Tales From the War (Kinsella Universe Book 5)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “Rachael, we’re downloading a prepared text to you. Go live at once! Freddie! Cut everything and switch to Rachael on all feeds! All feeds, all channels! Every single one! Rachael, read the announcement! Nothing else! Forget Desai! You understand?” the Net Manager commanded.

  “Yes, sir!” Rachael’s voice was one of the chorus. Without hesitation she lifted one jean-clad foot and kited the chair next to her away, sending the cardboard cutout that usually sat on it, spinning to the floor.

  The red light on the video camera in front of her lit and she lifted her eyes to it and began to read from the teleprompter. “At 1:33 AM, Greenwich Mean Time, the Federation Council issued a State of Emergency Decree. Unknowns, believed to be nonhuman, have attacked colonies in the areas between Gandalf and Fleet World. In spite of grievous casualties, Fleet World was successfully defended. However Gandalf and perhaps other colonies, have been lost.

  “All serving military personnel shall report forthwith to their duty stations. All leaves and passes are herewith cancelled. All citizens shall aid in any way necessary any uniformed military person in the accomplishment of their duty.

  “All members of the active reserve branches shall report to their armories in the most expeditious means possible; if you are unable to reach your regular duty post within 24 hours, report to the adjutant of the nearest armory of any branch.

  “All other citizens shall follow their usual daily routine. Please try to avoid using communications channels wherever feasible. Please continue to monitor this station for further announcements.”

  Rachael stared into the camera. “This announcement is signed by President Emil van der Veere, President of the Federation, for the Federation Council.”

  She took a breath. “Please stay tuned; this is a designated Emergency Information Channel of the Federation! Further announcements will be forthcoming soon!”

  The red light went of, and she heard James Douglas’s voice in her ear. “Very good, Rachael! Very good indeed!”

  II

  An hour later they were gathered in the main conference room. James Douglas listened as Aaron Goldman whispered in his ear, before Goldman found a seat.

  “We will be making a number of adjustments in the way we do business,” Douglas told them bluntly. “A great number of things that we routinely report or broadcast may no longer be reported or broadcast at all. We will receive guidelines shortly from the Federation, but in the meantime we shall err on the side of caution. As of this moment, we put nothing on the air that might provide any intelligence value to our enemies, without prior approval. For the time being I will personally approve all scripts and review all tape to be broadcast. Emphasis here is on all, one hundred percent, even our regular daily fare. Everything, even the Travel Channel! The Shopping Channel!

  “We need a volunteer.” He looked around the room. Most of the people at the big conference table were curious, but wary and cautious as well.

  “I have asked, and Fleet has agreed, that we be allowed to send a correspondent into the war zone aboard one of the vessels being dispatched there. In four hours a Fleet cruiser, the Shenandoah, will depart. I want to put someone aboard her.”

  There was a silence in the room and Rachael leaned forward, intending to speak. Douglas was looking right at her when he spoke and he slightly shook his head, stopping her from speaking.

  “Before anyone rushes to offer to go,” there were nervous titters around the room. “Aaron was asked to edit a tape that we will broadcast shortly for the Federation, with early reports of the fighting. Let’s see what kind of a job our best editing team has done. I warn you now, that what you will see will haunt you for the rest of your lives.”

  He lifted a control and the room lights dimmed and a HDD started, showing a view high over a city; not a city Rachael recognized.

  “This is Pippin, the largest city on Gandalf,” the voice-over reported. The scene shifted and zoomed towards a large expanse of water, dotted with a dozen ships. “This is the Port area and a Class II Fleet base. The next few minutes we will show transmissions from Fleet cruiser Hastings, as it lifted to meet the attack.”

  A black display showed, green along the bottom, many sparks further out, visibly moving down; more and more sparks kept appearing. An accentless male voice said curtly, “Black Force count is now sixty plus. Missile launch indications. Many missiles! No fault!”

  Another calm, firm male voice spoke, “Fire lasers counter battery, fire missiles counter battery. Standby to lift!”

  Sparks were racing towards the center of the display, hundreds, Rachael thought, only a scant few lifted out towards the ones falling inward. Some of the sparks bloomed large. More were falling towards other locations. “Black Force missiles are in the gigaton range,” the first curt and emotionless male voice reported.

  “Anybody else get off?” A new voice asked after a minute of firefly dancing.

  “Hastings was first, Fleet ships Nihon and Kosovo. Two merchant ships have lifted,” another voice added.

  The sparks were meeting in an orgy of blooms, but the center point of the display moved further and further away from the green surface. Many of the blooms were against the green surface now.

  Rachael felt ill; thermonuclear impacts against the planet. What had the woman said? Gigaton bombs? The voices stayed the same. The voice of the ship commander level and cool; the sensor officer's voice curt and emotionless as he reported the destruction of the merchant ships and reported the lift of yet another Fleet ship from the planet.

  At the end, a laconic voice, filled with bitterness spoke. “Hastings, Ceti Control. Remember us to the bastards!”

  An equally laconic, “Ceti Control, Hastings acknowledges,” came from the ship commander. The scene faded to black.

  Finally there was the picture of the city, once again, as it had been at the beginning. The announcer said simply, “Hastings killed seven major ship attackers, plus a number of smaller vessels, thought to be crewed. Nihon destroyed five major ships and is thought to have damaged one more. Agrabat destroyed four major enemy ships. A total of four Fleet ships escaped Gandalf, no others are known to have survived.”

  There was a pause, and the announcer added quietly, “The colony at Gandalf was destroyed by orbital bombardment by large thermonuclear weapons.”

  There was another pause, and a different picture showed, this time a blue and green planet, large against the black backdrop of space covered with hot red welts, like some horrible disease, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. “This was the last picture taken by Hastings of Gandalf. Colonial Census listed the population of Gandalf at slightly over three hundred million human beings. Of those who remained behind, there will be no survivors.”

  There was a moment of blackness; nothing showing on the screen. Christ! Rachael thought, nearly a third of a billion people erased! Just like that! The worst catastrophe in human history! In spite of having spent years reading all sorts of news, there were tears running down her cheeks and she wasn’t the only one at the table with tears flowing freely.

  Another picture of a planet from space, this time a more familiar planet. “Fleet World,” the announcer informed them, and then the picture returned to the now-familiar battle screen.

  Voices spoke softly about hostile counts, as more and more sparks showed up; this time the scale was significantly larger than in the previous view; other planets were in the scene as well. And the missile counts were in the thousands.

  Ships were coming at Fleet World from all directions, more than a hundred of them, the voice said. And missiles were being fired. Thousands and thousands of missiles. More and more missile sparks showed on the screen; close to ten thousand. Abruptly a familiar voice said, “Hastings is jumping!” Minutes later there was a curdling of the incoming sparks, as they were redirected at the hostile target in their midst. “Hastings is jumping.” the familiar voice repeated and 30 degrees away, the curdling started again.

  Other voices began to say, �
�Jumping!” And there were many more curdles. Sparks were going out now, too. Many sparks, some of them the large ones, signifying ships. Mostly red specks, but now and again, with sickening frequency, one of the white dots that represented a defender. Quite suddenly, all of the larger inward moving sparks with ship designations disappeared, and the calm voice reported that the surviving enemy vessels had withdrawn.

  The voice over announcer spoke again, “All of the weapons targeted on Fleet World were destroyed before they reached their target.”

  The scene shifted to the familiar face of the President of the Federation, Emil Van de Veere. “At this point in time we know little more about the attack on the Federation than you, the citizens of the Federation, know now. We have been attacked without warning, our attackers not only using weapons of mass destruction, but using them in a fashion we could only imagine in our worst nightmares.

  “Our Fleet is fighting back. There is hope, no matter how dark the hour may seem, no matter how bleak the prospects appear. Planets and systems have been destroyed, but others have been saved. The Fleet has won battles and will win more.

  “What sort of sacrifices we will have to endure, there is no way to know. Throughout history humanity has endured much, triumphing over adversity time and time again. Even when faced with what seemed like certain destruction at the time, we rose and met the challenges we faced. We can and will do that once again. We don’t know who our enemies are, but they are not invincible -- we can, we have destroyed them. Our enemies are beatable; we’ve beaten them, forced them from the field of battle, foiling their designs.

  “Nonetheless space is vast and the Fleet is small. For the foreseeable future we are all going to have to work together to give them whatever assistance they require.

  “My advisors tell me it is virtually certain that the enemies of humanity are listening to us, even now. Know you, then, that we would far prefer to make peace than war; that we choose talking over fighting to resolve disputes and disagreements. But when provoked, our people slaughtered, green planets blackened with nuclear destruction -- why, we will finish this war against you, casting you down!”

  The room was silent, even after the lights came back up. “So, we need a volunteer,” Douglas said, his voice as level as when he asked someone to make the noon sandwich run.

  His eyes were on Rachael and she knew everyone else at the table was looking at her as well. In truth, there never really had been much choice. Of all the correspondents, she was the one who’d spent the most time in space, she was the most knowledgeable.

  “I’ll go,” she said quietly, without braggadocio.

  “I wanted to send a full crew,” Douglas told her. “But Fleet said, no way. Failing that, I wanted at least one more.” He shook his head. “They said no. This is a great opportunity -- not only reporting, but camera work, copy editing, tape editing, sound -- the whole spectrum.”

  Rachael tried to grin; she could do it, all of it. She knew it and she knew he knew it.

  Yamaguichi spoke up, his voice hard and bitter. “Rachael? You are going to send her? That is unwise. She is not a team player. She should not represent Sat Com in any fashion, much less on an assignment of this importance!”

  Douglas looked at Yamaguichi as if he’d just expired in his seat. Rachael wasn’t sure why that thought ran through her head; Douglas was expressionless.

  Nonetheless, she hoped Douglas never had cause to look at her the way he was looking at the assignment editor.

  “Three times today, she struck off a story! For no cause!” Yamaguichi started to ramble about every other time Rachael had done something he hadn’t liked or approved of.

  The lack of response, the silent stares from everyone else in the room, finally caused Yamaguichi to stop talking, aware that he had offended not only the Net Manager, but the others as well, in some fashion that he didn’t understand.

  “I do not normally criticize colleagues in front of others; praise, yes.” Douglas said, his voice emotionless.

  Praise? Rachael thought. Douglas’s idea of praise was the word “Good.” High praise was “Very good.” Things you almost never heard from him.

  “Yamaguichi-san, you have worked for me for eight years. I am aware of your personal opinions, of your religion. I have, occasionally, allowed those opinions and views air; always, I must add, in pieces that were clearly identified as op-ed.

  “I was going to speak to you later about the task you set young Miss Woleski upon. I have, in fact, already spoken to her. She has been reassigned. Her piece,” he lifted one of the HDD’s from a pile in front of him, “has some sparks of ability. I will see that she has a further opportunity. Perhaps something is there. However, the bottom line is that she slanted the report to cater to your prejudices and she did not do an adequate job researching or reporting the subject.” He dropped the plastic disk into a wastebasket.

  “Rachael was quite correct to strike it, her own prejudices aside. It was a slanted opinion piece, not news. She reads for the Sat News channel, not the Sat Op-ed channel.

  “Moreover, we must also look at how this particular piece would have impacted Sat News just now, given the current situation. Had it been broadcast, the best case I can see is that we would look like idiots and would undoubtedly lose considerable share. The Fleet is popular at the best of times. At this point in time, well, that brings us to the worst case...” He waved his hand at the video screen. “We could be subject to sanctions under the current emergency rules. They threatened Andan Desai with death; I do not think they were bluffing.

  “That you bring this matter up, calls your judgment into fundamental question. Yamaguichi-san, you have one week to convince me that you should not be terminated. In the meantime, you are suspended. I will see you in seven days.” The room was cold, silent. No one looked at Yamaguichi except Rachael and Douglas.

  The assignments editor tried to bluster. “I cannot believe you would take the side of a, a, person who’s claim to fame is a cardboard cutout!”

  Rachael saw Aaron Goldberg mime putting a gun to his head and pulling the figurative trigger.

  For a moment Douglas was silent, looking down at his hands. Then he lifted up his head and stared at Yamaguichi. “It is my earnest hope that between now and your assumption of duties in your new place of employment, you will reflect on the truths of our business, not pastel, sanitized fairy tales.

  “Certainly Rachael uses a cardboard cut out. She followed the rules, Yamaguichi. Dickerson and Fallon hired her, they promised her all sorts of things to get her aboard. Rachael had the good sense to know the wheat from the chaff. Her contract said she could have any co-anchor she wanted. In the very fine print, as an addendum, they’d added the words, ‘under contract to Sat Com.’

  “Rachael asked for Dirk Hollerith, the HDD star. Even I was taken in. We told her, so sorry, he was not under contract to us. She produced a written agreement from Mr. Hollerith, allowing his picture to be used the way Rachael wished. I, like others, was initially taken aback. Particularly when she insisted; she had, she said, a contract.

  “Yet, Rachael played it just right. It was amusing and people talked about it. Jokes were made about it on the evening talk shows. In two weeks her rating share had increased ten points. Ten points, Yamaguichi! In the year before Rachael came to us, we’d lost three quarters of a point and the bean counters were contemplating terminating everyone in the news department.

  “A rating point, Yamaguichi, is worth more than a billion dollars a year, currently. And the viewers have stayed, gimmick or no. That is, Yamaguichi, nearly eleven billion dollars a year of added value. Please contemplate, Yamaguichi, your added value, as you clean out your desk before close of business today.”

  Douglas looked around the room, now ignoring the former assignment editor. “When I apprised management of my intention to send Rachael out into the war zone, at least one vice president nearly had apoplexy. The rest however, are absolutely certain that when Rachael Ferris repor
ts, there will be very, very few people who won’t be watching Sat News. War or no war, we are a business as well as a news agency.”

  Just before she left, Rachael handed Douglas a folded slip of paper. Later, he looked at her note, grinned, thought a moment and grinned again. He wished her well, very, very well. He picked up the phone and made the call. It was an idea far too clever to waste!

  III

  The next day, at the hour Rachael would normally have started broadcasting, there was a momentary flicker, then a sign saying, “Technical Difficulty, Please be Patient.”

  A second later the camera came live, focusing on a life-sized cardboard picture of Rachael. It dwelled for several seconds, long enough for even the dimmest viewer to realize what they were seeing. Then the camera pulled back, so that the audience could see Dirk Hollerith sitting in the other seat.

  “My regular co-anchor couldn’t be here today,” Dirk said, looking into the camera. “Rachael’s volunteered to go out to the war zone to report on the efforts the Fleet is making to defend us. I’m sure you, like me, wish Rachael the very best, along with all of the other brave men and women of the Fleet.”

  He started into the news, reading it with far fewer mishaps than most would, sitting for the first time in front of five hundred million viewers. And, except for the first mention, he treated the picture in the same way Rachael had treated his -- talking to it, pretending to hear obvious responses.

  An hour later, he did it again, only this time, it seemed like everyone on the planet had heard -- nearly two billion people were tuned in. During the fourth and final hour, nearly one person in two on the planet was listening -- the highest-rated, regularly scheduled newscast of all time.

  IV

  An hour after Rachael Ferris had left the Sat News staff meeting she was standing in her apartment, wondering how she could do it. What kind of clothes do you take to go off to war on a Fleet warship? On her previous cruise it had been simple: fifty kilos of personal items, and the rest was supplied. She sighed, got a suitcase out and started putting things like underwear and toiletries in it. There was a knock at her door and she went and answered it.