by John Lumpkin
“Report to CIC,” the text message said. He hit acknowledge, stopping the buzz, and started hunting for his uniform. Tom, across the tiny stateroom, snored gently in a drug-induced sleep.
Captain Thorne looked impatient when he arrived.
“Mercer, we’ve received a laser transmission from the surface,” she said. “The speaker identifies himself as Sun Haisheng and says he’s ready to come with us.”
Neil blinked. “Are we sure it’s him?”
“No. We need Donovan to come up and talk to him, and he’s not answering our pages. Could you go get him?”
He found Donovan in his quarters, slumped in a chair, which was quite a feat in weightlessness. He had a bulb of an amber liquid in his right hand.
He looked old.
James Donovan said, “You know what I hate about spaceflight? You can’t take an honest drink. Scotch isn’t meant to be drunk through a straw.”
He paused. “Are you all right, Neil?”
“I’m fine. I should ask you the same thing,” he ventured.
Donovan sighed. “Rafe was 28 years old. From an agency family, as it happens. Now his life will be reduced to a star on the wall at headquarters in Langley. They’ve got all our officers who died in the line on that wall, NSS, CIA, all the way back to the OSS guys in World War II … about half of them with no name, no identity, just a star. The other side can’t know who they were, what they were doing, who they may have known. Rafe will be one of those. Just a nameless star. Somebody might look at it and wonder, “Who was that person? How did he die? But they’ll never know. His parents probably won’t even get to know.”
Neil had no idea how to handle Donovan in this state. Keep him talking, I guess.
“Did you know Rafe’s parents?” Neil asked.
“Vaguely. His father is in our technology branch; his mother does classified things.” He sighed. “You know, I didn’t go west of the Mississippi River until I was 21 years old. But when I was in college, one of my professors was a recruiter. He didn’t pitch the adventure, and certainly not the money. He just said, ‘Intelligence work is a unique challenge to your mind, body and soul.’ I didn’t know what he meant by the soul part, but I signed up anyway. After 30 years of swimming in nothing but moral ambiguity, I’ve got a pretty good idea. I … I wish I could say it was worth it.”
After a silent minute, Neil said, “The captain sent me down to fetch you to CIC. Sun Haisheng is calling, says he wants to join us.”
Donovan shook his drink. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be along.”
Neil waited outside his hatch, just to be sure.
Two hours later, Neil was back in the cockpit again, hopped up on stimulants. Beside him in the co-pilot’s chair was Ensign Nicole Brandt, the only surviving officer from the ship’s decimated flight detachment. Brandt normally flew the ship’s single jumper; she was not trained for atmospheric flight, meaning Neil was the only drop-qualified pilot on board. She was only slightly more useful than an empty chair; she could manage the dropship if it needed maneuvering in orbit and Neil for some reason couldn’t handle the job.
Not how I wanted to get here, Neil thought.
It was a small drop … just a crew chief and Donovan were in the back. Thorne refused to risk any more personnel.
As they waited for the drop window, Donovan came forward to the cockpit, perching his elbows on the seatbacks behind Neil and Brandt. Neil turned; Donovan looked tired but composed.
“Things might get a little testy on the surface,” Donovan said. “Sun wanted to bring his full entourage … 30 guards, some advisers, his wife, and two other women who I think are his mistresses. I told him he could bring four people.”
Brandt stared at them.
“Who did he pick?” Neil asked.
“One guard, two advisers and one of the mistresses.”
Neil rubbed his brow. “A man of appetites. This guy is going to liberate Taiwan?” He looked at Brandt. “What I just said is classified, by the way.”
Brandt shrugged and gazed out the cockpit window. “Who am I going to tell?”
Neil’s handheld buzzed – a message from CIC, indicating the drop window was approaching.
Donovan said, “Neil, I also passed on some information from your ship’s sensors to our friends on the surface. Seems some rebels survived the bombardment. So here’s a lesson in covert operations: Get someone to do the dirty work for you.”
The two skytrucks rose in unison, leaving behind the smoldering wreckage of the Chinese dropships, and turned to skim above the foliage. Li Xiao sat in the truck’s cockpit this time, so he could stay in voice contact with Anjian during the 300-kilometer trip overland to the nearest commercial spaceport.
Anjian had assured him that the American destroyer had changed its orbit and was in no position to bombard them again. It seemed to Li that both sides had inflicted minor wounds on the other, and had now withdrawn.
Second Bureau had been perplexingly silent on whether Anjian should attack San Jacinto directly. The only communication transmitted thus far reiterated that his primary target was Sun Haisheng, and that he should use any means necessary to capture or kill him.
And Li didn’t know if Sun was alive or not, despite Anjian’s efforts to monitor communications in the area. His handheld buzzed … Anjian yet again. He was reaching for it when he saw the missiles rising from the fern forest below.
Sun Haisheng’s compound didn’t have much of a runway, just a flat strip big enough to accommodate the dropship. It was the most difficult landing Neil had ever attempted, but he managed to set the craft down without doing any damage.
Sun himself came out to greet them. He was slight, balding, and wore a thin white mustache. He moved with precision. He spoke English for the Americans’ benefit, inviting them in for a meal. When Donovan declined, saying the dropship could be tracked and staying on the surface was risky, Sun nodded and waved forward the two men and two women accompanying him. They were all traveling light. Without being asked, his bodyguard surrendered his sidearm to the dropship’s crew chief, and Neil launched them into the sky.
Li Xiao didn’t know the name of the young corporal who was running with him. But she had displayed a degree of ruthlessness in the hour since they were shot down that impressed even him.
Other than Li and the corporal, only the platoon lieutenant had survived the crash. He was badly wounded and unable to move, so the corporal left him in the truck, first trapping the entry hatch with a grenade and a piece of metal. When he tried to protest, she hit him in the face twice, stunning him into silence, and returned to work.
Then she and Li fled. It was not long until they heard the rebels enter the crash site, and they were rewarded with an explosion that meant the death of the lieutenant as well as several of the rebels.
Since, they had been pursued, and twice they had set ambushes that resulted in several more dead rebels. The corporal’s powered armor provided them with a distinct advantage over their enemy; she was able to fire and move so quickly the rebels must have thought they were fighting a dozen soldiers.
I made a mistake in using the trucks instead of the power armor, Li thought. I will learn from this. Victory is more important than my personal pride.
Li needed to communicate with the Anjian, to call for a bombardment and arrange for rescue. However, the corporal had lost her handheld, and Li’s was smashed beyond repair.
“Let’s set another ambush,” he said.
The soldier nodded and smiled thinly.
“What is your name, Corporal?
“Khenbish.”
“You are Mongolian?” He peered at her closely. Some curves in her face suggested non-Han roots.
“I am Chinese," she said. It was the correct answer from a citizen. She met his eyes, and he waited.
"I am from Wuhai,” she allowed. Inner Mongolia.
“What does your name mean?” Li asked.
“I am nobody.”
If Sun Haishe
ng expected a formal reception, he didn’t show it when he was ushered on board without any fanfare. Lieutenant Commander Carla Mendoza received him politely and led his party to their quarters in the ship’s MMP. She explained that security required he and his entourage stay separate from the crew.
Sun took this well, merely asking for some freefall-sickness and sleeping pills, and inviting Donovan and Mendoza to join him in his quarters. Mendoza begged off, citing her duties, and Donovan introduced Neil as his aide and asked if he could join in Mendoza’s place. Sun consented with a nod.
After Sun settled his people into other quarters, he and Donovan chatted amiably, with Neil keeping one eye on the running translation on his handheld. Donovan and Sun had never met, but they had several people in common.
After 15 minutes of small talk, Sun switched to English. “I am sorry for your dead men and women. They did not die needlessly.”
“That is good of you to say,” Donovan said, also in English. “What are your plans when you return to Earth?”
“I shall go to New York City, initially,” he said. “We have an enclave in the Flushing neighborhood that will protect me.”
Donovan nodded. “And then?”
“When the time is right, I shall go to Taiwan.”
“Without your army?” Neil blurted.
“The loss of so many lives is saddening, but the story of their sacrifice will inspire many more to join the cause of independence for Taiwan. The people of Taiwan are my army. They hunger for freedom. With China diverted by the Japanese, now is our time to strike.”
Neil wondered if Sun was crazy.
Sun went on, “I know the people of Taiwan. They are sons of China as many of you Americans are sons of Europe – related, but not the same. Did you know I was not actually born on Taiwan?”
“I did not.” The file Neil could access on Sun Haisheng was minimal.
“I grew up in Shanghai and joined the bureaucracy. I was sent from Beijing as an administrator in the local government in Taipei. I met my wife there not long after. After reunification, Taiwan was for decades allowed a number of freedoms the rest of China was not, and it showed. The city was so vibrant. It had arts and restaurants and people who simply enjoyed being alive. I said to myself, this is what all of China could become, if it only its masters would allow some creative chaos like this.”
He looked down into his drink. “But it was not to be. Most of my brethren returning from the colonies wanted more control, not less. The boot came down on Taiwan; it was to be folded into the main economic and political plan, our political groups absorbed into the ‘approved’ parties. I protested, tried to work from the inside, and was exiled first to Xinzhou, then to assist the Koreans in setting up their colony on Kuji. I left that post and went to Entente not long after, a man with no country, but a home: Taiwan. I joined the Liberation Congress, the Taiwan government-in-exile, on Entente. They elected me their leader twelve years ago, and despite Second Bureau’s best efforts, I have remained a free man.”
A slight shudder ran through the walls of the ship.
“What is that?” Sun said.
“We’re breaking orbit,” Neil said. “We are headed for Earth. When were you last there?”
“It has been 30 years,” Sun said. He blinked. “So long ago. How have things changed?”
Li and Khenbish circled back to the ambush site to search some of the rebels they had killed. Their pursuit appeared to have broken off for a lack of leadership. Sure enough, one of the dead was an officer, and he had a working handheld. It took some time, but Li reset the handheld to its default factory settings, allowing him to bypass any password checks. He transmitted to a public communications satellite in orbit, which linked him to Anjian, beyond the horizon.
“When we could not find or reach you on our last pass, we had feared you lost,” Anjian’s captain said. “Do you require any assistance?”
“We need a vehicle. Please contact someone to fetch us to the spaceport.”
“It will be done. Anything else?”
“I believe we have evaded our pursuit, but keep this line open until our ride arrives.”
“Of course.”
“Is the American destroyer still in orbit?”
“No. It is accelerating toward the DG Canum Venaticorum wormhole. I should also report that it sent a dropship down to the surface, to a small housing compound perhaps seventy kilometers from your present location. The dropship then returned to the vessel, and it broke orbit shortly afterward.”
Why would they do that? Li wondered. That is too far from the camp for any American survivors. Unless …
“Sun Haisheng is on board the American warship. You are to order the Americans to stop, board the vessel and retrieve him. If they do not stop, you are to destroy it,” he said.
A pause, long enough for Li to wonder if the order would be obeyed.
“It will be done.”
Floating back to his room, Neil decided he’d reached a personal milestone. He’d been up nearly 36 hours now with only a two-hour nap, yet he felt like he could handle standing another watch if he needed to. Or he could close his eyes and fall asleep, just floating here, outside the hatch to his room.
Might as well use the bunk. He opened the hatch and found Tom, strapped into his hammock but awake. His eyes were rimmed in red, and he looked away when Neil entered.
Not wanting to embarrass him, Neil started getting ready for sleep. After a minute of strained silence, Tom started talking.
“You ever have friends you just don’t like very much, but, for some reason, they’re your friends anyway? Rafe was like that,” Tom said. “Remember when we were hitting the bars on Entente, and that bum came up to Rafe and asked if he had fifty cents?”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “Rafe said, ‘Fifty cents? I’ve got fifty dollars!’ and walked away. Evil bastard, but a funny evil bastard.”
“The last thing I told him … I was yelling at him,” Tom said. “I’m sure we would have made up over a beer. Or not. I don’t know. It occurred to me I’ve never really run into death before. All my grandparents are alive and both of my great-grandmothers are alive; my great-grandfathers died when I was little. I don’t think I had even seen a dead body before today.”
He looked at Neil. “Sorry, I haven’t asked. How are you? Did you know the guys from the flight detachment?”
“Some,” Neil said. “Rodgers was a decent guy, had a couple of kids he loved to talk about.”
“Now they grow up without a father,” Tom shook his head. “That’s not right. Fucking Hans. And this fucking covert operation.” He grimaced, looked like he was about to break down for a moment, then sucked it up and looked at Neil.
“I need to shut up,” he said. “I’m chattering. I guess I’m trying to process everything. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. And quit apologizing,” Neil managed a weak smile, but inside himself he wondered where his emotion was. He knew he was sad that Rafe and the others had been killed, but he didn’t feel sad. It was like the deaths were mere data points to be filed away, perhaps to be experienced later.
Is something wrong with me? Tom’s dealing with this, but am I? Maybe I’m just heartless. Or in denial.
Mendoza’s voice echoed on the ship’s intercom and out of every handheld. “General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, to space action stations. This is not a drill. General Quarters, General Quarters.”
Neil heard muffled swearing from neighboring cabins. Tom unstrapped himself from his bunk; Neil, still in his uniform, didn’t wait for him. He left the cabin and launched himself back toward the main shaft through the ship to make his way to CIC, only to find the shaft already filling with members of the crew flying in one direction or the other. Twice on the way up he had to grab a handhold to check his velocity and prevent a collision with an astronaut headed in the other direction.
CIC was coming to life. Neil strapped into his usual seat at the Intel console. The holo display w
as up and running; it showed San Jacinto as a blue dart, accelerating toward the wormhole station to DG Canum Venaticorum, still more than half a million kilometers, and 40 hours, distant.
Some 6,000 kilometers behind the Americans, still in low orbit above Commonwealth, was a red dart labeled “Victor-9.” She had just fired her main fusion drive and was accelerating toward San Jacinto.
Victor-9 was communicating solely via text, and Lieutenant Vikram put their messages on one of the large screens in CIC.
“You are carrying a known criminal in violation of international law. You will decelerate immediately and be boarded, or we will destroy your vessel,” Victor-9 said.
“I guess our little truce didn’t hold,” Mendoza muttered, staring at the screen. She turned toward a crewman. “Okay, light up the antikinetics and counterbatteries. Full defensive profile.” That meant all of the laser power on the ship would be directed to self-protection.
“Captain in CIC!” a petty officer announced. Davis was right behind her.
“Victor-9 is burning remass to catch up,” the XO told them. “They are running at 27 milligees, triple their normal cruise thrust.”
“How long until intercept?”
Neil did some calculations on his console. When nobody else answered Thorne’s question, he said, “If we don’t alter our thrust, they will catch up to us in about five hours.”
“They certainly are erratic, aren’t they?” Davis said. “They kill our people on the surface. We defend them, so they fire the warning shot, and we fire one back. Everybody backs off. Now they come after us. It’s like their captain can’t make up his mind.”
“Or is taking orders from somewhere else,” Mendoza said. “If this guy is really a Han, it follows. They don’t allow for much independence in their captains. But is this just another warning, or are they serious?”
More officers filed in, Tom among them. Most of San Jacinto’s officer corps were present, save for Hayes, Doc Avery, some of the engineering officers, and Erin Quintana, down in secondary fire control near the gun turrets. For some reason, the thought of Erin in a battle caused a twinge of fear in Neil. We’re probably entering combat, so my training is taking over. But my feelings for her … those are outside the training. It’s making this more real.
