by John Lumpkin
“I can't imagine they will go to war,” Larkin said, answering a question Neil had not heard. “Wars need a few things to happen: One country must want something from another, or else wants to prevent the other from coming after him in the future. Both need to believe they can beat the other in a fight. With Japan and China, the tensions over the things they want from each other just aren't at the tipping point.”
“But they aren't very friendly,” said an older man, some cadet’s father, probably. Neil’s own parents were absent from the reception; they had come to his graduation, two days prior, but left before the commissioning ceremony, to attend Neil’s brother’s graduation from high school back home in Oregon.
“That's true,” Larkin allowed. “China would be happy to see Shanghai replace Tokyo as the world’s financial capital. But that's not enough. They know the costs of war for both of them would be too high and the payoff too low.”
Neil took a bite of the pastry. It was tasty, but not so soft, and, to his horror, it exploded in a crunch. Slivers of sugary confection sprayed from his mouth, landing on the front of his dress uniform and on the floor between his shoes.
Thankfully, no one seemed to notice. He finished the pastry with one bite, chewed large and brushed off his shirt. He shifted his position so his right foot covered the dandruff of crumbles on the floor.
“With all the weapons everyone is putting up there, it's a wonder fighting hasn't started already,” said a woman.
Neil saw a shadow steal across the face of the Army cadet next to her. The woman must be his mother. Not good for mom to make even a remotely anti-military statement on commissioning day.
Before Larkin could respond, one of Neil’s instructors, detecting an argument in the offing, threw a softball question at the admiral about his stint as commander of the cruiser Virginia, and the conversation moved elsewhere.
After the reception broke up, Neil walked across campus back to the dorms, feeling the hot midday sun through his uniform and a slight haze from the wine. He felt unglued, disconnected from himself. Everything’s in flux.
His next step was clear: fourteen weeks out in California, training as a combat drop pilot over the Pacific Ocean. Then, his assignment. His learning already exceeded that of a one-way assault pod pilot, so most likely he would get assigned to a planetary base as the first officer of a laser-launched ferry. His dream was assignment to an elite Sabre squadron, where he could fly one of the hybrid scramjet-rockets that could make it to orbit and back on its own. Orbital stations kept the expensive craft to carry quick-reaction forces and VIPs into the outback, and some warships had them too.
He was thrilled. Wherever he landed, he’d be flying soon enough.
His roommate, Rand Castillo, and their friend Cade Singer were waiting for him when he returned to his room. Both were also graduating ROTC cadets: Rand was Army; Cade was, like Neil, joining the Space Force. They had cut out from the reception about thirty minutes before.
Rand waved his handheld. “Sergeant Baca came by and said the orders are in,” he said, smiling broadly.
Neil opened his own computer and checked his messages.
ROUTINE
1400Z29MAY2139
FR MG HARDY, V-3, USSPACECOM
TO 2LT NEIL MERCER, USSF
1. YOU ARE ORDERED TO REPORT FOR DUTY ON USS SAN JACINTO (DS-99) AT VANDENBERG STATION, GEOSYNCHRONOUS EARTH ORBIT, BY 1800Z18JUNE2139.
2. PLEASE MAKE ORBITAL TRANSIT ARRANGEMENTS THROUGH YOUR REGIONAL PERSONNEL OFFICE.
He stared at the screen. His hand shook a little. Straight to a ship. Nothing about flight training.
“This can’t be right,” Neil said. “They’ve already posted me to a destroyer. Somebody must have forgotten I still need advanced flight.”
“Better take it to the colonel,” Rand suggested.
“I will.” Neil was silent for a moment. “How did you guys make out?”
“Waitlisted,” Cade said. “I have to go get a job.” It was the worst of all worlds. Cade would have to work in the civilian sector for a few years before giving up whatever career he had started to serve his duty requirement.
“I’m sorry, man,” Neil said, feeling a little shame for his initial reaction to his own letter. At least I don’t have to start looking for work. I just have to straighten things out.
“I got a posting,” Rand said.
“Where?”
“Kuan Yin. Space Defense Artillery corps. I’ll be trying to shoot your fellow rocket jocks out of space.”
“No kidding! Congrats.” China had taken the lead in colonizing Kuan Yin, around 11 Leonis Minoris, after the United States had claimed the system but before it could open a wormhole there. After some negotiation, the United States had ended up with a marginally habitable continent.
Colonel Alvarez, the university’s ROTC commander, wasn’t answering his calls, and it took Neil more than half an hour to locate him. With the campus shutting down for the summer, people were leaving early and Alvarez’s assistant was among them. Neil finally found the colonel chatting in a colleague’s office. He showed his superior the assignment.
“Congratulations, Neil. That’s great you got a ship so soon,” Alvarez said. “I know you signed up for flight school, but this is a great opportunity.”
“Why didn’t I get into flight school?” he said, the wine making him braver than he normally would have been. “I finished intermediate flight last summer. I was told I had passed all the preliminaries for advanced.”
“You did. But there were simply more qualified applicants than there were slots. For whatever reason, you weren’t picked.”
“Isn’t there some kind of wait list?”
“No,” Alvarez said sharply. “And you should be thankful you got a spaceside assignment. Your class has fourteen Space Force cadets. Twelve of those signed up for service on a ship; exactly three got slots. Plus you. Another two are getting offplanet surface postings; the rest are going to an Earthside or orbital base or into a delayed-entry program.”
The colonel’s voice softened. “Now, Neil, I know it’s not what you were aiming for. I don’t know what kind of job they’ll have for you on that destroyer, but at least you’re getting to space, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Neil said, failing to muster any enthusiasm in his voice. He wondered if he’d get command of the vessel’s sewage and recycling system.
The trip up, two weeks later, depressed him even more. It was on a Virgin Galactic lightrider, launched from a laser station on the ground.
I should be flying myself up here. Most of the other passengers were business travelers, probably bound for one of the manufacturing plants or hotels in low Earth orbit. Fewer were like Neil, headed for higher orbits or interplanetary craft.
Neil was the only one aboard in uniform. He was wearing his dark blue Class B’s, approved for most non-formal work occasions. It drew a few glances, but he was left alone. Many of the passengers chatted merrily across the aisles; from what Neil could gather, they were going to some sort of conference at the Sky Marriott, an affair sure to involve a few morning roundtables followed by lots of freefall partying, all on the company dime.
He was too wound up to sleep. Orbit was nothing new – he’d been up on several family trips, including one to the Moon, plus three months at the U.S. military’s basic freefall training station. Best of all, he had served as co-pilot on a half-dozen Sabre training drops, landing and taking off again from spots in New Mexico and in the Australian desert. Sabres were beautiful machines to his eyes, and taking control of one as it burned through the atmosphere at Mach 25 was freedom itself, a thrill like no other.
Before he departed Boulder, Neil and his friends, Rand, Cade and Carlos Encinias, a junior still a year away from his commission, had hit the bars in Denver for what Rand called “a proper drunkening.” It was a blur in Neil’s memory. Rand the extrovert cracked jokes and spent money and talked up the women, with Neil in his usual role as wingman. Cade, normally br
ittle in social situations, drank enough to relax and enjoy himself. Neil sobered up early to herd everyone to the train back to campus. It was a futile effort: The train had broken down again, and they were forced to stay the night in the city. Rand picked up the hotel tab.
Neil had gone home to Oregon the next day. His father and brother asked him lots of questions about his service and assignment; his mother listened to his answers and fretted about his safety.
“At least you won’t be screaming around in those planes,” she concluded, satisfying her worries as she always did, by deciding there was a way that things could be worse.
The real treat was a surprise visit from his uncle Jack. Colonel Jack Houston, retired, could remember when the service was still the United States Aerospace Force, and he was Neil's only close relative who had spent significant time in space. During Neil’s childhood, Uncle Jack had served on several ships, twice making the trip to Independence, the American colony at Sigma Draconis, and he had gone on one tour through the Japanese ring. It was Jack’s stories that had inspired Neil to consider military service in the first place.
The night before Neil left for orbit, he, Jack and his parents sat out back in their backyard, drinking beer and talking, mostly of mundane things. It was a clear, warm night, and Neil leaned his head back and looked at the sky.
For most of history the night sky has been flat; the stars might have been painted on the inside of a sphere. But now the sky has depth. Some of those stars are places we can go to. They aren’t points of light; they are locations, as real and as accessible as this backyard.
Neil saw plenty of stars that weren’t part of the firmament: starships firing their fusion drives. He could also pick out Vega and Arcturus, both accessible by wormhole. The stars we can see from Earth are either nearby and useful, or distant behemoths beyond our reach.
He tried to identify some constellations. For decades, the world’s spacefaring nations had built their own wormhole networks, claiming star systems and planets for themselves. The United States, Britain and Australia had spread into Draco, Cassiopeia and Perseus; Japan had moved into Indus, Pavonis and Herculis; China and Korea into Orion, Leo and Virgo; Europe into Cetus and Pisces.
There was a joke in there somewhere. The EU and water signs. I guess if we had stuck to form, Russia would have colonized Ursa; China Draco, the Brits Leo and we’d have had Aquila. Except Aquila has been pretty dry territory. And what would have Japan taken? There’s no constellation for chrysanthemum. Or maybe they think every rising sun is theirs. They sure behaved that way, sometimes.
“You’ll get another shot at flight school, I’m sure,” Jack said, misinterpreting Neil’s posture as an expression of distress. Neil straightened his head and looked at his uncle. “Meantime, a destroyer posting is a good one. They may not get the attention that the big flagships get, but you’ll move around a lot quicker, unless you hook up with a larger ship and head out in a fleet to show the flag somewhere. Might be in order given the problems with Japan and China.”
Neil nodded. Earlier that day, the news had reported some kind of extrasolar mishap between warships from the two countries some weeks back. The American secretary of state made an emergency trip to Beijing, and her British counterpart went to Tokyo, trying to keep the two sides talking. It was expected that concerted international attention would get them to back down again, but a couple of plugged-in Washington reporters, citing “western intelligence sources,” reported the mishap was in fact a full-fledged fleet engagement around a distant, habitable planet. The report was denied by Japan and ignored by China.
“There’s a lot of pride in play here,” Jack said. “Last century, it was Japan who prevented the Chinese government from inheriting the world they are so convinced they are the center of. After the Rock hit, Japan realized they needed colonies in space to preserve the race, but they also went up there and mined the asteroids and put up the orbital power stations. They built things and got rich, and everyone had to follow their lead. The Chinese missed their chance.”
Uncle Jack takes history personally, Neil thought, as the older man drained his beer. He went on, “Now both Japan and China’s governments are saturated with people who grew up off Earth, in places where they have known nothing but their own culture, their own sense of superiority. They haven’t had to get along with others.”
“If they fight, who wins?” Neil asked.
“I can’t say. Everyone has been working on space warfare for decades, but it has never come to serious blows. The big boys have been content with proxy wars and beating up on non-space powers. We haven’t seen so many well-armed nations, with such a balance of force, in a long time. We’ve got dozens of technologies and combat doctrines that haven’t been proven outside of simulations and exercises.”
Jack looked at Neil. “That’s the environment you are headed to. Let’s hope the stability lasts.”
The next day, on the ride up to orbit, Neil recalled the strange emotion Uncle Jack’s comment elicited, a knife’s edge between excitement and anxiety that he might serve during a conflict. He tried to rid the notion from his mind. Even if China and Japan did fight, America would stay out of it, as long as the shipping lanes are open to the colonies, and no one’s comfortable lifestyle is afflicted.
Not long after, the spaceplane docked at Christensen Station, one of the big twin-ringed LEO transfer stations that served as a jumping-off point to higher orbits. Neil passed through an extra layer of security to get to the section of the space station reserved for government operations. Beyond, the waiting room for the Vandenberg hop held an even mix of military and civilians, and he felt conscious of his appearance for the first time since the commissioning ceremony. Thankfully, his dark blues concealed the half-centimeter chocolate stain he had acquired from a cookie during the flight up. He hoped.
He looked around for an empty chair and saw an attractive young woman in a Space Force ensign’s uniform approaching him.
“You look like you could use some help,” she said. She was a head shorter than Neil, thin, with short brown hair. He wasn’t sure if the woman was being friendly or trying to take command of him, so he decided on a formal response.
“Neil Mercer, assigned to the San Jacinto,” he said, pronouncing the “J” like an “H,” just as proper Spanish dictated.
“Jacinto! Jacinto! Hard ‘J,’ like in ‘Juliet,’” said a dark-haired male ensign from a seat nearby, smiling broadly. “Damn it, we won that battle! Why can’t anyone pronounce it right?”
The woman chuckled. “Erin Quintana. You’ve found the right group. We’ve both been posted to the San Jacinto, as well,” she said, and motioned to the officer who had first corrected Neil. She pronounced the hard “J” too.
The dark-haired officer stood up from his chair. He was Neil’s height, thick and muscular where Neil was slim and of average fitness. “Tom Mondragon, from Fort Worth, Texas. Good to meet you, Neil.” He offered a hand.
Neil took it. Formality gave way to banter. “Didn’t mean to offend your motherland, Tom,” he said. “I’d read about the battle, but I’d never heard the name pronounced out loud.”
“April 21, 1836. Guaranteed Texas’ independence from Mexico. A fine day.”
Neil swapped backgrounds with the two young officers. Tom was another ROTC graduate, but older than Neil, just now going on active duty after four years in the civilian world, working at an entertainment channel.
Erin, meanwhile, was a fresh graduate from the Space Force Academy in Colorado Springs – one of the blessed few who were probably already anointed for senior command. Neil and Erin swapped a few stories about the nightlife in Denver; Neil, no party animal himself, still had more to tell than Erin. She said she was raised mostly in Washington, D.C., and that a lot of her family was in the military. Unlike Neil and Tom, she had traveled extensively, including long visits to Independence and Reunion.
They both agreed, kindly, that Neil had gotten the shaft by not being assigned
to flight school. Neil wondered if they were just being polite.
It was a four-hour flight to Vandenberg. The military jumper had a much different feel than the civilian launch. Most of the passengers, including Neil and the other junior officers, rode up in uncomfortable jump seats. The interior of the 70-ton craft lacked the padded, insulated walls and other amenities of a commercial flight; instead, Neil stared at exposed pipes and ductwork. Loud machine noise filled his ears as the craft powered up.
Two USSF senior astronauts – the service’s equivalent of a corporal – delivered a safety brief and walked each cabin, obsessively checking passengers’ names against a manifest and handing out earplugs, goggles and emergency bubbles to anyone lacking them. A sense of urgency rose in Neil as the jumper prepared for launch. He wasn’t sure if anyone else shared it, but here was a feeling of doing something important. Not something you got on civilian craft, where everything was done to make it feel like blasting into orbit at 11 kilometers per second was as routine as going to the store.
The pilot came on the intercom and enumerated the upcoming boosts and periods of freefall during the four-hour flight. “Sick kits should be within arm’s reach,” he said. “If not, let one of the crew know now; otherwise, if you don’t get it in the kit, you’ll have to clean it up. And trust me; vomit is much worse when it floats.”
Some faces in Neil’s view smiled at that; Neil felt himself laugh but couldn’t hear it over the sound of the jumper powering up.
The flight was uneventful; everyone in Neil’s cabin who needed a sick kit found one in good time. Erin, sitting to Neil’s right, slept most of the flight. Neil declined an offer to visit the jumper’s cockpit; he wanted to go, but he saw only civilians going up and decided joining them might make him somehow appear overeager or inexperienced to the other military personnel on board.
