“Me? No.”
“What about you, Jianjun?”
“What home? This is my home. You guys are my home.”
“What about you, Chati? You want to go home?”
Chati didn’t answer.
“It’s a game, Chati,” said Bingwen. “I’m not your real commander. I’m your pretend commander. We’re role-playing. Make-believe. You just need to pretend along with us. Because the people out there who are against us, those people are real. And if we aren’t the best and most unified unit in everything we do, they’ll win. Not us.”
“Every army needs a name,” said Chati. “A secret name. That only we know. We’ll play Colonel’s Li’s game, but the name will be our own.”
“What name?” said Bingwen.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Chati. “We’re Rat Army.”
CHAPTER 2
Ghost Ship
To: gerhard.dietrich%[email protected]/vgas
From: chin.li21%[email protected]
Subject: Re: no place for children
* * *
Colonel Dietrich,
I am delighted to learn that you have taken such a tremendous interest in the young men of the Commander Candidates Academy, an officially sanctioned school of the International Fleet. I fear perhaps that you may have been given some inaccurate information, however, and my hope is that I can clarify a few matters and put your mind at ease. My superiors at CentCom have already communicated with Rear Admiral Tennegard and Admiral Muffanosa and answered the concerns that you so dutifully raised with them. Admiral Muffanosa has since drafted his endorsement of the school, which I have attached for your records.
GravCamp is the International Fleet’s premier special-ops training facility, and the young men of CCA and I consider it a great honor to have access to the facilities. We assure you that we will not interrupt your training programs, as our intent is for the young men of CCA to be segregated from adults in all activities.
This academy is a grand experiment, to determine if the commanders of tomorrow can be prepared from a young age to one day lead the armies that will preserve and defend the human race, should the need ever arise again. We appreciate your full cooperation and look forward to meeting you in person when we arrive.
Respectfully,
Colonel Chin Li
Superintendent, CCA
* * *
There was little for Mazer to do all day on the transport other than read the reports coming in about the war. None of it was good: more ships destroyed, more lives lost, more operations failed, more squadrons decimated. Occasionally news of a victory would provide a brief flicker of hope, but then several days of more losses would extinguish the hope before it gained any momentum. The Fleet was losing the war. That was obvious. Not by a small margin. Not even by a wide margin. But by an ocean’s width. It wasn’t even close.
Mazer had never felt more useless and antsy. Marines were dying all over the system, and here he was stuck on a transport, twiddling his thumbs, doing nothing—neither with his combat skills nor with his mind. He had created a forum on the IF intranet where junior officers could share ideas and tactics and give updates not seen in the official sanctioned reports, but he didn’t have net access while on the transport, which meant he could neither learn from nor contribute to the forum’s contents. Several marines, sensing his frustration, suggested he pass the time reading from the transport’s digital library. But Mazer had no interest in crime novels or biographies. He wanted in-the-moment intel on the war: ship movements, seized asteroids, Formic anatomical studies, weapons advancements and challenges, anything that would give him a more comprehensive perspective on the state of the war. The meager daily reports that came in weren’t cutting it. They read like truncated telegram messages: casualty counts, ships engaged, coordinates. Just a string of hard numbers. Like a stock market ticker. No in-depth analysis. No academic observations of Formic tactics or strategies. Just unadorned raw data. To Mazer it felt like someone describing a painting simply by listing off the colors used.
In past conflicts, Mazer could turn to physical exercise to take his mind off the bad news and tedium. But the cramped confines of the transport denied him that as well. The exercise room was always crowded to capacity, and there was no wide-open space to practice zero G maneuvers. Worse still was the unwelcome fact that he was heading toward a training facility to fulfill a teaching commission. The IF was making him a teacher. Him. Someone who had trained his entire career for combat. War was what he was made for. He was as a Maori. The warrior mindset was as much a part of him as were his arms or his legs. And yet rather than using those skills in combat, he’d be stuffed in a classroom a few hundred million klicks away from any fighting.
It was maddening.
Kim was delighted, of course. Mazer’s status as an officer allotted him a small bit of data space every month to send home a brief message via laserline. It forced him to write painfully short emails. All he could communicate in the few words allotted was that he was still alive and moving away from the fighting, which was precisely what Kim wanted to hear. She would never forgive him if he somehow worked the system to put himself back in the fight, especially if anything happened to him. If he were killed after voluntarily diving into combat, she wouldn’t despise him, per se, but she would feel something harsh and ugly. Anger. Resentment. Pain that might not heal.
And yet, Mazer couldn’t shake the drive to get back into the field.
Could he somehow convince Colonel Li that GravCamp was the wrong fit for him? That he belonged on a warship?
It wouldn’t be a difficult argument to make. Mazer was not teacher material. He didn’t have the patience or the academic demeanor. That should be obvious to anyone. Nor did he have any interest in listening to himself drone on for hours on any subject, especially considering that there was no subject he felt especially qualified to teach. He was a marine. He was qualified to do marine things.
Which is why he was the first to volunteer to leave the ship when the opportunity unexpectedly arose.
It was nearly a month after the captain’s death, and the new captain, a Belgian woman named De Meyer, received word from CentCom that a destroyed IF warship in the outer rim needed investigating.
“You can’t go,” said Colonel Li when Mazer floated the idea. “The wreckage is six weeks away. You’d have to divert from the ship in a secondary vessel and catch up with us at GravCamp later. This is grunt work. We have over two hundred marines on this ship who have absolutely nothing better to do. The captain should send them.”
“The marines on this ship are mostly fresh out of basic,” said Mazer. “They’re young and inexperienced. That’s why they’re going to GravCamp. They don’t have the training for a mission like this.”
“You don’t even know what the mission is,” said Colonel Li.
“I can guess,” said Mazer. “An IF warship was attacked. But it clearly wasn’t completely destroyed or there wouldn’t be anything for us to investigate. I can also assume that it’s damaged beyond repair, or we’d be going to recover it. No one has mentioned the possibility of survivors, so I’m guessing it’s been wrecked for some time. Which means this isn’t a rescue operation. And yet this wrecked warship, for whatever reason, is deemed critical to the Fleet. Which leads me to believe that there’s intel or equipment on that ship that the Fleet feels is too valuable to abandon. Am I getting warm?”
“It’s both,” said Colonel Li. “Equipment and intel. Or better stated, equipment that collects intel. A recon drone. The ship is called the Kandahar. It was sent to the outer rim of the Belt five months ago to investigate the sudden disappearance of a few asteroids. Upon reaching a predetermined point in space, the ship sent the recon drone ahead to investigate. The ship was subsequently attacked by Formics. No survivors are expected. Two months later, the recon drone returned to and docked with the ship as programmed.”
“And now the Fleet wants to know what the drone learned,” said M
azer.
“There’s a data cube inside the drone,” said Colonel Li. “It contains all the data the drone collected on its reconnaissance. That’s the mission. Bring in the data.”
“We can’t access this drone remotely?” Mazer asked.
“A serious design flaw,” said Li. “Nor can we order the drone to come to us. It responds to a signature unique to the Kandahar. Like a homing pigeon.”
“If the drone found the ship,” said Mazer, “then the ship was emitting its homing beacon, which means it had some power after the attack. Did the Fleet receive any distress signals?”
“Not after the attack. The Kandahar got off a brief laserline claiming that they were under attack, but they went silent immediately thereafter.”
“Strange,” said Mazer. “Why didn’t they send a message when the Formics were on approach? The Kandahar should have seen the Formics coming well in advance. Why did they wait until the Formics were attacking to get a message off?”
“I’ve asked that same question,” said Li. “No one knows. CentCom is hoping the detachment can shed some light on that.”
“Whose mission is this exactly?” said Mazer. “Yours or the captain’s?”
“I have certain contacts at CentCom that keep me informed,” said Li. “But this is Captain De Meyer’s mission.”
“She’ll heed your recommendation if you give one,” said Mazer.
“I’m not going to send off my only other teacher,” said Li.
“There are very few permanent crewmen on this ship,” said Mazer. “All of them are support marines. Cooks, mechanics, flight assistants. They’re not ideal for a mission like this. Everyone else is green.”
“This mission doesn’t need a special-ops commando,” said Li. “It’s straightforward. Get to the Kandahar. Retrieve a data cube. Get back in the ship. Leave. A child could do it.”
“If this ship was attacked and catastrophically damaged, it’s unstable and unsafe,” said Mazer. “If Formics attacked it, they might still be in the vicinity. Plus, the ship may be filled with dead marines. We need to recover ankle tags. That needs to be someone used to the sight of death.”
“All marines should be used to the sight of death,” said Li. “Any marine who can’t take it shouldn’t be in the Fleet. And anyway, we have a crew manifest. We know who was on the ship. We know who died.”
“This isn’t about making a casualty report,” said Mazer. “It’s about respecting the dead. We collect the ankle tags to return to the families of those lost, if we can.”
“That’s not the mission,” said Li.
“No, sir, but it’s the decent thing to do if we’re there.”
“Fine,” said Li. “But you’ll take Bingwen and Nak with you. They’ll help you collect the ankle tags.”
Mazer stiffened. “Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You’re wrong. It’s a brilliant idea. This Colonel Dietrich at GravCamp is adamantly opposed to having young boys witness firsthand the atrocities of war. When he learns how Bingwen and Nak respectfully tended to the fallen, that frozen heart of his may soften.”
“Or he’ll be horrified that we made minors handle corpses.”
“As I said, every marine should have the fortitude to do so. And it’s important for a commander to understand that his mistakes have consequences. In war, poor leadership results in death, often in great numbers. Those are good lessons for future commanders to learn.”
“Bingwen has already seen too much death, sir,” said Mazer. “As has Nak.”
“You’re only reinforcing my belief that they’re ready for this assignment. I’ll inform the captain and begin preparations. I suggest you prepare as well.”
Bingwen and Nak were not disappointed by the news. But the other boys were.
“Why can’t we all go?” said Chati.
“Because one, your commanding officer has ordered you to hold your position on this transport,” said Mazer. “Two, the mission only requires a few people. Three, more marines on the selenop means more mass and thus more fuel. Four, the selenop can only fit a handful of people.”
The selenop, or the flying spider, was technically known as a TRAC, or Tender Rescue Assault Craft, a small vessel that could rush into a firefight to extract marines in need of quick rescue. The TRAC earned its nickname because it resembled a spider when its six anchor arms were fully extended and grabbing on to a landing surface, like a giant mechanical spider clinging to a wall.
The interior of the selenop had to be modified for the mission, as it wasn’t designed for long-distance flights. But the ship’s engineers worked around the clock to retrofit it with the equipment and accommodations the mission required. A week later, Mazer, Bingwen, and Nak climbed inside, detached from the transport, and diverted. The initial acceleration was a hard kick in the gut, but it wasn’t as bad as it would have been if Mazer had gone with other adults. Bingwen’s and Nak’s age and size required the navigational officer to design a flight that would put less strain on the passengers. The result was that Mazer and the boys would reach the Kandahar more slowly, but better that than kill them on the flight.
Six weeks on the selenop had felt like six weeks of solitary confinement. Mazer had never been on such a confined flight for so long, and the boredom and tedium were beyond overwhelming. The exercise equipment was at least available whenever Mazer wanted it, and he and the boys worked out for several hours every day. Mazer hated not knowing what was happening in the war. The brief reports that had come in to the transport, short as they were, now seemed like an encyclopedia of information. Here he had nothing.
Besides exercise, his only other diversion was the volumes of intel he had brought with him. Before setting out, he had downloaded everything that the Fleet had reported widely since the start of the war. All the many bits of intelligence pulled together. With this, Mazer built a model of the system and plotted where Formic attacks had taken place. He had known roughly what that map might look like, but it wasn’t until he had built the model and projected it in his helmet that he saw how comprehensive the Formic assault was. Traditional armies normally amassed large numbers of troops and vehicles before rolling across a landscape toward some military objective. But the Formics were spread out all over the system. Like seeds tossed in the wind.
That was the brilliance of the Hive Queen. She hadn’t swept into the solar system with a massive fleet, like a swarm of descending hornets or a volley of fired arrows. She had secretly sent tiny detachments of her soldiers—inside microships so small that no one had even detected them—to asteroids throughout the system. Then she had released her grubs and mined the rocks and built the warships right there in the asteroids. Plus, she had sent these microships with dozens of her eggs, which would grow and hatch in a hive inside the asteroid and then become the crews that would pilot the warships. In that sense, her army was exactly like seeds tossed into the wind, except instead of growing into plants, the seeds had grown into a fleet.
To Mazer’s surprise, Bingwen and Nak gave Mazer his space on the flight, allowing him to exercise and study his war notes without interruption. The selenop had a few small rooms, and Nak and Bingwen remained in their cabin and rarely came out. It was only at meals that they actually spoke.
“Colonel Li has an ansible,” said Bingwen when they were several weeks into the flight and gathered for dinner.
“I find that hard to believe,” said Mazer. “Maybe an admiral has an ansible. The Strategos and the Polemarch have an ansible. The Hegemon has an ansible. There’s probably one for every thirty ships in the Fleet. Probably less than twenty in existence. Why would Colonel Li have one?”
“Because he reports to someone who has an ansible,” said Bingwen.
“Who?” Mazer asked.
“I have no idea,” said Bingwen. “But it’s someone or a collection of someones who want to remain hidden. That’s why they gave him an ansible. So they could speak to him directly and instantly and not have to rely o
n the traditional laserline links, which are passed up the chain from CentCom and rely on relay operators throughout the system. Li’s superiors don’t want people to hear what they have to say and the intelligence they share. Nor do they want anyone knowing that they’re speaking to Li or that he is speaking to him. That’s the beauty of the ansible. You get a direct link to someone without normal IF lines of communication knowing about it. It’s a secret back channel, far more private than email, which can easily be intercepted.”
Mazer smiled. “And pray tell, why would Colonel Li need a secret back channel to a secret group of unnamed secret somebodies? Li is the superintendent of a school for twelve boys. He doesn’t command a fleet of ships.”
“I think he knew about the Kandahar before Captain De Meyer did,” said Bingwen. “Before the laserline came in with the instructions from CentCom.”
“You’re sure about that?” said Mazer.
“Not entirely sure, no,” said Bingwen.
“And do you have any additional non-evidence for your speculation?” Mazer asked.
“Colonel Li gave us an assignment,” said Nak. “That’s what Bingwen and I have been working on in our cabin all this time. He ordered us to investigate how the Fleet was promoting its officers and what criteria was being used to give men and women command. He said a large portion of commanders within the Fleet were not fit to hold the command positions they have. He said the Fleet was making grave leadership mistakes throughout the system that could lose us the war.”
The Hive Page 3
