by John Lumpkin
But too many won’t be, Rand thought as he walked through the base.
He found her at a chow station, hunched over her handheld, trying to answer some of the more arcane questions on Form 9072-B, POW Repatriation Questionnaire.
“Lopez,” he said.
Private Lopez, the only surviving member of Rand’s artillery platoon, turned, recognized him, stood and embraced him, something she had never done before. She stepped back and looked into his eyes, and knew the answer without asking the question. She turned her head to one side, closed her eyes, and bit her lip.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Rand said. “He saved a bunch of us. He really did.”
Sycamore Spaceport
Nice landing, Neil thought as the Marine dropship touched down on the longest of the spaceport’s runways.
He stood on the tarmac with Violet Kelley, whom he had recognized from the rescue mission in Cottonwood on his first visit to Kuan Yin. She hadn’t said much to him.
Neil was there to see Donovan, to have a conversation Neil much wanted and had looked forward to, a brief spot of leisure before he took his seat on another dropship heading to orbit a few hours from now. Kelley was there to meet with both Donovan and Gardiner Fairchild; the trio was to reestablish the NSS operation on Kuan Yin, which would ultimately target the new Russian territories on Fengsheng continent.
I guess that will be getting a new name, Neil thought. The Chinese had not been fully driven off Sequoia, though; Cypress and its environs remained in Chinese hands. Facing unceasing bombardment from air and space, the enemy brigade there had dug in, and the American ground forces were heading east to root them out.
But the White House was already calling it a great victory, saying the liberation of Sycamore and most of Sequoia continent meant America and its allies were driving forward in the war.
But at a cost, Neil thought. Seven ships and seven hundred Space Forcers lost, more than nineteen hundred Marines and soldiers dead on the ground. And much of the American capability to move armies between star systems was tied up here; it would be a long time before the U.S. could mount another operation like this. That means no relief mission to New Albion and the other friendly colonies on Entente, and no offensive against Guoxing and Xinzhou anytime soon. Human rights groups were calling for investigations into the treatment of Chinese civilians by American “irregulars;” a White House spokeswoman denied any role in any such incidents, which she could not confirm had occurred. And already thousands of freed American civilians, led by Moira Tobin, were insisting they be evacuated from Kuan Yin entirely.
Donovan’s dropship rolled up about one hundred meters away, settling low on its wheels so its passengers could exit. A refueling truck drove up, and a bus full of passengers came behind it. Crewmen waved and shouted to hurry everything along; standing orders were that dropships spend no more than twenty minutes stopped anywhere. The Chinese had sabotaged the spaceport’s launching lasers before their surrender, leaving the fleet’s dropships the only way to get back to orbit until the lasers were fixed. And there were far more people who wanted to be one place or the other than there were dropships to carry them.
Gardiner Fairchild hopped down, followed by Donovan. Neil waved, and Donovan raised a hand in return. Kelley began walking toward the dropship, leaving Neil behind. Donovan turned back to the door, and a crewman handed him something, and the fuel truck exploded.
The blast threw everyone from their feet; it shredded the dropship’s tail and pushed the craft forward several meters. The bus crumpled; its front end was aflame. Neil, dimly, saw some people running, some limping or trying to pull others away, and he heard sirens, echoing in every direction, and screams.
Epilogue
NEW YORK (Op-ed) – We build stories around events to make them make sense. The American story of this war was initially a thing of contention; the Chinese attacked the Sapphire and the San Jacinto, and we had to fight back. But that story made little sense; why would the Chinese, embroiled in a difficult war with Japan, attack us? So other stories arose to fill the vacuum: This is the long-awaited East versus West war, or the authoritarian versus the democratic, or 20th century powers versus 21st, or some other binary that falls apart under close scrutiny. Consider that the less educated in Japan and China say this is the final reckoning of 1,500 years of their conflict, and America’s participation is just a sideshow. Does it feel that way to you, with the coffins coming home to Dover?
Then, last summer, Senator Gregory offered us a story that made sense: This is a war for territory, for a future in which America isn’t a hefty chunk of a single continent, but an interstellar ideal that encompasses whole worlds. We, along with our Japanese and British and Australian and Canadian and Iranian allies, are victims of misfortune of the stars, and a China that’s too greedy to share its boon. So we must fight to preserve our future, to prevent our being overrun by a Chinese Empire spanning all of our skies.
That’s a fine story. Let me offer another. Start with the great expansion, the one of John Locke and Isaac Newton, the steam engine and the printing press. All the billions who were lifted out of stinking poverty and lived a better life than their parents, first in Europe and North America and Australia and Japan, later in China and India and South America, even a few in Africa. The Asiatic boom was the greatest net improvement in the human condition in history, but it also broke the bank; our ability to innovate more and more efficient ways to manage energy was exhausted; our resources were failing, and the seas were rising because of the dirty things we did to sustain ourselves. The low-hanging fruits of technology had all been picked; we had solved almost every physical and biological principle that needed solving; the remaining technologies we could envision simply cost too much to develop and employ. Many sensed this, and the states, the corporations and individuals who had amassed great wealth fought harder and harder to maintain their standard of living.
Then came the blessing of The Rock, the ‘Roide, 1409222 Vonhess, Nubei, Kirainsei – whatever your culture named it. Yes: A blessing, not for the millions of Africans and thousands of Australians and Indians it slaughtered, of course, but for the rest of us, who learned we need to ensure the species by going into space. All the wealthy folk found a useful place for their investments, and governments did everything they could to assist them. We got cheap lift, orbital solar power stations, and, lo, new worlds to conquer! Thus began a century-long boom, the continuation of the wonderful story of growth via investment, subsidy and profit. Asteroid mines and starships and colonies, and all boats lifting (except, of course, for a lot of Africans and a lot of Indians and a lot of Mexicans and so on).
But there was a problem, one nobody likes to talk about: We never actually made any money beyond the Moon. I mean real money, not revenue, but true profit, after you count all society’s shared costs in getting the program going – the tax incentives, government-backed bonds, deferred loan payments and so on. No, it’s cheaper to send nanorefiners into the old landfills than it is to mine most of the asteroids for terrestrial projects, and it’s cheaper still to use tried-and-true methods of strip mining and polluting. And there are very few things that are made on our colonies that can’t be made here; interstellar transport of mass-produced goods is in almost all cases economically unfeasible.
It has taken a while for that to shake out, but many of the big space investors started to cash in their chips about a decade ago. Solar power and orbital access were in the realm of the controlled profits provided to utilities; for work beyond Earth space, subsidies and tax breaks were dropping, and the capitalists did what they always do when they run out of ideas: They try to turn themselves into aristocrats, walling themselves off legally, financially and physically from the rest of us.
Don’t hate them. You would probably do the same if you were in their position. And they did help extend the economic boom the Enlightenment brought us for another century. Now the bubble is bursting; the desert of stars Senator Gregory told us about
has only hurried the process along. But he was wrong: We’re fighting this war not for planets, but for dominance on Earth. The winner controls the direction Earth’s economy will go and who gets to maintain their standard of living as the rest of the world begins a bitter decline.
As I said, I’m just offering one more story of the war. It’s a series of factual assertions I strung together with a common thread. Perhaps you prefer the clash of cultures or the lebensraum stories that are already well-known to humanity. Perhaps you’ll take this narrative and incorporate it into your own, most likely in opposition to it, casting me as some opponent to progress or the military or America.
Perhaps the story you believe says more about your politics than the reality of things. But none of that means our stories are arbitrary; quite the opposite is true, as they guide our decisions whether to negotiate with a rival, or send thousands of good boys and girls to their deaths.
South of Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Neil and Rand helped bury James Donovan and Hal Aguirre alongside hundreds of other American dead in a new cemetery in a meadow beside Highway Two. The weary chaplain had to speak loudly over the buzz of the nearby fab unit trailer, which was producing a steady supply of American flags, coffins and decomposition-assisting chemicals.
Aguirre’s service was first; a score of Rand’s guerrillas were in attendance. He received a Methodist burial, and Rand told stories of watching the skies with him, night after night. He was performing, Neil saw, putting aside his own grief to make his troops feel a little better.
After that, all the ex-guerrillas left, save Rand and Lopez.
“What kind of service for Mister Donovan?” the chaplain asked.
“I’m not sure,” Neil said.
“I’ve got one for that.”
She read the generalist, sort-of-spiritual, sort-of-secular service over him; it focused on citizenship rather than matters metaphysical – the same service a soldier would get if he indicated “unaffiliated” on his documentation.
It was brief; there wasn’t much to say, anyway, about a man who had lived his life swimming in secrets. Neil held his handheld so the video camera could transmit the service to Gardiner Fairchild, who still had one eye he could watch it with from his hospital bed. He would have done the same for Kelley, but she remained in an induced coma; the doctors had said she would need both legs regrown at facilities back in the Solar System.
I don’t even know if Donovan was his real name, Neil thought. Probably not. He knew Donovan was divorced and had a teenaged son on Earth, but Fairchild had politely been no help in providing any information that would allow Neil to contact his family, saying the service handled such matters on its own.
Donovan is gone, Neil thought over and over. He felt numb, defeated. The old spy had seemed larger-than-life. Immortal. We’ve won the day, freed thousands and thousands of Americans, yet all I can think about is the lives lost, the lives taken. The chaplain spoke of the eternal dignity of those died in the line of duty. Shouldn’t that be enough? But what if nobility is just a story we invent to make ourselves feel better, a way to impose a bit of meaning on what’s really just meaningless violence? Donovan was the one person who could have provided an answer that made sense. And Donovan is gone. This war's gotta end.
Rand’s face remained a mask. He’s lost a mentor, too, Neil thought. As Donovan’s coffin descended, Neil leaned over and dropped his handheld into the ground beside it.
Something for you to read, Jim.
Investigators believed someone had attached a bomb to the refueling truck, although the captive Chinese military commander had denied ordering such a thing. Neil was inclined to believe him; other than obvious strategic moves like disabling the spaceport’s launching laser and blowing up the sub pens at the port, the surrendering Chinese forces had not left behind any traps or partaken in any kind of scorched earth campaign in the city. But who, then? Why blow up a random dropship from orbit? Was it random, or revenge, or a targeted operation?
Could it have been Li Xiao?
He remembered the final words from Donovan’s last communication to him, about having to live with uncertainty.
Neil and Rand and Lopez rode back to the city together, in a civilian car the Chinese colonists had confiscated from the Americans, and the Americans had confiscated back.
“Do you know where you are headed next?” Neil asked.
“Earth,” Rand and Lopez said at the same time. Rand added, “They’re pulling one of the Marine brigades out, and we’re riding back with them. Lopez, here, she’s been offered a job with the recruitment command.”
“Not sure I’ll take it,” she said.
“Really?” Rand asked.
“Hard to kill Hans giving speeches at high schools.”
They were silent for a moment. Rand said, “I’m not sure what they’ll do with me. Probably not the recruitment circuit; I think I burned some bridges with General Grogan. Maybe back to an artillery hole. What about you, Neil?”
“Apache.” And Jessica. “She still needs a few days of repairs, but I’m not sure if we’re staying here, joining the Alley blockade, or heading somewhere else.”
They dropped Neil off at a quartermaster’s post; at last he was able to get a handheld that allowed him to access his Space Force Intelligence accounts. His queue was overflowing.
He found a message from Fort Belvoir regarding the serial number Donovan had asked about. Why was Donovan interested in some Chinese rocket the Japanese captured in Korea? He forwarded the message to Gardiner Fairchild, and asked if he knew what this was about.
No idea, Fairchild replied.
As Neil wondered if he should press Fairchild further, three more messages appeared in his queue. The first was a recall to Apache giving him priority on the next available launch to orbit. The second was orders for Apache, Valley Forge, and several other warships to return to Earth immediately.
The third was an intelligence report that explained why: A great Chinese and Korean fleet had crossed over from Sirius and launched from Venus’ Trailing Trojan, headed for Earth.
Excerpt from The Passage of Stars
The forthcoming third book in the Human Reach series
I was born too soon.
Jurgen Becker, master of the United Nations Survey Ship Javier Perez de Cuellar, floated before his stateroom window, musing at the field of stars before him, something he found himself doing more and more lately. The red dwarf GJ 1167 hung close within his view.
We think we have come so far. We’re more than fifty light-years out, and we’ve colonized a few dozen planets, and the politicians praise themselves for those accomplishments. But we’ve only taken a child’s step into the cosmos!
And so much of it remained out of reach, at least to Becker, who was approaching mandatory retirement age.
I would have liked to have seen the raging T Tauris and swirling protoplanetary discs in the Orion Nebula up close. But it will be more than a millennium until we get there, if we do at all. We’re still centuries from reaching the nearest neutron star or black hole. Even the closest B-class star, Regulus, is decades distant. I will probably be dead before the Chinese open a wormhole there. If I had been born later ...
He shook his head. I must discipline myself away from pondering such melancholies; I will have plenty of time for such thoughts after my retirement. And perhaps it is a good thing we have not reached such exotic phenomena. They are so beautiful, but evidence of something deadly. Some primeval disaster – the sort that probably would leave behind a neutron star, nebula or black hole – had wiped away life from an entire region of space near Earth. Scientists had only begun to debate where and when the event had taken place, but it had turned an estimated forty percent of Earth’s sky into a dark desert of lifeless worlds. And worlds with no indigenous life would have generated no oxygen atmosphere and were almost certainly useless to humanity.
The desert, too, had ignited humanity’s first interstella
r war, which was in its third year and showed no sign of ending. Japan and the United States had been the first to realize their colonial arms had reached the edge of the desert, and that they would find no more colony worlds; they had attacked China and Korea, whose expansion would otherwise have continued unhindered.
Russia and India had also built off the Japanese wormhole networks and founded a few colonies, and they also faced long-term stagnation. They had threatened China and received concessions, ultimately finding ways to avoid war.
And Europa, a power whose intervention could likely end the conflict, had remained passive. Becker knew his former countrymen – he had considered himself neither German nor European for more than four decades – had no reason to join. Europa’s colonial expansion, into Cetus, Eridani and Fornax, ran along the apparent edge of the desert. They would still have colonies to settle, though not as many as the Chinese. The powerbrokers in Paris and Berlin would call for peace even as they used their neutrality to enrich themselves by selling things to the belligerents, or people who wanted nothing to do with either side.
Such hypocrites. Becker had been raised to believe Europa was the world’s only great humanitarian nation, the only one that truly put people before money, unlike the mercantile empires of America, China and Japan. And perhaps that had been true, once, but a trip through the factory towns of North Africa, owned by European companies and operated by the locals, had taught him otherwise. People lived in tin-roofed shacks and relieved themselves in filthy ditches nearby. Disease was rampant; generic treatments were only sometimes available, and proper gene-tailored ones never were.
