by M. D. Cooper
Brit’s thoughts circled back to the kids. Maybe she should tell Andy to stay at Traverna and she would meet them there. They might find safety on the fringes, find refuge on one of the distant outposts in the Scattered Disk. She could return to her original plan to keep the kids safe, to just before Cara had been born, before she allowed herself to get dragged back into what was a losing war.
The pilot announced docking maneuvers and the soldiers moved to stow their gear. In another five minutes they underwent the small adjustments that meant they were closing with the Tierra del Fuego.
Land of fire, Brit thought, remembering the old translation. Did that mean she was entering hell?
The transport connected and matched spin with the larger ship’s personnel section. Brit adjusted to the gravity, then waited as the rest of the soldiers filed from the cabin. A few gave her slight nods, acknowledging her rank.
When the transport was empty, a sergeant stepped through the airlock and approached Brit and Starl, who was still asleep.
“Can your friend walk, Major?” he asked.
“He walked on board,” Brit told him. She elbowed Starl, who started and looked around with bleary eyes. He fixed his gaze on the sergeant and gave the man a tired grin.
“I see the valet is here,” Starl said. “I’d throw you a tip but I’m a little tied up now.” He held his cuffed hands up and waggled his fingers.
The soldier grumbled. “I’m here to remove your restraints,” he said. “Colonel Yarnes’ orders. Are you going to cause any trouble?”
“I was made to cause trouble,” Starl said, straightening in his seat. “But for you I’ll make an exception.”
With his restraints off, Starl stretched his arms. The sergeant removed Brit’s handcuffs and then knelt to free her legs.
“How’s your calf feeling?” Brit asked Starl.
“Thankfully, I can’t feel it. Everything is numb beneath the knee. I’m hoping it’s still there.” He craned his neck to look down the length of the transport.
“I can’t believe you fell asleep,” she said.
Starl stretched his neck. “We seem to go from terrible thing to long periods of nothing, followed by another terrible thing. I figured we were in the downtime. Also, I got bored.” He looked around abruptly. “Where’s Petral?”
“She was in a separate section,” Brit said. “They’re taking her directly to the ship’s med bay.”
Starl nodded, looking as though he only half-trusted the TSF. Placing a hand on the bulkhead, he stood carefully, balancing his encased lower-leg. “I should probably be heading there myself. Maybe I can bargain my way up a to a sweet augmentation, yeah? Something with a gun built in like Petral’s thigh. First time I saw that, I almost messed up my pants.”
“They didn’t tell me about your leg,” the sergeant said. “When we get off, I’ll have someone take you down to the medical section. I’m taking the major to the command briefing. It’s already started.”
Starl raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I’m not missing that, my friend. I’ll hop along beside you.”
The sergeant gave him a hard look, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said.
Brit and Starl followed the soldier off the transport into an airlock system designed to accommodate over-sized soldiers in armor. Once the atmosphere had cleared, they walked out into a service corridor filled with functionaries moving equipment and small units of soldiers sitting against the bulkhead with their bags in their laps, weapons balanced across rucksacks or disassembled for cleaning.
“Do you usually store troops in the corridors?” Brit asked.
The sergeant shook his head. “We’ve taken on an extra four thousand for transport to the fleet. These are all training for breaching teams.”
“That didn’t take very long,” Starl said, raising a sarcastic eyebrow. “How long was I asleep? Heartbridge just blew up.”
“We’ve been on alert since Ceres,” the sergeant said. “Business as usual. At least this time we can see from the newsfeeds what’s going down. Gets old being a shroom?”
“Shroom?” Starl asked, serious this time.
“Mushroom,” Brit said. “Kept in the dark and fed shit.”
Starl brayed laughter and almost lost his balance. Brit had to catch his arm to keep him from stumbling over a soldier sitting on the deck.
“Somebody from Cruithne made that up,” Starl said.
They reached a lift that carried them several levels toward the central axis of the ship. Brit monitored the micro changes in the gravity in the pit of her stomach.
When the door opened, they were met by security and had to be cleared into the command section. The sergeant led them down another corridor with transparent plas walls facing into planning rooms where large holodisplays showed the solar plane, waiting for officers to start prioritizing targets.
The corridor ended on a reinforced door with more guards. They underwent another security check, where a soldier scanned Starl’s cast, before they were allowed into the bowl-shaped chamber on the other side. Tiers of seats looked down on a central holodisplay, which currently showed Mars and Ceres.
Brit quickly scanned the room, noting with surprise the presence of officers from all major space forces. Marsians and Jovians filled two quarters of the chamber, while Terrans filled the rest. Covering the outside walls were icons that she realized denoted whole fleets. All human military space forces within ten AU of Sol were represented in the room. She caught sight of Colonel Yarnes in a middle tier, and spotted Jirl Gallagher sitting near the top behind him.
Seconds after she saw him, a Link request came through from Yarnes.
Brit’s skin went cold. Of course they had intercepted the message from Andy. She should have assumed it from the beginning. Not that it would have mattered whether she listened or not. They would have already broken the encryption.
She checked to see that she still had access to the message and found it in her queue where she’d left it. Now it felt like a betrayal.
Her gaze went around the chamber again, thinking through the different options. They were going to want her to lead them to Andy—most likely a joint group of Intelligence operatives now that the TSF couldn’t hide Andy from the others.
The sergeant directed Brit and Starl to seats near Yarnes. He nodded when she sat next to him but didn’t speak. A general whose name she couldn’t read was preparing to speak next to the holodisplay.
Yarnes gave her a sideways glance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 01.16.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Tierra de Fuego en route to Ceres
REGION: Earth, Terran Hegemony
The general standing in front of the assembled officers had short brown hair and a scar on her left temple that crossed from her hairline to the bridge of her nose. Jirl wondered
about the scar as she listened to the woman talk, contemplating why someone would choose to keep such a blemish. She supposed it wasn’t much different from the neat row of ribbons on the woman’s chest, a message to someone who knew how to read it.
“General Sollis,” Barbara Phelps said loudly, addressing the commander of the TSS Tierra del Fuego. “Thank you to you and your crew for hosting this briefing. They’ve shown the utmost professionalism.”
Phelps stepped toward the side of the chamber where the Marsian and JSF officers were gathered.
“Major-General Kathan,” General Phelps said, acknowledging the Marsian commander, and then, “Major-General Spruce,” from the Jovians. “Thank you for being here on such short notice, especially our Jovian comrades.” Kathan was a muscled woman with silver-blond hair. She looked more augment than human. Spruce was a lithe man with a buzz cut and deep lines in his face. While Kathan’s uniform had even more ribbons than Phelps’, Spruce wore black fatigues with only the stars on his shoulders as any indicator of rank or position.
Jirl had heard enough stories of isolated skirmishes between each of the militaries represented in the room to figure Phelps wasn’t wasting time with the acknowledgments. If it wasn’t for the presence of an external threat, they would all be figuring out how to kill each other.
Phelps faced the holodisplay and zoomed in from the solar map, flying past Ceres so that Jupiter filled one edge of the display. She focused on a collection of red icons and expanded the image. Each of the icons grew into an actual ship.
“Since the incident in Raleigh,” Phelps said, “we have a name for this enemy. They call themselves Psion. It’s our belief their force is a collection of sentient AI commanders and potentially sentient combat forces. From our long-range scans, this is the average vessel they’ve deployed.
The holodisplay shifted to a skeletal vessel with massive engines at the end of a long spine. There didn’t appear to be any habitat areas that Jirl could make out, at least nothing that would spin to provide internal gravity.
“Each of these vessels is three kilometers long, with a command and control element at the fore section and engineering control aft. The entire central sections are comprised of what we assess as manufacturing facilities and combat craft storage.”
The general described the engine capabilities, comparing the vessel to comparable human craft. While the ship, which the general started calling a “Fishbone” didn’t completely outclass the other space forces, it didn’t have to bother with the fragility of a human crew. Each Fishbone appeared to have robust close-in defense weapons, long range missile batteries, and the ability to produce medium-range attack craft as needed. The drone manufacturing tech was directly from the Heartbridge drone arsenal, most recently deployed by the Benevolent Hand at Cruithne.
Uneasy grumbling passed through the room.
“We assess their combat capabilities at parity or greater to our current available forces,” Phelps said with finality.
The Marsian General Kathan pointed at the model. “You’re saying that fleet, that mediocre assembly of ships, is at parity with all our forces?”
Phelps didn’t smile. “That’s what our simulations are showing us.”
Spruce said, “Our intelligence indicates the same outcome.”
Kathan looked at Spruce as though he’d betrayed her, then shook her head angrily. “Those things attacked us,” she said. “They murdered more than a billion innocent civilians. I don’t give a damn if they can move faster than us, we’re going to wipe them off the Solar System.”
“Are we?” Phelps asked. More rumbling went through the room, but no one dared get between the generals. Once the commanding officers decided a course of action, Jirl understood, it would be the job of everyone else to figure out how to execute. If they decided humanity would throw every fighting ship it had at this seemingly ‘mediocre’ threat, then they would write the plans. The tension in the room told her most of them hoped for a different decision.
The room reminded her of sitting outside the Heartbridge boardroom as Arla and the other members debated decisions that would mean life or death for millions, as they played ego against facts, outcomes against prestige won or lost.
“What does this look like to you?” Phelps asked, turning to face the holodisplay. “There are two thousand ships in the incoming force. Each of these ships has an assessed capability of deploying a thousand or more combat fighters. How many missiles struck Ceres? I think the count was somewhere near a thousand. Now let me ask you, my fellow soldiers, what percentage of your available forces would you typically devote to a breaching operation?”
The room fell silent as Phelps’ point sunk in. Jirl looked around, not knowing the answer and hoping one of the generals would answer the question.
Eventually, Kathan crossed her arms and said in a low voice, “Ten percent. It’s standard doctrine.” She shook her head, ire rising again. “Then where is their reserve? Where are they hiding the rest of whatever force they mean to bring against us? We all have the intel about Earth being their final goal. Where are they?”
“Not here,” Spruce said. “That’s all that matters.”
“So, if we can’t win force on force,” Phelps said, “that leaves us with deny and deter.”
“I’m not fighting a war with the intention of losing,” Kathan said flatly.
“Then what do you suggest, General?” Phelps asked.
“We haven’t actually verified any of these assessments,” Kathan said. “I suggest we probe their forces and gather more data before they reach medium-range attack positions.”
“They’re already within medium range of Jovian Space,” Spruce said. “You attack them in the Hildas Asteroids, what’s to stop them turning their attention to the Cho or Europa?”
“Time and fuel,” Kathan said. “They’re already inbound. The delta-v it would take to change targets at this point would strand them. We don’t need the message to know they’re on a one-way trip to Ceres. They need the fuel.”
“Wait,” Spruce said. “What message?”
“The message we intercepted from Traverna,” Phelps said. She pointed at Britney Sykes sitting next to Yarnes. “This all ties back to the Heartbridge Weapon Born project and their sentience development. A former TSF captain named Andy Sykes, who happens to be the husband of our Major Britney Sykes sitting next to Colonel Yarnes there, was the subject of an implantation experiment designed to smuggle a next-generation combat system out of InnerSol. We haven’t determined if he was working for the Psion Group, but when he arrived at Proteus, that initiated their plan. Now Captain Sykes is on his way back in-system with what he says is a way to infiltrate Psion. Does that sound correct, Major Sykes?”
Jirl stared at Brit, terrified for her. The general’s tone made it sound like she was steps away from accusing Andy Sykes of aiding and abetting enemies of humanity.
Brit blinked twice, then stood stiffly and addressed the room. “General Phelps, Andy Sykes is no traitor. He has been caught up in a plan to move SAI to OuterSol. That was separate of what has happened with Psion. Anything he is doing now is an attempt to help.”
“It seemed plain in the message that your husband is in contact with Psion, Major Sykes. Do you disagree?”
Every time Phelps said husband, Brit flinched.
“I don’t know, General,” she said finally.
“It’s my understanding you were in an inactive reserve status, Major?” Phelps asked. From her lips, major sounded like an insult.
“That’s correct, General.”
“But neither you, nor your husband, have resigned your commissions with the TSF?”
“No, General.”
“Then you can consider yourself reactivated. Captain Sykes, too. Once we’ve got him back in custody, we’ll determine the level of his involvement in this. It looks like treason, to me.”
“General,” Brit said, raising her voice in protest.
“Sit down, Major,” Phelps
commanded.
Brit stared at Phelps for another beat, long enough for several security guards in the room to grow tense. Finally, she sat down next to Yarnes and stared straight ahead.
The generals debated the standing and deployment of their various forces for another thirty minutes. Kathan seemed too ready to throw everything she had at Psion, while it was left to Phelps and Spruce to decide how much they were willing to sacrifice.
Everything came down to the current lack of intelligence and how much of a gamble it was to commit forces that might be better maintained near their home worlds. Spruce was especially wary of committing to a battle that would ultimately leave all of Jovian space undefended. At one point he mentioned involving political leadership in the decision and Kathan nearly stormed out of the room.
“How much time do we have before Psion reaches Ceres?” Phelps asked at one point.
A major stood and answered, “We estimate nine days, General.”
Spruce nearly threw his folio. “Nine days,” he shouted. “All I can give you is what’s here with me then. Two fleets. I’ll never get the rest out of the JC in time. We manage orders of magnitude more space than InnerSol. They wouldn’t even be mobilized.”
Phelps only nodded as if she had known that all along.
When Kathan had finished castigating Spruce for betraying humankind, Phelps shouted to regain order in the room. The two other generals, who had jumped to their feet as though they wanted to kill each other, finally returned to their seats, scowling.
“Here’s what I propose,” Phelps said.
“Mars and Earth will commit fifty percent of available resources, including the JSF available here. We will employ all long-range attack systems on the Psion forces in order to slow their advance into InnerSol, while conducting a covert operation to gain further intelligence.”
Low rumbling in the chamber threatened another uprising but Phelps stared them down.
She pointed at Colonel Yarnes. “The TSF lead for this expedition will be Colonel Yarnes, TSF Intelligence. Mars and the JC will provide their own officers. The TSF will provide transport and arms in addition to any special weapon systems our comrades would like to make available.”
