by A. D. Bloom
Moriah's spin brought the sun up so fast that you could watch the shadows of the ladder rungs move like second hands on a clock as Cozen climbed. Ram asked where he was going, but Cozen ignored him.
Ram followed him ten meters up the hull until he reached a section where it indented behind the rear nacelles. It was a narrow ledge to stand on with hull on four sides and Cozen had chosen it, Ram thought, because of the near impossibility of someone having line of sight to listen in on them up there. "What are the pilots saying about all this?" Cozen asked him.
"I don't understand."
"Our pilots," Cozen said. "Asa Biko and Kay D'Ambrosse. They have a lot of influence with the crew. Especially Asa Biko. What are they saying to each other about coming here and finding what we found? What do they think about it?"
Cozen sounded as if he was plotting a coup, but Ram told him the truth to see what he would do with it. "Nobody believes in coincidences like this where management is concerned. No, Mr. Cozen. You're the only one who knew where Moriah was and they're not so naive as to think you had no idea what was here. Nobody believes you just stumbled on this. They're convinced you knew the alien ship was here all along. They probably think you knew it's what crippled Mohegan."
"Is that so?"
"It is," Ram said, and Cozen's eyes narrowed half a degree. "But...our pilots and miners are committed to survival. They'll do what they have to do."
"What about you, Mr. Devlin? Do you think I knew the alien ship was here on Moriah?"
Ram didn't tell Cozen the truth. He said what Asa Biko had said. "Maybe you knew they were here, Mr. Cozen, and maybe you didn't, but it doesn't change what we're going to have to do to get off this rock." From the way Cozen looked at him, Ram thought maybe Cozen knew those weren't his words. The next ones were. "I've read plenty of history. This is how wars start."
"This war has already started." Cozen said it without pause like he'd thought long and hard about it already. He sighed into his helmet mic. "It's already begun. But given the scope of the conflict unfolding, I imagine, Mr. Devlin, you're going to tell me that you actually want to walk up to that alien ship with open arms and empty hands and say, 'We come in peace'. But it's not just your life you'll be risking if you do that. To maximize our chances of a successful assault we'll need the element of surprise. Walk out there and try to make friends with them and you'll just get killed. And you'll blow our advantage. In case you haven't been keeping score, they've shot at us already. Twice."
Ram had been keeping score, but he still wasn't convinced Humanity been attacked – not by aliens. "For all we know, Mr. Cozen, the microwave beam that sabotaged our systems was an attempt at communication. We need more proof about their hostile intentions before we assume anything. I'd like t-"
"Are you not convinced we were attacked, Mr. Devlin?" Ram closed his mouth and willed his face to blank itself and become inscrutable and reveal nothing. Cozen must have taken Ram's silence for an affirmation of his doubt. "If you find yourself questioning what's happened here and the necessity of what's about to happen on this rock... if you have doubts... then you'd better keep them to yourself. You don't want to go spreading those doubts around," he said. "Not if you care about your people. If you want your crew to survive today's assault, and I know you do, then you're not going to share any ideas you've got in your head about the necessity of making peace with the ETs. Do that, and you'll rob our people of their most valuable weapon."
"Surprise?"
"No, Mr. Devlin – righteousness."
"Mr. Cozen..."
"Righteousness, Mr. Devlin." Cozen said it a second time with more emphasis as if this time, Ram would hear the word for true and understand. He didn't. Cozen said it again, "Righteousness. Confidence and true belief that their actions are justified, necessary, and in line with the moral code much of our planet still accepts as divine will. Righteousness. They're going to need it for this assault. If they go into a fight questioning themselves, full of hesitation and doubt or remorse, unwilling to kill until there's none of the enemy left, then they're going to lose. If you spread your doubt among this crew, then you will cut their chances of survival in half. Maybe more. They believe in this fight and you're not going to take that away from them, Mr. Devlin. You're not going to share your doubts. You're not going to do that because you care about your people. It's one of the things I like about you."
Ram quickly decided what Cozen really liked about him was how he was to manipulate because he cared about his people.
Harry Cozen looked out into space with his eyes focused to infinity. He said, "Don't disappoint me, Mr. Devlin. Get over the bad taste of what we have to do because in a few minutes, I expect you to do it."
*****
In the reactor section's cramped control room Ram desperately tried to find some other way off that rock. He calculated the strength of the reactor chamber walls and whether or not they'd withstand the strain if focused explosive charges were used to send the explosion inward at a tiny pile of fissionable material. There was a chance he could use the pressure to create the x-rays needed for the secondary reaction. There was a much better chance that it would simply explode.
Ram heard the double-beep of another suit being added to his line of sight comms channel when Mickey Wells came into the reactor room. She stood against the bulkhead. Then, she leaned back against it and let herself slide down it just like she used to slide down the wall of her little box apartment when she got home from doing a 'job'. She'd slide all the way down until she was sitting on the floor and stay like that for a long time.
"Looks like you did okay." She said, "You always were a fast learner."
He thought he knew Mickey, but when he looked at her face through the helmet, Ram couldn't hold in the disdainful exhalation. It said more than he'd wanted to. If he was right about Cozen, then did she help him do it? Did she help Cozen when he reached out and killed Mohegan? Did Mickey help him fake the attack on Gold Coast that marooned them here on Moriah the same way? And if she was part of Cozen's lies, then why? Why for god's sake? Why start a war?
"Did he do it, Mickey?"
"Do what?"
"Did he kill ten miners? Did he sabotage Mohegan and then Gold Coast and make it look like both junks were attacked?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"C'mon Mickey, cut the crap. It's no coincidence what we found here. He planned this. The ETs could have just shot us. Why bother with cracking our systems to get the soft kill? No. Harry Cozen made that happen. He's using us. He's using us to start a war, Mickey. He's lying to us. He brought us here to do this. To attack that ship. He's the one who killed Mohegan's crew, not the ETs. He planned all this to maroon us here and get us to attack that ship."
"That's ridiculous," she said. "Why the hell would he do that?"
"I don't goddamn know!"
She asked it softly, but it was menacing. "Have you told anyone else about your theory?"
"The only reason nobody else is thinking it yet is they refuse to believe anyone would actually do what he did. But I believe it. I have some idea what he's capable of, Mickey. Is it true? Did you know when he did it? Did you help him?"
"If you don't know the answer to that, then don't insult me with the question." The silence hung there in the vacuum until Mickey banged the back of her helmet against the bulkhead. She did it a few times and said, "Things don't always go the way he plans." Hearing that made the deck fall out from under Ram's feet. No matter how strongly you suspect something awful, finding out it's true is far worse. Before that, there was an infinitesimal chance you were wrong – a chance that all your fears were imagined. Now, you know it's true and you can't pretend it's not. Now, you've got to face it.
"Have you told anyone else?" she asked Ram again.
"Screw you, Mickey." His righteous anger made it easy to say.
"Have you told anyone?"
"Did Harry Cozen send you in here to make sure I wasn't going to spread doubt and en
danger us all?"
"No, Ram. I came on my own because there's things I had to say to you. And.. and I know there's things you wanted to say to me since I arrived."
He'd had things he needed to say to Mickey for a lot longer than that, things he'd ground his teeth on for years after she sent him away to Staas and the Academy, but he'd come to terms with those himself. "Look. Mickey... On the way here... Back in the tube before you shot up past me, all I wanted... All I was trying to say was 'thank you'. For... for not letting me starve. For teaching me to read. For everything I've got. For who I am. I know you could have left me where you found me. I know you didn't have to do what you did."
"I only took care of you for a few years, Ram. It wasn't a big deal."
"It was a big deal to me." Ram hated her for sending him away, but he'd never say she did him wrong. She paid sixteen years tuition, room, and board upfront. He'd never been hungry ever again. If it wasn't for her, then he'd probably have perished and if by some miracle he hadn't, then he'd probably be one of the hungry billions.
Mickey knew all that. She knew he knew it too. She smiled at Ram, and after it faded, she banged the back of her helmet against the bulkhead a couple of more times. "You remember what I had to do for money back then, right, Ram?" He nodded. Of course he remembered. Mickey used her guns to make money. She killed people. Gang hits. And he knew even back then that there weren't any other jobs for her except in space and if she didn't want to ditch him, then she had to use the only in-demand skills she had. It was that or they'd have both have ended up back in hell where she found him. "Look I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Ram. I'm not saying I wouldn't have done that anyway... just to survive. Even if I didn't have you to take care of, I still might have done that for work. I'm not saying I did it for you." But she did do it for him, though. Ram knew that. The way it worked out, she did. She hated it. But she still did it. That debt had always been on the books. It always would be.
"Mickey, I know it would have been easier without me. I bet you could have gone up the well into space and got other work more than once after you found me. But you didn't and I owe you e-"
She banged her helmet against the bulkhead again and again. "Ugh. Ram. Shut the hell up. I'm not saying this because I want you to thank me. I'm trying to tell you why... No...no...how I did what I did... Because you need to know. What I'm trying to say is I couldn't have done it without you – without you to do it for. It was bad, doing it at all, and I know it wasn't just for you. I needed the money, too, but 'cause I was doing it for you... that's what made it... not okay, but...bearable. That's what let me do it and not hate myself. I chose to do something wrong. It was a choice I made and it helped make a bigger right."
But that's not the way it works, Ram thought. You can make right from wrong. It was Mickey who taught him that. It was Mickey who slapped the words out his mouth when he'd said different once. "Harry Cozen murdered ten innocent miners," Ram said. "He wants us to start a war."
"I'm not defending him. I can't. I won't."
"But why, Mickey?" Even though there were only two of them on the secure comms channel, she whispered her next words.
"Listen to me. This war is coming and nothing will change that."
"You've met them before, haven't you...Where? How?"
"Listen," she hissed. "Remember these words, Ram: 'War is the way of the stars'."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Just remember it. Look, if this war doesn't start today, like this on Moriah, then when it does happen, we will lose. We will lose, Ram. Don't ask me how I know because I won't tell you, but this war has got to start now. It's got to start as soon as possible and it's got to start in a way that leaves humanity with no second thoughts about fighting it. You get it? You understand why we're here now?"
Black propaganda. Cozen was creating a narrative - just the right historical narrative to accomplish his goals. That's why he didn't bring a gunship and assault troops. He was writing the story of the war's first shots: unarmed humans attacked in our own space. It was a story written to drive a righteous war.
Ram said, "Did you tell him to use Hardway because you thought I'd lie for you?"
"I don't want you to lie for me. I want you to lie for all of them – for Dana and Biko and his crew and Hardway and 12 billion people on Earth you don't know who are never going to thank you or know what the hell you did to save their miserable skins. You were a good kid and you're a good man and I know you don't want to do any of this. So far, Ram Devlin has been mostly the person he's wanted to be. For that guy, doing the right thing is easy. I need you to do the hard thing now, Ram. Like I did for you. I need you to do it for an even better reason than saving one kid. I need you to lie so that a billion kids like the one I found in the rubble can go on living and grow up."
"This... this isn't who I want to be, Mickey."
"I know, Ram. And just for the record, I didn't get to be who I wanted to be either." She laughed once as she got up. She said, "Maybe next time."
She stood up straight then. He remembered the pictures of Mickey Wells, the ones taken when she fought for the 2nd Marine Division. She stuck her chest out with so much pride in those pictures. She looked that way when he'd first seen her again on Hardway. Despite everything, she still looked proud now. Ram Devlin was really asking a different question, but the one that came out of his mouth was: "Is this...is this something you're proud to be part of, Mickey?"
Mickey Wells looked Ram in the eye and said it without a hint of doubt in her voice. "This is the most important thing I've ever done in my life."
Chapter Seven
"We've got 1.7 kilometers to cover," Cozen said. "I don't know anyone better in this environment than belt miners so I know we're going to make good time. Mickey, I want you scouting fifty meters ahead. D'Ambrosse, keep an eye on that knuckledragger and try to remember you're four meters tall. Don't get us spotted. Mr. Devlin, you have the rear."
They bounded low and single file over the dim and dusty flats with ten meters between them. D'Ambrosse and the knuckledragger carried Biko's breaching charge. It was a 2x3 meter piece of high-density hull plating ripped from Gold Coast. D'Ambrosse and her mech suit bent it before they packed the concave side with mining charges.
At first, the procession followed the gouges and scrapes the junk had left when she went down, but soon, Mickey began to lead them on a less direct route, following the backsides of the jagged hills and the bottoms of ravines that might hide them. Ram remembered seeing the shape of the alien hull and the tower mounted on the 'top'. It had to be 30 meters high. And it was set at least five or ten meters up. If they weren't careful or if Mickey picked a careless path for them, then the ETs would see the boarding party coming.
Dana hung back with Ram. When he saw an outcropping of rock he could pull her behind to get a few seconds of privacy, he didn't hesitate. He ran in long bounds to close the space between them and pulled her behind the jut of the rock out of sight (and comms) from the others. He didn't want to say what he said then. "Dana, let me and the others go in first." He thought maybe she understood why he said it, but she still looked angry.
"Are you kidding me? You'd never say that to Biko." She was right, of course. Then she said something unlike anything he'd ever heard come out of her mouth. "This was a crime against every human and it's every human's duty to deliver the payback." She'd never said the word 'duty' before.
"I just wish you were back on Hardway. I wish you never had to be part of this... " His voice trailed off when he remembered it was Cozen that put her here. Cozen had asked for her specifically. Now, Ram knew why: to make sure he had something to lose. "Just don't..." He couldn't even say it.
"Don't what?"
"Just stay alive," he said.
Minutes later, Mickey led them through a maze of sharp outcrops and jagged rock until she took up a position leaning into the slope of one of Moriah's fractured hills. She waved them all to her. One by one, they assembled o
n the side of the hill. "Target's on the other side," she said. "You'll see the tower when you're halfway up."
"First wave, fifty meters to the right," Cozen told them. "Second wave, fifty to the left. Third wave, hold where you are." Ram held his position with Biko and Cozen while Hollis and Lapuis went right with Mickey. Dana shot Ram a glance and a smile, and then she was gone with Oboto, Tse, and D'Ambrosse in the lumbering mech suit.
They could all hear Cozen's confidence in their helmets. "We will approach the vessel in three teams like we drilled. We will breach its hull, and we will kill whatever we find inside. We will find a way to disable the ETs' jamming, and we will call for extraction. Once we're inside, do not damage the interior of the alien ship. I want her as intact as possible." He paused then, maybe for effect. "I know none of us asked to be here, but this has to happen and you're the only ones that can do it. It's time to step up, people."
"First wave!" Mickey called out.
"Aye aye!"
"Over the top! Make for the tower. Go, Go! GO!" Mickey leaned forward into the hill and dug in, driving herself up over the crest with Hollis and Lapuis behind her in echelon on her four and eight o'clock. They screamed and kicked up dust as they ran to the top and then jumped – Mickey with her x-ray laser, Lapuis with the bulky, meter-long plasma cutter, and Hollis with one of the pig-sticker swords. Ram lost sight of them after that and since they were using IR comms, their battle cries went silent. If Mickey and the first wave had been burned to a crisp by some alien weapon a second after that, then Ram wouldn't know until he went over the top himself.
