The Fleet05 Total War

by David Drake (ed)

  “We?”

  She wouldn’t answer that, not say “ISA” or “Eight Ball Command” right out here in public. And the crowd she came in with was trying to look busy.

  But you could bet they were listening. Nobody’d even sat down, although a couple had gone to the bar.

  “We,” she said softly, and put the gun down, just the way she’d found it. “I’ll get your tech advisor.”

  “I don’t want a technical advisor.”

  “Command doesn’t care what you want, English. You’re getting what you need to keep you—and your unit—alive. The best we’ve got. And you’re lucky you pulled a human technical, rather than a Weasel tactical, advisor. So you smile, and you be nice. And don’t you make anybody’s life more of a hell than it’s got to be. You hear, buddy?”

  Or else he’d have her to deal with. Of all the tight-assed Intel officers English had known, Manning took the prize. “I give, Manning. Truce.” He squinted at her and tried to smile.

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Let me get your outfit back to full strength.” Manning turned, whistled, and motioned.

  Somebody came through the crowd to join them at the table. English was looking at his hands. He’d better find a way to make peace permanently with Manning. He couldn’t imagine how he’d let things go so far, over some Intel protocol.

  He looked up, ready to say something placatory and greet the 92nd’s new tech advisor, his hand out to take the file the advisor was holding.

  And blinked. Swore under his breath. Manning was watching him steadily. So was the technical advisor that Eight Ball Command had decided that the 92nd needed.

  The person holding out the folder was Cleary.

  He took the packet as smoothly as he could and said, “Thank you, Officer Manning. If you’ll excuse us, I’ve got to huddle with my new TA. . . .”

  He started to get up. Manning said, “You’ll have to stay here for a half hour or so, English. You can show her the ship’s belly later.”

  He didn’t even ask why. He was having enough trouble just covering his misery and shock. “Sit down, please,” he said to Cleary.

  Her pale blue eyes were wide as she sat across from him and Manning sauntered back to her group.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t dump you for good and sufficient cause, right now, Ms. Technical Advisor,” he said in as close as he could manage to a whisper. His damned voice was shaking.

  Cleary leaned forward, her starched uniform sleeves smearing the wet-rings on the table. “You’ve got to believe me, Delta Two, I didn’t know. Not my assignment; not who you were, beyond that you had a C&C profile in the simulator.” She reached out as if to touch his hand.

  “Damn it, don’t do that.” He sat back as if her touch was lethal. “Look,” he said in a rush. “We’ve never had a female anything in this company. And we don’t need a technical advisor—”

  “Yes, you do, sir.” Her brand-new uniform had all the appropriate mission patches, including the Redhorse patch. But it also had the crossed lightning bolts over a universe spiral: ISA.

  “Look, Major, I’ve got spooks up my ass on this. I’ve got Manning, who’s not my favorite person. Because of Manning, I’ve got her boss, Grant, breathing down my neck. Shit, if it weren’t for Manning and Grant—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Sir. I think when you’ve read my orders you’ll realize that, given the circumstances, although it’s your company, you’re not in any position to ‘dump’ me. So let’s just forget what’s happened up until now—all of it—and start over.” Her delicate jaw squared.

  “Okay, cowgirl. Let’s do that. You tell me, in fifty words or less, why I need you—any TA. Here. Now.”

  She didn’t even look over her shoulder before she spoke. She reached into her breast pocket and tweaked a field generator; he could feel it come on: all the hairs on his forearms rose and fell.

  She said, “In a nutshell: SERPA’s been dual-tracking a Syndicate reconnaissance effort. Grant and—some people—took a Track A shot at coming home with targeting data and intel. They blew it off pretty bad: some folks say they never even left the launch bay. So we’re the Track B effort. And if we don’t come back, the data’s got to. That’s what your briefing’s going to say.”

  “So, why do I need you? I been coming back just fine for . . . a hundred and twelve combat drops so far.”

  “Because the Haig’s going to take us into Syndicate space, and cover us while we do something very similar to what we were trying to do in that Ten Simulation, you and I.”

  “I still don’t copy the ‘you and I.’”

  “Mister . . . Captain English, not only do you need me, but you yourself can’t get any farther into action than the hold of an APC unless I certify you fit and ready. So be nice to me. Or you’ll sit this out and your second in command will have all the fun. And I know you wouldn’t want that.” She smiled as if she’d been telling him a joke.

  So he laughed like she had. Seeing them sit back from their close huddle, Manning started toward them again. With her, now, was Sawyer.

  Then English looked closer and saw most of his 92nd in the room (where they shouldn’t be because this was officers only), as well as Jay Padova and most of the officers from the destroyer—everybody who wasn’t working, it seemed.

  The lights went out.

  English grabbed for his pistol just as the hologram behind the bar came back on.

  It said, in big, glowing letters, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAPTAIN ENGLISH.

  And Manning, rushing over, reached down to hug him: “All’s forgiven, Toby. Everybody gets bitchy around their birthday, once they’re over thirty.”

  Sawyer had, of all things, a birthday cake with what looked like a million candles on it.

  He couldn’t even remember how old he was, in elapsed time: relativity aged you. And then he did, sort of. Whether you were chronologically some age or other ought not to matter.

  But maybe Manning was right: turning thirty wasn’t something you wanted to dwell on, not when you were just going into a new phase of an escalating interstellar war.

  Maybe that was all that was wrong with him: turning thirty. But, Cleary. Damn. What the hell was he going to do now?

  * * *

  He couldn’t believe, during the sponge transit into Syndicate space, that Cleary actually expected to jump into combat with the 92nd.

  Drop, maybe. But not jump. He had enough to do without knowing that one of the blips on his screen was somebody he’d fucked once and now was fucking him over, every way she knew how.

  It was just unacceptable.

  But, command being what it was, nobody gave a shit what he thought, and he couldn’t very well be event-specific, so there they all were, in the APC, suited up, with a woman technical advisor who probably thought that when the going got rough, the simulation stopped and you went to the showers and got laid.

  The Syndicate bases’ coordinates weren’t his problem, but Cleary was sure Padova had the right ones. So sure that she’d packed life support beyond normal need into the little APC.

  That spooked everybody. Even Sawyer. And when Sawyer was spooked, there was no way to pull the Marines out of it.

  So English was talking himself hoarse in the jump bay.

  They weren’t doing anything but sitting there. He handed out protein bars and cigarettes and told every joke he knew.

  Nobody had their helmets on; they weren’t free of the Haig yet, just sitting in her belly in another layer of arguably survivable hull.

  Cleary had insisted they spend the last hour of sponge jump ready to rock and roll. She was Omega leader on his com, because he wasn’t about to let her forget what had happened.

  When they dropped, and he had his helmet on, he was going to talk to her the way he hadn’t been able to during the briefing or in the interim.


  If she wanted to do this job, he was going to give her the on-the-job training she needed. Or die trying.

  He gave up trying to make the men feel any better than he did and sat down in a corner, with the bulkhead behind his back. There was bench space, but he didn’t want it.

  It was like a morgue in the APC. Their Nocturnal Operations Clandestine Module (NOCM) had been refitted for Syndicate encounters, like everything else on the destroyer.

  It carried APOT guns as well as underbelly cannon. The pilot and copilot couches had enough command-and-fire electronics to run the insertion from the bird. If they needed to.

  Sawyer was up there on the NOCM’s flight deck, with Manning, getting last-minute orders of some kind. Or getting head, for all English knew. The bulkhead door was closed.

  He looked at his watch again, and then at Trask, his top sergeant: “Trask, knock on the door. See if we can get privy to any of what Manning’s got to say.”

  “Right, boss,” said Trask, ducking his dark head as he slid off the bench, unwinding from his crash webbing too jerkily for English’s liking.

  This was going to kill his guys, if anything did, all this extra high-torque waiting.

  “Cleary,” he said in exasperation as Trask knocked on the forward bulkhead, “get over here and talk to me about these fratricide problems from the Haig’s APOTs you say you think you’ve fixed.” Fratricide meant, in general terms, one system screwing up another’s ability to function. You normally worried about it in terms of coms.

  But Cleary was worried about it in terms of—

  The bulkhead opened to Trask’s knock. Manning stuck her head out, saying, “Clear of sponge. Jump phase countdown in—”

  Cleary was moving toward him, and the space-time burped a little as the destroyer settled into real-time. So did Cleary. Staggering, she grabbed for webbing.

  English checked his watch. They were ten minutes early.

  So much for perfect planning. “Ninety-Second: ready up. Com checks. Lock and load.”

  The hell with Cleary. This was something he didn’t need a tech advisor for, a major or any other kind.

  Inside his helmet, the world of the APC began to look manageable.

  She was Omega leader; her yellow head lit and turned green, blinking for privacy: his Associate gave him dual-com before he could ask.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said without preface.

  “He’s early. So what?”

  “Something’s wrong. I’ve got stuff you aren’t monitoring.”

  “So, what do you advise, Omega?”

  “You might as well drop. The destroyer’s already engaging whatever popped it out of sponge early.”

  Shit. The Syndicate had something that could pull you out of a spongehole? English shivered. “Okay, Omega Leader. Stand by for all-com.” He didn’t want the men hearing any of this.

  “Drop in one minute,” he told them. He could hear Sawyer swear when he got the separation order without warning.

  Sawyer’s com bead lit, purple privacy and blinking:

  “Treat me like I’m still somebody you’d drink with, Toby, for chrissakes.”

  “Sorry. Got busy. TA’s got scary stories about there being some unfriendly fire out there when we separate. I was about to get to you with it.”

  The purple bead went off. English punched it back: “Keep Manning in the copilot’s seat. We got one woman, we might as well have two. Maybe we’re the only ones’ll go home from this.”

  “Crap. Too long an APC ride,” Sawyer said. And: “Thanks.”

  English toggled into the tune-up that Trask was giving their Marines, and prayed like hell that there wasn’t a space battle going on around them when the APC dropped out of the Haig’s belly.

  But there was. If the APC hadn’t been Clandestine, with all the stealth that implied, they might have gotten hit before they made their first orbit.

  As it was, they had too long a ride to atmosphere.

  “Play dead,” Sawyer advised from the flight deck, and everybody shut down everything, including movement, coughs, or unnecessary communications, until the red drop light started to strobe.

  The APC skipped in and out, then into the Syndicate world’s atmosphere like a stone on a pond. Somebody lost hold of a rifle, which went banging around the bay until Trask caught it.

  English didn’t have to look to know it was Cleary. He decided he was going to shoot her himself if she screwed up once more. So far, she was running zero-sum: he’d given her one point for calling the hostile fire warning, which evened her up for the point she’d just lost, letting her weapon get loose and bang around like that.

  Noise could get you killed in this mode. Purported dead pieces of crashing equipment didn’t make human noises.

  He was holding his breath.

  Then the burn of attitude stabilizers told him he didn’t have to, and he got ready to drop his teams.

  Sawyer said, “Got one full ground track,” in his privacy com. “Here it comes.”

  English’s visor display showed him the APC’s collection of imaging and signature intelligence from the planet.

  And damned if Cleary didn’t break right in with, “If we’ve got that much, maybe we should send it back. Or go back with it to the Haig.”

  “Maybe?” English said icily. She shouldn’t even have been able to penetrate purple mode. “Sawyer, port that data to the Haig and wherever else Manning wants, however else she wants. Tell me when it’s done. Don’t drop anybody until we know it’s safe.”

  Damn, this was his worst nightmare.

  Trask was cued up to talk to him, his green light blinking. “Yeah, Trask?”

  By then his field first was waving at him urgently. “Sir. We can’t assume we can hold parameters during another pass. Integrity of insertion voided. Repeat: jump now or pull out and try another day.”

  Otherwise, Trask was saying, they’d be tracked all the way down.

  And from the cockpit, Sawyer said, “If we can. We’ve just been acquired on somebody’s scope.”

  When you were acquired, you were a target.

  They were, at this point, sitting ducks. He wasn’t feeling like suicide today.

  “Cleary,” English said, and his Associate made a command decision to bring her up in privacy mode. “What do you say? You want to die here? We’re a target as of now.”

  Something Sawyer did on the flight deck threw everybody to the right before she could answer.

  “Cleary? How bad you want that insertion? As our TA, we’ll jump if you insist.”

  Time to see what she was made of.

  “Delta Two,” came her voice, “you’re the captain. If you say the situation’s too dangerous—”

  They took a hit that English hoped was glancing. The NOCM shivered and began to spin.

  The question of command was now academic, but he gave Sawyer a direct order anyhow: “Delta Three, get us back to Haig if you can. Intel’s more important.” Fucking SERPA had a goddamn scenario-able picture of their drop coordinates, anyhow. Cleary had verified for him that it was the same location. Difficulty Level Ten.

  No fooling.

  He had to grab webbing himself as Sawyer wrestled the NOCM out of the atmosphere. Then the ride steadied as they came out into cleaner space.

  But English wasn’t getting lucky today. Sawyer told him: “I’m porting you a view of the engagement at the Haig. You’ll want to call this one yourself, Delta Two.”

  When he saw the space battle, he blinked twice because it couldn’t be this bad: telerobotics were all over the Haig’s skin, like ants trying to get into an overripe pear. He could see the little puffs and bright flares of the destroyer’s reactive armor as it met the telerobotic attack. Then he said, “Omega Leader, to the flight deck.”

  He met her there, and there was just room for
the two of them, plus Manning and Sawyer.

  “So? Now what?” Sawyer’s voice through the Associate-assisted four-way was attenuated with protective scrambling.

  “Damned if I know,” English said, leaning one hand on his rifle. “I just came up to watch the show from a better seat. TA, what do you think?”

  Cleary leaned over Sawyer and touched something on the imaging screen. The view got better.

  “Must be fratricide: the Haig’s APOTs are interfering with her jamming and other defensive systems.” English thought he heard a sigh. “Maybe I could fix it, if I got on board.”

  “Can’t you tell ’em what to do?” Manning wanted to know, her one-eyed visor turned toward Cleary and polarized flat black. “It’ll take us a while to get back inside.”

  Manning didn’t say, “We might not be able to get back inside.”

  English started estimating what he and Sawyer could do to clear the hull.

  “Manning, Cleary, you guys send them some stabilizing data.” He remembered Cleary giving him that sort of thing when he entered the simulation.

  “Sawyer, you and me are going to drop the 92nd onto those telerobots and pick ’em off by hand.”

  “Whatever I can’t get with a quick orbital pass,” Sawyer amended.

  * * *

  When English got himself pulled off the skin of the Haig, he asked for a head count, lying on his back in the NOCM, breathing hard and staring at the nice, low ceiling as if he could see the wonderful, precious atmosphere floating there.

  His APOT rifle was still in his hands; its barrel was up against his helmet.

  Until everybody called in, he was still reserving the option of shooting Cleary, who was hanging, tangled, in the webbing across from him, looking as if he’d have to cut her free.

  When the last Marine checked in, the last grid square checked out as empty of telerobots, he knew he wasn’t in for any more surprises: none dead or MIA. Three wounded bad enough to need special retrieval. Not great, but nothing they couldn’t handle. The telerobotic enemies weren’t programmed for men.