by John Lumpkin
On his screen was a slightly fuzzy image of a Chinese Luhai-class destroyer. Its forward sphere was pointed roughly toward them; it was on bombardment patrol some two hundred kilometers above Kuan Yin’s surface. Extending from behind the sphere were two large, corrugated rectangles – the destroyer’s radiators. Rand hurt inside seeing them. So vulnerable. At this range, a couple of hits from my guns would slice them clean off. He took some stills of the ship for future study. And he saw three little lumps along the main hull … spacewalkers out for a stroll, probably to inspect or fix some busted part.
“Hey, L.T., can I talk to you about something?” Aguirre said.
Rand looked up. “Sure, Hal.”
“Sorry. I guess I should stop calling you L.T.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not really used to the new rank, either. It’s just a brevet, so I may not keep it once this is all done.”
“Yeah, and when will that be?” Aguirre grinned sardonically. He had been an oak after they became guerrillas, anticipating Rand’s needs, gently guiding him when he was making a bad decision or forgetting something important – in short, doing everything a sergeant should, except, perhaps, for sleeping with a private, but Rand had not ordered them to stop. With all of them separated from higher command, and, really, the rest of humanity, one had to make allowances.
Aguirre said, “So Violet talked to me and Lopez.”
Uh-oh. “What did she say?”
“She wanted us to leave with her.”
“Wait – what? What do you mean, leave?”
“She thinks this base is due to get whacked. Can’t say I disagree. Too many people, not enough defenses. She wants to head back out to the wilderness and keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
“Hal, we hadn’t hit the Hans in four months hanging out around Cottonwood.”
“I know. She hinted she wants to get some new supplies and maybe recruit a few more fighters to leave with her, and then start operating near Sycamore.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Lopez and I both said you’re our CO, and we go where you go.”
Rand felt a surge of emotion. That’s loyalty, right there. “Thanks, Hal. She hasn’t come to me with this.”
“I know. She thinks you’re getting rolled into command responsibilities here and that you won’t leave.”
“She’s right, I guess. We’re back to being real Army again, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir. Not that we ever really stopped, not in the ways that matter.”
“Yeah,” Rand said. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Did she say what she was planning to do?”
“She said she’s not planning to go solo unless she thinks a Chinese attack is imminent. Not sure I trust her to stick to that. She’s not popular around here, and she feels like a fifth wheel.”
“I should talk to her, Hal.”
“Yes, sir. I think that would be a good idea,” Aguirre said. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the sky. Earth’s constellations were wildly distorted, but familiar markers like the Pleiades, Capella and Aldebaran were above.
But his trained eyes detected something, a certain unnatural ordering among the chaotic stars … there. A dim line of lights, twinkling.
“Sir, about three fingers to the right of Rigel, and down. Could you point the scope there?”
Rand complied. “I see it,” he said after a bit. “God damn. More than a dozen … twenty … make it thirty-five ships in a line that points back to Long Nu. Those ships just came through the Han keyhole from Golf-Juliet Eleven-Thirty-Four.”
“So more Hans.”
Rand fiddled with the telescope’s settings to try to make out the ships, but it just didn’t have the resolution. He stared at the lights for a while on the scope’s screen.
“The flicker’s off,” he muttered.
“What’s that, sir?”
“We aren’t really trained on long-range observations like this, but those aren’t military drives we’re seeing up there. That’s a huge civilian convoy.”
“Must be the circus come to town,” Aguirre said, his eyes never leaving the firmament. “Just what we need.”
Chapter 9
OSAKA – Fujitsu researchers here say they have developed neural overlays that are able to handle as many as two dozen thought commands from a user to a computer, a significant increase over current commercially available models. These overlays, however, require a six-week induced coma and a year of training for the user, a significant barrier to wide adoption by the technological public. Nevertheless, Fujitsu officials praised the development: “Like polymath artificial intelligences, full-service neural overlays able to process the entire range of human thoughts and interface with computers have lagged far behind predicted capabilities and remained a ’technology of tomorrow’ for generations now. With this advance, we’re a step closer to realizing that dream.”
North of Puerto San Carlos, Republic of Tecolote, Entente
Neil couldn’t stop grinning, even as the six-wheeled, two-and-a-half-ton truck bounced over yet another pothole, bruising his backside. Across from him, his red-headed Marine protector grinned back.
“You still glad you volunteered for this mission, Gunny?” Neil half-shouted.
“Wouldn’t miss it, sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Ruth Harkins replied. “Be good to be near some action, even if we’re just observers. Way more fun than babysitting a bunch of Navy pukes. Life’s been pretty dull since they broke up the San Jacinto crew. How is the old girl, anyway?”
Neil shook his head. “She’s finally getting fixed. Yard was spending most of its time on ships with less damage to get them out to the blockades sooner. But last I heard she should be ready to fly in another four months.”
Harkins nodded. “That’s good to hear, sir. “
Her arrival in Tecolote the day before had been a welcome surprise, a renewed connection to his prior ship and crew. He had lost touch with most of them – he still got an occasional note from Doc Avery, now serving on the George Washington, and Tom Mondragon on Kennedy Station, but Tom’s communications were mostly forwarded diatribes from commentators about the injustices of the war or screw-ups by the Delgado administration.
The vibrations from the road surface changed abruptly, and Neil looked out the open back of the truck. The pavement had ended, and they were now on a dirt road.
“Why did the road stop?” Neil asked the driver.
“The rebels blew up a couple of robopavers out here and burned some farms,” he said, looking at them over his shoulder. “A lot of crews who get assigned to come out this far refuse to go, and if we force them to, they desert. It ain’t worth the trouble.”
“Are we going to get attacked?” Harkins asked. She put a hand on her rifle.
“Probably not. Colonel Aziz has them pretty contained in this area, and activity has been down the last couple of months. But it will take a while before civilians are going to be willing to come back.”
They were on a flat coastal plain, but out of sight of the ocean, which was some fifty klicks to the east. Ahead of the truck, great gray peaks loomed above a line of clouds. The lower elevations of the mountainsides were covered by the thin beginnings of a jungle of tall, narrow trees.
They encountered no one on the road until they hit a checkpoint where the plain became hills, and they reached the military encampment half an hour after that. They were met by a corporal, who took them to a lieutenant, who took them to a major, who took them to a tent containing Colonel Samir Lorenzo Garcia y Abdulaziz and three of his aides.
The colonel was a short, thin, black-haired man in olive fatigues and an olive che-style ballcap. He wore a sidearm in a brown leather holster.
“Please, just call me Aziz, or Colonel Aziz if you insist on formality,” he said. “Sorry we don’t have better accommodations for you. We may have to pack up on short notice. We’ve got some units up in the mountains trying to flush out the enemy, drive them into a smalle
r box where we can direct our main force.” He pointed to a map.
Neil’s expertise was in space combat, not terrestrial warfare, so it took him a few minutes to figure out the symbology on the projection from the colonel’s handheld. Harkins, bulky in her battle armor, watched over his shoulder.
“How many bad guys?” she said.
The colonel looked briefly surprised that an enlisted person would speak up. Neil recalled that the Tecolote military didn’t train its NCOs to the level the American services did.
“In this sector, we think about three hundred or so effectives, operating in platoon groups or smaller. They’re just starting to get organized – ”
Harkins suddenly and clearly stopped paying attention to him. Neil’s own handheld alerted him to unusual electromagnetic activity in the room. He looked at Harkins, who nodded.
“All of you, don’t say anything else,” Neil said.
Now Aziz appeared genuinely annoyed. He looked questioningly at Neil.
“You’ve got bugs in here, the artificial kind,” Neil said.
Harkins walked over to her pack and pulled out a beer-can-sized black cylinder with a small clear bulb on top. She set it on the table in the center of the tent.
“They’re expensive and so easy to kill that no big army bothers with them anymore, but any Marine company always keeps one of these rayguns around just in case,” she said. She touched her handheld. “Nobody look directly at this.”
Harkins’ little laser – first developed to kill mosquitos, back on Earth – worked its way around the room. Its beam was invisible, but every few seconds Neil saw a tiny purple spark as an airborne artificial transmitter died.
One of Aziz’s aides sighed. “We didn’t know the enemy had that capability.”
“Can we examine those to prove who made them?” Aziz asked.
“Not without some gear I don’t have and a lab. They’re the size of dust motes; the laser burns them up pretty good.”
“Presumably, they’re Chinese or Korean,” Neil said.
“Good guess,” Aziz replied, but something in his words implied skepticism. He is worried Naima or someone from the administration is spying here, too, Neil realized. I thought getting out in the field would get us away from all the paranoia in the capital, but it’s everywhere on this island.
Harkins looked at her handheld and said, “Room’s clear, but I’ll leave this on in case any have been lying dormant in here and decide to light up. Once we’re done, I’ll pass the laser around the camp in case there are any others lurking about, but they like to hang out around expensive command and control gear, ‘cause that’s where a lot of interesting secrets happen.” She pointed at a console in the tent. “I’m guessing that’s your local network and comms rig?”
Aziz nodded. “We have a backup set, but we haven’t turned it on since we left our base six months ago.”
“Then we should be in the clear. These things don’t have the power to both fly and transmit very far, so you’ve either got a turncoat in your camp who released them since you set up here, or you hit some kind of tripwire when you arrived. There should be some kind of repeater nearby, but good luck finding it.”
Aziz tried anyway, leaving to assemble a technical crew to hunt for a transmitter. His aides described the situation in the area to Neil.
When Aziz returned, Neil pointed to a high valley on the map. “Are you leaving them an escape route through here?”
“Up to a point,” Aziz said. “There’s an old U.N. terraforming station up there. It’s an obvious place for the rebels to congregate, but they never have. If we drive them in that direction, we may force them to. Then we will be able to pound them.”
“Makes sense.”
Aziz was quiet for a moment. “Lieutenant Mercer, I understand you attempted to procure us some artillery rockets. As you can imagine, that’s something we could have employed with great effectiveness, particularly if we are able to force the rebels into the terraforming station. Can you tell me why they weren’t delivered?”
“You haven’t been told?”
“I can’t seem to get a straight answer. General Naima blamed President Conrad, in so many words. General Vargas blamed you.”
Neil stiffened. Vargas’ lie angered him so quickly that he didn’t think through the politics of his response. “Vargas is full of shit. General Naima told the truth. We had the shipments arranged and Conrad said no, that accepting such direct aid from us would bring too much attention from the Chinese.”
Aziz regarded him coolly. “That sounded like an honest response, but it’s one that’s also in your best interests if you are trying to build trust with me.”
“I would think clearing your room of spies would have built that trust,” Neil said evenly.
“If only we knew for sure who sent them.”
“Look, Colonel, if we’re not welcome here – ”
Shouts, outside, punctuated by handheld alarms going off.
“Sir! Inbound aircraft, coming from the northwest!” one of the colonel’s aides shouted. “Count is eighteen, coming in low. It’s a raid.”
“We didn’t know they had that capability, either,” the colonel said grimly. “They’re coming from where we don’t have any radar coverage.”
Neil said, “I’ll wager they’ve got a base out there, and somebody panicked when they lost the intel feed from this room.”
“How long do we have?” Aziz asked a lieutenant sitting at a console.
“Ten minutes. And they just picked off one of our airborne scouts.”
“Call San José and tell them to scramble some interceptors. They’ll get here late.”
“When?” Neil asked.
“Half an hour, if we’re lucky. You got any triple-A on that getup of yours?” he asked Harkins.
“No, sir. I’m a rifleman, and this isn’t a heavy weapons suit.”
“We have exactly four manpads in the camp and one anti-aircraft laser,” Aziz said, shaking his head. He turned to a captain. “Get outside, tell everyone who fires something smaller than a fifty to disperse and get under cover. Tell them they can go outside the perimeter to get under the trees.”
The captain blinked. “Sir, some of them will run off.”
“Then remind the sergeants to keep an eye on them. But if we lose some to the woods, it won’t be any different if we lose them to the attack, except less to clean up.”
The captain smirked. “Yes, sir.”
Outside, Neil heard the officers shouting to the sergeants in Spanish. The officers use English with each other and Spanish with the enlisted. That can’t help.
Aziz turned to Neil. “We don’t have any hardened shelters here. You both should get out to the woods, too.”
The mission. “Colonel, have you identified those incoming aircraft yet?”
Aziz nodded to his lieutenant, who said, “No ID on the little ones, but our scout said the big ones looked like JZ-11s.”
“Chinese heavy gunships,” Aziz said. “We’ve got a couple of Brazilian knockoffs of the same model, but they’ve been down for missing parts for months. They’re great at rooting out insurgents when you have control of the air. The little ones are probably spotter craft.”
“But China hasn’t flown the elevens in thirty years,” Harkins said.
She’s right. That gave him an idea. Neil grabbed his handheld and dialed Apache. “Foxtrot Alpha, this is Sneaker.” The tradition on the ship was that ground parties were named after footwear. “Emergency Priority.”
Apache’s orbit had carried it to the far side of Entente, so his transmission bounced between several British communications satellites orbited after the allies took Entente’s skies from the Chinese.
There was a slight delay. Then, a female voice: “Uh, Sneaker, this is Foxtrot Alpha. Go ahead.”
Neil cut in the video, saw the astronaut – Callahan, that’s her name – serving as the comms watchstander. He explained to her what he wanted.
“
I hope that’s in shipboard memory,” she said. “Otherwise it will be several hours to ask Space Command and get a response.”
“I’ll be calling back for an orbital strike before that,” Neil said. Astronaut Callahan looked perplexed before cutting the video so she could research his request.
Maybe I should have told her I wasn’t kidding. No idea if Howell would approve one, or if he even has the authority to order a bombardment.
“Five minutes!” the lieutenant called.
“All right, shut everything off and get under cover,” Aziz told his team. “The radar will just be a big target. We’re going to have to ride this out. Mercer, you and your Marine are with me.”
“Your Marine?” Harkins said under her breath.
They trotted outside. Neil observed that Aziz’s battalion was reasonably well-run: A number of squads were calmly moving toward the treeline, but a few laggards were sprinting, in a couple of cases while getting dressed, toward the nearest cover they could find. Aziz stopped a couple of times to give instruction to junior officers and sergeants before taking cover in the trees around the camp.
They heard the planes before they saw them: a grinding rumble, echoing off the hillsides. Harkins pointed, and a small, speedy drone raced overhead. A half-dozen .50-caliber machine guns opened up, their orange tracers trailing behind it. Off to Neil’s right, a trooper kneeled and fired a surface-to-air missile from a shoulder launcher. It roared and left a curling trail of smoke as it arced toward the drone, impacting it on the right wing. The plane spun onto its side and crashed in the trees several hundred meters away. The trooper dropped the launcher and ran for cover.
“Idiot,” Aziz grumbled. “We need to save the missiles for the gunships.”
The lieutenant from the command tent ran over, crouched low. “Sir, we’re having trouble firing up the laser.”
Aziz gritted his teeth. “Bet you guys never run into problems like this.”
“You’d be surprised,” Harkins said, smiling grimly.
Ten more spotter craft appeared, followed by the heavies. The six AI-flown gunships were large, propeller-driven aircraft, about twenty meters long.
