Orion Rising: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic (The Orion War Book 3)

by M. D. Cooper

  “Or were you maybe put-in?” Jessica said, and the group dissolved into laughter once more.

  Joe couldn’t help but join in, and saw Tanis chuckle out of the corner of his eye.

  “Ah, I’ve missed you, Jessica,” Tanis said.

  “You too, Tanis. You’ve raised some good kids here, the both of you—you should be proud of them.”

  Joe looked at his two girls and smiled. “Somehow they both survived our childrearing process intact. That may be more from their innate stubbornness than anything else.”

  “Need us to go, Dad?” Cary asked.

  “Nope, it’s you we came to talk to,” Joe said.

  “Gotta split, anyway,” Jessica said as she rose. “My ass is gonna be shaped like this chair.”

  Trevor peered around behind her. “Nope, perky as ever…I mean it’s probably filled with springs and ballistic jell or something, it should be impervious—even when it comes to hard mess hall chairs.”

  “Trevor! I have no…well…I probably have both of those things inside me somewhere, but they are not responsible for the shape of my ass,” Jessica exclaimed.

  Trevor nodded and winked as he followed Jessica away from the table.

  “Those two are great!” Cary said as Joe and Tanis sat. “They sure had some wild stories.”

  “Jessica is built out of wild stories,” Joe chuckled.

  “Ah, so that’s what she’s built out of,” Tanis replied with a smile.

  Joe chuckled. “That one will never get old.”

  “So, what’s up?” Saanvi asked before taking a sip of her drink. “You two have serious face.”

  “We’re sending you two to Landfall,” Joe said without preamble. “Things are about to get hot out here, and all non-essential personnel are being evacuated.”

  “What?” Cary asked loudly. “Are you serious? Landfall. In the bunker, right?”

  “Easy now,” Tanis said, raising her hands. “It’s not just you, anyone who isn’t in the ISF, or isn’t mission critical is being sent to a refuge.”

  The two girls shared an angst-filled look as Tanis spoke.

  “But we’re ISF,” Cary said, her tone emphatic. “We got accepted into the academy. We’ve flown two cruisers. We’re assets, not liabilities.”

  Joe shook his head slowly. He wasn’t surprised that Cary felt this way. Their younger daughter always acted as though she had to live up to her mother’s reputation—and seemed to think that it had to be done before she turned twenty-one.

  Saanvi knew Cary’s internal struggle as well, and Joe saw her give Cary a comforting look. “Flying a ship on a set course and being in combat are two different things. We could make a mistake and get other people killed.”

  Cary passed Saanvi a hard look. “We won’t. We know what to do.”

  Angela added.

  Joe watched the girls’ expressions change several times as they stared at one other, and knew they were having a protracted conversation over the Link.

  “Kinda rude, girls,” he said. “If you’re gonna whisper behind our backs, at least get good enough at it so we can’t tell.”

  He saw a smile creep across his wife’s face, and knew she was probably carrying on at least one other conversation right now. It was different for her, though. He was certain Tanis simply couldn’t slow down anymore—at least not right now with the biggest battle of their lives approaching.

  Cary frowned at him, and Saanvi sighed.

  “What about all those crewless ships, who’s going to fly them?” Cary asked.

  Angela supplied.

  “And most of those ships aren’t fit to be much other than shields,” Joe added.

  “Some aren’t,” Cary said. “Some are almost fully operational, I reviewed the specs.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tanis shook her head. “But it’s not going to happen. You two will go to the bunker under Landfall. There’s no shortage of work that needs to be done there.”

  Cary looked to Joe. “Seriously? That’s the final word?”

  Joe nodded. “Seriously. Your mother and I are not going to budge on this.”

  Saanvi caught Cary’s eye and gave her head a shake before turning back to her parents. “We’ll go. We understand the risks.”

  “Good,” Tanis said with smile. “The last shuttle is leaving in an hour, and you need to be on it.”

  They rose from the table and shared a round of hugs.

  Joe spotted the exact moment that the two girls realized that this could be the last time they ever saw their parents, and a new round of embracing ensued. In the end, they finally managed to make their way out of the mess to a waiting groundcar and the girls got in, still waving and wiping away tears.

  Joe watched them go as Tanis collapsed against him.

  “They could do it, you know,” she said. “They would be assets.”

  “They don’t know how to work with a team,” Joe replied. “And they really suck at following orders.”

  Tanis sighed. “Well, Cary does. Saanvi would be the perfect little soldier in that respect.”

  “True, we’ll have to teach her more about how to push boundaries and think outside the box when she starts her first term.”

  Angela countered.

  “I think you’re right there,” Tanis agreed. “I see big things in Saanvi’s future.”

  “With those two on their way back, what’s next on your docket?” Joe asked.

  Tanis let out a long breath. “Kent. With the plans Sabrina brought back from Orion space, I have new angles I can use with him—I’m positive that he still has intel we need.”

  “Good luck,” Joe said and wrapped his wife in a long embrace, his lips finding hers, reveling in her taste before he let her go.

  “Oh, stars, Joe, you’re such a tease!” Tanis smiled. “Always have been.”

  “Me?” Joe appropriated a wounded expression. “You’re the one who played hard to get for years.”

  “That was almost two hundred years ago. The tables have turned since then,” Tanis said with a raised eyebrow.

  “I have a long memory,” Joe chuckled.

  MASTER PLAN

  STELLAR DATE: 03.29.8948 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Detention Center, ISS I2

  REGION: Near Roma, New Canaan System

  Kent rose from his cot as a guard appeared at the entrance to his cell. The clock in the passageway just past zero-dark-thirty—another interrogation, just as he had been drifting off to sleep.

  “Wrists together,” the guard said without preamble.

  Kent touched the two silver shackles on his wrists together and felt them lock onto one another. He had to admit that the restraint system was effective; the guards never needed to touch him to ensure he was secure, there was never any opportunity to make a grab for a weapon. No option to escape.

  Not yet, but his time would come. There was always an opening, an avenue of escape. He just had to wait for it.

  The stasis shield across the font wall of his cell switched off, and the guard raised his hand to the metal bars that still blocked his exit. Three of them drew back, melting in on themselves. On a previous trip to the interrogation room, he had asked if that was picotech and the guard had laughed at him.

  “Course not. Simple flowmetal, but don’t think you can hack it. Stuff will kill you if you try.”

  Kent had seen flowmetal before, but never used so casually—for a prisoner’s cell. The things these people took for granted were astounding.

  As he stepped out into the corridor, one of hundreds in the I2’s brig, he smiled a
t the guard. “So, where to this time?”

  “The usual,” the man replied. “You’re very popular.”

  Kent laughed. “Yeah, you should really just leave me there, save you the trips.”

  “You’re telling me,” the guard replied. “Still, protocol is protocol. I can’t leave you alone in an interrogation room, but I can do whatever when you’re in your cell.”

  “A lot of prisoners in here?” Kent asked as they walked past dozens of empty cells.

  “Some,” the guard replied.

  “Really? How many? I haven’t seen anyone but you all day.”

  The guard laughed. “Seriously, let it go. Do I look like I was born yesterday? Want me to tell you about shift changes and when I take a whiz? I bet I could rustle up the design specs while I’m at it.”

  Kent shook his head and gave a rueful smile. “Was worth a shot.”

  “Yeah, prisoner’s prerogative, scheme about escape. We could just slap you in stasis, you know. Consider your cell a perk.”

  Kent knew there was no perk involved. If he was in stasis he couldn’t stew and worry, he couldn’t perseverate. Even the constant back and forth to the interrogation room—where a never-ending stream of intelligence operatives attempted to pry secrets from him—was all tactics.

  The guard led him through a security arch, and past a waiting room to the corridor containing the interrogation rooms.

  Each time they had taken him to a different one. He suspected that it had nothing to do with whether or not the others were in use, but rather to mess with him, keep him off balance.

  He kept hoping he would see someone else from his team, but in the time he’d been in the I2’s brig there had been no sign of them. If his strike team was aboard, he was certain they were in stasis, tucked away to use as leverage against him at some point.

  “In here,” the guard grunted and opened the door, leaning across him as he pushed the door wide.

  Kent knew chances to strike wouldn’t come often and took this one. He swung his shackled wrists up, aiming for the guard’s forehead, when an armored hand shot out from inside the room and caught his forearm in an iron grip.

  “Nice try, Kent,” the voice said, and he recognized it as Tanis Richards’s.

  “Damnit,” the guard swore. “And here I thought we had finally reached an understanding. Sorry Admiral Richards, it won’t happen again.”

  “We’re all stretched thin,” Tanis replied. “It’s late and your shift ends soon. Log off early on my authority. We’ll take care of our friend here.”

  The armored hand pulled him into the dimly lit room, and Kent saw that it belonged to a massive ISF Marine, one of four in the small room.

  The imposing figure sat him down and separated his cuffed wrists, locking each one into mounts on the table. As he secured Kent, two of the Marines walked out of the room and took positions in the hall, closing the door behind them.

  Kent looked across the table at his enemy—the woman he had tried to kill, should have killed, had it not been for how little of her was human anymore.

  “I see you have a new arm,” he commented.

  Tanis lifted it up and the skin on her hand changed from a natural tone to a silvery metal. More flowmetal, it seemed.

  “Temporary,” the admiral replied. “I prefer flesh and blood as much as I can, but this will do for now.”

  “I’m surprised. I thought you’d revel in your overuse of advanced technology,” Kent scowled.

  She paused, and the woman’s ever-present frown seemed to deepen, then her visage cleared and she gave a slight smile.

  “I don’t mind sharing my personal beliefs with you,” she said. “You don’t have to work so hard. We’re really not so different, you and I. I’d like to show that to you.”

  “You and your people are abominations,” Kent said softly, “I share nothing with you.”

  “Not so,” the admiral said with a shake of her head. “We’re both human, we share common ancestry. We value things like freedom, intelligence, life, children…peace. Do you not value those things?”

  “Of course I do, but what I don’t value is unbridled use of technology and what it does to humanity. I already told you about what the Transcend did with their picotech experiments. The billions that died from their hubris. Yet, you’ve still sided with them.”

  Kent realized that his voice had risen and the Admiral shook her head.

  “Technology is a tool. Just as propaganda is a tool. Just as we all are. Every one of us is wielded for some purpose, what is yours? What does your President Kirkland really want?” she asked, her eyes imploring—it was an act Kent didn’t buy.

  This woman was no one’s tool. She was the puppet master.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’m going to tell you a story, tell you about what we really want here in New Canaan. Perhaps you will come to appreciate our point of view.”

  Kent sat back in his chair—as much as the restraints would allow. “This should be good. Proceed.”

  The admiral began to speak and Kent saw a look of longing grow in her eyes. “I grew up on the shores of the Melas Chasma, one of the great lakes that formed in the Mariner Valleys after Mars was terraformed. I used to stare at the rings around Mars at night, dreaming of traveling through the Sol System, and maybe beyond. They were beautiful, you know. Mars 1 and the MCEE…I’ve seen a lot of constructs since, but never anything to rival those. They had such class, such beauty. They were the first things we ever built of that scale, you know, as a species, that is. Mars 1 proved that we could conquer the stars, spread out and make the galaxy our home. No longer did we have to live on unstable rocks at the bottom of steep gravity wells.”

  The admiral paused and gave him a sad look. “But that’s all gone now. War borne of greed destroyed those rings—denying a legacy that should have been precious to all humanity—and smashed them into the planet below. From what I understand, it’s never been repaired. Mars is still a graveyard…a reminder of humanity’s first great genocide.”

  “Hardly the first,” Kent interjected. “Humanity has been wiping out sub-cultures forever. Did they fail to teach you that in your Martian schools?”

  Admiral Richards’s stare sharpened. “Marsian. It would seem they didn’t teach you enough in yours. And yes, we learned of all the horrors that humans and AIs have brought down on themselves and each other. But the destruction of Mars, and Earth afterward, was different. Two trillion humans and AIs died at the hands of the Jovians. Two trillion deaths and the loss of humanity’s homeworld and the first extraterrestrial world we ever terraformed.”

  Kent wondered if the emotion he heard in Admiral Richards’s voice was genuine. The enemy had disabled many of the mods the military had granted him, so he was unable to read her heartrate or skin temperature, but nothing in her demeanor appeared duplicitous.

  The thought suddenly caused him to wonder what had happened to Vernon, his strike force’s AI. The military AI had not been embedded in any of the soldiers, but rather encased in the tech-pack Kent had carried.

  Vernon must have been subverted by now. But if so, why was the admiral spending so much time with him? He didn’t voice the question, allowing her to continue.

  “But that was long ago, just like my dreams as a young girl were long ago. Mars is forgotten, barely a footnote in our people’s long journey into the larger universe. But I’ve not forgotten. Ironically, all I could think of back when I was young was how much I wanted to leave. How I wanted to see the Sol System, and then maybe the stars beyond. Now I’d give anything to stand on the Melas Chasma’s shores once more.

  “But I joined the military as soon as I hit the minimum age and got my wish. They took me from Mars and made me the woman I am today. I became their tool, the instrument of my superiors.”

  She looked sad, though there was still a fierce light in her eyes. Kent had to admit that this was not the interrogation he had expected. It was almost a confession.

  “I was a good
tool, too,” Admiral Richards continued. “I was sharp, and I cut deep. In the end, however, I was too good, too dangerous, and my superiors worried they could no longer control me.

  “They were right. I was no longer willing to be their instrument, but what choice did I have? I could have left the TSF and joined with the Scattered Worlds. I could see that war was coming in Sol, but I would just be trading one master for another.

  “No, the answer was simple. I had to leave Sol.”

  The admiral paused there and took a drink from a glass of water at her side.

  “Thirsty?” she asked and pointed to a dispenser in the corner.

  “Yeah, I am,” Kent replied.

  His cuffs unlocked from the table and Admiral Richards gestured to the dispenser. “I’m not your servant. Go get it yourself.”

  Kent stood and saw the two Marines in the room stiffen. He knew why Richards was doing this. Make him think she trusted him, like he was a friend and not a prisoner—as though he could forget his place with the two hulking soldiers in the room with them.

  Still, it was nice to stretch his arms, and he poured a glass of water, downed it, and then made a cup of coffee.

  “So, you decided to just run off and get away from it all, then?” Kent asked as he sat back down at the table.

  The admiral gave him a hard smile. “That’s one way of looking at it. I just wanted a simpler life, away from the madness that was Sol.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  Admiral Richards let out a rueful laugh. “I suspect you know. To be honest, it’s not been that bad. Sure, we’ve had some trouble, but we’ve done a lot of good, too.”

  “Really?” Kent asked with a raised eyebrow. “The history books don’t really read like that. You used picotech to consume enemy ships in two systems, you made a black hole in the Bollam’s World System, which is slowly destroying the place.”

  “That’s certainly one way of looking at it. Except the Battle of Victoria was to save an entire people from what essentially amounted to slavery…though by then the threat had been upgraded to annihilation. We held off on using our picobombs so long as they were only targeting our military. The minute they went after the civilian population—that’s when we ended the fight.