by Jay Posey
“As certain as anyone can be in this business, captain,” Davis answered finally. “And then there’s this…”
She cycled the projector to another image, this one an apparent debris field in open space. Some destroyed satellite, Lincoln guessed, or maybe a small shuttle. “Thirty-six hours ago, the civilian station Veryn-Hakakuri YN-773 suffered a catastrophic collision with an unidentified space body. The image you see here is what’s left.”
The young lieutenant paused a moment, either to let that sink in, or because she was wrestling through the emotions of the news. Even the smallest stations were vast structures; catastrophic collision must have been an understatement almost to the point of absurdity. Lincoln looked at the image with new perspective, felt his mind twist with the shift in scale. With the new information, his brain reorganized the debris, picked out different details; the section he’d thought might have been remnants of a shuttle cockpit must have been fifty times the size. An observation deck, or hydroponic capsule maybe.
“Search and rescue crews are still a few hours out,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “but based on scans coming back from our whiskers… our current assessment is that there were no survivors.” WISCR drones could travel much faster than any crewed ship and so the earliest reports on just about any event almost always came from them. No survivors. How many souls did it take to keep a hop up and running? A thousand? Two thousand?
“They have several hundred kilometers of open space to cover, though. So maybe…” Davis trailed off. Like any technology, WISCRs weren’t perfect, but if they weren’t picking up any signs of survivors, there wasn’t much hope that search-and-rescue would have any more luck when they arrived.
“What kind of ‘unidentified space body’ could wipe a whole station?” Pence asked with a reserved tone.
“Whiskers are showing a lot mineral fragments in the debris field,” Davis answered. “It’ll be a while before forensics can determine anything for certain, but our working theory for now is an untracked asteroid.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Coleman said. “Their sensor array would have picked that up a long way off, whether it was showing on official tracking reports or not. They would have had plenty of warning to nudge the station out of the way.”
Davis nodded. “You’re right, sergeant. They should have had warning. And for more than just the obvious reasons. YN-773 was the station’s external designation, but its official one was LOCKSTEP. It was one of our primary SIGINT assets, shared between NID and Army intelligence.”
“It was a spy rig?” Sahil said.
Davis nodded again. “LOCKSTEP was synced to Martian orbit and responsible for a substantial percentage of our signals intelligence.”
“How substantial?” Lincoln asked.
“Losing it doesn’t blind us completely,” said Davis. “But it’s certainly a strong poke in the eye. Most of what we know about MARSCENT had LOCKSTEP’s fingerprints on it in one way or another. If they didn’t do initial collection, they were usually the ones to cross-index sources, and to follow up and corroborate new reports. Some of NID’s best people were on that rig.” She hesitated a bare moment before she added, “It was also an undeclared asset.”
“Mars didn’t know we had military operations there,” Lincoln said, clarifying.
“That’s correct, captain,” Davis said.
“So it was illegal,” Master Sergeant Wright added.
“That’s not true,” Davis said. “Technically. The Directorate ran the station and maintained a fully civilian staff on board for its entire operation. Military activity was compartmentalized, off-station, at a declared site.”
“So just because it wasn’t staffed by official military personnel,” Coleman said, “that makes it all right as far as interplanetary law’s concerned?”
Davis pressed her lips together before she answered, “It’s a grey area.”
“Convenient,” Wright said.
“I’m not sure we want to start looking too closely at the ethics and legalities of our particular duties, master sergeant.”
“Maybe if your folks managed yours a little better, we wouldn’t have to be so worried about mine, lieutenant.”
“Settle down, Amira,” Almeida said, from his corner. “Let’s not pick on our guest. She’s got enough on her plate already.”
“Sir,” Wright said.
“And, lieutenant,” he said, leveling his gaze at her, “I don’t mind you sticking up for yourself in here, but I would advise you to monitor the tone you take with my kids.”
“Yes, sir,” Davis said, and then shook her head. “Sorry, sir. And… I apologize, sergeant. I’ve been burning a lot of hours lately.”
Wright brushed the moment aside with a nod and a subdued gesture of her hand. Davis reset herself, and continued. “As Sergeant Coleman pointed out, LOCKSTEP should have had ample warning of any kind of threat, particularly one of that nature. But as you can see from the outcome, for some reason that wasn’t the case.”
Lincoln was already putting the pieces together. “So maybe it was an accident, and maybe it was an attack. You think someone threw a rock at your station to show they knew you were there?”
“Could be,” the lieutenant said. “But LOCKSTEP was undeclared for good reason. Whether this was a purposeful attack or a freak accident, we can’t go around broadcasting the loss.”
“You can imagine the diplomatic snafu this has already caused,” Colonel Almeida added. “We’ve had multiple offers of support from several of the Martian administrations and a number of private organizations, and our people have had to decline them all. It’s closer to them than it is to us, so I don’t have to tell you how that looks.”
“And Henry Sann’s death,” Wright said. “Not a coincidence.”
“Possibly not,” Davis said. “That’s the trouble. There’s no obvious connection between the two, no common threads apart from NID. But the timing is certainly… concerning.”
“What about the hit?” Lincoln asked. “Any signatures you recognize?”
“I’ve got full packets waiting for you with all the details,” Davis said. “I’d rather have you take a look and see what you come up with on your own.”
“We’re going into ISOFAC, kids,” the colonel said, referring to the team’s isolation facility, where they would hole up all together, cut off from the outside world until their mission package had been greenlit or scrubbed. “I can give you four hours to get your affairs in order. Then it’s go time. We have a lot of very important people turning the screws to get answers on this.”
“How much are we going to be bumping into NID?” Lincoln asked. “Are they running the show?”
“We’ll have a liaison for you to coordinate with,” Almeida answered. “A Mr Self. You can tell how concerned the Directorate is, because Mr Self is one of their seniormost guys. So senior, no one’s authorized or willing to tell me anything about him. But apart from him, for now, NID is forbidden to act on any of this. That’s why they’re bringing us in. We can’t say for certain whether either of these events were intentional, direct attacks against our nation. And if NID or any of our friends down the hall start buzzing around too much, we risk tipping off the wrong people that we’ve been hit. Both Henry and LOCKSTEP were undeclared for a reason. We can’t operate as if these were attacks, and we most certainly can’t pretend they weren’t. Henry’s murder would have been concerning no matter what. LOCKSTEP’s destruction is a blow on its own. But the two of them together look an awful lot like the first shots of a war we don’t want to have.”
“Possibly,” Davis reiterated. “Or they’re two completely unrelated events that just happen to have horrible ramifications. That’s what we need you to determine.”
“I don’t see it, sir,” said Coleman. “Central Martian Authority can barely keep its member states from poking holes in each other’s bubbles. I know we’re not on the friendliest of terms, but why would anyone up there pick a fight with
us?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a government tried to use an enemy abroad to buy some unity at home,” Wright said. “Not by a long shot.”
Though every one of the fourteen Martian settlements was sovereign, the Central Martian Authority acted as a unified governing body. Whenever the CMA issued policy, its members all fell in line. At least, they always had so far.
“Same effect here, though,” Coleman said. “If these were attacks, even if they were only directed against the Federation… I mean, shoot, even if they were only against the United States, it’d still risk giving us a reason to buddy up with all our local bad actors. Mars versus Earth shrinks the neighborhood an awful lot; maybe our differences with the Eastern Coalition don’t seem quite so big anymore.”
“Seems like we would’ve seen the buildup before now, too,” Pence said.
“Maybe,” Almeida said. “But if someone out there did want to go that route, throwing a little sand in our eyes is a pretty good way to get started, wouldn’t you say? We’re eight months out from Earth-Mars opposition, and our planets are going to be even closer together than the last time. Prime time to launch on us, if they’re going to. The timeline makes sense.”
“And the level of confusion all of this creates,” Lincoln said. “If it is an attack, and we can’t even tell… we spend our time trying to figure out what’s going on, while they’re busy executing the plan. Puts us way behind.”
Almeida nodded.
“If it’s an attack,” he added.
“So what do you have for us?” Lincoln asked, anxious to get to the point. “What’s our starting point?”
Davis stepped back from the podium and deferred to Almeida, who moved up and officially took over the briefing. He brought the image of Henry Sann back up and let it hang there in the air next to the scattered remains of LOCKSTEP; two phantoms at opposite ends of the loss-of-life spectrum, yet equal in significance.
“That’s for you to tell us,” said the colonel. “Our friends in the 23rd have a couple of threads for you to tug on, but no clear winners. Davis will transmit the full dump to you once you’re in the ISOFAC. Sift through it, see what catches your interest. And keep in mind, this is a quiet operation, kids.”
“When is it not, sir?” Mike asked from the back of the room.
“This one even more so than usual, Mike. It’s already a political nightmare, and this is exactly the kind of thing that the hallway warriors at Higher will exploit to push an agenda regardless of whether it’s appropriate or not. Everyone’s going to spin this as proof of why we need to do whatever their pet project is. We’re shortening the chain of reporting to keep as many hands off as possible. And that’s just here at home. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about all the bad actors we’ve got watching us, sniffing around for any sign of weakness.
“Captain Suh,” Almeida said, looking meaningfully at Lincoln. “I expect to have your team’s CONOPS ready for my review by this time tomorrow.” He put just enough emphasis on the your to make it clear without sounding forced. That wasn’t a lot of time to put together a concept of operations, not on something this complex with so little data; there was no doubt who would be held responsible if they didn’t hit the deadline. “Lord knows I’ll be spending all the time between now and then arguing with Higher about why we haven’t already done something. Questions?”
Lincoln glanced around the room, but the grim focus on the faces of his teammates told him everything he needed to know. This was exactly the kind of thing they were built for. This was a worthy one.
“No, sir,” Lincoln said. “We’re good to go.”
“Then get to work.”
With that command, Lincoln and his team stood and made their way out of the briefing room with a restrained sense of urgency. And as Lincoln followed his new teammates down the hall, all his anxiety about his decision, all the uncertainty about what he’d gotten himself into, melted away as the energy of purpose flooded him. And a strange suspicion began to grow in him then, that maybe the colonel knew him better than he thought. Jumping feet first into a chaotic situation and being expected to figure it out on the move… Lincoln could almost believe that this was exactly what he’d been made to do.
SEVEN
PIPER’S first impression upon waking was that she had fallen asleep in one of the station’s service tunnels. Her second impression was that she must have gotten incredibly drunk the night before and passed out in one of the station’s service tunnels. Then the flood of memories washed over her; the final moments of YN-773, the shockwave rushing towards her, and what she had assumed had been her death. Yet here she was, alive. As surprising as it was to discover that fact, her head and body warned her not rush to any conclusions. All she could really say for sure was that she wasn’t dead yet.
Emotion threatened to overwhelm her, but some instinct told her to resist it. Now wasn’t the time. No, it wasn’t instinct. It was one emotion overriding the others, suppressing their intensity.
Fear.
Not terror, or panic, but a quiet, important warning, urging caution and stillness. And Piper knew then that she was in danger.
Piper couldn’t identify the source, exactly, but the feeling was distinct, sharp around the edges. Another presence weighed on her; someone close. She had a sudden, childlike impression of hiding under a bed and seeing a pair of feet enter the room and stop next to her.
“She’s waking up,” a voice said. A man’s voice, rough even in its whisper.
A moment later, the presence withdrew, and Piper heard a whirr and a click. She counted to fifty before she risked taking a look, and even then she only cracked one eye. There was no one in sight. The room was so still, in fact, that she started to wonder if she’d dreamed it.
She didn’t recognize her surroundings. Gradually, her senses expanded outward, encompassing more than her immediate discomfort. Lighting was poor, but steady; a thin blue aura radiated meekly from fiberlights along the top and bottom of the wall, unobtrusive. It gave the room volume, but not much in the way of detail. The room was narrow, longer than it was wide, but not large. A regular rectangle, with walls that looked bare in the gloom. She certainly wasn’t in the pod. A storeroom on a station, maybe, or a ship. When she raised her head, the dim room sloshed in a sloppy swirl, and it took a full minute of lying back before everything settled into place. Even lying still, her every joint seemed to be slightly out of alignment.
Piper closed her eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled. Decided to start again from the beginning, as if this was her first time waking up. Without opening her eyes, she made a mental list of the things she knew. She wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t in the pod. Obviously someone had rescued her. But a ship would have had to have been close to have rescued her so soon. Unless… how long had she been unconscious? Maybe she’d been out for a long time. Maybe her injuries had required they keep her in a medically induced coma. Maybe they’d already transported her to another hop, and she was being treated.
But no, the room hadn’t appeared to have any medical equipment in it.
Maybe she was still aboard YN-773. Except it wasn’t the station, it was just a piece of it; she was strapped down to a chunk of debris, hurtling through space. Her eyes popped open of their own volition, wide and wild. Her mind was still fuzzy, her thoughts, disjointed; with her eyes closed, her imaginings had a bizarre quality lent by the grey space between sleep and wakefulness. Better to keep them open, then.
Piper spent a few moments staring straight up at the ceiling, and then turned her head slowly to examine her surroundings. In this second look, Piper confirmed her initial assessment of her location. It really did seem like a storeroom. And if she were on a station, there would be no reason to put her in a storage room. A ship then. And why would anyone put her in a storeroom? It must have been something small, something that wasn’t used to carrying a lot of people around. But then, if it was a ship, why hadn’t they put her in the medical bay? Even the smallest ru
nabouts were required by law to have some sort of medical station. And it was obvious enough to her just from the way her body felt that she needed some kind of aid.
But then, she caught sight of her right arm at rest by her side and saw that in fact someone had already given her medical aid. A thermoplast cast ran from the top of her knuckles almost up to her elbow, preventing her from rotating her hand and forearm. She wiggled her fingers, felt a burn radiate through the back of her hand. Piper recalled the initial shockwave passing through the pod, the sharp burst of pain. A broken wrist then, most likely.
She lifted the arm and brought it nearer to her face so she could examine the brace more closely in the weak light. Piper didn’t have any medical training herself, but life on a hop had its risks; she’d broken enough small bones to have some idea of what a good cast should look like. And this one impressed her. Maybe she’d been expecting it to be a temporary fix, a makeshift, improvised solution slapped together by whoever had found her. But this looked clean and professional to her. It was a custom print job, neatly executed. Whoever had applied it had been meticulous. A person concerned with precision. For some reason, it made her think of the military.
That might make some sense. Maybe the Central Martian Authority had happened to have a vessel in the area. If they’d been out on patrol, they could have been among the first to respond… but then, again, the room. And, she still hadn’t shaken the sense of danger she’d first felt.
It only now occurred to her that maybe she’d only been afraid because she hadn’t been fully awake yet. If she wanted to know what was going on, the easiest thing to do was to ask somebody.
Piper curled herself up to a sitting position with a good deal of effort and a fair amount of pain, and then swung her legs over the side of the… cot, she realized now, that she’d been lying on. She sat with her feet flat on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to subside. A wispy thought drifted through her fogged mind that dizziness was a common symptom of concussions. She started to sigh, but when she inhaled, an electric streak of pain made the breath catch in her throat. Even after the initial shock passed, a dull ache persisted on the left side of her ribcage. She wondered if she’d broken some ribs too. Careful of her newly discovered injury, Piper gently cleared her throat and raised her head towards the door.
