by Dani Kollin
But for many, it was not only survival but vengeance that motivated them as well. When they won, they were determined to wipe out every single member of the Outer Alliance and their avatar masters or lackeys, depending on whom you asked. Either way, the Alliance was going to pay for having started the war, then not stopping it, and finally for coming very close to winning it. They were going to pay with the very last drop of their blood. Whether that meant the spacers of the UHF or the miners of the Alliance, many no longer knew or cared.
All except for Trang. As the little holo-tank came online, he saw the 287 ships of the Alliance drawn up in battle array just out of range of his ships. The Battle of Earth was about to begin.
AWS Warprize II
The data systems were working perfectly. J.D. looked on, eyes approving. She knew what each one of her ships knew, when they knew it, and how they knew it. It gave her an incredible advantage in the impending battle, and she was intending to use it to lay her last trap of the war.
Trang has some plan to hurt us. It’s probably got to do with attacking our data systems or sensors. It’s what I’d do. It’s our greatest advantage, and if they can neutralize it, we’d be forced to learn in battle what they’ve had three weeks to figure out: how to fight with crippled ships. When he springs his trap, I’ll spring mine—even at the cost of everyone on this ship, small price to pay. I must draw Trang’s forces around me, must be the magnet that will distort his lines, act as the torn seam that only Suchitra can slice through to end this thing, once and for all.
“I’m overconfident, Sam.” J.D.’s chant had begun. “You have my number. I’m going to use my superior training and data systems to dance rings around you. I’m so overconfident, I’ll go after you in order to end this quickly. You just can’t wait to punish me for my overconfidence can you, Sam?”
And for the first time in the war, J. D. Black truly knew that Sam Trang was listening. She had thought so at the Long Battle, but now she knew. A part of her couldn’t help but wonder if this was what the prophets actually felt. She knew she was going to beat him, even at the price of her life. Her command crew now looked at her with utter conviction. They understood what her whispered words meant: that the divine was granting the Blessed One her power to control the enemy, to read their thoughts and control their actions. Victory, they all felt, was at hand.
J.D. leaned back in her command chair and crossed her legs confidently. Head bent slightly forward, eyes narrowed and now staring in a hawklike gaze at the theater of war unfolding before her. “Captain Lee,” she said in a voice thick with resolve and anticipation.
“Sir!”
“Order the fleet to prepare for bat—”
Just then, the hatch opened, flooding the dimly lit command sphere with the overly bright light of the corridor. J.D. turned toward the light, prepared for trouble because no one should have had the authority to open that door without her permission. As her body swung around toward the hatch, the faceplate on her battle armor slammed shut. She reached for her blast pistol and brought it to bear, but to her surprise, the person outlined by the light of the corridor did have the authority to open the door. But New Alliance One had left the fleet hours ago and that person was supposed to be gone with it.
“Admiral,” Sandra O’Toole said as calmly as if she’d just interrupted a card game, “we need to talk.”
* * *
J.D. waited until the door of her quarters were closed before she spoke to her President. For a moment, she looked at the pristine orderliness of the space with a pang of regret—no telltale signs of Katy—but quickly focused on the job, which was … what, exactly?
The President went over to J.D.’s wet bar and poured a shot of amber liquid into a glass tumbler. “Can I get you one?” asked the President nonchalantly. J.D., face still bathed in the tension of the command sphere, stiffly nodded.
Sandra raised her tumbler and took a sip. “Apple juice,” she said, surprised. “You sly dog, you. And all this time, I thought you allowed yourself a little vice.”
“It is against the wishes of Allah.” J.D. could no longer wait. “Madam President, Sandra, what are you doing here?”
“J.D., you can’t win this battle.”
“The hell I can’t! He’s listening to me. For the first time in this cursed war, Trang is finally listening to me when I speak. The Alliance says that I’m the Blessed One, that Allah chose me. I don’t know, maybe he did, but I do know that every time I felt this connection—the one I’m feeling now—I knew what was going to happen. Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to fight a man who outnumbered me every time we fought and not have that feeling? To face him time and again, praying for that blessed sign and not once, not once ever having it? Well, God has finally heard my prayers, Sandra, and I’m telling you whatever your fears, ignore them. I will win this battle.”
“Perhaps I misspoke,” said Sandra. “Of course you can win this battle, Janet, but the real question is, should you?”
J.D.’s war face disappeared only to be replaced by her palpable look of shock. In her six years of fighting for the Alliance, it was the most outrageous question she had ever been asked.
“Uh … Sandra, do you have any idea what happens if I lose?”
“I think I do. Trang comes after us with everything he’s got and attempts to do to us what he’s been mistakenly led into believing we’ve done to him. Now, I repeat: Do you know what happens if you win?”
“We win,” said J.D. “The Alliance is saved.”
“To do what exactly, Janet?”
“To survive, I guess,” said J.D., suddenly confused. “What else is there?”
Sandra’s mouth turned upward; apparently, she knew.
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought, Sandra. I’ve been kind of concentrating on the whole ‘barely surviving against impossible odds’ thing.”
“And you’ve done that rather well, I might add; and you can win. Congratulations, the UHF fleet is destroyed. Trang is dead or captured.”
“Preferably dead,” said J.D., “and Jackson with him.”
“Very good,” agreed Sandra. “And don’t forget your pièce de résistance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, of course. You die too, remember?”
J.D. crooked her head slightly. “That’s not a certainty.”
“Please, Janet. Who are we kidding? It’s pretty much a certainty, right?”
“Wait … how did you—?”
“I didn’t,” said Sandra. “Much to my embarrassment, your daughter had to tell me.”
“Katy? My Katy?” asked J.D., flummoxed.
“Smart kid, your daughter, smarter than me in this case. I changed my plans when I realized you’d decided to go all Valkyrie on us. But even if you don’t have to deal with the mess of your ‘victory’”—Janet’s cheek twitched slightly at the contempt with which Sandra spoke that word, her eyes unconsciously going to the display case with the medal of that name—“we will.”
“You do understand, don’t you,” said J.D., “that if we don’t win, we die? If we don’t win, our freedom is destroyed and we fought for nothing?”
“Perfectly, but let’s look at the other side of the coin, shall we? When we win here, we’ll have to destroy or occupy all orbital installations that can be used as a threat to the Alliance. We’ll have to destroy or confiscate the solar energy array that provides the Earth with an enormous amount of its power. We’ll also have to deny orbital rights to the Earth. They cannot be allowed to orbit their own planet. Or do you suggest that we don’t do these things?”
“No, Sandra, they’d be the minimum precautions needed.”
“Am I missing anything?”
“As a matter of fact, you are. I’d have to order the bombardment of the planet to eliminate resources that could be used to overcome our advantages of high orbit. We would also need to comb the planet for their best leaders in science, technology, and the armed forces in order to
isolate them from the general population. We would also have to maintain certain on-planet assets in order to keep tabs on the population.”
Sandra nodded her head. “Leaving aside the occupation forces we’ll need in perpetuity, what will happen to the population of the Earth after we deny them access to their orbital facilities and lob a few more rocks at the surface?”
“Mass starvation, pestilence, a total breakdown of civil authority,” she answered. “Planetary unity would break down with no central control.”
“Oh, they’ll have a unifying thought, Admiral. Every time they look up into the night sky, they’ll curse the tiny dots of orbiting lights, the enslaving lights that condemned another ten or so billion of them to death. And they will unite. Even with only eight or nine billion left on the planet, they’ll still outnumber us—will always outnumber us—and they’ll hate us for eternity.”
“But you’d be in charge, Sandra. You’ll find a way to solve it,” she said, almost as a plea. “That’s what you do, what you’ve always done. And it’s why I’ve been working so hard to make sure you have real power.”
“Aha,” said Sandra drolly. “So what you’d wish for me is to rule over the majority of the human race from a throne made of skulls with the sullen mass of humanity bowing to that hellish throne for all eternity.”
“That’s a little dark, even for you, Sandra. You and I both know we could eventually bring them into the Alliance. Sure, it would take generations—”
“In the past, it might’ve worked—and only might have. You could wait a hundred years while the older generations died off and the later generations came around to accepting the new status quo. Four generations later, they wouldn’t know anyone who died, any family member or friend horribly oppressed. But in our bright, wonderful present, we live a long time. The old generation won’t die off so quick. They’ll be ever present to remind the new Earthers what those off-planet bastards did to them and will continue to do. The hate will never die, Janet. And you can guess what’ll happen if we drop our guard for just one second.”
“They’ll seek vengeance. They’ll drench the solar system in the blood of our children.” J.D. sagged. “You’re right,” she finally whispered in despair. “It will never end. Katy will have to be a soldier all her life. By Allah, if they won’t stop, will we have to kill them all?”
“What?” Sandra asked, eyes glittering maliciously. “Isn’t our freedom worth it?”
J.D. shot her vicious scowl. “Are you saying the traitors were right?”
“Not at all. Their problem was that they only saw two possibilities. Truth is, you see only two possibilities. Trang and Sambianco see only two possibilities.”
J.D. stood dumbfounded, desperately searching for a way out of the mess they’d all perilously drawn themselves into. She didn’t want Katy to grow up a killer, didn’t want to spend her days overseeing more death, more destruction; didn’t want to have to look at the disfigured side of her face for the rest of her life. She turned to Sandra, and a smile formed on her lips. It was there. J.D. saw her hope reflected in the face of the Unincorporated Woman and knew that once again, the journey had taken an odd twist and that once again, she would follow.
“You have an idea.”
“Yes,” said Sandra with a seductive grin.
“That presumably does not involve us dying or murdering most of the human race.”
“Uh-huh,” Sandra said, her smile growing ever wider.
“What do I have to do?” J.D. said with a wonderful mixture of dread and relief.
Sandra came up and, taking both J.D.’s hands in her own, looked her prickly and calculating warlord in the eye and said, “Janet, you’re going to have to really, really trust me.”
UHFS Liddel
“Why are they waiting?” Trang heard Zenobia ask over their secure DijAssist link.
“Hell if I know,” answered Trang. “But if this lasts much longer, we’ll have to go to the Beta Plan.”
“Sir,” Zenobia said, real concern in her voice, “we have a slightly better chance of success if they attack us.”
“Of course, if they’re experiencing some sort of difficulty, we could be wasting the perfect opportunity. Truth is, Zenobia, we don’t know what’s going on. In battle, you never have enough information. At some point, you just have to commit.”
“And are we, sir?”
“Hell no,” laughed Trang, “least not yet. We’ll wait and see what develops.”
“Admiral,” Trang’s sensor officer reported.
Trang’s brow shot up. “Well, that didn’t take long. What’ve you got, Paul?”
An image appeared in the jury-rigged holo-projector. “It appears to be an executive-class long-range transport, sir. Whatever it is, it’s been modified.” The sensor officer dug deeper. “Sir, I may be mistaken on this, but … well, I think that ship is what the rebels call Blessed One, Admiral Black’s command shuttle.”
“Now that is interesting,” said Trang.
* * *
It took over three hours for the two sides to negotiate how it was going to work out, including a lot of verification and inspection, but the end result had Admiral Trang anxiously standing at attention while Admiral J. D. Black’s shuttle was landing in the loading bay of his ship, the UHFS Liddel. Of course, the computer systems on the shuttle had been partitioned and swept for avatar coding, and the pilot they sent out to bring the shuttle in had actually been one of Trang’s. Still, after it had been confirmed that the President of the Outer Alliance, the Unincorporated Woman herself, wanted to talk, Trang’s gut told him that maybe he should listen. Even he had to admit she was taking most of the risks.
He couldn’t help noticing that while she was dressed in a surprisingly simple and comfortable jumpsuit, he was still in full battle armor. His security detail had been afraid of hidden Alliance nanite technology that could operate despite their best efforts. Trang actually felt silly, but the look of the OA President’s bodyguard made him glad of the snipers if not the suit. Trang knew the type. This one looked like he wanted to destroy Trang’s entire ship with his bare hands and the only thing stopping him was his own self-control. The intelligence data on Sergeant Holke had shown him to be surprisingly good at high-level protection as well as an exceptional combat leader. Why the man was still a sergeant when he should have been a full-bird colonel was beyond Trang. But it was good to see that Holke had honored the agreement and come aboard unarmed.
It was, however, the woman who commanded all the attention. Damn, if she didn’t remind him of Amanda Snow. The woman was every bit the picture of absolute confidence he remembered Amanda having been. Of course, flying completely unarmed onto a ship filled with people devoted to seeing you dead for having murdered in the billions their friends and family also spoke to that confidence; he liked it. In fact, he’d done almost the exact same thing all those years ago at Eros, under eerily similar circumstances. This time, however, O’Toole didn’t have the winning hand as he’d had at Eros—or did she? It was possible the woman was insane, in which case he’d gotten all dressed up for nothing. But this woman didn’t look insane; she looked pretty much how he’d imagined she would—in real life, that is: supremely dangerous. The holo-vids, he saw, didn’t do her justice. Sandra O’Toole, in her own way, radiated a danger far more palpable than the obviously loyal and skilled combat veteran slightly to the rear and right of her.
Trang had enough. He stripped from his battle suit and strode right up to the woman. He knew his security detail was probably going nuts at that moment, but his gut told him this woman was not a danger in the classic sense of the word and he needed to assess her as much as possible—as soon as possible.
“Ms. O’Toole,” he said with a formal bow, “welcome aboard the UHFS Liddel.” He’d be sold for a penny stock before he would shake hands like a Justinite.
The woman returned his bow perfectly. “Thank you for having me aboard, Admiral Trang. I know it cannot have been easy.”
“Nor for you, Ms. O’Toole.” Trang acknowledged her but refused to give her the title of President. He considered a variety of different tactics. He was sorely tempted to give her a guided tour and just talk with her about trivial matters until he could get a sense of her, but something told him that would be more to her benefit than his. In fact, for the first time in his life, Trang was no longer sure he was the most capable person in the room. He found that fact to be both worrisome and exciting. He decided to try the direct approach. “Why are you here, Ms. O’Toole?”
“To let you win the war, Admiral.” She’d said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Trang took a moment to digest the implication. He even looked to Sergeant Holke for some sort of guidance, but saw the poor man was just as confused as he was. “Perhaps we should talk further, Ms. O’Toole. We can meet in my conference room.”
“Normally, I’d be delighted,” she said, pulling a small rubber band from her front pocket and tying her hair back in a ponytail, “but one of the conditions I was forced to accept was that I would not leave the vicinity of the shuttle. If I did, or it was destroyed, J.D. was most emphatic that it would result in this battle everyone seems so intent on having.”
“I’m afraid this battle is a necessity, Madam Pre— Ms. O’Toole.” Trang grimaced at the slip, but damn it, the woman was Presidential. “And I hardly think Admiral Black has the ability to know if you’re near the shuttle or even if it’s intact while inside my flagship.”
Sandra leaned forward and whispered. “I won’t tell anyone about the ‘Madam President’ slip. I can’t speak for the good sergeant, though.” Holke’s eyes pierced through Trang. Clearly the sergeant would like nothing better than to kill Trang if he could do so without getting his President shot at the same time. “As for the ability of Admiral Black to know where I am,” continued Sandra, “or the shuttle’s status or whereabouts, I couldn’t really tell you. She seemed very confident that it wouldn’t be a problem. I wouldn’t test her on the shuttle, though. She’s always hated the interior. Calls it an executive’s hedonistic excess and would love any excuse to blow it to smithereens.”
