The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach)

by John Lumpkin

  Donovan scratched his chin. “Are you sure you should be telling me all this?”

  Komarov smiled. “Mister Calvin, I imagine your NSS spies learned this before I did.”

  Does he know? Donovan wondered. He had known about the Korean feelers, but not about the Chinese offer to Moscow.

  Komarov went on, “The madness is my leaders actually considered this offer, or, at least, considered counteroffering a smaller but still significant piece of our territory on Earth. Giving up part of Mother Russia, all for a chance at another colony, that we would have to travel through Chinese space to reach? We still have no idea if we’ll find any more useful planets. The Chinese may have already hit the far edge of the bubble and simply not told us.” He shook his head. “In any event, the gamble the Chinese offered us was a poor one. So we decided to gamble on war instead.”

  USS Apache, Gliese 373

  The unexpected but welcome presence of an Australian squadron guarding the keyhole into the Gliese 373 system solved Apache and her consort’s remass shortage. The squadron’s six ships – comprising a significant portion of Australia’s space fleet – were protecting access to their country’s newfound treasure, a habitable moon one system downstream.

  It also marked their return to space still in communications with Earth; the Chinese virus infecting the comm buoys had been rolled back here, and Neil immediately sent off an emergency message to Space Command describing the Chinese fleet heading to Entente. It would take all of twelve minutes to bounce between the relays back to Earth.

  That finished, he contacted the Australian flagship and asked for their intelligence officer.

  “Apache, this is Flight Lieutenant Wu. Go ahead.” A familiar face resolved in Neil’s console screen. “Neil! Good to see you, mate!”

  “Kieran,” Neil said. “I wish I had better news.” He hadn’t seen his friend since his visit to Sydney a year ago. He told him about the Chinese fleet.

  When he finished, Kieran said, “At the moment, we’re in touch with DG Canum and Entente, and I haven’t seen any reports that the Hans have been sighted. So they’re still in Beta Canum. But they can cross DG Canum in two weeks, and it will take at least six for any relief to arrive from Earth.”

  “You don’t have anyone already en route, then.”

  “No, nothing significant, although I’m sure we’ll launch all we can once your report gets through,” Kieran said. He shook his head. “This is bad. Hopefully our new allies can pull us out of the fire. I just don’t understand why the Hans would be willing to risk Kuan Yin for another chance to invade New Albion.”

  They chatted grimly until Kieran’s captain called, and they cut the connection.

  The Chinese pulled out half their defenses from Kuan Yin and hurried them to Entente. They’re acting like we’re threatening Huashan.

  He thought that over.

  Are we?

  No. We’ve committed forces to Saturn and Kuan Yin, so we’ve drawn heavily from the Earth blockade already, and we’re relying on the Russians and the threat from India to keep China from making a play to get back into Earth orbit.

  But we’re building up on Tecolote. It’s supposed to be a base to defend the Apollonian Ocean, but it might look like a staging ground for an invasion force. All the Hans would need is some bad information about our intent. The kind of information a spy like Irene Sato could have provided her Chinese contacts. If so, that means everything on Tecolote was one big feint, an attempt to draw the Chinese into committing too many forces there, I guess to give us a chance to go after Kuan Yin again.

  And it worked. Except for our friends on Entente.

  Apache and her consorts stayed with the Australians just long enough to refuel, and then thrust toward the next wormhole. They met the joint Russian-American fleet at GJ 1119, Kuan Yin’s doorstep, three weeks later.

  Combat Supply Cache Condor, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

  Aguirre knocked on Rand’s door and entered without waiting for a response. “Cap, sentry just said Third Platoon’s coming back.”

  “All of them? Too soon. What’s wrong?”

  “Patterson didn’t say.”

  An excuse to get out of this chair, at least. Rand went to the main tunnel.

  In fact, only two squads of Third Platoon had returned, one guarding the other. A Squad and the heavy weapons team were still out in the field. B Squad looked ragged and grimy.

  Rand took the squad leader, a junior sergeant named Alicia Patterson, aside. “What happened, Sergeant?”

  She shook her head. “We found a pair of skytrucks, parked on the ground, with only a couple of Hans guarding them. So we attacked. I don’t know if it was bad luck or a trap, but they had a platoon plus some air on top of us within thirty seconds. They got Ski and Jimmy Pasker before the rest of the platoon saved our ass.”

  “Dammit, Sergeant! We can’t afford to lose anyone! Did you have lookouts in place?”

  “Yes, sir. But with only a squad and primitive comms it’s hard to watch every possible angle of approach.”

  “No excuses, Sergeant. Go see to your people.” Patterson left, looking abashed.

  More of my people, dead, and a vow broken. Rand went back to his office. Unbeckoned, Aguirre followed him in and closed the door.

  “You were too hard on Patterson,” he said. “Sir.”

  Rand felt conflicting emotions: A desire to yell at Aguirre for being out of line, and a fear that his sergeant was right. He took a deep breath. Don’t alienate your right arm.

  “She’s gotta do better, Hal, or she shouldn’t have a squad,” he said, shaking his head. “I never paid much attention to politics or any of that shit; hell, we’ve been here so long we don’t know if we’re winning the war or have already lost. But someone has to make it off this rock, Hal. It’s my job to make sure these people survive and make it home.”

  Hal’s face took a hard set. “That’s part of your job, sir. If it was your whole job we could sit here playing Spades until we’re relieved. The rest of your job is to harass the enemy, make him change his operations, and keep laying the groundwork until the cavalry gets here. And that’s dangerous work, and Kowalski and Pasker knew it. That’s a thinking, adapting enemy out there, and sometimes they’ll outfox us, Cap. We have to learn from it, and move on. Taking it out on Patterson or yourself won’t do a damn bit of good.”

  Rand bit his lip. “I should go talk to Patterson.”

  “Nah, let me handle it, sir,” Hal said. “You go heavy and light with her like that and she’ll crack up. I’ll cover for you with a healthy NCO-to-NCO conversation.”

  “Thanks, Hal,” Rand said. “How are you doing?”

  The question apparently caught him off-guard, and his eyes momentarily betrayed a deep, abiding pain. “Been better, sir. I keep dreaming she’s being tortured, or worse.” He shook his head. “I know there’s not much reason for the Hans to do anything to her other than throw her in with the rest of the POWs, but I keep remembering them executing all those prisoners in the Cottonwood jail during the rescue.”

  “Do you want me to send a team to recon the camp, see if they can see her?”

  Aguirre shook his head. “No, sir, they could get caught and give up our location. I appreciate it, but helping me get a good night’s sleep isn’t work the risk.”

  CSS Xinglong, above Entente

  Admiral Pan Gaoli looked over the cost tally as his flagship transited the wormhole from DG Canum Venaticorum into Beta Comae Berenices. It was roughly what the simulations predicted for overcoming a blockaded wormhole: a truly massive expenditure of missiles, with four breaching cruisers, a light cruiser, a destroyer, two frigates and a support ship lost.

  At least the breaching ships were heavily automated. Pan’s fleet could sustain such losses and still fight; the smaller enemy flotilla guarding the gate could not. The defenders had suffered eight ships destroyed, including the British flagship Formidable, and three more disabled and surrendered. The five surviv
ors, led by the battered cruiser Repulse, were fleeing from the plane of the system, their ultimate destination uncertain, and, for now, irrelevant.

  War of the mass, Pan thought. At his order, the fleet descended toward Entente. A few more Chinese ships – survivors from the earlier battle, hiding out in orbit of one of Beta Comae Berenices’ outer planets – lit their candles to join Pan’s flotilla.

  It took a day to drop to a bombardment orbit. His ships bunched up to concentrate their fire for each pass, which would focus first on New Albion’s surface-to-orbit laser sites. Most of the troop transports would wait in a higher orbit until the enemy was softened up, although he ordered three specialized battalions to drop on a minor island state that had thrown in with the enemy and became an advance base for their sea and air forces. He tasked a cruiser to provide fire support.

  Republic of Tecolote, Entente

  General Antonio Vargas died among his beloved artillery rockets. He was out in the field, in the northern highlands, directing the hunt for bands of rebels. The concentration of troops he was with was large enough to attract attention from orbit, and the cruiser Taizhou lasered his position relentlessly. One beam struck an ammunition truck at the center of Vargas’ encampment, igniting the rocket fuel inside. The fireball, which consumed General Vargas and many of his troops, was visible for kilometers in every direction.

  Within a week, rebel forces, backed up by Chinese commandos, approached San José’s outer suburbs. Colonel Samir Lorenzo Garcia y Abdulaziz was summoned to the capital yet again, this time to be put in charge of the defenses there. He knew all the dirty tricks of urban fighting against a technologically superior foe: Sniper teams on the rooftops and in doorways, proximity bombs, bombs on timers, antipersonnel mines in the streets. Get indoors when the enemy’s warships were overhead. Kill a few assaulters here and there, sap their morale, slow them down. He stopped short of ordering his troops into civilian clothes – that would be unprofessional – but he didn’t flinch when he saw some of Naima’s personal militia walking the streets in their blacks.

  But while the rebels were still a bit of a disorganized rabble, the Chinese special forces with them were seasoned veterans of this sort of fight; their unit had been instrumental in ensuring more than one African government continued to supply raw materials on terms favorable to the Chinese. They moved slowly and efficiently, sending drones to scout each street and suspect building, and bringing armored troopers forward to root out Aziz’s forces. When something looked too threatening, they stopped their advance, and waited for the Taizhou to pass overhead and burn it.

  Aziz had his victories, though. His troops lured an enemy platoon into a warehouse and then collapsed it on them. One of his RPG teams managed to kill four Chinese heavy infantrymen before being taken out by a drone. Of course, the civilians in the middle of this suffered the most, at least the ones who hadn’t the sense to flee as soon as they saw troops moving through their neighborhood. As Aziz retreated from one command post to another, he was surprised to see curled-up bodies in the streets behind his position. Shortly after that, his unit was ambushed in what he thought was a safe area. He took a bullet to his forearm and was captured.

  General Katherine Naima holed up at the interrogation center as enemy troops moved through the city. She had a faint hope the rebels didn’t know its location, but Kao Tai, advising the senior colonel in charge of the Chinese forces, ensured it was assaulted as soon as his troops were in range. She also insisted it not be bombarded, because it would be a useful facility in establishing the new regime. When the attack came, her police fought poorly, and they were quickly overrun.

  Naima herself, however, eluded capture. After Kao Tai’s raid on the center, Naima had a safe room installed, its access disguised as a small steel service duct plate in the lowest underground level. The room itself was shielded from cursory scans by various sensors.

  When the firing subsided, Naima waited three hours before emerging and made her way toward the surface. She killed two rebels with her pistol and fled on foot toward the docks.

  Paul Layton and the other State personnel left on a suborbital flight for New Albion just before the Chinese troops reached the city. Commander Marc Raleigh and Lindsay Trujillo volunteered to be the last ones out of the American consulate. They secured seats on a chartered suborbital and destroyed as much computer data as they could in the meantime.

  They split up when Lindsay left for her apartment at the foreigner’s compound to pick up a few things, and Raleigh made his way directly to the spaceport. He was swept up in a riot, though, and could not find a way past the barricades.

  Lindsay’s roundabout route, however, allowed her to make it in time. The security forces had already fled, and the charter was surrounded by rough men and women with big rifles. She boarded and was surprised to find Raleigh’s seat empty. She argued with the pilot to wait a little longer, but when a rebel artillery shell burst within the airport grounds, he took off.

  One of Kao Tai’s informants in San José called her and said General Naima was on that particular suborbital. He was lying; one of his ex-business partners was on the flight, and he was seeking payback for some perceived theft.

  Kao Tai had her doubts about the contact, but she had no time to confirm the information, so she contacted Taizhou.

  In orbit, Taizhou’s sensor operator noted the launch; standing orders were not to interfere with evacuating vehicles. But he heard the communications officer asking for confirmation, and then nodding before relaying coordinates to the laser officer.

  Shortly, the fiery remains of the suborbital crashed into the ocean.

  Commander Raleigh, wearing civilian clothes, saw the suborbital launch from a few kilometers away and cursed. He heard faint thunder when it was shot down, but it was too far distant for him to know what happened. The flow of people was toward the harbor, so he joined them. Maybe I can catch a ride with the Brits. I’m not going to spend another second in a Han prison.

  The scene at the docks was chaos. Thousands of people had crowded here, looking for escape. HMS Caledonia had been bombarded at anchor and sunk in shallow water, the top of its sail still poking above the surface along the quay. A large freighter had also been sunk further out in the harbor. Dozens of boats of various sizes – cabin cruisers, fishing trawlers, yachts – were heading for open sea. As Raleigh watched, a group of people on a small panga motored up to a large sport fishing boat and shot the people on board.

  And things fall apart, he thought.

  Two jet-powered drones roared low overhead, and something that sounded like firecrackers burst in a line along the quay. Raleigh heard screaming, and he was thrown in the water.

  His head came up. The quay was aflame, burning so hot that he had to swim further out into the harbor. He wondered what he would do.

  “Damn it, gringo, get over here!” Tippy Griego shouted from the boat’s wheel. By chance Tippy had recognized Neil’s replacement from the going-away party among the human flotsam in the water. His wife grabbed the boat ladder and attached it to the side, and he climbed board.

  Tippy wheeled his cabin cruiser around and headed for the mouth of the harbor. The guy – Marc, that was his name – seemed in a daze, so Tippy talked to him to see if he would engage.

  “We’re going to ride out the worst of it at sea,” he said. “Kind of like a hurricane, I guess. This dinky boat doesn’t have the legs to reach anywhere else.” He gestured at several large yachts making for the open ocean. “Not like those aristocrats there, headed to Ardoyne or New Albion. Anyway, we’ve got enough food to last us a week, and then we’ll head back. New rulers will need catering, just like the old ones. I just hope I’ll have a house.”

  Another man came topside, with some children. Tippy’s next door-neighbors.

  Raleigh, wrapped in a towel, collected himself. “Thanks, Mister Griego. Mind if I use your handheld? Mine fell in the drink.”

  Four days later, he departed on a submersible sent by
the British submarine Hibernia, which met them well away from the coast, farther, Tippy said, than he had ever taken his boat out.

  Irene Sato heard that some ships were picking up refugees at an undeveloped natural harbor near Tecolote’s extreme southern tip, so she carjacked a fleeing family from its sedan and headed in that direction.

  But the rebels had already set up checkpoints at San José’s southern exits, and she soon found herself stuck in a traffic jam. She inched along, hour after hour, until she reached the checkpoint itself. A bored rebel looked her over and then at his brand-new Chinese handheld. Then he looked back at her, and back at the handheld, concern growing on his face.

  She shot him.

  He reeled backward, and she gunned the sedan’s engine and crashed into the pickup truck that was serving as the roadblock. The truck spun to one side, and she accelerated her now-damaged car down the highway. She heard a loud thunk as a bullet penetrated into the sedan’s trunk.

  Ten minutes later, two Chinese tilt-turbofan drones caught up with her. One pulled in front of her, turned, and neatly fired a single .50-caliber bullet into the engine block. As the car coasted to a halt – even now she didn’t hit the brakes – she grabbed her handheld, connected to a satellite, and started entering a message. She knew the Hans probably had an information blockade in effect, but commerce would require that it eventually end, and her message would sit in a queue until it was released to reach its recipients.

  Entering the encryption password took far longer than composing the message itself. She hit send just as a Han troop carrier landed nearby. She entertained the idea of shooting herself in the head, or going out in a blaze of glory, but, for some reason, she hesitated when she saw Kao Tai herself get out of the transport.

  She was typing in the command to wipe the handheld’s memory when a Chinese soldier smashed the butt of his rifle through her window and into her head.