by Ian Douglas
But he was going to need a thorough shower afterward. He felt . . . unclean.
He wondered though if the Commonwealth’s civilian government was going to allow 1MIEF to save it, or if they would succeed in so hamstringing the military that failure was inevitable.
It was a situation faced by democratic societies throughout history—the knife’s edge balance between democratic freedoms guaranteed by the military, and military rule. Only rarely, however, had failure in that balancing act carried such a high ultimate cost—extinction.
That was an alternative Alexander would fight—bitterly and with every weapon at his command—to the very end.
9
2206 .1111 Skimmersub Shuttle
Bahama Banks, Earth
1110 hrs, local
Just less than two hours after their arrival at Freeport, their stomachs pleasantly filled with a somewhat spicy local concoction called conch chowder, Garroway and Armandez sat together in the passenger lounge of the submarine shuttle from Freeport Tower to Miami, a sleek undersea passenger craft with large transparencies giving them an exceptional and unobstructed view into the undersea realm between the Bahamas and the Florida Peninsula.
The lounge was fairly crowded both with civilians and with military personnel, all coming Earthside like a colorful invasion from space. The orbit- to- surface space elevators like the one at Quito took three days to reach Earth from the Ring. That was fine for cargo and people on a tight bud get, but most tourists preferred the two-hour descent on board an agrav shuttle.
Garroway looked out through the transparency—yes, a real transparency, and not a viewall screen—and wondered if he was dreaming, or caught up in a particularly rich and detailed sim. The sheer beauty, the peace and tranquility of his surroundings, were spectacular. It didn’t seem possible, in fact, to imagine a bigger leap—from the galactic vistas and savage bloodshed of Cluster Space to . . . this.
Inner space, someone once had called it.
The surrounding water was a crystalline glow of transparent, brilliant sapphire blue, with shafts of sunlight shifting and flashing from a ceiling as dazzlingly bright as liquid mercury. Ten meters below, a variegated landscape drifted past at fifty kph, mountains and ridges of brilliantly colored coral interspersed with vast, flat prairies of current-sculpted white sand or waving, green fronds of seaweed. Schools of bright- colored fish flashed and turned, reflecting dazzling flashes of silver in the shifting light. Larger creatures, sharks, rays, and others, moved and circled as silent shadows in the distance.
“I never knew it could be so beautiful!” Nikki was sitting in the seat next to Garroway’s, leaning forward, holding his hand as the shuttle glided swiftly through the marine shallows.
“It is pretty,” Garroway agreed. “Glad we came?”
“Definitely!” She started, then pointed aft. “Oh! What’s that?”
Garroway consulted his implant, linked at the moment to the submarine vessel’s AI. It was slower than he was used to, but the data came through in a moment. “Dolphin,” he said. “I think there’s a pod of them trying to follow us.”
“ ‘Trying?’ ”
Garroway grinned. “Dolphins are fast . . . but not as fast as we are right now. They’re going to have a hell of a time catching us.”
“How fast are they?”
“Check your implant. There’s a download available from the local AI. Thought-click the dolphins header.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh . . . right . . .”
“Ten meters a second for sustained swimming,” Garroway added reading his link. “Faster dashes over shorter periods of time. Say about thirty-six kilometers per hour over the long haul. And right now we’re doing fifty.”
“Yeah?” She nodded toward the transparency. “They seem to be keeping up pretty well.”
Garroway turned, and saw a pair of streamlined gray shapes just off the submarine’s starboard bow. They appeared to be matching the vessel’s speed perfectly.
“Son of a bitch,” Garroway said. “They’re not supposed to be able to go that fast!”
“They’re riding the bow wave,” a Marine lieutenant said from his seat just behind them. “They’re surfing on the pressure wave created by the sub.”
Garroway turned, startled, then grinned at the man. “Good God! Have you become an expert on dolphin physics since your, ah, elevation to godhood, sir?” His emphasis on the word “sir” was deliberately insulting.
“Fuck you, Marine,” the lieutenant said.
“Fuck you, too, sir.”
Armandez looked confused. “Gare! You can’t say that to an officer. . . .”
Lieutenant Ramsey laughed. “It’s okay, Private. This time. I knew this snot-nose back when he was a lowly PFC.”
“And he was a lowly Marine gunnery sergeant,” Garroway added. “Private First Class Armandez, may I present to you Lieutenant Charel Ramsey, USMC.”
“Nice to meet you, sir,” she said.
“A pleasure, Private.”
“This . . . this officer and gentleman happens to be the Marine who first established direct mind- to-mind contact with the Eulers, out in Aquila Space,” Garroway explained. “Then the SOB went mustang on us. Became a fucking officer.”
Ramsey shrugged. “Hey, seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“You don’t usually see such old men running around as lieutenants.”
“Now you’re getting personal, Marine.”
“So, which shuttle did you come down on? I didn’t see you on the zero- seven- twenty drop.”
“I was right behind you, Marine. Left Ringport Quito at zero-eight-hundred.”
“Ah. We came out of Ringport Macapá. Welcome to Earth, sir.”
Ramsey looked through the transparency. “It’s kind of wet down here, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Looks like we need to talk to the environmental department about the rain.”
“Or at least submit a climate revision request to the proper departments. So what are you doing these days, Garroway?”
“First Platoon, Bravo Company, sir. One-Four Assault Recon. How about you? They stuck you in N-2, didn’t they?”
Ramsey glanced around the lounge at the other passengers. None appeared to be listening. “I could tell you . . .” he began.
“But then you’d have to shoot us. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before. What are doing planetside? Not scouting for an invasion force, I hope.”
“Visiting my folks,” Ramsey said. “They live in a beachtower near Orlando Beach. How about you? I seem to recall you didn’t have a family groundside.”
“You remember a Marine named Warhurst?”
“Gunny Warhurst? Sure as hell do.”
“He’s retired. Living under Miami.”
“Son of a bitch. You got contact info on him?”
“Sure. Or tag along with us. Assuming you have time in your crowded sched, sir.”
“Maybe I will. I haven’t seen Gunny Warhurst in God knows how long. I thought the bastard was dead.”
“He thinks he is,” Garroway said. “I don’t think he’s been happy since he retired.” He turned to Armandez, who was looking more and more confused. “Gunny Warhurst was my DI in boot camp, on Mars. Later on, he rotated to 1MIEF, just in time for the Aquila Space op. He, um, saved my ass. Big time.”
“Really? Where was that?”
“Nova Starwall,” Ramsey said. He grinned at her. “Did you realize, Private, that this butt- ugly character you’re sitting with is a genu-wine hero?”
She smiled. “As a matter of fact, I did. He saved my tail in Cluster Space. Cut his own legs off so there was room for both me and him in his assault pod.”
Ramsey’s eyebrows crept higher on his forehead, and he looked down at Garroway’s legs. “Oh, they’re coming along fine,” Garroway said, answering the unspoken question before it was asked. “They grew me a new set on board the Barton, after this last dust-up in the Cluster. My second pair, in fact.” He slapped his thigh. “Good as new.”
“Shit fire. Don’t make a habit of that, okay?” Ramsey shook his head in mock sadness. “Cutting off your own legs . . . that’s destruction of government property, you know? They’ll bust you back to recruit private and have you scrubbing out the head for the rest of your tour.”
“I got the lecture already, sir. There was this shrink-AI on the Barton who was sure I had some kind of self-destructive impulse.”
“Well, hell, yeah. You joined the Marines, didn’t you?” Ramsey looked at Armandez. “Anyway, I’m glad this character saved your tail, but that’s not why he’s a hero.” Ramsey reached across and tapped a blue ribbon riding above the colorful rows of ribbons on his chest. “Didn’t he ever tell you how he got this?”
“His Medal of Honor? No. He didn’t. Every time I ask, he changes the subject. Do you know?”
“Battle of the Nova, at Starwall. Nine, ten years ago, now. This mental case volunteered to fly a Euler triggership FTL through a star. Blew up the star, and wiped out a major Xul base.”
“Lieutenant Ramsey, here, was the guy who figured out how to use combat drones to find me,” Garroway explained. “When the star blew, I was on the other side from the stargate, and the triggership was junked, going slower than light just ahead of the heavy particulate crap from the nova. But thanks to him, they found me, just ahead of the heavy stuff. And Gunny Warhurst, the guy we’re going to visit in Miami? He’s the one who spacewalked over and pulled me out.”
Damn. Garroway remembered now why he didn’t like telling the story. For just a moment, he relived the memory— including the flash of terror that always accompanied it. It had been so fucking close.
Even nine years later, he could see that exploding star reaching toward him, filling the sky with white fire.
“As you can see, Private,” Ramsey was saying, “we have an extremely tight-knit little community here. Gunny Warhurst saves Garroway, Garroway saves you. . . .”
“So some day you can pull some young Marine’s ass out of the fire, Nikki,” Garroway said. “Look, can we change the subject? You two are making my head swell.”
“Which one?” Ramsey asked.
“Fuck you. Sir.”
“Your family’s in Orlando Beach, you said?” Armandez asked him.
“Yup.”
“I thought most of Florida was under water since Armageddonfall.”
“A lot of it is. Tidal waves from the Xul attack took out most of the eastern coastal areas. That was followed by the mini-ice age, Armageddon Winter. The climate control satellites and orbital solar mirrors reversed that after a century or two, but things swung back too far the other way. People didn’t really know what the hell they were doing, and it was tough finding the right balance of insolation and ice. When global temperatures finally stabilized, ocean levels were about fifteen meters higher than they had been. Of course, a lot of coastlands had been slowly sinking already before the Xul strike . . . what they used to call global warming melting the ice caps. By the time the climate was balanced, some cities had vanished. Others had been built over even when the original was under water. Like Freeport. Or Miami.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing Miami,” Armandez said. “Especially the coral gardens.”
“It’s a dump,” Ramsey said with a shrug. “Like most of the planet.”
“I take it you visit out of family obligation?” Garroway said.
“I suppose so. I have a few friends here. And my parents. I used to have a wife and a husband, too, but they decided I was gone too much and kicked me out. Just like Gunny Warhurst, in fact. That was a long time ago.” He grimaced. “Ancient history. The Corp’s my family now.”
“Amen,” Garroway said. “A-fucking-men.”
Senate Floor
Commonwealth Government Center, EarthRing
1637 hrs, GMT
“We must,” Senator Yarlocke thundered to the assembled crowd, “must learn the lessons of history! If we fail, we risk the survival of Earth, of the entire race of Humankind in its diaspora across the stars!”
Alexander was seated in the visitor’s gallery of the Senate Deliberation Chamber, a huge room with seats arranged in semicircular ranks about the speaker’s dais, listening to Yarlocke with growing amazement. Did loyalty, duty to her office, even common sense itself mean nothing to the woman?
Was that what politics did to a person? Or was she a politician because of some basic and ultimately fatal flaw in her character?
He recognized his own anger. He would have to watch that. . . .
“The history I have in mind,” Yarlocke went on, “is the history of our relations with the Islamic Theocracy.
“Now, the Commonwealth has fought numerous wars with the Theocracy over the past centuries . . . eighteen major wars and literally hundreds of minor clashes and border incidents. Before the Commonwealth, the United States of America fought several major wars against the Theocracy’s predeces sors, what was once loosely termed ‘Militant Islam.’ Some historians would point out that America’s struggle with Islam went back to the early nineteenth century, in a series of clashes known as the Barbary Wars.
“A thousand years of warfare against . . . not a state, not a country, but a religious and sociological idea. A thousand years of warfare . . . and it accomplished nothing save for making adherents of that idea our eternal and implacable enemies.
“Fellow Senators of the Commonwealth of Humankind . . . the lesson is painfully clear. Direct military action accomplishes nothing, nothing, save to foster hatred and more bloodshed! . . .”
“Yarlocke is in rare form today,” the voice of General Dorrity whispered in Alexander’s mind. The Senate-Defense liaison was seated among the senators in the auditorium below—Alexander could see him from his gallery seat, a tiny figure seated next to the two representatives from Ishtar—but a private channel let them speak as though they were sitting side by side.
“The Warlock is always in rare form,” Alexander replied, bitter. “Give her an audience, and she’ll play to it.”
There was seating on the Senate floor for hundreds; fewer than a quarter, though, were physically occupied. According to the proceedings link in a window open in his mind, eighty-one Commonwealth senators were present physically for this session, while another one hundred seventy were linked in from elsewhere, attending the session via the Senate Net. The total represented just over half of the total Senate membership—enough to establish a quorum if Yarlocke called for a vote.
The unpleasant meeting with the appropriations subcommittee had ended an hour and a half ago, when Yarlocke had informed Alexander that she was delivering a speech to the full Senate at 1600 hours. She’d actually grinned at him when she’d told him that she would be presenting a new motion today, one calling for the immediate recall of 1MIEF to Solar Space and an end to the Xul War. She’d told him that he could watch, if he wished, from the Senate Gallery overlooking the floor.
She’d made it sound like she was doing him a special favor. This session, however, was open, meaning that it could be accessed by anyone throughout the Solar System with the appropriate download codes and addresses. According to the figures running in an open window to one side of Alexander’s mind, some six hundred million people were watching, most within EarthRing, with a few watching on Earth, Luna, and—with a twenty-minute time-delay due to the limitations of the speed of light—Mars. If she hadn’t given him the invitation, he could have tuned in and watched just the same.
His physical presence in the chamber, however, gave an immediacy to what he was hearing, an immediacy, he was fully aware, that was largely psychological, but nonetheless quite real.
So far, however, all he’d heard had been more of the same—a recitation of the need for peace, of the need to reach out and understand the alien, the unknown, the need to find common ground and mutual comprehension. There’d been nothing yet about Operation Clusterstrike being a failure, not exactly, but she had continued to hammer away at her old theme, that send
ing ships and Marines to unimaginably distant corners of the Galaxy to kill the Xul a few at a time was not working, could not work. Nine years of war, of raids by 1MIEF, and there was no indication that Humankind had even gotten the enemy’s attention.
She continued to speak about the Commonwealth’s ongoing war with the Islamic Theocracy, and was managing a rather blatant rewriting of history as she did so.
“Wait, wait,” Dorrity said after a moment. “What did you call her?”
“Hm? The Warlock?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that a male witch? Why do you call her that?”
“No. The entertainment conglomerates use the word that way in horrorsims and so forth, but it originally meant an oath- breaker, a traitor. It’s from Old English, I think.” He pulled down a dictionary page in his mind and doublechecked. The word “warlock” was English, but not changed in the transition to modern Anglic over the past few centuries. “Yeah. Old English Waerloga. A covenant- breaker.”
“Okay . . . so how do you figure her to be one of those?”
Alexander shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I was just playing with her name,” he said. “Helps me dismiss the creature without blowing a pressure seal. But . . . think about it, General. She swore an oath, a covenant, to the Constitution of the Commonwealth and, by extension, to the people she represents. The Constitution is a direct extension of the Constitution of the old United States. To provide for the common defense. . . .
“Now, we can sit here and argue until the heat death of the universe whether our Xul policy is right or wrong. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder myself whether what we’re doing is right. But that one . . .” He shook his head. “She twists words and theories and ideas and history itself in ways that would make a hyperdimensional topologist’s stomach turn. She’s Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts, making words mean exactly what she wants them to mean . . . and formulating policy based on her definitions, and to hell with what anybody else thinks.”
