by Ben Weaver
He ignored me.
“Private, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to jump over this fence and choke you to within a second of your life.”
“Good luck,” he said. “That’s a three-meter force fence with a nine-point-seven-five rating.”
His mouth fell open when I bent my knees, found the bond, and leapt over the fence, hitting the ground before him. “Now I could choke you, but I just want to talk to your CO.”
He staggered back, lifting his rifle. “Don’t move.” His skin rippled to life, and he immediately called for his sergeant as Halitov took his own flying leap over the fence, making a more graceful landing than I had.
The sergeant, an overworked NCO with bloodshot eyes, asked for our ID numbers and operating codes, which she said would still need to be verified via DNA scan since our tacs were deactivated, but she was willing to take us to her command post around the corner.
There, we met with two second lieutenants, one of whom checked us out with his portable scanner, then abruptly snapped to and saluted us. I told him we’d need immediate transportation to the garrison’s HQ, where we could speak directly with Lieutenant Colonel Pauson Drage, operational commander. Five minutes later, an airjeep arrived and whisked us off.
The HQ was located on the north side of Pier 81A, where ground and marine traffic was restricted to military vehicles. As we got closer to the complex, I stopped repeatedly looking over my shoulder, feeling a bit more at ease. We made a vertical descent outside the single-story building’s main entrance, thanked the corporal for his smooth piloting, then hurried inside the office, where administrators monitored activity on literally hundreds of displays. A second lieutenant led us into Drage’s office, where we took seats and waited for the man’s return.
“How much are we going to tell this guy?” Halitov asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“We’d better get our story straight before he gets here.”
“Let me do the talking.”
“Gentlemen,” said Drage, parading quickly into the room. Dark-skinned, with cool, blue eyes and an old-fashioned crew cut that squared off his head, the lieutenant colonel dropped quickly into his chair and leaned forward. “You guys are part of some new special forces group, aren’t you?”
I glanced to Halitov. Drage knew more than I had thought. “Uh, that’s classified, sir.”
“Not at my clearance it isn’t.”
“Sorry, sir. Yes, we’re part of a special forces group.”
“So you were working undercover as war protesters…”
“Not exactly, sir. That was…an accident.”
“Really?”
I could tell he wanted to pursue that subject, but I didn’t want to waste time. “Sir, we need to record a message and tawt it out to Rexi-Calhoon. It’s urgent, sir.”
“We can arrange that, but I have to tell you that since the war broke out, we’re running only two comm shuttles per local week. You just missed the last one. The next one won’t be here for about seventy-six hours.”
“What about commercial exporters? Can we run a chip out on one of them?”
“You could probably get a skipper to do that for you, but those people don’t work cheap when they know you’re desperate.” His frown deepened. “What’s going on?”
“Sir, you understand that our mission here is classified.”
He smiled darkly. “Captain, I really don’t have time for this. I have the Eri Flower en route, a major sewage spill, and a security problem to handle. If all you want is help sending off a chip, I’m sorry, but you’re on your own.” He stood, getting ready to dismiss us.
Halitov gave me a pleading look, and I realized that even if Drage didn’t believe me, I couldn’t leave his office without warning him. I needed to do that, not for him or for me, but for the thousands of civilians who might die. “Sir, intel provided to us by the Colonial Wardens indicates the Eri Flower is carrying an invasion force.”
“Nonsense. Our intel indicates she’s carrying a Marine detachment of about eight thousand troops, which is just enough to secure her. I’ll trust my own recon officers before I trust anything gathered by the Wardens—if you know what I’m saying.”
“I understand, sir, but I wanted to let you know that once the ship arrives, the Charles Michael is supposed to take her out before those invasion troops can launch.”
Drage reached for a tablet on his desk, called up information on the Charles Michael, then scanned the page. “She’s listed as destroyed.”
“I know, sir. She’s being operated independently by the Wardens.”
“And how did you come by this information?”
“Sir, we were aboard the Charles Michael. She’s out there in the Vzyk Trench, cloaked and waiting to strike.”
“I’ll need a cerebral scan to verify this.”
I knew he would say that. And I knew that if we submitted, he would learn more about Rebel 10-7 and about the Colonial Wardens than he needed to. “Sir, please. Just trust me on this.”
He thought a moment. “If what you’re saying is true, then all I need to do is sit back and watch the fireworks.”
“Yes, sir. But there’s always a chance the Charles Michael won’t take out the Flower, and if those Marines arrive, your garrison will be massacred. You can’t get reinforcements here in time. I respectfully suggest that you begin evacuating as many civilians as you can. Get them out on every ship you have.”
“Do you know what you’re asking? Do you know the kind of panic an evacuation like that would cause?”
“Sir, how many civilians will die if those Marines invade? I also suggest that in preparation, you shut down this HQ, shut down all your command posts, and purge all data.”
He looked to Halitov. “You haven’t said a word, Captain. You concur with everything your partner is saying?”
Halitov’s gaze turned steely. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“Well, then. You’ve given me a lot to consider.” He was hardly convinced.
I rose. “Sir, I’ll submit to a cerebral scan right now.”
“Are you sure, Captain?”
“Yes, sir. But I have to warn you. What you’re going to learn could put your life in danger.”
“That’s a guardsman’s job, isn’t it?” he asked. “If you’d like, your partner can record that message while I’m scanning you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I told Halitov to address the chip to our friend, Colonial Security Chief Mary Brooks, who would share the information we had gathered with her council of senators, though I wondered if our intel would simply be too little, too late.
Drage took me over to the HQ’s single interrogation room, handed me the C-shaped cerebro, and promised he would focus the scan on military-related activities and do his best to ignore personal memories. He spent about ten minutes watching the monitor. I didn’t feel a thing, though I still worried about him respecting my privacy.
When it was over, the grave look on his face and his distant gaze made me nervous. “Sir, are you all right?”
“Yeah, I just, uh, I didn’t realize that eight of the seventeen worlds have already fallen. The reports we’ve been getting have obviously been censored.”
“Sir, will you begin an evacuation?”
“Yes, I will. We’ll concoct some story. An airborne virus, maybe. Something related to the sewage spill.”
“You’ve got less than two days.”
“In two days we’ll be lucky to evacuate ten percent of the population.”
“I know, sir. You should probably concentrate on getting the children out first.”
He nodded, slapped palms on his hips, then stood. “Well, then, I’ll have your tacs reactivated. If you want to ship out on a military ride, you’ll have to wait for that comm shuttle; otherwise, you’ll have to try cutting your own deal with a barge or freighter pilot.”
“If you’d like, sir, we’ll wait for the shuttle. In the meantime, I don’t think our CO would mind if we helped you o
ut.” Even as the offer came out of my mouth, I remembered that Jing could still be waiting to capture me and Halitov. Still, I needed to think like a soldier. I had sworn to protect the colonists here and in the sixteen other systems. We would follow the code. We would help Drage.
“Two conditioned officers from a special forces group volunteering to help? Only a fool would turn down that offer,” he said with a wan grin. “I’ll put you in touch with the skipper of a mineral barge who owes me a favor. I’ll have him get your chip to Rexi-Calhoon.”
I stood. “Thank you, sir.”
“Also, I’ll call over to the supply desk, get you fitted with some new utilities and gons.”
“I appreciate that, sir.” I saluted and went for the door.
“Captain?”
“Yes, sir?”
He hesitated, then slowly reached for his cheek. “I have a cousin who has epi. I wish he could meet you.”
I nodded awkwardly, then left to find Halitov waiting for me outside the room. I summarized my conversation with Drage as we headed down a hallway toward the supply officer’s desk. When I finished, he stopped dead, looked at me. “You volunteered us? You idiot.”
“We can’t just leave.”
“The hell we can’t.” He held up the tiny comm chip, no larger than the size of an old penny. “I say we tawt out with this, go to Rexi-Calhoon ourselves, and personally deliver it to Ms. Brooks. And while we’re there, we tell her about this second conditioning facility on Aire-Wu, and we tell her we want to be brought there and reconditioned. Maybe you don’t have a problem with our grandpa syndrome, but I do. I really do. And so will the Seventeen. They need us. They’ll find a way to get us there.”
I started forward again, and he double-timed after me. “Rooslin, I want to be reconditioned, too, but not by becoming a traitor. Look, we give Drage a couple of days. Then we leave. And by the way, getting to Aire-Wu is one thing. Finding the conditioning facility and gaining access to it is another.”
“Two days, huh? Shit. That’s two days too many. And I’m sure the Wardens still want to get their hands on us.”
“All of them except Breckinridge, right?”
He made a lopsided grin as we reached the supply desk, where the sergeant, a rawboned nineteen-year-old with fuzz on his chin, looked as tired as every other soldier we had seen. He saluted, cleared his throat. “Captains St. Andrew and Halitov?”
“That’s right,” I answered. “We were recently mistaken for war protesters. I’m wondering if you have any clothes that might help…”
He ran his gaze over our civilian outfits and snorted. “Yes, sir.”
We received the fresh utilities, along with new boots, boxers, and socks, then used Drage’s private billet to change. I looked in the mirror, reached for my breast, and leveled the gold octagon pin with the diamond in its center, the “captain’s gon.” I never thought slipping into military-issue clothing could feel so good. And wouldn’t you know, I didn’t look much older. Still a touch of gray, yes, but our accelerated decrepitude had slowed, at least for the time being.
About thirty minutes later, Drage called and told us where to meet his friend. In the company of a trio of heavily armed guardsmen, we airjeeped down to Pier 56F, where we delivered the chip. The skipper told us that he and Drage went way back, that they had even gone to high school together. That made me feel slightly more at ease. Still, we were turning over highly classified information to a stranger. Sure the message was encrypted, but any rogue decrypter worth his salt could break into it. We had to trust Drage and his friend.
After that, the lieutenant colonel put me in charge of a company stationed within the main tower. Halitov remained, of course, my XO, and we immediately realized that our unit was spearheading the entire province’s defenses. Drage, it seemed, had a lot of faith in us.
From the main observation post located on the tower’s roof, we squinted against the wind and looked out at domes peaking up here and there, at the tops of pyramid-shaped structures, and at the circular, flat-topped roofs of still more buildings half-submerged in the brownish gray amoebae that encompassed the province and gave off an unholy smell. Our skins filtered away the stench once we had found the proper purification setting. We spent the better part of the afternoon checking in with the company, running drills, and familiarizing ourselves with the junior officers. During all of that, my mind worked overtime on something Breckinridge had told us, something that I had initially accepted without a second thought but now didn’t make much sense.
By the time night fell, the fixed geometry that had once cut across the wavelets had reduced itself to the twinkling of thousands of randomly positioned lights. The sea had grown eerily calm, the light of twin crescent moons casting a faint sheen across its surface. I stared through a pair of binocs, believing I could pick out the distant lights from the approaching Eri Flower. A hazy smudge of black obscured the horizon.
“Well, we wanted to see the tower,” Halitov said, his skin shifting from phosphorescent green to transparent over his face. “Can’t see it any better than this.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“Who knows…”
“Breckinridge said that when the Eri Flower arrives, the Charles Michael is going to take her out. I’ve been wondering all day about the logic of that. Why are they waiting until the ship arrives? Why not just blow it up out there?”
“I don’t know. If they destroy her while she’s docked, they’re bound to cause major damage to the port and the nearest domes.”
“Exactly. Why would they let the Flower get so close?”
“Maybe they want some people to get off first. Their operatives, maybe?”
“No, they could jump ship the way we did. Or take a jumpsub or something.”
“They said they’ve already written off the Flower as a loss.”
“And maybe they’ve written off AQ as well,” I said.
“Could be. Maybe they’re going to kill two birds with one stone. I mean, it’s not like most of the citizens want us here.”
“Yeah. And hey, that holo we saw a little while ago, remember? What was that poll?”
Halitov squinted hard in thought. “I think they said eighty-one percent of the people want us to leave. These people never wanted to secede from the alliances. This place reminds me of Mars.”
“Maybe the Wardens consider AQ and the Flower as a double threat.”
Halitov’s expression soured. “Two birds, one stone. Or in this case, tactical nukes.”
I took a long breath. “If this place is a target, then we’re standing right in the bull’s-eye.”
He grinned crookedly at me. “And you volunteered us for this shit.”
“We have to find Breckinridge,” I said.
“What?”
“Come on. We’ll see if Drage can loan us a jumpsub.” I started toward the hatch behind us.
10
Lieutenant Colonel Drage’s evacuation was in full swing and playing out on big-screen news monitors hanging above most of the major piers. Nearly every watercraft available was departing for Jones Rigi-Plat, even though the floating colony lay over two weeks away via the fastest jumpsub. Some civilians in smaller or older ships would run out of food, fuel, and oxygen long before they reached safety. Thousands of those ships would float aimlessly on the waves like old lifeboats carrying the survivors of some horrendous sea disaster. I couldn’t help but imagine that scene as the high-speed lift carried Halitov and me down to the main floor.
“What’re we going to do?” he asked. “Surrender to the Wardens?”
“If we have to.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“If we’re right, they’re the only people who are going to survive this thing.”
“This ‘thing’ has to be stopped.”
“And you think we can go there and talk them out of it? This goes way up, way beyond them. We have to leave—preferably before this place blows.”
The lift doors opened, and we jogged across a circular terminal, where one of our privates waited with an airjeep. He flew us over to Drage’s HQ, and we found the man in his office, frantically packing his belongings into several rucksacks. “What’re you two doing here?”
“We could be wrong,” I began slowly, “but we think the Charles Michael is going to take out a lot more than just the Eri Flower.”
“Figured it out, huh?” he asked grimly.
I exchanged a puzzled look with Halitov. “Sir?”
“The sub’s skipper contacted me about an hour ago. The moment the Flower is moored, everything you see here will be gone. They’re going to use low-level nukes with limited fallout, but they’ll do the job, all right.”
“We can’t let this happen.”
“Too late. Angelino has her orders, and Drummer Fire Command won’t divert any capital ships here. They already got their hands full.”
“Sir, wait a minute. I don’t understand. Why did Angelino contact you?”
“She’s sending over nearly every jumpsub she has to help evacuate my garrison. She has no intention of killing any member of the Guard Corps.”
“Just innocent civilians—including children,” I amended.
“St. Andrew, love it or hate…it is what it is. And we can’t change it. Yeah, we swore an oath to protect these people, but these people are already dead. Our job now is to save ourselves so we can go on fighting the good fight.” He didn’t sound very convincing and probably didn’t believe the words himself.
I was about to exploit that doubt when Halitov butted in. “Sir, with all the activity that’s going on around here, won’t the intel people on the Flower realize something’s wrong?”
“They must assume we know they’re carrying an invasion force, thus we’re evacuating the city. We have to assume they don’t know about the Charles Michael because they haven’t altered course.”
I shook my head. “But, sir, if they observe we’re evacuating as well, and they track those jumpsubs back to the Charles Michael…”
“We’ll be evacking as quietly as possible. And we’ll be rendezvousing with the Michael at a point deep in the trench, just after she retreats from her attack.”
