by John Lumpkin
How is this winning a war? He felt like a rat. If he didn’t find anything he’d be blamed for running a lousy investigation; if he found something he’d have to report on one of his colleagues.
Everything out here is gray, Neil thought. We’re steeped in it. Donovan relishes it, and now I swim in it. But the others: Look at Doc Avery and Uncle Jack and Maria Sanchez, all ready to kill some Hans, no questions asked. Even Erin, who can submerge any doubts she has about this war because she believes it’s her duty to do so. Or Tom, who hates what has happened so much that he would probably join a protest march back on Earth.
Tom … the thought triggered something. But he was late for a meeting with Donovan, so he let it slide.
The information came from Yancey; the plan was all Rand’s. A six-vehicle Han ground convoy was moving down Farm-to-Market Road 4, en route to collect a bunch of ranch families assembled for transportation to Cottonwood, then the camps at Sycamore. They would pass along the main street of Hawthorn, a tiny village built a decade ago to serve farmers tired of going all the way into Cottonwood, fifty klicks distant, for supplies. The hamlet was deserted; the Hans had already cleared it out.
But it made a pretty good spot for an ambush.
Overhead was a steely gray sky. Rand was perched on the second story of Hawthorn’s hardware store, with Rebecca Torren beside him, one window over. Across the street, arrayed on the upper floors of the church and town hall, was the rest of his crew.
This would mark their fourth ambush of Han forces. The other three had been small-time, picking off single vehicles and a few troopers. They’d been lucky so far, and none of Rand’s people had been hurt.
“Got ‘em,” Lopez transmitted from across the street. “They’re approaching. Be here in a minute.”
“Hey, if we’re cops, shouldn’t we try to arrest them?” Rand said to Torren. It was a running joke. Torren smiled and whispered out the window, as quietly as she could, “You’re all under arrest.”
She paused, then said, “Definitely resisting. Serious obstruction of justice. Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way.”
Rand chuckled. Hard to imagine a cop could be such an effective guerrilla. But she knew the roads and farms outside of Cottonwood, knew the families, and knew good places to hide from pursuers.
The first vehicle passed in front of them. It was an eight-wheeled armored car, with some kind of heavy gun in a turret. Good thing they had recovered some Han rockets in the last raid.
Behind that was an open-air jeep, presumably with the officer in charge of rounding up the American colonists. Then four trucks, each escorted by two infantry troopers in combat armor, keeping pace with their walker gear.
Uh-oh. They had assumed the Han infantry would be in one of the trucks, but they were getting more careful. He reached for his handheld to call off the attack –
Too late. McKay’s rocket grenade sliced out from an upper-floor window of the town hall and connected with the armored car at the lead of the convoy. It detonated on the metal cage that lined the car’s exterior like a fence, wasting much of its energy. The car skidded to a halt, the turret gun depressed and unmoving.
Torren, to Rand’s left, opened up next with her assault rifle, shooting at the cab of the rear truck. The plan had been to disable the forward and rear vehicles in the convoy, opening up a kill zone along Main Street from which the Hans couldn’t escape.
We’re committed now, Rand thought. The officer’s jeep crashed into the back of the armored car, the smaller vehicle folding like paper against the heavy vehicle’s rear quarter. The other trucks skidded to a halt without hitting one another.
The Han walker infantry started moving impossibly fast, scattering into doorways along the street. Rand took aim, fired … missed. “Lead them! Lead them!” He whispered fiercely, not realizing he was talking aloud.
He saw one trooper leaning out a doorway, too far. He fired and saw a splash of red behind the man, who fell.
A fusillade of shots, up and down the street … Rand saw another Han trooper, bravely negotiating the street to help the truck crews to safety, stumble as she took two hits to the chest, but her combat armor absorbed the blows. She kept going.
Rand peered across the way.
“Aguirre,” he said on the radio. “Bad guys, right beneath you.”
Rand saw a hand emerge – probably Lopez’s – from the church’s top window, a circular, multicolored stained-glass thing they had broken to set the ambush. She dropped a grenade, which exploded just as it hit the ground, blowing apart the heavy oak church door and the four troopers clustered beneath it.
McKay, on the handheld comms – “L.T., I think they got the turret on the AFV going!” Rand heard the heavy cannon open up, saw out the window it was shooting at McKay’s position. Puffs of smoke appeared around the windows of the upper floor of the town hall.
Silence on Rand’s handheld for a long moment. Then, “McKay here – Pravitz and Ramirez are down. They look bad. I’m … suppressed.”
Shots from the street up at Aguirre’s position. It’s falling apart – and I can’t solve it from here.
“We’re losing it!” shouted Torren. Stupid. Use the handheld.
“McKay, you have to take out that AFV,” he said into his handheld, as calmly as possible.
“Sir, I … I’ll try.”
Rand and Torren’s position was drawing fire – Rand couldn’t peer out the window. But he heard a whoosh and a loud crack, followed by another fusillade of shots.
“I got it,” McKay transmitted. His voice was quiet, almost hollow. “I took a hit, but my armor stopped it. Stupid … shouldn’t have watched.” He fell silent.
The Chinese gave up after losing their lieutenant and their AFV. Their spotter drone overhead couldn’t tell them what they were up against, and they were taking too many losses. Strike drones were twenty minutes away, and a space strike would take thirty – too long to hold out. Two of the trucks made successful three-point turns and roared away, the troopers running beside them, sometimes turning to fire wildly back into town.
The street fell into silence. McKay was alive but having trouble breathing; Rand thought the bullet may have cracked a rib. Ramirez and Pravitz, the two MPs, were dead. It was time to clear out … no telling when the Hans would come back in force. They grabbed what weapons and ammunition they could. Aguirre found a high-power mobile computer and communications rig in the wreckage of the officer’s jeep.
They left the Han wounded, on the theory a wounded man took up more enemy resources than a dead one. They also left their dead behind.
Neil decided the best place for the interview was their quarters.
“Tom, we need to talk,” he said. He passed him his handheld, the message on the screen. “This yours?”
Silently, Tom took the handheld, scanned it for a moment, and passed it back. He nodded.
The original message had gone from Tom to the news director at the entertainment station in Texas where he used to work. It wasn’t the full account of the destruction of the Chinese colony ships; it was merely a copy of one of many Chinese government press releases accusing the Japanese of one atrocity or another. Tom had highlighted the relevant passage, and had noted, “Sometimes when you cry wolf, there really is one.”
“This news director in touch with the Times?”
“Probably,” Tom said. “You didn’t dig out her reply to me, I take it. She said she knew just who to pass it to.”
He was right; Neil hadn’t thought to scan inbound traffic. “But you don’t know for certain?”
“Nope,” Tom said sullenly. “They must have learned the rest in Washington. Are you going to rat me out? All I did was help someone tell the truth about a criminal massacre.”
He propelled himself from the room without waiting for Neil’s response.
Li Xiao idly wondered how an American Army private could afford a house of even this modest size. Land was cheap in the colonies, but materials were not.
Perhaps his wife earned more money than he did.
Khenbish, down on the street below, called. “They are home,” she said. “We are in position.”
Li leaned forward in the skycar cabin and tapped the driver on the shoulder, signaling the operation was about to begin. The driver nodded and brought the car to a position above the house.
Li Xiao said to Khenbish, “Go.”
He slaved his handheld to the cameras on the skycar, and watched as Khenbish and several other security troopers surrounded the house and went inside. Li heard a single, muffled shot picked up by Khenbish’s microphone.
A few moments later, she said, “We have him. I had to kill his wife; she had run to the house computer, presumably to erase some files.”
“Understood.”
This target had been difficult to find; his communications to the insurgents were well-coded. But Li had found too many mentions of places in his messages that were also sites of attacks.
Through the camera, Li Xiao watched as Khenbish led a sobbing, hooded PFC Tim Yancey to their waiting van. He smiled. Khenbish was good at her job, and eager to please.
Neil couldn’t meet Tom’s eyes when he entered CIC. The alert had been expected; San Jacinto was approaching the keyhole to GJ 1119 – another red dwarf on the long haul to Earth.
GJ 1119 also branched to 11 Leonis Minoris, where the Chinese had taken Kuan Yin. At last report, they hadn’t tried to move into GJ 1119, but Captain Thorne wasn’t taking any chances. They had not seen any civilian shipping since passing the Spruance task force, one system back.
The imminent crossing had also meant a bit of a reprieve for Neil’s investigation. He hadn’t yet told the captain he had figured out the source of the leak, rationalizing he hadn’t eliminated every potential source on board – maybe someone other than Tom had provided more specific information for the story. With the looming threat of combat, Captain Thorne logged an order that his duties in CIC took precedence over updating Earth on his investigation.
“Probe away,” called Ensign Brandt. The pilot had been summoned to CIC to remote-fly the sensor drone through the keyhole. It would poke around the other side to make sure they weren’t facing an ambush.
The drone, a disc less than 10 centimeters in diameter, passed through the center of the keyhole. Its two cameras began a scan of the space around the keyhole mouth.
“Bingo,” said the sensor tech sitting behind Brandt. “Multiple candles near the Kuan Yin keyhole. Distance point-one-four AU. Ensign Mercer, you should be getting the telemetry – whoa! Got a visual on a ship near the keyhole mouth! Range about 300 meters! Definitely a warship!”
Everybody cycled through their screens to see what the astronaut saw. Sure enough, a long, gunmetal gray vessel lay before the camera, its weapon mounts pointed directly at the drone.
The sensor operator zoomed in on some markings on the ship’s nose. She saw a cross of red on a white field, with a familiar jack in the top-left corner.
Captain Thorne said, “Relax, everyone. It’s a Brit.”
Yancey is getting bolder, Rand thought after re-reading the latest message to “Grandma.” He’d actually included a specific hour for the next target – a Han general would be touring the remains of Fort Patton, now occupied by Han troops. I should warn him to tone it down.
Captain John Courtenay, Royal Navy, master of HMS Swiftsure, walked into San Jacinto’s dropship bay with the grace and precision of a man who had been in freefall for twenty years.
Captain Thorne smiled warmly. “Welcome aboard, Captain.”
“Oh, please, call me John.” He looked around. “San Jacinto. You don’t know how happy I am to finally be aboard an American ship that isn’t named for a battle in which you either defeated us or pulled our feet out of the fire.”
Laughter, from both Thorne’s and Courtenay’s entourages. This guy knows how to get off on the right foot, Neil thought.
They floated up to the briefing room, and Courtenay stood at the front. He was tall, with a weathered face and a slight paunch, a testament to his many years in space. He was jovial and confident, and officers and astronauts alike responded to him. His words sunk in.
He’s a leader, Neil realized. Captain Thorne is a manager, but this captain inspires the people around him.
Courtenay said, “As you’ve no doubt gathered, Swiftsure is patrolling the junction – ah, keyhole, as you folks cleverly call it – in case anything gets by your Spruance task force. The large assembly near the 11 Leonis Minoris junction is a multinational fleet, 21 combat ships total, plus four Marine assault carriers and a smattering of support vessels. They’re going to retake Sequoia from the Hans. Your countrymen make up the majority of the fleet, led by the Eagle – your Eagle, not ours, of course. Royal Navy has four – Swiftsure, Trenchant, Centurion and Somerset, and the Australians have Fremantle and Warramunga,” he said. “There’s an orphan Iranian frigate, the Bayandor. Three Sakis have recently arrived, including one ship I believe you are familiar with, the Mogami.”
Courtenay peered around the room and saw looks of disgust.
“Yes, I see some of you aren’t much for Rear Admiral Tanaka either. You should know that it’s not quite clear yet who is in overall command,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” Davis interrupted.
“I’m afraid not. There’s a apparently a bit of a dispute between him and your Rear Admiral Bannon on Eagle on who should command the strike, and your respective home offices aren’t clarifying the situation much, I’m afraid. But I imagine it will work out soon, for we’re all one big happy alliance, aren’t we?”
Neil didn’t miss the sarcasm. He’s worried.
“Tanaka actually outranks Bannon – the Japanese would call Bannon a commodore, you see, as we would,” Courtenay said. “But Bannon quite rightfully argues that because it is primarily an American fleet, trying to retake an American colony, he should remain in control.”
The two captains’ handhelds buzzed within two seconds of each other. Courtenay scanned his screen and nodded at Thorne.
“New orders,” Thorne announced. “We’re to join the fleet. Swiftsure will be joining us for the ride over. Ensign Mercer, could you ask Mister Donovan to join us when Captain Courtenay has concluded?”
Rand Castillo never thought he could be bored and terrified at the same time. He had been waiting for twelve hours, as motionless as possible, in a small creek bed a few klicks from Fort Patton. His fear made him want to get up and run away as fast as he could. But he knew motion was death; the hunter drones circling overhead would find him and kill him.
There were only four of them alive now – Rand, Aguirre, Torren and Lopez, hiding in the woods. McKay was dead; the bomb had come out of nowhere, and obliterated their position as they had crept toward Fort Patton.
It must have been a high-altitude drone that got him. The last message from Yancey, suggesting an attack on the Hans occupying Fort Patton, was a set-up, and they had walked into the trap. Had Yancey been compromised? Or perhaps one of the others had turned on them. Rand didn’t know. Some part of him didn’t want to know.
Their cabin felt cold, like the air conditioners were working overtime, or someone was letting some outer space in. Tom, seated, was looking straight at him, his hands clasped together.
“Tom,” Neil said, trying to recite the words as he’d rehearsed, “I’m going to report that I haven’t anything found confirming the source of the leak, and I don’t expect to.”
Ensign Tom Mondragon’s mouth tightened for a moment. He said, “Thank you, Neil. You’re a good friend for protecting me, and I’m sorry about my outburst last week.”
Neil opened his mouth to tell him not to worry, but Tom raised his hand. “Let me finish. You should know I went to the captain a few hours ago and told her I sent the message. I asked her to let me tell you, and she was okay with that.”
“Are you going to be arrested?”
“No. A ship’s captain has a lot of leeway to ta
ke discipline into her own hands. She said I didn’t really leak any classified information, given I simply endorsed a Chinese press statement. I get a reprimand in my file for an unauthorized media contact. She’s sticking her neck out for me, but she said she’s already in the shitter with Space Command, so why not do the right thing?”
San Jacinto and Swiftsure joined the allied fleet near the 11 Leonis Minoris keyhole ten days later. It was a less-than-ideal place to stage a counterattack. No gas giants were within a reasonable distance, so the fleet had to haul its own fuel.
The fleet was in a distant orbit over Pickering, a frigid, moonless world of watery ammonia oceans and nitrogen skies. Though such an arrangement could theoretically harbor life, nothing lived in the seas or upon the few rocky outcrops that jutted above the liquid surface. It was a world useless to humanity, save as a gravity well to hold a wormhole.
The allied fleet kept a respectful distance from the keyhole, fearing the enemy would send missiles through. They did not fear an attack against the wormhole equipment; it was unthinkable the Chinese would escalate the war to that level, as such a strike would surely engender retaliatory strikes against wormholes elsewhere, leaving fleets and colonies cut off from Earth for months or years. In the interim, the lost colonies, many of which were still dependent on Earth for machines or nutrients in short supply, would be at risk for destruction. It would be a level of violence on par with global thermonuclear war, or nanological weapons, or dropping asteroids from orbit … all actions neither side dared to contemplate. For the moment, at least.
Neil, wasting time while on duty in CIC, viewed images of the fleet from the ship’s external cameras. The video reminded him of the view in an aquarium, with large, stately fish moving slowly as little baitfish – intership jumpers – darted to and fro. The massive flagship, Eagle, was located near the center of the formation. The familiar lines of the cruiser Mogami were close by, challenging Eagle’s supremacy.
