Through Struggle, the Stars

by John Lumpkin

  “It’s okay, ma’am,” Erin said. “I was only three at the time. They did their duty.”

  “They must have served with President Delgado’s mother, then,” Nestor Garcia interjected.

  “Yes, his mother was my folks’ CO,” Erin said. Juanita Delgado had died with the Quintanas. Her sacrifice was a frequent subject of pre-election biopics on the president.

  “Did you go to Earth?” Thorne asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. My uncle and aunt, who were assigned to the Pentagon, raised me and my brother.”

  The captain nodded. “I did a desk trick at the Pentagon when I was a lieutenant. Were they named Quintana?”

  “No, ma’am. Westlake. It was my mother’s brother and his wife.”

  “Hmm. I don’t recall any Westlakes, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Erin said. The captain turned her attention elsewhere and did not address her again. Erin appeared not to notice the looks of respect being afforded her by the officers around the dinner table.

  That night, Neil worked up the nerve to go down and introduce himself to the commander of the ship’s flight detachment, a lieutenant named Rodgers. His callsign was, of course, “Buck.” Rodgers agreed to allow Neil some simulator time and maybe, just maybe, a drop or two in the jump seat for trainees on board one of his birds. The meeting was cordial enough, but Neil couldn’t shake the feeling that Rodgers regarded him, a not-quite-pilot, as an eagle might regard a caged parakeet.

  As San Jacinto crossed the Wolf 359 system, Neil ran through three simulated battle drops in his off-duty hours and didn’t crash or get shot down during any of them. He hoped Rodgers paid attention to the simulator logs.

  Neil smirked as he read the brief on the FL Virginis system. Planetary names were often a dead giveaway to who discovered them; irreverent ones like Marble and Pea could only come have from California. Sure enough, he read, the discoverers were two astronomers from UC Berkeley. East Coast and European scientists went for more dignified titles, from mythology or the arts. Asians tended toward idyllic names. If a planet was habitable or otherwise particularly important, the politicians would rename it something patriotic: America’s primary colonies were Independence, Liberty and Columbia.

  It had been three weeks since San Jacinto had departed Vandenberg, and the destroyer was now motionless near the Wolf 359-FL Virginis keyhole, waiting for an inbound space train to clear. She had made her first wormhole transit this cruise 19 days prior, from the international station at the Earth-Moon L-4 point into Wolf 359. After this crossing, she would have two additional red dwarf systems to traverse before reaching the Entente system.

  Wormhole stations always included two curved plates at opposite sides of the wormhole loop, which maintained the opening with energy from the attached solar array. Facing the mouth was a series of guidance rings that directed ships into the KH event itself. Many wormhole stations had refueling facilities for ships; some, like the Sol-Wolf 359 junction, served as a port for the big colony ships headed out to new planets. Millions of colonists had passed through those, trading whatever life they had on Earth for land on a virgin world.

  The warship had about an hour before the wormhole’s traffic control computer would give it clearance to pass through, and Neil reported to the CIC to assist Stahl in preparing a report on the vessels known to be in the system beyond.

  He quickly hit a snag. The robotic U.N. wormhole stations were supposed to keep freely accessible data on the locations of ships in international space, but Neil could only call up month-old reports. He had the comms officer, Daphne Vikram, contact Wolf 359’s manned U.N. station, which confirmed that, yes, some kind of computer virus had wiped the database, and they hadn’t been able to restore any recent data. He and Stahl took this to Lieutenant Commander Merrill Davis, the ship’s operations officer, who was the senior officer in the CIC at the moment.

  Davis, San Jacinto’s third-in-command, was one of Neil’s favorite people to work for. He had come up from the enlisted ranks and was closing on his fortieth year in the service. He’d crack jokes for anyone except the captain, and he cared little about rank except when it came to running the ship. He wanted the job done right, but he didn’t mind if folks had fun doing it. Neil reflected that between Davis and the XO, San Jacinto wasn’t a bad place to work. Carla Mendoza, for her part, was simply competent – scratch that, she was extremely competent. She knew which jobs to delegate and which to oversee directly. She was easy to get along with and kind toward the newer officers.

  Captain Thorne was another matter. Neil had few doubts about her capability as a warship captain, but he had developed a low opinion of her ability to be a leader. She interacted little with the crew and usually just barked orders at most of her officers. They were the right orders, but no one took any pleasure in receiving them or carrying them out.

  “So, what you’re telling me is we don’t know whose ships are currently in FL Virginis?” Davis asked. “Damn, the virgins always give me the most trouble.” To no one in particular, he asked, “Anybody remember that whorehouse on Reunion? Same story.”

  Among the half-dozen crewmen in earshot, only Stahl didn’t laugh. When the noise subsided, Neil said, “I’m afraid so, sir. Best guess is either the Hans or the Sakis have released a virus into U.N. traffic control to cover their tracks.”

  “What about our intel packet on the comm buoy?” he asked. The fleet stored encrypted intelligence on commercial communications buoys, which was, in theory, available for download only to other U.S. warships.

  Stahl shook his head. “Sir, I queried it, but it’s even more out of date. Once we get through we can ping some freighters for their data in addition to our own sensor sweep.”

  “Ugh. I hate to ask the merchies for help, but we’ll do it if we have to. Could you guys ask the station for their logs of who has passed through here recently?”

  “Can do, sir,” Stahl said. “For what it’s worth, we tracked seven drives, six civilian candles and one high-efficiency candle with Chinese military specs, all decelerating toward this wormhole since we entered the Wolf 359 system. Presumably, they all went through.”

  “Good to know, good to know,” Davis said. “Okay, carry on.”

  Passage through a wormhole is unremarkable; it is as complicated as walking through an open door. A ship accelerates toward it and goes through. Those on board experience no particular sensation; visually, there’s no long tunnel or bright flash, just a shift in the field of stars.

  San Jacinto emerged from the wormhole in largely empty space, save for the wormhole’s support structures: guidance rings, solar panels, a cluster of containers and the robot ballast tug. The destroyer’s gyms were retracted, so the ship’s extremities didn’t brush the extreme spacetime curvature marking the outer edge of the wormhole. Given the tidal forces there, that would be catastrophic.

  They went through at General Quarters; Captain Thorne decided the lack of data on the ships in the system was a good excuse for a drill.

  It turned into a long day for Neil and the other members of the intelligence and detection sections. First, a reconnaissance drone transited the wormhole and scanned the vicinity with cameras and radar, transmitting its negative findings back to San Jacinto. Thorne ordered the destroyer through a few minutes later. Her cameras hunted for lights out of place in the firmament, searching first along the expected path of ships traveling the quarter-AU between the only two wormholes in the system.

  They found several, the same ships that had been ahead of San Jacinto in Wolf 359. The nearest were a cluster of three slow Chinese colonial transports and a small military escort ship, about a day ahead, presumably heading for China’s enclave on Entente.

  Twelve hours later, Neil returned exhausted to his cabin to find Tom reading in his hammock. They hadn’t seen much of each other lately; Tom routinely stood overnight and early watches, where Neil tended to start in the late morning and work into the evening.

  Tom said, “How was
your day, honey?”

  “Just fine, dear.”

  It was their usual banter, the opening round of what typically devolved into an exchange of recycled jokes, bad imitations and quotes from the comedies.

  But Tom held fire. Instead, he asked, “How’s the intel world treating you?”

  Neil thought that one over. He’d been too busy lately for any real self-evaluation.

  “Other than Stahl, not bad, I guess,” he concluded. “I’d always thought of intel as glorified office-work for everybody but the field spooks, but it’s actually pretty interesting. The access to information is fantastic. Lots of boning up on foreign fleets, and the stuff sticks with me pretty well. I read reports on Chinese and Japanese politics, profiles of their admirals and captains and their combat doctrines. I feel like I’m learning how things really work – as long as it’s not the U.S. of A. you ask me about.”

  Tom nodded. “Glad to hear the post is working out for you. Because, if you don’t mind my saying, you just don’t strike me as the ramjet jockey type.”

  The pang of a career diverted, again. It was softer, now. Neil fought with himself for a moment. Tom was his best friend aboard; still, this was crossing a line. But Neil defaulted to civility, not confrontation, and he suppressed an impulse to snap at his roommate.

  “You think?” Neil said. He couldn’t keep all the sarcasm out. “Look, we’re not all the steel-jawed, skirt-chasing extroverts from the movies. We’ve got those types, sure, but …”

  “Well, sure, you don’t wear sunglasses all the time or have that thousand-klick stare, but that’s not what I meant. When did you first think about becoming a pilot?” Tom asked.

  “I guess before I was a teenager. I always loved those sleek machines. My uncle, who was in the service, noticed and got me onto some military bases to poke around. I think he was subtly trying to influence me to sign up.” He smiled at the memories, felt his edge departing. Tom’s not trying to be a jerk.

  “And your long-term plans?”

  “I figured I’d put in eight years or so and then think things over,” Neil said. “Either stay in the full thirty and get the nice pension, or jump to civilian service and start making real bucks. Lightriders may not be Sabres, but they still need pilots. Not sure how it will work out now. I suppose I’ll keep applying for advanced flight school.”

  “Just my opinion, Neil, but I think you’d find piloting pretty boring after a while. Don’t get me wrong: Those guys have pretty exciting and important jobs. But, in the end, they are operators, working with tools. Their whole job is to use them properly and to train constantly so they react correctly when something goes wrong. You strike me as too much of a thinker for that kind of work over the long-term. Your mind is always going; you’re always worried about something. I bet they’d let you pilot for four years then promote you like crazy, so they could push you into a desk job, developing operations doctrine or something.”

  Is he right? He sounds like Donovan. Tom’s sharper than I have given him credit for. But the conversation had gotten too one-sidedly personal for Neil’s comfort.

  “What about you, man?” he asked. “You’d be handling comms gear if you weren’t running the displays up in CIC, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not your tool-user type, either. When I was about 12, I snuck a look at my psych profile. It said I was a ‘people person.’” He snorted at the term. “My talents lay in handling people, the way one of your pilot buddies handles his plane. I didn’t quite understand what I was reading at the time; I took it as career advice, not as stupid test results. So, yeah, I can work the machines, but my real job as CIC officer is communication. I manage the staff; I’ve got to be able to tell them what to do when the captain and XO are giving orders; I’ve also got to relay my team’s findings back to the chiefs. I have to do it quick, and do it right, just like your ramjet jockeys.”

  “I can think of lots of jobs where you could do that sort of thing back on Earth, and probably get paid better,” Neil said. “Why did you sign up? Don’t you think I buy that pay-for-college story of yours.”

  “Seriously, that part was true, though I picked Space Force over the other services because I wanted to get off Earth. I’ve got goals, you know.”

  “Goals?”

  “Goals,” Tom said firmly. “I’m going colonial once I get out. The colonies are the place to be if you want to raise a family. Land practically for free as long as you use it right, clean air and water, and local governments that know how to leave you alone. The way people were meant to live. So, yeah, I’m going to claim some land for a ranch for the wife and me and start raising cattle and popping out kids. I figured four to six years in the service would let me see most of the colony worlds, so I can pick the best one and immigrate.”

  Neil nodded. Cheap, even free, land was the universal draw for the colony worlds. Governments, eager to expand their off-Earth presence and relieve population pressure at home, tried different appeals to get their people to emigrate, some financial, some emotional.

  For nations built on ethnic identity, like Japan and Israel, the colonies were sold as a way to preserve the race, should another large asteroid crash into the Earth. The British tried to tug at the old nationalism: “Once the sun never set upon the British Empire; now many suns rise over it.” This was a slight exaggeration; the Brits had one planet of their own, plus part of another. For China, it was a fait accompli that the Middle Kingdom would encompass many worlds. The government built starships and went, and the people followed. And, as in lots of nations, certain undesirables received a free ticket.

  For the Americans, it was anything goes. Groups with money and off-the-mainstream ideologies seized the chance to build a world, or at least a community, according to their vision. Individuals bet on the future wealth thousands of acres of free land would bring.

  Neil asked, “Your wife on board with your colonial plans?” Tom had married young.

  “She’s not thrilled about leaving her family in Texas behind, but her pharma career is going nowhere, so yes, she’s on board.”

  “They say it takes all types to get a colony going, so I guess you qualify, cowboy,” Neil said. The unease between them had passed.

  Neil found Stahl alone in the Intel department office, which was a relief; the lieutenant preferred to berate his people in front of an audience.

  Stahl said, “Ensign, I’ve talked to the XO about you, and I thought we might try to reset things. Particularly given your background, your work here has been adequate so far. And I realize you are in an odd position having to work with Mister Donovan and Mister Sato half of the time.”

  Neil tried to make his face appear utterly passive. What’s this about?

  Stahl went on, “So I wanted to give you some advice. I’ve been around NSS people before. They’re all alike. They pretend they are from the State Department until they decide to let you in and reveal who they really work for. Then they expect you to do whatever they want. They’ll pull out their silly mystique and pretend to know far more than they actually do. And NSS types from Washington are the worst – they spend half their time playing junior politician, withholding information from the military when they can get away with it and leaking to the news media like a sieve. And they make so many, many mistakes.”

  “Sir?”

  “I say this with your best interests at heart: Don’t get too close to them. Their mission is to get people to betray their country, to feed them information for money or to satisfy their egos or whatever. The NSS uses people and spits them out. It may seem like we’re all one, big happy family in the national security community, but we’re not. At some point, push will come to shove, and they will want you to betray your loyalties. When that happens, remember that the Space Force is your service, your home. We’re your brothers and sisters, not the NSS. Tying yourself too closely to the … agency can leave you tainted in your superiors’ eyes. Think about your career.”

  Neil nodded and said he would.r />
  “The military’s criticism isn’t entirely unfounded, although they have wanted our jobs ever since President Truman signed the bill that established the CIA,” Donovan said at their meeting the next day. Neil had casually asked about the origin of the military-NSS conflict. “Military intelligence does different work than we do, and in my view that’s the way it should be. The NSS follows foreign politics, economics and strategic weapons. The military follows conventional weapons, tactics and leaders.”

  You also do the president’s dirty work, Neil thought.

  Donovan went on, “But I disagree with the accusation that we are somehow exceptional in that we play politics in Washington. The Pentagon plays far more games than we ever have to curry favor in Congress and the White House. You know how San Jacinto was built? In pieces. Pieces in as many states and congressional districts as the Pentagon could find. Quite a bit more of it could have been made in orbital factories for cheaper than on the surface, but the Pentagon provides jobs; all we really have to trade is information, so we play ball with Congress and the press. It’s just the way things are. Tell me, are you getting some pushback because you are working with us?”

  “More like warnings,” Neil admitted.

  “From the captain?”

  “Well, I’d rather not say, but no, not her.”

  “Then I can guess,” Donovan said. “Neil, I can’t really say whether your association with us will somehow affect your career somehow, although I’m fairly certain the military intelligence community as a whole isn’t as petty as … some within it. You’ve been a big help to Rafe and me since we’ve come on board, and I’ll have some work for you once we reach Entente, if you’ll volunteer to join us down on the surface. Think it over, and let me know.”