by John Lumpkin
“Now, onto CJTF Twenty-One,” he said. “This will be composed of American and Russian forces. Twenty-two combat ships, twelve combat support, and an as-yet undetermined number of brigade transport groups.”
Everyone looked up at that. Brigade groups meant an attempted invasion of a terran planet. Donovan examined the ship list. He saw only two battlecruisers, and nothing else larger than a medium cruiser. They want to move fast. But that’s not going to be enough firepower to bombard a well-defended planet or break through a keyhole, not without help.
“The Diaz will serve as the flagship, and the Kirov will be the lead ship for the Russians. At this point, we can only say that the task force will deploy into the Wolf 359 system,” McCormack concluded.
Lot of options from Wolf 359: We could go to Commonwealth, Guoxing, Kuji, Xinzhou, or even Hoshigawa via Leviticus. But those aren’t the obvious destination.
An Australian Army colonel raised his hand. “Have the Russians asked for any allied ground forces to be deployed on their territory?”
The Russian flag officer, a counteradmiral named Komarov, spoke for the first time. “At this time, we do not feel any such deployments are necessary, but we are grateful for any offers,” he said in a monotone. That’s a rehearsed line, Donovan thought, and not what Gardiner told me. Guess his information isn’t as good as he claims.
“You would think they would welcome it,” Ramesh whispered. “But they don’t seem to be worried about the Han reservists across the border. Hmm, maybe that means we can hit you up for the 10th Mountain Division, eh, Jim?”
“I’ll send that up the line, but remember, I’m a mere senator’s aide, so I rank somewhere between pond scum and dirt,” Donovan whispered back, smiling, and Ramesh gave him a skeptical look.
“The American fleet commander will be Vice Admiral Lesley Cooper; Lieutenant General Velasco Suarez will command the ground forces.”
Donovan leaned over to Fairchild. “They couldn’t get Miraflores for either of these missions?” Vice Admiral Carmen Miraflores had become the first bonafide American hero of the war, in the eyes of politicians, media and troops, after she had led the victory at the Battle of Kennedy Station a year prior.
“She’s a celebrity now,” Fairchild said. “From what I’ve heard, she doesn’t want to be, but Delgado and Joint Chiefs aren’t letting her out of their sight. They need to be able to remind everyone she’s in charge of the American fleet guarding Earth orbit and blockading the Hans.”
“Hrmph. It’s going to be a smaller fleet with all these ships leaving.”
“Don’t you worry, Jim; the Russians and Indians can make up the difference.”
The briefing broke up not long after. As Donovan stood, several lines of text appeared in his eye:
JIM, YOU’RE GOING AS NSS LIAISON ON THE DIAZ. GARDINER WILL RIDE OUT ON THE KIROV. STAY TUNED FOR YOUR COVER ARRANGEMENTS. SONYA.
Gardiner Fairchild had apparently received the same message.
“Got to be Entente, don’t you think?” he said in a low voice. “You’ll have to tell me how to get laid there.”
“Find someone who will put up with you? The mission is difficult enough as it is,” Donovan said. Sonya, he thought, you’ve lied to me yet again.
Near Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
The G8 star 11 Leonis Minoris A glowed an angry red through a tower of gray smoke, and everything around Rand was cast in a hazy orange. The nearest of the forest fires was about ten klicks away, ignited by the Chinese orbital lasers as they bombarded the Falcon base. The air smelled like a campfire.
Most of the trees are first-generation, planted by the terraforming corps after the colony opened up. I wonder if the forest will be able to grow back by itself. It was an idle thought, but idle thoughts were a relief after the nightmare they had witnessed in the attack on the base. Perhaps one hundred people had made it out before the lasers struck; Rand had witnessed a beam play across the stout form of Major Isabella Cruz as she sprinted from the cave entrance, burning and shattering her body at the same time. The image remained with him when he closed his eyes.
Of the others – DiMarco, Gant, Ruiz – Rand had no idea. Probably killed when the missile warheads arrived and collapsed the cave entrance. At least I convinced Cruz to have some of the troops outside the base. They knew others had survived, because occasionally they would hear a crack of thunder as an orbiting warship bombarded a surface target. They had also seen Chinese airborne troop carriers overhead more than once.
But they – Rand, Aguirre and Lopez – had found, and been found by, no one, and they walked alone. They had rifles, armor, and some supplies, thanks to Rand’s insistence they be ready to evacuate at any time. But the food would run out soon, and the American forces had already consumed most of the game in the area.
And we won’t find any help here, Rand thought. They had made their way toward the nearest small military cache, Eagle, and found it similarly destroyed by orbital bombardment. If they got all the caches, we’re done.
“Where to now, Cap?” Lopez said.
“The bathroom,” Rand said.
“I heard that,” Aguirre agreed.
“You men are such weaklings,” Lopez said.
“They called her the iron bladder back in the day,” Aguirre said. She punched him in the shoulder.
Rand and Aguirre moved into the trees and separated by several meters.
A minute later, as he buttoned up, Rand heard a shout behind him.
Instinctively, he hit the dirt, taking care not to land in the puddle he had just created. He saw Aguirre off to his left, down on one knee.
“Woah-tow-shawn! Woah-tow-shawn!” they heard Lopez say in their ears. She had activated her comm, and she was saying, in Chinese, “I surrender.”
Oh, shit, Rand thought. He didn’t transmit a response out of fear it would be detected. He looked over at Aguirre, who was turning off the safety on his rifle.
“Twelve of you? Think that’s enough to handle me?” Lopez said in English.
She’s warning us off. There’s too many for us.
Aguirre was now looking at Rand, eyes pleading. Rand shook his head. No, Hal. We can’t win. She’s a prisoner. Better that than all three of us dead. They remained motionless, hoping the Chinese squad didn’t look too hard in the surrounding area. After a short time, the squad leader barked at the rest, and a little while later, a small skytruck ascended and departed, heading for Sycamore.
Hatred burned in Aguirre’s eyes.
“We’ll get her back, Hal,” Rand said. “She’s all we have left.”
San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente
Neil’s farewell gathering was at a small, upscale bar above a small furniture showroom; the bar was used primarily by foreign diplomats and businessmen, and it kept a low profile; it had no storefront, just an unmarked door in front of some stairs.
Tippy Griego and his gorgeous wife were there, along with the entire consulate staff, plus a few others Neil had met once or twice. Commander Raleigh, freshly arrived in Tecolote, was also present, maneuvering around tables and couches with grace, despite the crutches. And General Naima had breezed in but quickly departed, to everyone’s relief. No one likes the chief of the secret police at a boozer.
Of all of Neil’s friends and close associates on the island, only Das was absent.
As the evening wore on, people started leaving, and the party shrunk to a small booth. Lindsay Trujillo sat next to Neil, putting her head on his shoulder from time to time. Tippy and Harkins sat across from them. Tippy kept laughing and trying to get Neil to commit to going fishing before his late-morning launch departed.
“Tippy, is Das working tonight?” Neil asked as they waited for another round to arrive.
“No, he said he was coming here when I saw him at the luncheon we worked today. Dunno why he didn’t make it.” Tippy tried calling him, but Das didn’t answer.
Maybe he’s nervous about what he told me and doesn’
t want to be seen with me, Neil thought.
“Can we go to his place?”
“Are you sure, man? This party’s just getting started.”
“I’m worried about him, Tippy. He’s never missed work, has he?”
That made up Tippy’s mind. “All right, we’ll go.”
Neil drove the consular car, while Tippy’s wife took their family car home. Lindsay declined her offer of a ride, insisting on coming with Neil and Tippy. “After all, Neil, you’re no longer formally part of the consulate, so the car’s my responsibility,” she said.
They drove to the workers’ barracks where Tippy lived. Outside were three San José police cars and a lot of men standing around.
Neil strode up to one of the cops, putting on his officer-in-authority voice. “What happened?”
“Knife fight between a couple of imports over a bottle of tequila,” the cop said. “Imports” was street lingo for the involuntary transportees. “One of ‘em didn’t come out so well.”
“What’s the victim’s name?” Neil asked. Das wouldn’t fight anyone.
“Who the fuck are you to ask?”
Tippy intervened and slipped the police officer a cash card. The cop pressed some buttons on his handheld, and showed the screen to Neil and Tippy.
It held two images. The first was an image of Das that must have been taken shortly after he arrived on Entente; it showed him thin and haggard. The second was the same man, with lifeless eyes, lying atop a pool of blood. Neil sucked in a breath, and Tippy balled a fist.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Neil heard himself say. He swallowed his anger. Save it for later. Now isn’t the time.
Lindsay put her hand on Neil’s back. “I’m so sorry, Neil,” she said. “It’s just this place. This awful place.”
Lindsay tried to stay with him at his last night at the apartment. She didn’t attempt physical intimacy, but she asked him about Das, trying to get him to express grief, trying to get him to mourn.
She failed, and, after midnight, left.
A part of Neil felt bad for not being nicer to her, but most of his mind was occupied, analyzing. I must admit the possibility, however unlikely, that this really was a random killing. But Das was also the target he feared he was, if someone betrayed his role in uncovering the plot to keep President Conrad drugged and docile. The Hans might want him dead in revenge, or as a message to me. Perhaps Naima had him killed to ensure Conrad’s weakness isn’t known to anyone else. But who knew he was the connection? Me and Tippy. And maybe some of Tippy’s other employees. But they didn’t know about the drugs being withdrawn. Someone else must have learned.
Because of me. I made a mistake somewhere. It’s my – where was the mistake? Someone would have had to have known about my meeting with Tippy and Das and followed me there, and then overheard my conversation with Naima.
It went on, around and around in his head, until after the sun came up, when he had to leave to catch the launch to orbit. I can’t solve it, not in one night. But somehow, Das, I’ll figure out who did this to you, and why. I owe you that much.
At the spaceport, he recognized one of Naima’s undercover lackeys, watching him and Harkins board. Neil knuckled his forehead in a sarcastic salute at the man.
USS Javier Benavidez y Diaz, Wolf 359
The arrival of the joint Russian-American fleet through the keyhole from Earth elicited no obvious reaction from the Chinese forces arrayed around Wolf 359. This was to be expected; no doubt word of the combined fleet had preceded its transit.
The situation in the system was largely unchanged since Apache’s battle with the Gan Ying several months prior, with various fleets guarding the wormhole junctions to their territories. Donovan, in one of the briefings, had learned that the British had withdrawn all of their ships from the FL Virginis wormhole, sending them to Entente to assist in the defense of the colony there. Only six fighting vessels remained – four Australian, two Canadian – a dangerously small force, but the Chinese had made no move to attack it. A Chinese victory would cut off the quick path from Earth to Entente and the rest of the International Ring.
Perhaps they believe six ships on the other side of the keyhole would inflict too many losses, Donovan thought.
“Mister Calvin, could you please assist me for a moment?” said Counteradmiral Komarov, his usual easy smile on his lean, angular face. He waved his handheld. “I would like to access some information from your ship’s computer, but this damnable device is apparently quite prejudiced against Slavic peoples.”
Donovan chuckled. He had found he couldn’t help but like Sergei Pavelovich Komarov, the chief of the delegation of Russians riding aboard the American flagship. Despite his stone-faced demeanor at the briefing on Kitsinger, Komarov was a gregarious soul, just one who had a distaste for briefing a room full of people he didn’t know.
Komarov’s superior, Vice Admiral Fyodor Ivanovich Volodin, was aboard Kirov, and Komarov’s job was to ensure the Americans and Russians worked well together. Donovan was posing as a Colonial Affairs bureaucrat named Ted Calvin, who was riding out with the fleet. Without much to do – in either his fake job or his real one – he had befriended Komarov as a fellow fish-out-of-water on the Space Force battlecruiser.
Donovan pulled himself over to Komarov on some handholds. They were in the vessel’s spacious, many-tiered CIC. Donovan was aware there had been some grumbling among the ship’s officers about a foreign officer being allowed in the room, as he would be able to learn much about American operations and capabilities. But the overall fleet commander, Vice Admiral Cooper, had made sure Komarov was welcome. We want to take good care of our new friends, show them they are full and welcome partners in the alliance, Donovan thought. The alliance I helped trick them into joining.
“What do you want to do, Sergei Pavelovich?”
“Oh, nothing important, my friend, just access your weapons and propulsion systems,” he said. “You may wonder why, so I shall tell you. I greatly dislike the captain on the frigate Stoykiy, for he once flirted with my future wife while we were at the academy together. I have plotted my revenge for an age, and it is at hand, Mister Calvin, if only I could access your blasted coilgun controls! Bah, what kind of allies are you, to make this so difficult?”
He said this completely deadpan, and Donovan looked him in the eyes, and they both broke down in belly laughs at the same moment.
After a moment, Komarov said, “In truth, I was trying to see if I could access some telescope imagery of the Recons Two wormhole. The Leviticans have a frigate they bought from us about ten years ago patrolling there. When I was a junior lieutenant, I served on that ship as weapons officer, and I have some fond memories of my time on board. We called it the Rastoropnyy, but they renamed it something righteous, like the Apostate or the Whore of Babylon or somesuch.”
Donovan laughed again, and he made a snap decision to dig out an image for Komarov. Even if he was lying, it was hard to imagine what damage a snapshot of a little point of light millions of klicks distant could do.
As he tried to summon the image on his own handheld, an all-hands message took over the screen, and the officers in Diaz’s CIC began barking orders to their subordinates.
“Course change! All ships in Combined Joint Task Force Twenty-One, reorient toward the Lalande 21185 keyhole, and set your thrust to ten milligees!”
Lalande? That’s back to American space. That means we aren’t going to Entente. Are we doubling back to the Solar System? We’d come out at Kennedy Station, a full month’s journey from Earth. Otherwise we could go to any of the American colonies, but why take this fleet so deep behind friendly lines …
… unless we’re going to Kuan Yin. That would mean Wolf 359 was a feint to throw off the Chinese about our final destination. We’re going to liberate Sequoia. Hell, with this many troops, we could push the Chinese off the entire planet.
Only when the ship crossed the keyhole into the relative safety of the Lalande system
did Admirals Cooper and Volodin make the announcement: The fleet was indeed headed to Kuan Yin.
A three-month trip. If we win, and it’s not a long campaign, and I don’t die, and I’m not ordered to stay there, maybe I’ll be home before the cherry blossoms.
USS Apache, orbiting Entente
The repair crew did a good job, Neil thought as Apache’s jumper pulled into its bay. The frigate’s new coilgun gleamed in Beta Comae Berenices’ light. The entire ship looked good. While he had only served aboard her slightly longer than he had been in Tecolote, it still felt like a homecoming.
He arrived on the overnight watch; his faint hope that Jessica would be there to greet him was dashed. The officer of the deck apologetically said everyone was exhausted from getting the ship ready to break orbit, and that he was to meet with the captain at 0500, three hours hence. Neil stumbled into his room and managed to doze off.
He dreamed of someone very much like Das until his alarm woke him.
These are getting wordier, Neil thought, as he read the orders during his meeting with Howell. Space Command must be worried about losing access to comm buoys yet again, so they have to deal with everything up front. He had so much to digest, including the new alliance with the Russians and the Indians, and now this:
PRIORITY MESSAGE
TOP SECRET
0942Z15JUN2141
FR: VADM SALAZAR, USSPACECOM
TO: COMMAND/OPS USS APACHE, USS ERIE, USS PONTCHARTRAIN, USS AQUILA
CC: VADM COOPER, TF21
1. USS APACHE, USS ERIE, USS PONTCHARTRAIN, USS AQUILA HEREBY DESIGNATED TASK UNIT 21.4.1.
2. APACHE WILL ESCORT ERIE AND PONCHARTRAIN FROM BETA COMAE BERENICES VIA SZ URSAE MAJORIS TO GJ 1119 WITH ALL AVAILABLE VELOCITY, REFUELING FROM AQUILA AS NEEDED.
3. PRIMARY MISSION IS TO ENSURE SAFE AND TIMELY ARRIVAL OF USMC AND USN BATTALIONS TO 11 LEONIS MINORIS III (SEQUOIA); ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY.
4. IF TASK UNIT ARRIVES BEFORE MAIN BODY CJTF21, MAKE CONTACT WITH ANY ALLIED FORCES IN GJ 1119 AND AWAIT NEW ORDERS. IF MAIN BODY CJTF21 HAS ENTERED 11 LEONIS MINORIS SYSTEM, JOIN THEM.
