by Kali Altsoba
In another paradox, they won’t see Alpha for two hours if they’re still holding roughly in the same patrol perimeter where Alpha can already see them. Images of the Krevan ships are still en route to the inner system, unlike light images of the NCU which arrive in a continuous stream two hours old.
Ten more NCU destroyers are in the outer system, at the leeward L2 of the lifeless rock where Alpha just appeared at the L1. In about 10 light minutes they’ll spot five small warships showing as orange on their threat displays, and accelerate hard to intercept. As far as NCU Authority is officially concerned, KRN ships are designated orange ‘friendly star nation’ on all threat displays. Not allied blue, but not hostile red either. The same is true on Alpha screens.
Ten minutes later, the NCU destroyers hear Resolve’s IFF confirm the intruders as KRN. Captain-to-captain exchanges that follow contact with the 10 destroyers are civil but no more. Quickly, they reach Alpha and take up position, three on either side and two more in front and behind. They’re holding a very tight pattern for a friendly escort. Something’s wrong.
Concern deepens on the Bridge of Resolve just under two hours later when the big NCU warships turn to rise at speed from the inner system. They’ll intercept descending Alpha at a combined 23% light-speed. The closing distance shortens time lag with each fresh transmission.
A rather stiff admiral on the Main Bridge of the older battleship NCU Aquarius starts with a hard demand. “You will open all ship’s logs to my inspection immediately. We must know whether ‘Alpha,’ as you call yourselves, was followed here by Kaigun warships.”
Working through the requisite light-speed coms delay, Magda assures the suspicious admiral that no pursuers followed once she left Genève over a Standard Week ago. “You’ll take my word on that, I’m sure, which I give to you as a KRN captain and commodore of this flotilla. Our logs are under security protocol. They will stay closed.”
He’s not happy about it, but he can’t force the issue. Not yet. Not on his own authority. He can and does order her as head of the local NCU Authority to the space dock at Harsa, a warm terraformed moon in the deep interior of the Nova Cincinnatus system.
“Harsa was set aside as a sanctuary for you Krevan refugees.” He says ‘Krevan’ with a hint of sneer. “You’ll disembark all personnel on the sanctuary moon and register as refugees. The destroyers already with you will escort ‘Alpha’ down to Harsa ... umm ... for your safety.”
Magda listens through the delay to his repeated use of ‘refugees’ then says proudly: “All onboard these KRN warships are active-duty fighters and sailors. There are no refugees among us. We come here as old allies and friends. We are not allies in this new war, yet we remain and always will be friends of this great Union. As friends we will accompany your escort to Harsa.”
Her riposte meets stone silence for several minutes past the light-speed delay of the laser coms. Then the curt admiral breaks silence with a warning. “As my government has told yours, all refugee ships are welcome to harbor at Harsa and four other designated sanctuaries. Any and all warships will register and remain in space dock pending further designation. All active-duty military, except for skeleton crews needed to maintain ship integrity, will disembark moon side.”
Strike three. When the admiral abruptly cuts off all further coms Magda says to Émile: “Let’s make it clear right now XO, we’ll not reduce ship’s crew by a single sailor when we reach the moon. Everyone in KRN uniform stays onboard. Pass the order along to the other captains.”
“If I may, captain, I didn’t expect our initial reception to be so, well, frosty. I hoped that we might find allies here, but clearly we Krevans are more alone now than ever.” She senses that he needs more words, that his disappointment at this weak denouement for Alpha is profound.
“This is not our ally, not yet anyway. This mighty Union and power is still asleep to the danger to itself and to decency in Orion. But nor is it our enemy. This admiral who rises in a battleship to meet us and sends his destroyers to surround and escort us, is not an enemy. He is the worried gatekeeper of a cautious friend, upset that armed farfolk are knocking at his door.”
“I can understand that.”
“The Wolf bays outside his fences and he fears we are leading the pack to his open barns, bringing war to these systems too.” Sotto voce she adds, “and he will come XO. This war will not be contained. Yet keep hope for us. The day of our revenge will come, too. We’ll return to our stolen worlds with Ulysses to listen and to lend aid as his red bow sings our song of vengeance.”
Émile doesn’t understand. This time it’s Magda who doesn’t have the time to explain it. “Something General Constance told me before we left Genève. That one day we’ll stalk The Wolf back to his lair, kill him and go home. If she’s right, our cargo’s far more precious than you can know, Mr. Fontaine. But today is not that red day. First, we take our people down to Harsa.”
She switches on the All-Ships coms link. “Alpha will secure weps. Power down lasers and empty and seal all missile tubes. I want no mistakes or friendly fire incidents, people. We’re here and we’re going to finish this Exodus mission without mishap or tragedy. All ships head to Harsa. Obey all instructions from our NCU escorts. Let’s take our people to sanctuary.”
Exile
Alpha is escorted into space dock by NCU warships and crews nervous with fresh reports of Kaigun spies and Kempeitai saboteurs. There are confirmed sightings of phantoms crossing into Calmari border systems, that several tried to slip past spaceyard electronic-nets to penetrate to the wharves where NCU warships are parked in long rows. The whole Union is in a state of apprehended crisis. Tensions are rising in the government, in city streets wherever ethnic Grünen show, and around family dinner tables where the politics of war divide young from old, the angry from the fearful, and the self-righteous from everyone. An old friend welcomes Krevan warships and warriors fleeing to sanctuary at Harsa, but not warmly. And many still think, not wisely.
Alpha’s small warships pull in trailing fluids and gases from unrepaired battle damage. All three are cramped and packed with tired and irritable troops. The two converted troopships are only slightly better off, their air foul from overused heads despite constant sterile recycling.
The original flotilla of seven small ships split in two as it left burning Genève, each half fighting separate actions and taking different paths through the Kaigun pickets to bohr away. To the relief of Magda Aklyan, she finds Captain François Archambault and all four destroyers of Beta strike force waiting in orbit to reunite under her command. She smiles as she embraces him in the old manner, with a kiss on both cheeks. ‘He does smell like brine! All seashells and sand.’
There were no pickets waiting for Beta as Archambault hot-bohred away from the gas giant L4. His route was more direct after that, so he pulled his half-squadron into Harsa four days before Magda arrived. He’s been defying and delaying the admiral’s disembarkation orders ever since. Now she tells him to let all KRA go to the moon, but to keep all KRN crew on alert status.
Nine ships release packed infantry to the surface via Harsa’s quick, very short elevator. Reunions are, well, quite enthusiastic. Even rather athletic. There’s a lot of hugging and kissing and promises of intercourse to follow soon, before officers order scattered units to reassemble and sort into designated barracks. There’s angry grumbling until the troops are told they can head out. They move into the city in search of bars and any and all kinds of trouble. KRA officers stay off the streets and out of bars, leaving both to loud, carousing rankers and NCOs. The officers instead pair off by gender, sexual inclination or orientation, and head directly to cheap hotels.
Not KRN officers, who stand their stations onboard their ships in crisp wheat-uniforms, watching with a mix of disgust and envy as dirty, happy soldiers debark. Grumbling sailors are also denied shore leave by Magda Aklyan, who knows it will be more than hard to get them back onboard if their host decides to intern instead of guest-host
her crews and warships. The envious sailors hold in geosynchronous orbit over the tropical pleasures beckoning to them from the warm moon they see outside the Main Scuttles, or with faces hard-pressed against lesser viewports. They listen as the Harsa memex entices them moon-side like a lustful siren, singing to them languid songs from atop a slippery rock, bare-breasted and promising perfect tropical sex on a white sand beach.
Once moon-side, soldiers forget about the stranded sailors. Even Jan forgets. As soon as his troopers are taken care of he rushes out to find and apologize to Zofia. He’s ready to beg her in front of all Madjenik to take him back, if that’s what it takes. He expects that it will. ‘I haven’t been this godsdamn nervous since my first date in grade school on Genève. My knees are weak!’
She jumps into his arms while he’s still half-way through a heartfelt and truly groveling apology. “You’ll finish later,” she says, kissing him full on the mouth as he pulls her against his chest and hardening loins. “Now, show me how very sorry you are!” So he does, and then again. Good to her word, Zofia later makes him kneel before her and complete his mea culpa. Twice.
They only stop love-making because they can’t stop laughing, as Samara jumps onto the bed and pushes Jan off Zofia with her cold, wet nose. Later, she tries to make her master rise from his knees in front of this strange goddess he seems to worship. Samara accepts a bowl of mockmeat they give her in a corner of the tiny hotel room, and gulps it down. Then she lays her head on big front paws, sharp and angular ears erect and alert, looking with steel-gray-on-silver eyes jealously at the narrow bed where she’s not allowed. Where Jan lies naked again with Zofia.
Afterward, they have a long talk. Jan agrees that forbidding sex between them as officers was dumb. About the stupidest thing he’s ever done. “A damn fool idea,” Zofia agrees, “when the chance of us living longer than a few more days or weeks are past slim.” And that’s that.
For some it takes years to achieve intimacy, and even then they fail. For a lucky few it takes an hour or a day. Jan and Zofia fall in the mysterious middle. It took time and nerves and fear and courage to get to intimacy, but they know they’ll never escape from its embrace again. The thing they don’t know is how much time they have left, but no lovers ever truly know that.
***
“There’s a lot of sex going on down there,” Lev Tiva of Asimov says smilingly to Magda Aklyan, his eyes waltzing mischievously under thick but well-groomed brows. Alpha’s officers are all present at a briefing she calls on the flagship KRN Resolve. “So much love-making going on, we Krevans aren’t going to have enough room in the sanctuaries to hold all the new arrivals.”
“I agree with Lev,” François Archambault adds, playfully. “Magda, you’re going to have to ask the NCU Authority for a whole other moon, one with fewer beaches and lots more birthing chambers and nurseries.”
“Glad to hear it,” Magda rejoins, laughing lightly. “First bit of good news we’ve heard in a week at Harsa.” She stiffens. “Alright captains, down to business. Status reports, all ships.”
She’s invited all first and second officers to this real-time All-Captains Mission Brief, held in person and not over the holo-system on the Signal Bridge. ‘I hear that most of them did well. Just like Émile Fontaine, who was more than splendid.’ She glances at her young, intense First Officer sitting ramrod straight at the far end of the conference table.
‘Even those who didn’t do so well are going to have to, next time. This is a room full of future captains, if I have any say about it. We’ll need them all in this war. And many more.’
When the seven captains finish their single-ship reports she turns to Owoye Azazi. He’s scrunched with nerves, under a freshly-cropped, short afro he’s rubbing too briskly. He wears an unkempt, oily engineer’s uniform from which he’s self-consciously trying to remove a stain he noticed after the meeting began. It’s a tough one, so he gives up and returns to rubbing his head.
“I’ve asked the chief-of-engineers, Warrant Officer Owoye Azazi, whom I think you all know, to report on big picture repairs before we go into Executive Session to discuss upcoming mission priorities. Chief, the deck is yours.”
“Well captain,” he begins hesitantly, “as I predicted back at RCW-142, before we made the emergency jump away from them icebergs, there’s lots of micro-cracks in the heterodiamond plate and carbyne-shields of every ship that took a hit or near-miss back in the last leg of the run outa Genève. Biggest ones are in the asses of Asimov and Jutlandia. Oh, sorry captains.”
“That’s fine, chief. Continue.” Tiva gives a big, bushy grin. Azazi served on Asimov before he transferred to Resolve. They’re old and good friends.
“We’ve bin’ working on plate repair and engine overhauls as top priorities. Key exterior and other structural damage ken be repaired right here at Harsa’s small yard. ‘Bout another week is all. After that, we’ll work inside on the smaller stuff. I got short crews on that now.”
Rutger Metsalaer, captain of Guépard, breaks in. “How’s cooperation with our hosts?”
“They’ve bin real good to us, the grunts in the yards anyways. Not like when we first got here and they weren’t real friendly. Things ‘re lookin’ up. Made some friends. We’re engineers.”
The chief goes on to detail external repairs on every ship. The warships Triomphant and Resolute are free of outer battle damage, as is the troopship Warsaw. All the rest have holes of one kind or another, especially Asimov. He closes with an update on the converted Grün liners, now recommissioned as KRN troopships.
“Warsaw and Jutlandia are being completely over-armored and refitted with permanent berths, maken’ ‘em into real troopships. Not so many wood bunks or so cramped, but safer for anyone tied into a bunk if we ever havta maneuver again like we did tailin’ it outa Genève.”
“You mean during The Gauntlet,” says Émile. “That’s what we’re calling Alpha’s run to the L2, I mean in the official combat log.”
“Sure, if you say so, sir. That one. Gotta say, ma’am,” Azazi turns sharply to Magda, momentarily forgetting his shyness, “some of my lads and lasses will be sorry to see the wood bunks go. They like the smell. Even if some ground-hugger boys and girls got wood slivers up their backsides. Good thing most a ‘dem kept their weaves on, at least ‘till after the fight.”
Tiva can’t help it: “I’m pretty sure none of our friends in the KRA are wearing weaves any more. In fact, I’d lay good credits down that at this moment most aren’t even wearing pants.”
Nearly everyone grins at that. Tiva is encouraged to more: “A few trooper butts full of Torun pine slivers is the least of what could have happened, Chief Azazi.”
Captain Tura Dan of Warsaw speaks for all in the room. “I agree. We can admit it now: all of us were expecting far worse losses. It’s only thanks to Captain Aklyan that we didn’t suffer them.” She isn’t sucking up. She means it, and everyone in the room knows she’s exactly right.
“Hear, hear!” Captain Metsalaer and two first officers say it nearly at once. Archambault catches his old friend’s eye and nods his own affirmation.
“Decorum gentlemen. We’re officers here,” Magda admonishes. before relaxing and relenting. She gives the whole group a wide smile. “Team effort. So well done, everybody. Now, all but captains and first officers, dismissed. Exec Session. Mission need-to-know only.”
***
After a week in space dock Magda decides to accept Harsa Port Authority’s invite to her sailors, and their repeated and rising pleas for shore leave. She lets Alpha crews, but not officers, go to the surface in quarter shifts.
“As long as we always have three-quarters battle complement on every ship in the flotilla. We’re still at war, and I don’t trust the local admiral who heads NCU Authority.”
Sailors hop to the chance for R&R on the lush moon, where the KRA is hogging the best booze and rooms and is hardly ever reported to be in barracks, even to sleep. The officers try to do it alphabetically but bac
k down when they learn that all nine crews already drew lots, and hand over the agreed rotation lists. Those in the last shore parties watching everyone else leave are mocked: “Hey, we can’t guarantee that you Fourth-Quarters will find anything left when you get down there. We’re all awful hungry and thirsty, right boys?”
The G-Class star at the center of Nova Cincinnatus is parent to seven planets, but only Livy and its moon Harsa orbit in the warm zone and have free-flowing surface water. Livy is fully developed going back 1,600 years, but Harsa’s surface is only partly terraformed in a wide band around the equator, following a deep rift valley. It’s a massive wound-scar left over from an ancient collision that nearly cracked the moon in half. The rest of the surface is high mountains and saltless oceans. AI-bots reworked a controlled atmosphere, leaving it heavy and humid for the very few settlers who arrived later, and the even fewer who stayed. It rains a lot. Every day.
