Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship

by Jean Johnson

  Saunders smirked, pushing away from the van so he could saunter over to the hoverbike. “We’re not that stupid. No offense to you Army types.”

  “. . . None taken,” Roghetti muttered, watching both monks mount the hoverbike. “Open the gate for the Ship’s Captain.”

  Gulvigsson nodded and touched something on his arm unit. Static sparked not just across the gate but across the air for at least four meters above the gate, proving that the perimeter had been secured by more than just a mesh of cheap-looking, galvanized, chain-link steel. Saunders turned on the thrusters. With a quiet thrum, the hoverbike lifted up off the ground, then tipped sideways and took off. Ia stepped through the gate in their wake.

  “I’ll give you a ride back to camp if you want, Captain,” she offered, unlocking the beige vehicle.

  “I’ll take that offer.” Joining her, he climbed into the hovervan from the other side, then craned his neck to eye the machinery occupying most of the back. “You said I could use it?”

  “My people will have priority, but yes. First thing’s first. Get this back to camp and get my comm techs to start tuning its frequencies—buckle up,” she ordered, strapping herself into the restraint harness. “It might be less than a klick back to the heart of camp, but this thing won’t move until I hear that belt click.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” he quipped, pulling the straps into place for his own seat. “How long will it take to get the frequencies tuned? I have some reports I need to send to the DoI, and I’d prefer to send ’em by a more private means than lightwave.”

  “Probably about two, three hours. No more than three, most likely. Then I’ll need half an hour to connect with Headquarters and give Mattox my battle plans.” Starting the thrusters, Ia lifted the hovervan a meter off the ground and drifted it forward, navigating the gate gently to keep from knocking Gulvigsson’s legs out from under him with the repulsor fields. She sped up a little once they were through. “We have twelve cable plugs for direct-line bandwidths available, with the capacity to project up to four pinholes at a time with this rig. But it has to be sitting still. The vacuum chamber is too small to compensate for anything more than the planet’s own movement. You can have up to four of those twelve bandwidths if you know the exact connection frequencies.”

  “Not really, since we deal mostly in lightwave frequencies out here on the line . . . but I figure you might know. If your crew is right, and you really are that accurate,” Roghetti added, glancing at her.

  Ia shrugged. “I try to be. A lot more than I care to think about is riding every single day on my accuracy.”

  • • •

  “Shakk,” Captain Roghetti swore, staring at the screen on the back of the hyperrelay unit.

  “. . . Sir?” Private Mysuri asked, glancing between him and her CO. “Is something wrong?” It was her duty-shift hour to watch the van’s contents, and her responsibility to make sure everything worked properly now that the hyperrelay had been programmed.

  “It’s alright, Private,” Ia reassured her. “He’s just realized he now has a direct connection to the Tower’s hyperrelay hub on Earth.”

  “That explains why the machine is humming so loudly,” Roghetti muttered, nodding at the thrumming bulk of white metal occupying the van’s cargo space. He hesitated, datachip in hand, then shook his head. “I can’t send this right now. I was thinking I’d get the DoI processing center on Kelkirk Station, which is where the Dabin relays connect.”

  Ia frowned in confusion. She trailed mental fingers through the timestreams, looking for what he wanted to send, and its potential repercussions. “. . . Ah. That report. Yeah, it’ll get flagged for priority handling, coming in on this particular channel. You should probably speak with Colonel Matheson and Major Nikulu’a before you send it, double-confirm they’ll be sending their own. Maybe even invite them out here to help file it in person.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed quietly, staring at the chip. “It’s easier to v’shakk away your career when you have at least two other officers willing to back you up. If it went to the Kelkirk, they’d also take a few days to process it since they have four or five battlefronts’ worth of reports to wade through at any point, but this would happen a bit fast.”

  “As of tomorrow, six battlefronts,” Ia quipped. “But three days after that, it drops to four. The volume from Dabin will pick up sharply, though.”

  “Are you pulling my leg?” the Army captain asked her.

  Ia smiled.

  “. . . Sirs?” Mysuri asked, flicking her brown gaze between the two. Ia shook her head subtly, and she changed the subject. “If you don’t need the DoI on Earth, Captain Roghetti, I’ll set the ping to Admiral Genibes’s office now.”

  He nodded, giving her permission. Stepping into place, Mysuri tapped in the address, then synched her arm unit. Text scrolled up the screen, response and counterresponse as she added more information. After a minute, she nodded. “Security protocols have been confirmed, Captain. We can use this. The distance involved limits us to three hours per liter, but we have a secured line to the chain of command now. The only thing you’ll have to worry about, sirs, is parabolic audio surveillance. We don’t have the vacuum of space and several cushioning layers between us and the enemy.”

  “Any messages for us?” Ia asked, curious.

  “Just the one, sir, text from Admiral Genibes. ‘Informed Mattox to expect your plans,’” she read, tapping open that file. “It looks like he’s gone offline for sleep, sir. Did you want me to leave him a message?”

  “Tell him ‘I’m on it,’ then switch relays to Dabin Army Headquarters,” Ia instructed.

  Movement caught her attention; it came from a figure ducking into the mouth of the tent sheltering the van. Like everyone else in camp, the tallish blonde woman had donned mottled camouflage clothes patterned and colored to look like the local terrain. Ia frowned, not expecting Jesselle Mishka’s arrival right now. That was an off-the-wall percentile probability.

  “Doctor?” Ia asked her.

  The tall blonde woman waggled the datapad in her hand. “I finally got hold of the individual post-battle reports from Roghetti’s Squad sergeants this morning, and do you know what I found, Captain? This Brigadier General Mattox’s battle plans are a steaming pile of nonsense!”

  Roghetti eyed Mishka, then glanced at Ia. “That’s your Company physician. What is she doing discussing tactics?—Not that I disagree with your assessment, Lieutenant Commander,” he added in a polite, apologetic aside to Jesselle, “but that’s not normally a surgeon’s area of expertise.”

  Ia held up her hand, warding off his doubt. “Dr. Mishka is a Triphid, not a mere surgeon, with a triple doctorate in comprehensive medicine from preventive care all the way through to post-op. As a result, she has a knack for putting disparate information together and coming up with an accurate summation of the underlying problem.

  “This is why I insisted you study tactics for the last two and a half years, Doctor,” she added, facing Jesselle. “I needed you to be familiar enough with tactics and battle reports to look at the fights here on Dabin and tell me what’s wrong with my patient.”

  Jesselle waggled the datapad again, hints of a scowl pinching her otherwise-smooth brow. “What’s wrong is that your patient is filled with self-inflicted wounds disguised to look like enemy-inflicted injuries. Somewhere along the way, someone started lying about it to the higher-ups. Look,” the doctor added, tilting the pad so both fellow officers could see. “I cross-compared the official reports for the casualty ratings and the official tactical summaries pulled from the military Nets, versus the real reports from these soldiers.

  “The types of casualty reports being passed up higher than the Legion level are being misrepresented for the types that should be felt in ground-based combat versus the Salik, given the officially reported battle plans,” Mishka stated, thumbing the screen so that graphs overlaid
each other. The tally counts and percentage bars did not match. “Almost every single one of these is like . . . is like elective surgery. Like ignoring a gut wound to augment the breasts. It looks pretty on the page, but it’s all offensive pushes, trying to use overwhelming force to maneuver and destroy the enemy.”

  Ia blushed a little at her blunt analogy. She wasn’t the only one. Roghetti coughed, and Mysuri bit her lip. The private cleared her throat. “We have a pingback from headquarters now, Captain Ia. Shall I put a call through?”

  “Give me a moment, Doctor. Hopefully, my plans will fix the problem,” Ia added. “Put it through, Private.”

  Mishka nodded. Turning back to the hyperrelay machine, Ia lifted her chin. Mysuri tapped in the commands to connect the link and shifted back so Ia could take her place. With this particular unit coded for direct contact with Earth, they didn’t have the relay connected to any of Roghetti’s communications net for security reasons. It could also be used to connect to a relatively close hyperrelay hub and bounce back directly to Army Headquarters here on Dabin, with the bare minimum in time lost and no risks of the enemy picking up the call via lightwave. However, using the machine meant using the one and only screen on the side facing the open back door of the van; that was the only way all the pieces could fit into a hovervan of this size.

  Ia tucked her hands behind her back, echoing Roghetti’s and Mysuri’s waiting poses. Mishka folded her arms across her chest, datapad still in one hand. After a few seconds, someone answered the link. The woman on the other end was clad in Dress Greens, her formal jacket striped down the sleeves in Space Force Black; silver oak leaves decorated the collar points, marking her rank as a major. Behind her, Ia could see the bland beige walls of an office. The name pinned to her jacket said Perkins.

  The major had started out with a smile, but switched it quickly to a puzzled frown as she studied Ia’s face and local-colored clothes. “. . . Excuse me, meioa, but this channel and code are reserved for Command Staff–level communications. Who are you, and how did you get access?”

  “I am Ship’s Captain Ia, 9th Cordon Special Forces,” Ia introduced herself. “Admiral Genibes of the Special Forces sent a message about eight hours ago on this same channel instructing Brigadier General Mattox to expect my call. I would like to speak with him, please.”

  A dog barked somewhere in the background. The pull of the planet’s gravity was lighter than Ia’s homeworld, but the sound wasn’t much different from the yapping of a stubbie, the stout-legged heavyworlder dog breed found back on Sanctuary. For a moment, she thought it was a rather odd thing to have in a military headquarters, then had to remind herself she was on a planet, not a starship or a space station. Animals could roam a lot more freely here than they could on a ship, where they had to remain caged for their own safety in case of sudden maneuvers.

  Major Leotta Perkins, checking something on a secondary screen, shook her head. She offered a polite smile. “I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment, Ship’s Captain. But we are expecting your battle plans. Please forward them to me now, and I’ll make sure the General sees them as soon as he has a moment.”

  Ia didn’t trust her smile. Not because it seemed insincere, which it didn’t, but because of Mishka’s sigh behind her. It was a huff of impatience mingled with disbelief. “I must insist on being put through for a face-to-face, Major. These plans have been approved by the Command Staff, and I have been instructed to deliver them to Brigadier General José Mattox himself. Since I am needed on the battlefront to help implement those orders as soon as they are approved and distributed, this puts me 643 kilometers from his location. If need be, I can hold this hyperrelay open . . .”

  “Twelve hours, sir,” Mysuri murmured from her position to one side. She pointed to the power display in the lower right corner of the oblong screen. “It’s located right there on this model.”

  “. . . For the next twelve hours,” Ia confirmed, barely missing a beat. The configuration for the portable relay’s screen wasn’t the standard for military-issued ones, and she hadn’t been the one to set it up. She had spent the last two and a half hours eating breakfast and conferring with the corporals and yeomen heading up each of her Company’s Squads, going over what they had learned of the local terrain in order to match it up with her coming battle orders. “Considering he’s just left the restroom, I think I can wait four more seconds for him to enter your office and become available.”

  The major’s smile never slipped. “I don’t know where you get your inf . . . oh.” Major Perkins lost her smile at the corners of her mouth. She focused somewhere past her screen and spoke. “Brigadier General, there’s a Ship’s Captain Ia from the TUPSF Special Forces on the comm. She insists on speaking with you immediately, sir.”

  Her body turned, gaze lifting to follow the brigadier general’s movement as he came around to her side of the desk. Bracing one green-sleeved arm on the desk and the other on the back of the major’s chair, Mattox smiled into the pickups, deepening the creases on either side of his mouth. Aside from those lines, his round, tanned face was mostly wrinkle-free.

  “Ah, the infamous Captain Ia. Bloody Mary herself, come to help out the Army. Pass on over those battle plans, will you?” he offered as the dog again barked in the background. “I’ve been looking forward to reading them.”

  Wary at his open friendliness, Ia took a moment to twist her mind onto the timestreams. Rippling waves of grass met her inner eye, crisscrossed by thousands of gleaming streams representing all the lives in her immediate reach. Mist scudded in tufts here and there, but Ia could see downstream into the future.

  It looked like Mattox would indeed implement her plans. Satisfied, she pulled her awareness fully back into her body and fished for the datachip in her shirt pocket. “I have them right here, General. I’m looking forward to working with the Army on this.”

  Slotting the rectangle into the machine, she hit the download command. Major Perkins tapped a few controls, then nodded. “Download complete, sirs. Will that be all, Ship’s Captain?”

  “For now, yes. Make sure that gets distributed by the end of tomorrow,” Ia added, removing the chip. “The timing is crucial.”

  “I’ll look them over and deal with them right away. Welcome to Dabin, Captain,” Mattox added politely. “I’m sure with you and your reputation on our side, the Salik won’t be a problem for much longer. Headquarters out.”

  The connection ended with a tap of the major’s hand. Ia blinked, then shrugged it off. She moved back to the other two officers, letting Private Mysuri shut the machine down. “Well, that went better than expected.”

  “That man is delusional.” Mishka’s flat statement made Roghetti blink and Ia frown. She lifted her chin at the now-blank screen on the other side of the black-haired private. “I’ve seen patients who refuse to acknowledge reality. He is far too agreeable in the face of the disparity found in these reports.”

  “I checked the timestreams, Doctor,” Ia reassured her. “He will follow my plans.”

  Jesselle eyed her up and down, then shrugged. “Well, you asked for my opinion, and that’s my opinion. I’d almost judge him to be suffering from split-personality syndrome, but I’d need to examine him formally first . . . and that accusation goes no further than the four of us,” she added, pinning Roghetti with a hard look. Ia and Mysuri, she apparently trusted. “I’m not inclined to piss away my career because of a bit of undocumented speculation.”

  Roghetti held up his hands, reassuring her. “I’m right there with you, sir. There’s a handful of us who want to level charges of incompetence . . . but doing that even with solid proof guarantees our own conduct gets run through a Board of Inquiry.”

  Frowning at her crew member’s words, Ia took a few seconds to slip back into the timestreams. Touching the waters of José Mattox’s life, she checked it for signs of a dual personality, a happy Dr. Jekyll ignorant of a dang
erous Mr. Hyde hidden inside. The fog was still there, but only in patches and mostly toward the edges of her immediate awareness.

  She pulled back to herself with a shake of her head. “From what I can see in the timestreams, he’s not suffering from any split-personality disorder.”

  “Well, someone is at Headquarters. If it’s not a tumor in the brain of the snake, it’s a cancerous growth down in the pancreas,” Mishka muttered. “Presuming snakes have pancreases. I never studied herpetology.”

  “I’ll keep my senses open,” Ia promised her.

  “You do that, sir. And do keep in mind he never said he would implement those orders,” the blonde added tartly. “Just that he would look at them and handle them somehow.”

  Unsure if her Company physician was reading too much into Mattox’s words, or lack thereof, Ia switched the subject. “I’ll keep that in mind as well, Doctor. Captain Roghetti, if you don’t need me, I’d like to walk the front perimeter with one of your sergeants, get a feel for the lay of the land. It’s one thing to see it in my head but another to hear it, smell it, and feel it. Particularly before I have to go out and fight in it.”

  Roghetti checked the chrono built into his bracer-sized command arm unit. “There’s a mixed patrol of yours and mine headed out in . . . sixteen minutes. We’ll get you suited up to go out with them. If you’ll excuse us, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “Of course. Captain, I’ll go review some more reports to see if I can diagnose exactly which element in the chain of command is causing the problems on this campaign if it isn’t Mattox himself,” Mishka promised. “That major might be one of your roadblocks. Try your best not to get hit, gentlemeioas. I’d far rather wade through piles of debriefings than have to perform surgery in a field hospital—no offense to your medical facilities. It’s not a bad pod as far as portables go, but it’s not a state-of-the-art infirmary.”