Runs In The Family
Page 24
Mairin looked at Conner frantically working his console. “I don’t know, but I’m hoping to have some answers soon. You all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mairin nodded but didn’t speak. How do you tell someone they’re doing a great job when they knew they’d just fucked up royally? “Stay alert out there. I’ll be in touch. Six out.” Not the best motivational speech ever, but unfortunately it would have to do.
Routine activity brought solace. The actions of her crew, the banter and checklists called out, answered, and finished brought a palpable relief she hadn’t believed possible. The activity stilled her brain. The mistake was terrible. But given the communications issues across the regiment and seemingly all the way to TDF Command, the loss, while awful, was really not that bad. God help me for thinking like the brass, she chided herself. Her command console danced a jig of green and yellow as vehicles updated their status automatically and with actual human input. Busy making ready for war, she thought.
“Ma’am, I’ve got a Ticonderoga CIC private channel off a DCS.” The concept of rapidly deployable communications satellites, with onboard Global Positioning Systems, allowed for a combat operation on any planet.
Mairin looked at her board. “Anybody on it?”
“It’s monitored. No current traffic.” Conner glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve got it for another two hundred seconds. It’s highly secure. You want it?”
Highly secure? Whatever. “Give it to me.”
The connection chirped and Mairin heard, “You have accessed a nuclear delivery frequency. You have ten seconds to change frequency without retaliation.”
“Saber Six for Thunder Six. Flash traffic. Push frequency to one two one seven five decimal five. Saber Six out.” Mairin shut off the connection, fearing a microwave burst would fry the Slammer’s communication architecture. “Jesus, Conner! You could have warned me!”
Conner shrugged. “All I saw was that it was monitored and open, ma’am. I opened it.” He put a hand to his ear and Mairin’s mind flashed to a million old science fiction scenes. Conner was the wrong sex and the wrong skin tone from the memory whispered to her. “Incoming from Thunder Six. Button two.”
Mairin chinned over. “Thunder Six, Saber Six, over.”
“Your nickel, Saber Six. What’s your traffic, over.”
“Sir, I need freqs for the close air support near my position.”
“Saber Six, you have no close air support tasked by order of your regimental commander.” Mairin’s blood froze. “Is it true your soldiers killed a friendly vehicle?”
There were a million things she wanted to say, but none mattered. “Roger, Thunder Six.”
“Understand, Saber Six. Push all combat data to me now.”
She met Conner’s eyes. After a few seconds, he gave her a thumbs up. “On the way, sir.”
“Sit tight until this one’s over, Saber Six. There’s not going to be a need for close air on your position and orbital gunfire is finally working as advertised. Not much moving on the battlefield right now.”
Mairin relayed the feed from Coffey’s gunsight and nodded with a grim smile on her face. The regolith downslope from the regiment’s positions was ripped and torn asunder by round after round of orbital gunfire. Massive plumes of rock and debris shot out of each new impact crater. There were no Grey vehicles moving anywhere in the regiment’s section. “Confirmed, sir.”
“Saber Six, Thunder Six. Keep the faith. Thunder Six out.”
Keep the faith? What faith? There wasn’t a place for God or faith in any of this. If there was a god, she’d have Tally to come home to. Stupid thought, she shook her head violently enough to pop her neck. There was about a one percent chance that she’d have gone home to Tallenaara. Most likely she would never see that cabin or Tallenaara ever again. Tally was engaged to the Prelate of Earth now, and Mairin was stuck on a godforsaken little world, staring at an enemy that seemed to be losing their advantages, and facing the more dangerous righteousness of her commander’s intent to place the blame anywhere other than on himself. Or themselves, she thought. They’re all the same. Stuffing their faces full of chewing tobacco and swaggering like dime store cowboys.
The tremors from impacting artillery rounds slackened to nothing over the course of several minutes. The adrenaline coursing through her system began to fade and exhaustion reared its ugly head. Eyes closed, head against the sight extension she nearly fell asleep listening to the hum of the vehicle systems in her earphones and the silence of the regimental net. Silence. Her eyes snapped open. “Conner, are we in the regimental net?”
“Shit!” Conner spun to the console and began to work. “We’re cut out of all regimental feeds. The regiment is moving away from our position.”
“How long have they been gone?” Mairin’s stomach tightened.
“Three minutes, maybe four.” Conner squinted. “What are you thinking?”
Mairin pushed the troop frequency. “Guidons, this is Six. Incoming! I say again incoming! All critical systems to standby! All systems—”
WHUMP! WHUMP!
Master caution sirens sounded as the vehicle rocked side to side under the stupendous nuclear detonations. The impact threw Mairin to the floor of the turret where Conner joined her as the vehicle rocked to the other side. Her head ached from the impact and she couldn’t hear anything. The main hydraulic housing above the main gun ruptured, sending highly pressurized flammable liquid into the atmosphere. Mairin watched the droplets beginning to coalesce on the floor as she rolled away from Conner and floundered for the plug-in for her helmet. She snapped the connection together and heard the vehicle Interface reading a list of cautions and warnings a mile long.
“Interface, that’s enough. Combat readiness report.”
<
Fifty-two percent. “Casualties.”
<
“Push all data to Thunder Six. Execute emergency action plan Charlie.” Mairin looked at her display with bleary eyes. A flat plain lay about a thousand meters behind them. She selected the target and transmitted it to her troop. “Rally point selected. Conner, get me a dustoff. Now.”
“A dustoff?”
Mairin shook her head. C’mon, Mairin! “A ride! A drop vehicle! Something to get us off this fucking rock!”
“On it.” Conner replied like a scalded dog. “Button four, Lieutenant Conyers enroute with Rhinos four-two, four-three, and four-five.
Mairin pushed over. “Rhino Four-Zero, Saber Six. Need a combat load at this rally point.” She transmitted the location and waited for the message to bounce to the orbiting recovery vehicles.
“Saber Six, roger. ETA is one-seven mikes.”
<
“That’s not gonna work, Four Zero. Need you in ten mikes or less.” Mairin watched her vehicles beginning to move with all possible speed to the rally point. “You’re gonna have to stand on it, Four Zero.”
The frequency clicked twice and Mairin kneed Lee in the back. “Okay, Sergeant Lee. You’re the best person I’ve got that knows these beasts inside and out. How do we conserve everything we’ve got and get our troopers recovered without dying in place?”
Lee chuckled. “Shut down everything but comms and repulsors.”
“We won’t have weapons if the Grey horde comes rolling through the gap,” Mairin replied.
“We’re going to need air cover, ma’am.”
Mairin shook her head. “We’ve been told no. Remember?”
“That was before we took a nuke barrage. We’re under protocol for rescue at all costs.”
Sonuvabitch! Mairin chinned over to the nuclear release frequency. “Ticonderoga, this is Saber Six.
Two nukes dropped on my position, origin unknown. Fifty-two percent combat effective needing medevac and close air support now! Acknowledge!” Seconds felt like days. Her limping vehicles now showed more red than green in their life support status markers. Confirm the impacts from the orbital sensors, people! They’d find it and with any luck they’d tell her that Coffey and the rest of those assholes were taken out by nukes, too.
“Saber Six, this is Titan Six. Recovery protocol engaged. Help is on the way.”
Mairin leaned back a little bit at hearing the Admiral’s call sign. “At least we got somebody’s attention.”
Conner looked at her for a long moment and finally spoke. “What happened to the regiment, ma’am?”
Mairin shook her head. Somehow they’d moved without any one in the troop knowing it. Like they’d planned for it. Rehearsed it. “Were our optical links hacked?”
“No, all of the links from the regiment were live the entire time.”
“Then why didn’t we see them moving out, Conner?” Mairin said. “How did they move out without our knowledge?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Goddamnit,” she snapped. The concept of fighting a war where units couldn’t talk to one another and technology didn’t mesh into a singular effort made no sense. War never changed. Why? Why do we continually make shit up as we go along? One day she’d ask that question to someone in charge. If she lived that long in this lunatic war.
Watching the approaching Rhinos change their vectors, decelerate and drop to the surface of Ashland with barely a registered impact, Mairin wondered if she’d gone into the wrong service. A shred of jealousy rippled through her. Wanting to cruise through the clouds and feel the acceleration pushing her back into her seat was as palpable as craving Tally’s touch. She trembled at the thought of Tally, but felt like she was flying herself. Maybe she could learn?
She pushed the thought away and made sure her platoons were loaded before she ordered Booker to position the tank for pick-up. She linked to the forward visual system of the Rhino and secured her helmet communications by protocol.
She watched the curving horizon of Ashland falling away and imagined wind in her face. What would it be like? A scrap of memory surfaced. Riding in the back of a sailplane with long white wings. The sailplane shuddering as it punched into thermals and turned to ride the swelling wind higher and higher. The absolute silence of the cockpit. There was the barest sensation of movement in the sky, except for small windows allowing air into the cockpit for comfort. The ride was forty dollars for an hour and it was money well spent. Doing it again never panned out, did it, Grandpa?
Mairin closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat rest. Maybe she could find a way to fly like a bird. Fly away from all of this craziness. Just be.
Just be.
* * * * *
Forty-Five
The officer of the watch announced the arrival of Captain Mubutai to the deck of the interstellar colony transport Haven. At the navigational console, the freshly washed face of Alicia Jones smiled a private smile and made her greetings along with the rest of the crew. He didn’t meet her eyes and there was no slight to it. She’d relished the taste of her captain not more than six hours prior in the privacy of his dark, humid cabin. She stood and waited until the captain was seated on his dais, aware she was staring not at the powerful man who’d been her lover, but at the lush chair that would hold his frame. One day that chair, or one very much like it, would be hers. All she’d have to do is her job like her apprenticeship mentors told her, or she could fuck her way to the top. Without meaning to, she’d chosen the latter, and rather than falter in the face of adversity, she’d skipped right past the completely flustered and unhandsome first officer and went straight for the captain. He’d said during her interview that he was “old school,” whatever that’d meant, his wandering eyes telling her everything that really mattered to him. She might be the best navigator in the colony fleet, but she’d have far more opportunities as a navigation engineer based on who she would bed. All that mattered was that chair. Her chair. The end would justify the means.
Graduation from the Academy seemed to be a lifetime ago. She watched the captain going through his rehearsed motions about the bridge and allowed herself a second of introspection. She’d been rated as the first watch navigation engineer for two reasons. There were not many people in the Eden Academy better than her at third order differential equation theory, and there weren’t many people of this day and age that truly realized how the human existence is based on sexual desire. To hunt for that conquest, thrive for it, had dire social consequences two or three hundred years before. In this time, without the teachings of war and the constant conflict of the last two centuries, those who could distinguish themselves either through beauty or through sexuality were the ones who moved ahead. There were no ugly crewmembers for colony ships. If they’d all been blonde-haired and blue-eyed, someone might have raised an eyebrow, but everyone knew that colonies became more and more aware of the potential contamination of their gene pool. Colonies were determined to weed out the irregularities of the human condition. Alicia Jones knew to her core that she was perfect and every experience she’d had to this point confirmed it to her psyche.
The crew sat by protocol and began a litany of rehearsed checklists and reports. Alicia had no part, so she verified her flight profile for the third time in the last hour. Her mathematics were flawless, and verified by the navigational computer aboard the Haven and the colony corporation mainframes planet-side on Eden Two. Her fingers trembled as she adjusted the thruster profiles slightly, accounting for more gravity than reported on the way past a red giant star known as Maneater. As good as she might be in bed, and she knew she was damned good, performance on the flight deck was equally important right now. Her first interstellar jump had to be absolutely flawless. She would accept nothing less from her watch.
“Miss Jones,” the captain rumbled. “Coordinates set for first jump?”
“Aye, sir,” she chirped but withheld the smile threatening her lips. “First jump in four minutes, thirty-two seconds. Jump duration will be sixteen hours, twenty-seven minutes, and ten seconds to the Lapella Nebula. All systems nominal for foldspace. Generator at eighty-two percent and increasing nominally.”
Mubutai nodded and went about the rest of the ceremony. Satisfied like a gluttonous king on his throne, he finally smiled at the crew and let his eyes linger a fraction of a second on Alicia Jones. “Today, we take the Burton Colony out farther than any known human colony into the inner rings of our galaxy. Today, we add our names to the book of explorers handed down from the time of Columbus, Vespucci, and Drake. May God watch over us and keep us. All sections and all decks, pre-jump protocol in effect. Foldspace jump drives to active. Two minutes to jump. Secure all hatches.”
A mild storm of activity took over the bridge of the Haven. Alicia merely strapped herself in to her console and warmed up the foldspace system. Folding time and space at my whim is great cosmic power, she thought with a grin. Gravitational fields were set to maximum and the Haven wrapped itself quickly in a field of charged dark matter for protection. Forty-five seconds. She gave the all clear to the captain, who smiled at her approvingly.
A warning light clicked onto her console. <
Alicia blinked. “That can’t be right. I’ve run the numbers three times!”
“Is the obstruction moving?” Mubutai growled.
Alicia studied it for a moment. “Yes. Transient course. We will clear the obstruction by two hundred thousand kilometers at passing.”
“What is it?” Mubutai asked.
Alicia scanned the target and felt her heart skip. Only certain things in the known galaxy were that big! “Not confirmed yet, sir. It’s huge. Likely a Grey mothership.”
<
sponse. <
Mubutai looked at Alicia. “Time to jump?”
“Twenty-six seconds.”
“Dampening field to maximum.”
Alicia adjusted the dark matter field. Blips began to populate her screen by the dozens. She scanned the nearest one, and then scanned it again. Oh, my God! “Captain, I’m tracking over a thousand Grey assault fighters in our orbital plane. They are giving us a wide berth—staying out of our gravity well.”
Mubutai nodded. “Comms, relay contact reports planetside.”
The communications specialist looked up. “Sir, we’re being jammed on all frequencies.”
“Options?”
“Sir, we have to jump.” Alicia stated the obvious. Once a fold engine started, the only safe way to shut it down was to execute the jump. Sir Isaac Newton would have said it was like falling from a great height. The fall didn’t kill. The sudden deceleration did. Or maybe it was that you couldn’t stop a physics problem from unfolding. “Fifteen seconds.”
Mubutai looked at his display, undoubtedly studying the swarming Grey spacecraft above the teal-blue and green horizon of Eden as the Haven emerged from the planet’s nightside. Blue-green streams of light began to appear from some of the bigger vessels. A beam shot across the bow of the Haven. “God have mercy on us.”
“We’re taking fire!”
Alicia consulted her readouts. “Minor fluctuations in the forward quarter, sir.”
“Dampening field holding. No damage reported.” Another officer on the bridge chirped. Alicia wasn’t sure who, but it didn’t matter. Hundreds upon hundreds of Grey fighters dove for the surface of the planet like black raindrops falling from the sky. Life as they’d known it on Eden, the premier human developed colony in the Outer Rim, was over. There wasn’t time for goodbyes. Alicia ran the last sequencer and initiated the fold engine procedure flawlessly. “Ignition.” The viewscreens turned purple, gold and green as the Haven folded away. There was silence on the bridge until the captain called for the first watch and stood the rest of the crew down for nominal operations. The vehicle was silent from bow to stern as crewmembers and colonists alike wondered what might come of the Grey assault on Eden.