“I asked for Stone,” Eric growled.
“Kate can handle it,” she said and watched her friend enter the simulator room. “She gets bored. Stone probably wanted her out of his hair.” Not that Stone had hair. He shaved his head every morning.
“She’s undisciplined.”
Gina shrugged. So what else was new?
“You don’t get it, do you?” Eric said. “Even after Callendri, you still don’t get it.”
“I guess not,” she said. Callendri? What did he have to do with Kate?
Roberto Callendri had been a recruit who had attacked her during a training op after accusing her of setting him up to fail. He had cracked, had what they in the regiment called a whigout. Kamarl Dolinski, Roberto’s best friend, had to put him down. Capped him with his pulser with a shot to the head at close range. Took Roberto’s head clean off.
“Viper stability is contingent upon discipline, Gina. We train continually, and use harsh training methods all to keep us stable. Too much time to think is not good for us. You should know this by now, how can you not know this? What, you think after all this time I need more training? You think I still get in those coffins every week because I don’t know my job?”
“Well...” Gina said but she hadn’t thought about it. Eric did still run sims occasionally, but not every veteran did. “Never considered it.”
Eric opened the exterior doors and they marched shoulder to shoulder toward the admin building where the regiment’s offices were. The General had his office there, close to the operations room, which was just another name for a big conference room. It had tons of tech; holotanks, comm equipment, big screens... all for planning missions. She had been in there before, but only for training. She’d heard that the General was starting to rotate personnel through admin to round out his viper’s education. A good idea, she thought, as long as she didn’t get stuck in an admin position long term. She shuddered at the thought.
“You can’t be comparing Kate with Roberto.”
“I can’t?” Eric said. “Why? Because she’s your friend?”
“No, but they’re nothing alike.”
“If you think that, you’re not paying attention. They don’t have the same background, that’s true, but they’re alike in other ways. Kate follows only the rules she likes, and listens to only those she considers worthy according to her own criteria. She doesn’t follow orders because they’re orders, or because they come from officers placed over her, she follows them because in her estimation not doing so would inconvenience her in some way. If I gave you an order that you didn’t like, you might protest it briefly, but then you would follow it. Kate though would not protest; she would smile and nod and might even salute me, but then she would go off and do it her way.”
Gina was surprised that Eric knew Kate that well. He was bang on, but his final estimation of her was way off. Yes, Kate would do things her way, but the job would get done. Anyone who had seen her in action could not doubt that. If not following orders as if they were gospel was the only thing needed to label a viper as a rogue unit, half of the regiment would be scrapped.
Colonel Flowers was recruiting new men even now, and toughness wasn’t the only prerequisite. He was looking for tough skilled soldiers who could think for themselves; soldiers who could be relied upon to get the job done. Soldiers like Kate in other words. No, Kate was no rogue. If she had one fault, it was her single-mindedness. She could be too ruthless. The mission or goal that she set for herself came first with her. She was a bit like Eric and the other veterans in that way, but Eric didn’t see it. It was too close to home.
In a situation where achieving a mission’s aims meant sacrificing lives, Kate would not hesitate. Gina didn’t like that about her friend, while at the same time she couldn’t help but admire Kate’s dedication to her mission. In Kate’s place, Gina knew she was more likely to sacrifice herself than others. A weakness in her perhaps, but that’s just how she was wired.
“You just don’t like her because she reminds you of you,” Gina said with a grin at his scowl. “It’s true! All you old timers think alike. Mission first, nothing second. Well, Kate came off the assembly line with an attitude that could have been cloned from Sergeant Stone. She even talks like him, and you get along with Stone just fine. If you want to label Kate a rogue, you’ll have to scrap half the regiment and all the veterans.”
Eric shook his head. “There is a difference. The old timers, as you call us, have the Alliance’s best interests as their focus. Kate only has Kate’s best interest as hers.”
Gina felt she should defend her friend, but she didn’t know how. She knew Kate thought of things outside of herself. She had helped with Shima and had been more than happy to do it. She had joined Stone’s intel section, and was excited about the work she was doing there. Mission planning, she assumed, because it was all hush-hush stuff and Kate wouldn’t talk specifics. Kate couldn’t carry out any of the things she helped to plan until she was fixed, but she could help the rest of her team by designing well thought out operations.
“I don’t agree,” Gina said, and would have to content herself with that. Kate would prove him wrong in the end, and that was all that really mattered. “Any idea what this mission is about? Anything on the books you can think of?”
Eric accepted the subject change. “There’s always stuff on the to do list, you know that.”
Gina nodded. People too. People on a viper’s to do list weren’t on it long though, like those guys on Thurston. Yi Zhang and his brother Hu Zhang (AKA Daniel King). They had been backers of the terrorist outfit euphemistically called the Freedom Movement. Daniel King had been part of the not so loyal opposition in government on Thurston, and had stabbed his own people in the back by supporting the bombers with the eventual aim of taking over the government himself. He and his brother had suffered a mischief not long before Eric left that world. Eric was instrumental in pulling the Freedom Movement down. Gina knew because she had been one of roughly a thousand Marines on planet at the time and had helped him destroy them utterly when they attacked the capital en masse.
“Anything stand out to you?”
Eric shook his head. Oh well, they were nearly there. No doubt the General would explain.
They entered the admin building and headed straight for the General’s office. Quite a few of the offices were in use again, and Gina glanced through open doors at the bustle. There was a lot of brass concentrated here and she wondered what they all found to do. Remembering how empty this place had been before, it was as if the regiment had been some slumbering leviathan, but one that was definitely awake again now.
Eric led Gina into Burgton’s outer office. He took Raph’s salute and then they were ushered into the General’s presence. They saluted him, but he wasn’t alone. Sitting before the desk was a trim smartly dressed older woman Gina had never met. Eric knew her though. He greeted her like a friend before turning to introduce Gina.
“Lieutenant Gina Fuentez, this is Liz Brenchley.”
The woman stood to shake Gina’s hand and then took her place again.
“Liz heads up our Department of Industry,” Burgton said. “She’s here for a couple of reasons. Your mission will be to escort and protect her among other things, but we’ll come to that in a moment.”
Gina nodded. An escort mission to where, and to do what? She could do it in her sleep but why her? Eric said that the General had asked for her specifically. She couldn’t think why. A simple escort mission could be handled by anyone in the regiment.
“Your platoon, where are we?” Burgton said. “I know what you’ve been having them do since you squared away our Shan situation. Well done with that, by the way. Shima left us very excited about the colony here and I think that could help us in future. I doubt we’ll have any issues with volunteers.”
Gina nodded. “Shima loved site five, the one we used for her surprise vacation. Varya and Kazim were already leaning that way due to location and the mountains
, but I think Shima will push them over the line into backing it before the elders.”
“We won’t know anything more for a few months. It will take Shima around three to get home,” Burgton said. “But I’m sure we’ll hear back before the year is out.”
Gina nodded again. The Shan had only been gone a few weeks. “You asked about my platoon, sir. Are you deploying us?”
“No. I want to know what they’ll need while you’re away.”
So the mission was a one unit operation? That made her wonder about it even more. Gina shook off her preoccupation and laid out her thinking regarding her men.
“I’m happy with progress, sir. All four squads are coming together nicely. I’m not really surprised as most of them have fought together before, and all of them trained with me under Colonel Flowers. I thought there might be trouble when they transferred over from their old units, but that at least turned out to be a worry over nothing.”
“So the next step is...?” Burgton pressed.
“More training. I want to start them on squad and platoon simulations next. I have them in simulators every third day right now, and that’s probably about right for individual training. When they go to the larger squad and platoon missions, once or twice a week should be enough. I want them to get used to working as a larger unit again. This last year we’ve been fighting in penny packets a lot... no insult intended, sir.”
Burgton smiled. “The truth doesn’t offend me, Gina. There was no help for it with so many in hibernation. So, if I were to send you on an operation, you would have no concerns for your platoon?”
“I didn’t say that, sir. I should oversee their training regardless, and hell, I need some myself.”
Eric snorted.
Burgton glanced at Eric, but didn’t ask. “And if I were to assign someone to oversee them for you... Dolinski let’s say?”
“Then I would say my platoon was in good hands, sir, but Kamarl has his own platoon to handle. The way I hear it, 2nd needs even more work than 1st does.”
“True. You have a suggestion?”
“Bump Hiller to cover for me, just until I get back.”
“Done,” Burgton said decisively. “Moving on to why you’re here. Liz and I have a job for you both. On the surface it’s a simple escort mission, and as I said, you get to protect Liz while she oversees her team. Why only two units, you’re thinking. Well, it’s not because I don’t value Liz or the mission. They’re both vital, and I mean that. Liz is a personal friend, but it’s her work that makes her indispensable to me.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Love you too, George. Seriously, no one is indispensable. My deputy can do my job, or I’d find a new deputy.”
“Your job yes, but Oracle? No.”
Liz cocked her head, but then acknowledged his point with a nod. “I’ll give you that one.”
“Oracle?” Gina said.
“That’s a long story,” Burgton said. “One I’m going to tell you but in the operations room. We have a mission to plan.”
Burgton led them all out of his office and down the corridor to the operations room. No one was using it so they had it to themselves. Burgton waved them toward the main tank at the centre of the room. He worked the controls himself, and the room’s lights dimmed as the tank came alive.
Gina frowned at the planet displayed and at the legend below it in bold text. Kushiel. Kushiel? Her eyes widened as she remembered why the name was familiar. It was The Kushiel of the Accords. The planet was bombarded from orbit into an uninhabitable waste by the Merkiaari. The Accords banning orbital bombardment and the use of atomics in atmosphere had been a direct response to what happened to that luckless world. What possible use could there be for the planet now?
Burgton turned to address them. “Here we have Kushiel, bombed by the Merki from orbit with nuclear and kinetic ordnance over a prolonged period. All life extinguished by them and the planet ruined forever as a warning, we assume, against further use of atomics in atmosphere against them. I say we assume, because we’ve never managed any dialogue with them about Kushiel or any other subject. But, we got the message. The Accords were written, and all Alliance members signed it. We don’t know what the Merki think about that, but neither side has used orbital strikes or atomics in atmosphere against the other since then. And no other planets have suffered Kushiel’s fate, so we can assume they’re at least satisfied with it.”
Gina didn’t interrupt, but it wasn’t true that neither side had used atomics. Admiral Meyers had in fact deployed Zeus on Child of Harmony. Zeus missiles were atomics, though they were classed in the micro nuke range of weapons carried aboard fleet carriers. The risk of using them against the Merkiaari had been extreme. If the Merki high command somehow learned of it, the consequences could be dire. Fortunately, and probably a mitigating circumstance Meyers used to justify her decision, her ships had owned the system at the time, and the Shan elders had specifically requested the strike. By ensuring no Merki survived the experience, the details of how the victory was achieved had been hidden.
“That’s the background,” Burgton said and manipulated the controls. The image changed to a cityscape. “This is the capital city of the colony; obviously the images were taken long before the war.”
Gina nodded as image after image appeared. The city had been designed using an older colonial style—lots of stone walls and columns rather than the more modern but sterile steel and glass. She liked it. It reminded her of places she had visited while on leave. She’d chosen to visit Earth on her last leave as a Marine just before she was recruited into the regiment. She remembered the ruins of the original Washington DC on the shores of Crater Lake that had been preserved as a memorial. The final image that Burgton displayed was of a building that had an impressive dome, just like the broken Capitol building she had seen back then.
New Washington on Earth was the capital of the Alliance, but the architects of that city had turned away from the past and embraced wholeheartedly their concept of the future. Perhaps they had simply wanted to blot out the memory of Washington’s destruction at the hands of the madman Douglas Walden during the Hacker Rebellion, perhaps not, but by creating something completely different and separate from old notions of architecture they had also lost something. Steel and glass mega-scrapers, though technologically impressive, could never replace the heart swelling beauty of old weather-worn stone columns and domes. New Washington had no Capitol, no domes, just super modern mega-scrapers and needles... it made Gina feel a little sad. Romantic foolishness, she thought, but she did admire Kushiel’s old colonial style of architecture.
“Kushiel was governed as a republic, but one with a twist. Its colonial administer was an A.I named Sebastian, and it was he who was effectively the head of state.”
Gina gaped.
Burgton nodded at her surprise. “I don’t mean he was named president. Kushiel’s government had all the trappings of a republic as we understand it. No, I mean the A.I ran the colony’s infrastructure without outside input—even back then everything was mostly automated like today. They took things further by swearing the president in before him. In effect, Sebastian was the ultimate supreme court judge and guardian of Kushiel’s constitution.”
Wow. That was taking things too far, Gina thought. The A.Is were almost mythical beings to most people. They were a part of history. Even so, Humans had created them as helpers and even friends, not as some kind of Praetorian Guard policing their creators and deciding whether they were fit to govern.
“That brings me to this,” Burgton said and the holotank changed. “This is Oracle.”
Gina stepped closer to the tank. Oracle was a massive installation—she picked out a significant datum—built subsurface, 3km down. Under The Mountain then, had to be. It made sense. The geothermal power plant that serviced Oracle was even deeper. The central chamber drew her eyes. It was a stadium sized spherical void in the middle of the display and it told her what Oracle had to be.
“Good na
me for something designed to predict events,” she said quietly. Eric gave her a questioning look, but she didn’t explain. “I assume you didn’t sweat the ban on neural interface technology either?”
Liz shrugged. “Not so much. In for a few trillion, in for a few billion more.”
Gina winced. Trillions? Yeah, she could well believe that looking at all this. The installation itself, just the empty chambers would have cost many billions as deep as they’d had to go.
“What’s going on?” Eric said. “I seem to be the only one not in the know.”
Burgton raised a hand. “Gina knows a little of this because I confided in her on Child of Harmony for background before we went to pick up Shima. Oracle is Snakeholme’s A.I.”
“But the ban...” Eric began, but tailed off. “Sir, you’re risking too much. Building our own little fleet of ships, and our own weapon’s factory made sense even though it’s illegal as hell, but breaking the ban on A.Is and neural tech? If the Council learns of it, they’ll shut us down with nukes from orbit if they have to!”
“Calmly, Captain, calmly,” Burgton said. “There are reasons for everything I do, no matter how mad they may seem at first. Gina, the ban on neural tech has never been applied to us. Every viper ever built has neural interfaces because we need them to function. The regiment hasn’t been specifically excluded from the ban, but viper design implies it and the Council is well aware of that. That leaves the A.I ban. The technology isn’t under the ban, the software is. The Oracle installation is therefore safe.”
“Semantics,” Eric said angrily and Gina glanced at him worriedly. “You risk everything.”
Burgton looked at Eric coldly now. “You’ve been with me a long time, Captain Penleigh. You’ve seen some of the things I’ve had to do or order done to keep the Alliance safe and on course. You’ve been sent to carry out many of them. This is just one more of those things. It’s a little late to be growing a conscience, don’t you think?”
Eric stiffened, his eyes grown cold.
Merkiaari Wars Series: Books 1-3 Page 100
