by Kali Altsoba
ALERT! ALERT! THE CALMAR UNION IS NOW AT WAR WITH THE DAURAN COMMONS AND THE GRUN IMPERIUM. REPEAT. THIS UNION IS NOW AT WAR…
Loudspeakers and the GovNeb repeat orders and messages on an infinite loop, but Jan and Zofia tune them out. They’re still lying naked in bed, except both have on HUDs to look for individual call-up notices and detailed instructions coming in over the closed KRA and KRN milnebs. They know they have to get the Brigade into orbit, but if they stand up the ‘honeymoon’ is over, forever. They’re holding on to each private second that they can. It’s not really working.
Dauran and Grün militaries have put into action a secret invasion pact, separately but simultaneously hitting the last unoccupied Krevan worlds, seven Union moons and ten weakly-defended planets. The GovNeb breaks more news about rapidly unfolding invasions and huge naval battles in the easternmost systems.
There’s no escaping this wider, bigger war, the Fourth Orion War. Now that it’s here, everyone in 10th Commando and 1st Division want right back into the fight. “We’ve been out of it too long already,” Jan says under his breath.
He knows his brief time of joy and rest is over. “Ah well, at least I have my Penelope by my side, not locked far away in a house full of lustful suitors. As he did.” He’s been reading up.
He looks over at Samara, hyper-alert in a corner from all the clarions and the loudspeaker still blaring rolling warnings and threats in the street outside. More and more, Jan thinks about Ulysses. He doesn’t realize that he just did so out loud, confusing but also amusing Zofia.
“Whose Penelope, my sweet. Is there something about someone you’re not telling me?” Zofia has a wicked grin on. She gives him a hard poke in the ribs.
Jan leaps up and paces the room, naked. He places calls to all battalion commanders and makes arrangements to muster 10th Commando Brigade at the foot of Orestes north military elevator in 30 minutes, exactly. Zofia stays lying in bed, Samara alongside her. She jumped into Jan’s warmed-up spot the moment he stood up, when Zofia winked her over.
Zofia strokes and calms Samara, whose nervous and upset at the clarions and loudspeakers and Jan’s obsessive pacing. Both watch him pace. Zofia listens, advises, calms him by not joining in frantic calls.
“There’s still time my love, we’re five minutes brisk walk from the elevator ourselves.”
He doesn’t hear. He’s not listening. He’s leaving her behind. He’s moving away from shore, pulling out to sea. Feeling salt-spray in his face. Listening to coarse cries of white birds.
“So it begins.”
Jan says it out loud as much or more to himself as to Zofia. He stops pacing, standing naked and unaware at the end of a cheap, creaky hotel bed where lie the only two creatures he truly loves. He looks out a small, grimy window at a bleak dawn breaking over the lunar horizon.
“Ulysses can’t go home yet, but at least he has more warships and now also powerful friends alongside. Now he must begin the long and dangerous voyage that lies ahead.”
“What are you talking about, my love?” she asks, now genuinely puzzled and worried about the stern and grim look sweeping over his face. Changing him in darkening ways. Pulling him farther from her bed, away from this room, maybe from her. ‘Is that the sea I smell?’
“Nothing. Forget about it. Just something General Constance said to me when I went to see her and she gave me this command, before we left Toruń and Genève.”
He shrugs in that very Krevan way a new Grand Alliance of hundreds of billions that is already forming worlds away will come to know so well, a slight raising of his shoulders and tilt of his head to one side that says, better than words, “il faut en fenir.”
It must be endured, so let’s all just get on with it, yeah?
Jan knows a man can die but once and that he owes no callous or fickle god that death. He knows that he has an ideal and a cause to serve forevermore, a purpose far beyond himself. He chooses to accept it, to embrace it. He does it right here and now, in this naked moment in a cheap hotel with his love Zofia watching and worried at the pain she sees in his face. He decides that he’ll pay whatever personal price he must to honor General Amiya Constance, the brave and brilliant woman left behind to die on Genève. His general, who made him realize that the time of personal honor and doubt and death and all small causes is over. Maybe the time for love, too.
Jan recommits to Amiya Constance and to war, under his breath he retakes the solemn vow he first took in the sweetgrass without knowing it, that he renewed in Toruń Wood. That he swore yet again standing in ash rain waiting for the mine to blow, waiting to lead Madjenik into The Crater and home to Toruń. That he swore to his general he will fulfill, even though it means drifting alone for years on storm-tossed and starry seas with only white birds for company.
A solemn vow to do whatever he must to fulfil his mission, maybe even his destiny, if there ever was such a thing. Whatever he must, to lead his people out of exile back to their lost and stolen worlds. Even if it costs him everything. Even if the price of leading is losing Zofia.
“OK, it’s forgotten. Really weird, my darling, but forgotten.” Zofia looks worried as she watches him stare out the window up to the stars, seeing the stiffness in the muscles of his back, tension in his neck and shoulders. ‘Is he pulling away from me again? I couldn’t bear it!’
Constance gave him the Ulysses mission in her wood-tower office, a clean and spartan room redolent of oak and teak and life. He had just challenged her decision to sacrifice herself, pleaded that she was the leader their people needed, not him. Begged that she not go out to the berm to die, that she leave on the Exodus fleet in his place. She dismissed him with a wave.
“Here I stand,” she said. “I can do no other. I shall die before the berm. You will not. A useless death is not a luxury to be indulged by you. For you are cursed to command, to lead our people in their coming exile. Jan Wysocki, your fate is worse than mine, for you are doomed to live so you may lead. Live then, lead us so that we may fight on forever and Krevo will not die.”
He didn’t understand. Not before she did go to die outside the berm, to get Alpha away, to get him off Genève, to lead an exile army lost in foreign stars. He knows now. Her prediction of a far wider war is coming true, a war where Krevans have already suffered total defeat but are no longer alone. A war fought to defend and to liberate, in alliance with the other free peoples of Orion who are at last awakened to their peril. If only by the black jackboot kicking in their door.
A war to the end, an absolute war with no limits asked or offered before it’s over. He knows now it will come to that, that he will have to commit terrible crimes to defeat not one but two vast tyrannies. He knows also that he can do it. That he can be the cruel leader his people need him to be. That if it comes to it, he will draw his knife across the throat of whole worlds.
Standing naked before his past, his future, and all the Thousand Worlds, he says it all over again. As he did that day in her wood office with incense on salt-air, white bird calls and flapping canvas in his ears. He says what she made him say out loud to her. He promises Amiya Constance that he will take and carry the torch she hands him as she goes to die at Toruń’s berm.
He finally realizes that Zofia is staring at him, hard. Deeply puzzled. Worried. That even Samara looks worried. He doesn’t want to upset either of his ladies.
“Right, time to get dressed and back to the Brigade. HQ is yelling that the Wreckers are gonna get combat-baptized into this new war tout suite, dropped right into an ongoing fight with the DRA on Minotaur. Confirmed: that’s in the Portus Cale system.”
“Alright,” Zofia says, concealing her worry. Then a mischievous-kitten look comes over her face. Red curls freed from bondage cascade freely down to her shoulders, pouring over the pillow where she rests her chin in her left hand, leaning on an elbow. “But there’s something I want you to remember over the next few days and weeks, however long we’re apart this time.”
He turns around, then
beams in lusty admiration as Zofia reaches down her right hand and pulls back the cheap cotton sheet she’s lying under, revealing all her naked body. He marvels yet again at firmly erect nipples rising out of the curves of her small but perfect breasts, at her flat belly and tiny navel. Her lithe calves taper provocatively, bent outward at the knees to show off her athletic thighs, and more. Her red diadem is shaved to an exclamation point, guiding his lustful gaze to the pink wetness wanting him and waiting for him between her legs. She arches her back, thrusting slowly upward and toward him. He feels a flush of blood in his neck and face. She sees him harden, standing naked. And laughs, just as she did that night wearing a red dress.
“OK we can leave now.” She laughs again, grinning widely as she leaps out of the narrow bed and starts to dress. He dresses, too, but has a little difficulty getting his pants on.
Inside two minutes she stands before him in beige. Not as Zofia, new-found love of his life, but as Major Jablonski, his top battalion commander, attired in full combat kit. Silver oak-leaf clusters shine from a crisp yellow-collar sealed tightly around her throat. A black pistol is strapped to a wide belt that hugs her narrow waist. He’s seen her shoot it in anger and on target, smoking one Grün youth, then another. A black-diamond dirk is snugged into the top of a sleek and even blacker combat boot. He’s seen her use that, too, cutting a boy’s throat in a sweetgrass meadow, another in an ashen forest, and again at The Crater. He used to hate that knife.
He loves everything about her now, even the knife. Especially the knife.
Minotaur
“Mr. Fontaine, make for the first bohr-zone. We’ll leave Orestes cold but come out of the last jump in the series hot. The other end of this five-day string is Minotaur. That LP is sure to be contested from the moment we arrive. We’ll have to jump fast into Portus Cale system, then fly right into the tunnels on Minotaur. The ACU will hold them open. Let all the captains know.”
“Aye ma’am, entering first jump coordinates now.” Émile thinks it an ill-omen to fly hot as Icarus into the labyrinth at Minotaur. ‘Didn’t he and his father, Daedalus, build it so that King Minos could sacrifice youths and maidens to a great bull? And we’re bringing thousands more of both right to him!’ Well, youths maybe. There are no maidens anywhere onboard anymore.
Magda knows it’s a desperate mission, probably one-way for most or all the ships and troops under her command. It’s been just over half-a-day, and already reports are that the war is going badly for the newly formed and hastily proclaimed “Grand Alliance.” Minotaur may have fallen by the time Wildfire gets there, five days from now. It’s being bombarded hourly.
Enemy are falling through the skies over 22 Calmari or Krevan worlds, border communications are all jammed or broken, hundreds of ships are missing, space docks have been blown up by saboteurs or fifth columnists, military and civilian casualties are being reported as “extreme.”
The enemy has achieved total surprise at every level possible: psychological, political, strategic, operational, and tactical. What’s unfolding is more than a disaster. It’s a catastrophe.
She thinks: ‘This isn’t a combat jump, it’s politics. Wildfire is being sent into a hopeless fight for a moon sure to be lost, with too few ships and marines. We’re not a savior armada or a real effort to rescue the moon’s defenders. We’re a gesture. Gods, I’ve had enough of losing!’
“Mr. Fontaine, open all coms.”
“Open.”
“Attention. Commander’s message to all Wildfire captains and crews, and to KRA in the troopships. We are heading to Minotaur in the Portus Cale system, as you have been told. It is under heavy attack. You may also have heard whispers that this is an impossible mission, that we have no hope of success. To that I say only this: the word impossible is not Krevan. Aklyan out.”
Weeks later, Calmari Defense Minister Georges Briand is told about Aklyan’s mission message by Admiral Gaétan Maçon, who is fed the story by the War Government on Harsa but checks and confirms it personally. Briand says: “Bring me that woman’s file, immediately.”
***
A resentful fear grew across Calmari worlds months before the betrayal of the Peace of Orion by what the GovNeb is calling the “Dual Powers,” the alliance of aggression of the Hermit Empire and Imperium. Many watched and worried that their Union might go to war in behalf of Krevo, might be dragged into a stupid fight that most Calmari said was none of their business.
“They’re OK, I ‘spose, them Krevans. I’m awful sorry they got themselves invaded, but what’s that got to do with us?” says a systems engineer. He’s going to end up on Amasia, arctic front. Posted to Fort Desolation, whose frozen ramparts will be under permanent RIK siege.
“I got four little ones at home. I can’t be marching off to fight for strange places I never even heard of before. Where the hell is Brno?” She’s a mother and a medical technician. She’ll be drafted into the Cyber-Surgical Corps and serve on the hospital ship Esperanza del Mar. She’ll travel to more of Orion than anyone she’s ever met. She’ll hardly ever see her kids.
“I don’t need no war, neither. I just got into New Beijing Academy. Gonna study celestial mechanics and get a pilot’s license. Fly the five moons of Amasia and all the Lagrange routes!” She’ll graduate ACU Skyforce instead. She’ll die flying her first mission, over a southern desert in support of a failed attack by 7th Assault ‘Enthusiastic’ Division. Nothing will be left of her but ashes.
“Who wants to die for Krevo? I’ll not send my sons and daughters to fight in a farfolk war, so far away and all about causes and arguments between odd peoples we don’t know.” It’s a prominent lawyer. He’ll be drafted to write wills for the ACU, including for two of his sons. One will be killed on Glarus. His will is later contested. ACU says they can’t pay if they can’t find a body.
“You got dat right, Papa. None ‘aw ower bus-i-ness, nope.” A mechanic. He’ll serve with an armtrak unit. He’s going to win a medal for valor when his base is overrun by Daurans.
“Still, awful sorry for them Krevans. Nobody deserves ta be invaded like that.” His wife. She’s going to be very worried, very lonely, and very proud. But mostly lonely and worried.
“Ya sure, yur true on dat.” A machine tool-maker. He’ll be designated Essential War Worker and officially exempted from all off-world military duty.
“Robert Hoare will keep us out. He’s a good man, the PM. Loves peace.” Unknown. Missing civilian, presumed killed in a Dauran orbital bombardment. Possibly enslaved.
“Fee, fy, foh, fum! Stop beating your silly drum!” A poet. Not very good at it. Hates war. Will work in the Domestic Morale Bureau at MoD. That’s propaganda work. He’s going to love it. It means anything he writes gets on the memex and everybody is forced to see it, like it or not.
“All this war talk is giving me a headache.” Won’t last long. Decapitated on Portus Cale.
“Shut the fuck up! Everybody knows there isn’t going to be a war!” Still in school when he said it, wants to leave home. Thinks he hates his father. Will volunteer for the Marines on day one. Accepted.
Calmaris on the five sanctuaries and other frontier worlds where Krevan refugees arrived were least sympathetic. No one wanted to see poor, distasteful, disruptive, distressed fugitives in their streets. Farfolk who didn’t seem grateful enough for the real generosity shown them in the sanctuaries, which they took over like they weren’t even Union territory. Then the refugees went off-base and dared to “mix with decent Calmaris.” They had an awful lot of guns and took them everywhere, even though local laws said they couldn’t. They were rough-trade and looked it. It was especially resented that so many local girls seemed attracted to rougher Krevan boys who swaggered into towns near the camps looking for sex or trouble, and usually finding both.
That was before. Most petty tension dissipates as the Dual Powers push ever-deeper into Calmari space, overrun and occupy more frontier systems. It fades along with departing fighters in light-blue weaves wh
o go to war alongside old fighting-hands wearing pale-beige. Most of it, but not all. There’s too much death and suffering not to blame Krevans for some of it. After all, war followed them into Calmari space and systems, where all the news is bad and getting worse.
***
Minotaur is pitted with sharp-lipped impact craters from eons of airless pounding. It’s also laced deep below its surface with an immense network of tunnels and caverns, enormous lava tubes from its primeval molten period. These were further excavated over many decades, until today hundreds of larger tubes serve as pumped-air living spaces linked via artificial side tunnels, all sealed with vacuum-tight bulkhead doors. A serial chain of larger caverns connects to a low-gravity research center prosaically named ‘Lava Center’ by the engineers who built it. A small residential city is next door, carved out of pliable volcanic rock-tuff. It’s more poetically dubbed “Ellora” by residents. It’s emptied of civilian researchers and families now. They all fled the minute the Dauran invasion fleet appeared in Portus Cale system. Skedaddled real damn fast.
