Act of War

by R. L. Giddings

  The auto-doc, had been responsible for the bulk of ultra-fine surgery involved in what was technically a heart bypass operation and she had been surprised how efficiently the machine had coped with the demands. The Confederation versions of an auto-doc were much more rudimentary and never used in such complicated procedures.

  “Are they happy with the work?” Morton asked. “The surgeons themselves?”

  The implication was clear. The auto-doc would consider the transplant a success even if the patient subsequently died. And there were some surgeons who shared a similar mind-set.

  “That is what they are attempting to ascertain now,” Bunayega said through gritted teeth. His emphasis on ‘attempting’ suggesting that Morton was somehow interfering with the process simply by asking the question. “They’re concerned about possible necrosis.”

  “And if all that checks out - how long before they can re-start the heart?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bunayega said pointedly. “Would you like me to ask them?”

  Morton struggled to keep a handle on her growing frustration.

  “I’m going to take a break,” she said. “Be sure to let me know when they re-start the heart.”

  She could feel the relief in the room as soon as it became clear that she was leaving.

  Do they really hate me that much?

  One of the medical technicians followed her out of the operating room, quickly helping her remove her scrubs.

  “Thank you,” she said as they took her apron, struggling just to appear civil.

  There were a number of medical personnel in the observation room. The work that they were attempting was ground-breaking by Yakutian standards so they were always guaranteed an audience. She went out of her way not to engage with anyone directly, taking her time at the hand neutraliser. It was one of the few times in her day when she didn’t have to question everything she was doing.

  “Surgeon Captain Morton,” a familiar voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  It was Hermendal, almost unrecognisable in medical scrubs. Even his beard looked neat.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” she was so pleased to see a friendly face that she wanted to hug him.

  Hermendal looked around as though he was thinking the same thing, the Yakutians doing their best to ignore both of them.

  “This is where they’ve got me working now.”

  “Really?” Morton couldn’t hide her scepticism. “I didn’t realise you had any medical training.”

  “Oh, I haven’t, but it seems as though there’s some Confederation bigwig who’s making a complete ass of themselves. Someone thought it might be an idea if they had a – shall we say – impartial translator come down here. I’m thinking, surely this woman can’t be as bad as everyone’s making out.”

  “That’s great,” she laughed. “But I already have a translator.”

  Hermendal rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. “No. What you have is someone who speaks both languages. A translator is something quite different. Let’s say: part diplomat, part therapist, part humanitarian. A translator understands what it is that the person wants to hear and succeeds in gently softening the blow when the bitter truth is finally revealed.”

  “And that’s your skill I take it?”

  Hermendal threw up his hands immodestly, “Countless plaudits would have us believe so. How are things going?”

  “We’ve reached a bit of an impasse in there, so I thought I’d pop out for a moment,” she looked past him, to the small group that had gathered by the window. “It’s alright, though. As I’m nominally in charge, they can’t start anything without me. Not that they’d ever admit it.”

  “The Yakutians have enough trouble working out their status system at the best of times. Having a total outsider in charge must be terrible for them. You can see it on their faces.”

  He was right of course. It showed in their pinched expressions whenever they looked at her.

  “May I enquire how you managed to acquire this post? Did you have to call on any of your other skills along the way?”

  She was referring to his ability to command people to do his bidding.

  “You do me a disservice, doctor. Besides, my abilities only extend to those people who are susceptible to my suggestions.”

  “As was I. Are you suggesting that I’m feeble minded?”

  He came forward and took her by the hand.

  “No, surgeon captain. All I’m saying is that loneliness can make fools of us all.”

  She pulled her hand away as if she’d been bitten. That hurt far more than anything the Yakutians might inflict on her.

  Hermendal clearly regretted it as soon as he’d said it.

  “Forgive me, I was showing off. I apologise. No, it was odd but Commander Sunderam contacted me directly.”

  “Sunderam?”

  “That’s right. For such a blunt military type he seems to be strangely astute. No doubt he picked up from your reports that you were becoming frustrated by your team’s lack of progress.”

  “Yes,” she said, re-classifying her view of Sunderam for the umpteenth time. “I suppose that might have been the case. What surprises me the most is that he’s actually read my reports. I didn’t expect that and I certainly never expected him to act on them.”

  “Might I be brought up to speed on what the problem is? If I knew what you were getting up to down here, that might be a start.”

  The pair of them turned their attention back to the observation window. “It’s Captain Faulkner. Mahbarat insisted that he be re-animated. Seems he’s a big fan of our CO. Only, it turns out that he has one or two heart problems which we hadn’t known about previously. Turned out that a heart transplant might be our best bet.”

  “Without having access to a suitable donor we had to rely on the Yakutians on-board cloning facilities.”

  “In such a short space of time? That’s truly impressive.”

  “You haven’t heard the best part. They were able to employ gene therapy to address the original heart’s congenital defects. If he comes through this, he’s going to have the heart of a twenty year old.”

  “Okay,” Hermendal sounded sceptical. “But that’s a good thing, surely?”

  “If they can manage to re-start his heart then that’s an excellent thing.”

  “I can hear a ‘but’ coming.”

  “If we can’t re-start it then we have a very real problem.”

  “Can’t you just re-freeze him?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. We can put him in a medical coma but the chances are that he won’t come out of it. The key issue won’t have been addressed and we’ll have failed.”

  “I’m assuming that – as far as Captain Mahbarat is concerned – this would be a bad thing.”

  Hermendal came around and began leading Morton towards the door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The commander tells me that you haven’t taken a proper break in three days. At present our beloved captain is stable. So, if you wouldn’t mind coming with me.”

  “But I can’t possibly leave.”

  “You said yourself: they can’t start without your say-so.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, though.”

  “Trust me,” he swept his arm out towards the door. “It does.”

  *

  Governor Ardent was fast running out of patience.

  She had thought that, as the newly re-instated Governor of Blackthorn, she might have been able to prevail upon Captain Meyer to set up a defensive line to help protect the convoy of ships still leaving Blackthorn but as the hours passed it had become clear that wasn’t about to happen. The only authority Meyer seemed to recognise was that of the USDC and so it appeared that, short of a direct order from the Admiralty, he was unlikely to be offering his services anytime soon.

  Jacobs had already approached her with the idea of putting her in charge. He’d even offered up his own ship,
The Sundowner, to act as her flag ship. Ardent had almost laughed when she’d first heard the suggestion. It was a very generous offer but the fact that she had once run a space station in no way qualified her to take charge of a major space offensive. Just the thought of working in three dimensions was enough to give her a headache.

  She still hoped, with Farnese’s help, to be able to talk Meyer around but he seemed in no hurry to meet with her, having by now committed himself to the Search and Rescue mission. And time was running out. They needed to get themselves organised if they weren’t to squander what little tactical advantage they had.

  Getting Meyer onside was the key to everything. With the Renheim to rally around, it would be so much easier persuading the merchant ships to join them. She also hadn’t given up on the idea that the Serrayu might be talked into coming along as well, although they were currently on the far side of Iscaria and had yet to respond to her hails.

  No, the main problem was Claus Meyer. He seemed adamant that his ship would not become caught up in all this activity and while Ardent could understand his reluctance to give his backing to what was essentially a civilian operation, the longer it went on the more she started to question his integrity.

  She had tried to broach the subject with Farnese once but he had been loathe to even discuss it.

  On the surface, Meyer gave the impression of having become fully engaged in the humanitarian rescue of his fellow spacers, but the reality was markedly different. The Renheim hadn’t recovered a single escape pod in nearly two days. Every time one had been identified, Meyer had demurred. It was always too far distant or in completely the wrong area of space – whatever that meant. He justified these decisions by claiming that he didn’t want to be pulled out of position, as though to do so would see him stepping into some terrible Da’al trap.

  And it was this that she found most infuriating. Meyer could not be relied upon to commit to any one plan of action. He seemed quite content to gather data, going through all the necessary procedures while achieving precisely nothing. This, while all around him people were crying out for his leadership.

  And in the current vacuum, it had been Ardent who had stepped into the breach. Since the confirmation had come through that she had been re-instated as governor, Meyer’s attitude towards her had changed. Buoyed by the idea of having a top diplomat on-board he had granted her a certain amount of autonomy, giving her largely unfettered access to the communications department as she attempted to balance the affairs not just of Blackthorn but of all the colonists in the area.

  It had been Ardent who had requested that a line be opened to the Oreole, the first ship out of Laax since the crisis had started. She wanted to know what was happening on Laax but also what was happening in the rest of the system. Her intention in inviting Meyer along, was to try and highlight the importance of evacuating the little mining colony while they still had the chance.

  “But what was so important that you simply had to leave?” Meyer had precious little tact when addressing civilians. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed put?”

  The Oriole’s captain, a sour faced woman by the name of Shabnavee Vaz was finding it hard to stay civil.

  “We tried that. We sat out here patiently while all of this went on thinking that eventually someone would come out to us. But that didn’t happen. And as things got worse, it started to feel as if we didn’t exist.”

  “It’s just not been possible to get a relief ship out to you, that’s all,” Ardent said.

  “That might be the case, Madam Governor, but we’ve got a lot of sick people on-board this ship. We’ve had real problems with malaria and our medication gave out weeks ago. You can only make do for so long.”

  “I understand,” Meyer said. “But if you’d gotten in touch then we could have sent a drone out. Now, by launching your ship, you’ve drawn attention to yourselves. You may as well have set off a distress beacon. It’s not the sort of thing that the Da’al are likely to ignore.”

  “Captain, this has been going on for six months. We’ve had forty two deaths in that time and nothing has been forthcoming from you or from anyone else. I am sick to death of contacting you people and being told that someone, somewhere is going to get onto it, and yet still nothing happens. There’s only so many funerals you can attend before you realise you have to do something, whatever that might be. We made our decision and now we’re sticking to it.”

  The woman’s sense of frustration was clear and Ardent had to agree that she did have a genuine grievance. But after everything that had happened over on Blackthorn, the fate of eight hundred miners and their families had slowly sunk down the list of priorities.

  “What are your plans now?” Ardent asked.

  “Some of these people are extremely sick. We need to get them to a proper hospital.”

  “Then may I suggest that you head for Iscaria? They’ve got a number of good hospitals down there and I can arrange for them to set aside a couple of isolation wards for your malaria victims.”

  “What’s wrong with going straight to Blackthorn?”

  Ardent shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. Blackthorn can’t deal with the people she’s got. Trust me: this is the best alternative.”

  “Very well. If you could send me the arrangements for the hospital, I’ll get right on it.”

  “I’ve already taken the liberty of putting an emergency package together. Columbia Hills has enough capacity and has agreed to accept you. I’m sending the details over now.”

  Vaz’ expression immediately softened. “Well, Governor, I don’t know what to say apart from: thank you.”

  “I’m glad that we could help.”

  “Yes, that’s wonderful,” the suggestion of a smile had started to transform her features. “Can I just ask: what’s likely to happen to the others back on Laax? You’ve got families down there. Two schools.”

  Meyer made to say something but Ardent stopped him. This was a discussion for another time.

  “You’ll have to leave that with us,” she said. “We’re pretty stretched here at the moment.”

  “I understand,” Vaz said. “Could I also take this opportunity to offer my condolences?”

  “You’re talking about what happened on Blackthorn?”

  “Er, no, not specifically. I was talking about the survey ship you sent to Tigris.”

  Ardent and Meyer exchanged glances.

  “The Dardelion?”

  “That’s right,” Vaz’s tone had changed. “You are aware of what had happened, I take it?”

  “I’m not sure that we are. Please go on.”

  “We picked it up on one of our long range scans. She was ambushed it seems. It was all over far too quickly.”

  “What exactly are you saying,” Meyer said. “She’s been hit? Destroyed? What?”

  “I don’t have the details but it seems the Dardelion was caught completely off guard.”

  “Survivors?” Ardent asked as numbness started to seep in.

  “Can’t be certain, though it looks as though she burnt up as soon as she entered the planet’s atmosphere. I’m very sorry.”

  After Vaz had signed off, Ardent slumped over her console while Meyer stood behind her, saying nothing.

  She couldn’t quite take it in. All those people gone in an instant. Joanna Silva especially. She’d liked her. Liked her a lot. This didn’t seem right.

  “What are we going to do?” Ardent said.

  “About the Dardelion? There’s nothing we can do.”

  “I meant Laax. There must be, what? Six hundred people still down there.”

  Meyer made an odd popping noise with his mouth while he considered this.

  “They knew the risks. If they hadn’t launched that relief ship we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “No, but they did and we are. As you said yourself, the Da’al are hardly likely to ignore them now.”

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “This m
ay seem cold but the best thing to do at moments like this is not to panic.”

  “And do nothing?”

  “Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing to do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Webster couldn’t bring himself to look away.

  If they’d still been in orbit then things might have been different. Once the explosions had died down, the shuttle might have been in a position to approach the Dardelion on the look-out for survivors. The difference now was that the Dardelion, having been attacked and with her helm seemingly destroyed, had quickly fallen out of orbit and was, even now, preparing to enter Tigris’s atmosphere.

  “We have to do something,” Webster said. “We can’t just sit back and watch this happen.”

  Markham was keen to avert a confrontation. Keeping his voice calm, he took his CO by the arm and led him through to the shuttle’s cramped cockpit and away from the prying eyes of Nash and the other Marines.

  Corporal First Class Mullens was at the helm but kept his eyes fixed on his instruments throughout.

  The view from the cockpit was, if anything, even more distressing than the view from the main cabin.

  Dardelion was approaching re-entry at a flat angle, effectively guaranteeing that she would not survive the next ninety minutes. A beautiful blue flame ran the length of the broken ship’s fuselage and both men stared at it for far too long, fascinated by the play of light.

  “Sir, I’m sorry to have to say this, but there’s nothing we can do.”

  “There must be something,” Webster insisted. “We have to try and get them out of there.”

  Markham squeezed his arm in an attempt to force Webster to focus. “Even with specialist equipment, sir, the best we could hope to do would be to get a line out to them. But that would require any survivors to have access to pressure suits.”

  Webster made to argue but then stopped himself. Renheim had provided them with two pressure suits, both of which were aboard their shuttle. In fact, Mullens was wearing one now.