.
Neil wanted to draw her closer. I want to tell her about what I’ve done in the war so far. I want to her to know those things, to understand me better. Maybe she’ll open up to me, too, tell me things I don’t even know to ask about.
He decided to test the waters.
“I have to say, it was kind of wild being on the Han ship,” he said.
She was still cavorting in the near-freefall when he said this, but she detected a certain tone in his voice, and she turned to look at him, an inquisitive expression on her face. She settled to the floor and did not push off again.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
So he did. It did not, however, occur to him to share the story of the abuse he had received from Commodore Metcalf; being called out publicly like that had embarrassed him on a very deep level, and he didn’t want to relive it, even if she might provide a measure of comfort. She might also reject him over it.
Outside Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
“I love this altitude,” said Private Lopez, stretching her arms above her head. “Feels almost like home, doesn’t it?”
They were in highlands again, not far from where they had left the freight train behind. And Lopez was right – here, more than four kilometers above the planet’s oceans, the air was only moderately heavier than at sea level on Earth. It felt to Rand like his joints were all settling back into place for the first time since he arrived on the planet. And it was a lovely sort of mountain cool.
