Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  Yet was she really that same person? Each fight and crisis had knocked a part of her down. It used to be that when you got damaged, you could leave the rubble where it lay—even use it to evoke pity from people, then leverage that pity to squeeze status and money from them, if you liked. There was no need to do more, and so people hadn't.

  That age was gone, as dead as the pre-Panhandler era, as buried as the neanderthals. They had entered an age of survival. When a part of you got knocked down, you had to rebuild it and make sure that it was stronger than it was before.

  Otherwise, the next blow you took might kill you.

  She opened her device and began to record.

  ~

  Converted people-haulers departed from every station in the Belt. Homemade fighters launched from fifty different settlements, meeting up in small groups for protection before carrying on to rendezvous with the Dark Solutions team. Other stations sent bomb boxes, the new term for the unmanned vehicles crammed with mining explosives. Drones zipped everywhere, delivering vital supplies, joining the fighters, and replacing the ones being destroyed in pursuit of the Lurkers.

  When you only watched it for a little while, the whole thing looked like a chaotic and sloppy mess. But if you watched for long enough, it started to make sense in a way you had no words for. Rada almost felt like she could pick all that motion up in her hands and shape it into weapons to wield against the enemy.

  When the Combined Earth Task Force was one day out, the Lurkers, who had been cruising along the curve of the Belt, bent course to cut straight across it. Toward the coming human fleet.

  "Don't tell me they're going to make it easy for us," Winters said. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they're doing what we want them to."

  "Tell CETF to adjust their heading to put the Utter Stone between themselves and the Lurkers."

  There was a pause while Winters did this. "The Belters made the Lurkers skittish after inflicting just a handful of losses. Does it seem strange to you that the enemy now looks eager for a fight?"

  "Maybe their skittishness was a ploy to make themselves look weak. That could provoke us into coming after the scared, wounded prey."

  "That would fit with the idea that they started destroying stations in order to get us to come after them."

  "I think they're confident they can win." Rada quieted her active mind, letting its deeper parts tell her what they saw when they looked at the Lurkers. "But we don't even know what the Belt has planned for the Lurkers. They won't have any idea what's coming."

  The volunteer navy of the Belt arrived to join Dark Solutions five and six ships at a time. Most of the fighters' hulls were a generation out of date, though their engines and weapons arrays were much newer. The Dasher ships looked like something out of old comics: cobbled together from who knew what, painted with reds and yellows and cobalt blues, flames and leering skulls, bristling with as many weapons as they could bolt on to the frame.

  Once the full fleet was assembled, they took a wide pass around the Utter Stone, turning about once they were hours beyond it to meet up with the CETF on the fly. The Lurkers tweaked their course to bypass the Utter Stone by a good margin—like Rajak's Folly, it included a number of smaller asteroids, and the aliens were clearly wary of flying into another trap.

  Yet they were still coming in close enough to work. Whatever Mat-Nalin's plan involved, it didn't rely on hiding inside rocks.

  Their makeshift fleet dovetailed with the CETF. The eighty Earth ships were a hodgepodge of manufacturers brought together from 27 different nations, and some of them still showed charring or actual holes in their flanks from the previous fight with the Lurkers. Even so, they were modern ships loaded for bear. They looked ready to fight.

  "Commander Pence," Admiral Vance hailed her. "Appreciate the primer you sent us. Are you ready to find out if my pilots were paying attention to your lessons?"

  "Yes sir."

  "How ready?"

  "Sir?"

  "I'd like you to fly second wing in my third squadron."

  Rada frowned: second-in-command of a whole squadron? "Admiral, I haven't even simmed with your pilots before."

  "That's the only reason I'm not offering you first wing. You will trust me when I say that I understand this is outside of protocol. But protocols were invented in a time when we weren't fighting for our existence. It's my judgment that it's a waste of resources to have you flying solo, especially in a moment when we have no resources to waste. You will be a prime asset to my people."

  "Would this be a permanent assignment?"

  "No, Commander." The admiral smiled wryly. "And not only because there's a real chance we won't survive the battle."

  She wanted to shrug the offer off. But she knew she had no choice. "Sir, it will be my honor."

  "Very good, Commander. Welcome aboard."

  She explained to DS, which might have been awkward if they'd decided to retake the Silence or insist she stay and fly with them, but no one even thought to raise a fuss. The CETF's third squadron consisted of 24 ships and was led by a woman named Alcera who was utterly humorless but seemed like she might also be incapable of getting rattled.

  Twelve hours left. Rada spent most of it practicing and simming with her new squadmates. They had strange Earther accents and were much more military formal than she was used to, but there was one thing about them that anyone could appreciate: every pilot was dedicated to killing at least one Lurker fighter before getting shipped off to Catalina.

  It went by fast. Before she knew it, they were making their final checks and adjustments. The Lurker fleet materialized in the distance. All that was left was to fly out and meet it.

  She wished she had someone to speak to, someone that she'd known for more than a few days, but everyone from her old life was long gone or dead and everyone from her new life was scattered across the System. She didn't even know if Webber and MacAdams were still alive. Toman was still out there, but his optimism had been taken from him along with his spirit and he hadn't yet found the cold resolve that was the only thing that could replace it.

  She was alone, then. That would have to do.

  Tactical lit up with the orange triangles of four hundred enemy ships.

  "Scheme Blue-Two," Admiral Vance said, sizing up the enemy formation. "Attack positions."

  Rada nudged the Silence ahead and to the left of First Wing Alcera. The rocks of the Utter Stone hung above them.

  "Approaching laser range," Vance said. "Begin maneuvers."

  Rada jerked her control sticks, driving the Silence into a hard roll while plunging into an irregular corkscrew that would have had her vomiting within seconds if not for the ship's MA. Every other ship in the fleet followed suit, yet each ran its own individual maneuvers. This had two purposes: first, to confuse the Lurkers, if only for a few seconds, allowing the human fleet to close within missile range. And second, to see whether they could make any of the lasers miss.

  The two fleets poured toward each other. The first of the red bolts reached out from the enemy lines.

  The battle had begun.

  8

  "We have run a sophisticated analysis of the footage you acquired." Loris' wiry little legs hung from the stool she was perched on, feet not quite touching the ground. Around her, officers scurried about the tight quarters of the submarine's bridge. "The design of the planes isn't a perfect match for anything in our records."

  Webber bobbed his head. "What about the imperfect matches?"

  "By definition, an 'imperfect match' would include kites, hot air balloons, and inbound snowballs. If you mean to ask whether it is a close or partial match to other known designs, the answer is yes, although that's likely only because certain features have proven to make for the best flying death machines. There is no obvious match of the Tandana jets to any other lineage of fighters."

  "So we have no idea who built them?"

  "Oh no, we've got a pretty good idea about that."

  "But you just sai
d—"

  "That the design is foreign. So it is a good thing that we are not depending solely on the design for answers. Less than one hour before the jets launched from Tandana, a conflict broke out on the border between New Mongolia and Sveylan."

  MacAdams leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. "New Mongolia? As in the place Hartwell runs?"

  "Following the prime minister's encounter with Mr. Webber, the past tense is now more appropriate. But yes, New Mongolia, vaunted member-state of the UDL."

  "Meaning the jets are hers. Were hers."

  "Or they are an asset of the UDL to be deployed whenever any of its nations finds itself in serious conflict."

  MacAdams looked around for something to crush. "They're going to war? The Lurkers just blew up half the planet and these shitheads decide it's time to finish the job for them?"

  Loris extended her index finger and gestured as if she was tracing a series of U's in the air. "New Mongolia and Sveylan have disagreements dating back centuries. The current chaos is the perfect opportunity to settle their differences."

  "The UDL was working with the Lurkers, though," Webber said. "What if this is just another part of their strategy to deliver Earth to the Tubes?"

  "We find that unlikely, given that the Lurkers turned on the UDL as well. But it can't be ruled out yet. We need to discover what's unfolding here so that we can put a stop to it before Earth is destabilized even further."

  Webber turned to MacAdams. "Why do I get the feeling we're about to be dropped into a war zone?"

  MacAdams sighed. "Because you're starting to understand that there are times when being good at your job is a curse."

  Loris made a fast wagging gesture; her hands seemed to be as independent of her control as a tail to the dog. "We're not dropping you into a war zone. We're dropping you next to the war zone."

  "Then what?" Webber said. "Grab the nearest general by the medals and ask him to spill his battle plans?"

  "Nothing half so crude. One of our allies with more direct involvement in political affairs has been approached by a defector from the New Mongolian government. The defector has promised that he is in possession of vital intelligence regarding Lurker operations on Earth's surface. However, he insists that he is in danger and that he can't reveal this intelligence until we have extracted him from his current location."

  "If he's an important government somebody, why can't he get himself out?"

  "Because his government has been thoroughly bombed and he is currently trapped in the town of Khent, which is close to the Sveylani border and hence has been tossed into anarchy by the sudden war your fighter planes rushed off to prosecute. Additionally, he is afraid the New Mongolian government is aware of his intention to defect and is actively searching for him."

  "So you want us to snatch him up," MacAdams said.

  "We wish for you to remove him from Khent without falling into the hands of local authorities. From there, you will proceed to a pickup zone where we will extract the three of you."

  "Question," Webber said. "When do we get to stop doing this?"

  "Why, the answer to that is very simple, Mr. Webber. We get to stop fighting when there is no more fighting left to be done."

  "You mean when we win?"

  Loris shrugged her bony shoulder. "Or the Lurkers do."

  ~

  Snow draped the hills and the plains—and the road, too. There were almost no tire lines in it. Not MacAdams' favorite sign, it meant nobody was driving this way. Which meant they were probably idiots to be doing so themselves.

  But the complete lack of traffic did mean he could drive down the middle of the road, which was much appreciated, because with all the snow, he had no damn idea where the pavement ended. At least the pale green shrubs hunched under the blanket of snow gave him a clue about where the shoulders came to a stop. Would have been nice if Dark Solutions could have flown them in—he would have been happy to do another parachute job—but New Mongolia had had their airspace locked down tight since the conflict with Sveylan had broken out.

  Two dark wedges crossed high overhead, flying north toward Sveylan. Webber powered down the window and leaned out, filming them with his device. Frosty air poured inside the car.

  The jets shrank to specks. Webber settled into his seat, rolled up the window, and frowned at the video replaying on his device.

  MacAdams glanced over. "Get the make?"

  "New Mongolian. Definitely not like we saw at Tandana."

  MacAdams grunted. The road tilted downhill, the snow thickening at the bottom of the decline, forcing him to slow to a crawl. Two minutes later, he crested the next hill. Khent stood five miles away on the white prairie. Not much of a city. A few big apartment towers, but everything else was under ten stories. Smoke rose from one end of the settlement to the other.

  Webber groaned. "Tell me it's not on fire."

  "It ain't. They're burning things for heat."

  "Burning what? Wood? What is this, the Middle Ages?"

  A few small craters dirtied the snow. A mile ahead, a northern road dovetailed to meet the one they were on. There were no cars on that road, either, but a small army of refugees from the border trudged along it toward the city.

  As they neared the junction to Khent, MacAdams unsnapped his holster, loosening his pistol. The refugees walked through the snow in small groups, bent under straining packs, a few of them dragging tarp-covered sleds behind them. As the car came up behind them, they parted to either side of the road, turning to stare with eyes as cold as the landscape.

  A woman seated by the side of the road with two children got to her feet, took two steps toward them, and collapsed, her arms outstretched, beseeching them.

  "Uh," Webber said.

  "Can't stop for these people. We can't help them."

  "Knowing that won't stop me from feeling like a total dick."

  "Then think how much worse you'd feel to save her only for millions to die in the war we were supposed to be stopping instead."

  Webber let out a slow sigh through his nose. "Why does Dark Solutions keep making us do this?"

  "Don't mean to alarm you," MacAdams said. "But they might think we're the best people for the job."

  "Well that is a frightening thought."

  A young man strode from the shoulder to the middle of the road. He stopped there and faced the car, holding a long shovel slanted across his body like a polearm. MacAdams rolled down his window and stuck his arm out into the cold, the muzzle of his pistol aimed at the kid.

  The kid spit at the windshield, then backpedaled, slipping in the snow. MacAdams kept his pistol trained on him until they were past. Tents cropped up along the road, most of them collapsed and abandoned. Packs of gear lay torn open and scattered, dropped by those who were too tired and looted by those who thought they could carry the weight. There were bodies, too, half hidden by the snow, limbs and faces frozen solid.

  Two more groups of young men made a play for the car. MacAdams walked them both back with the steady aim of his pistol. They rolled on, closing within two miles from the city, passage made easier with the snow tramped down by thousands of feet.

  A bang went off beneath the right tire. A man jumped from behind the shrubs and clapped his hands over his head. The car spun hard to the right. MacAdams jerked the control sticks left, but it was already skidding off the road and into the deeper snows of the shoulder.

  The car rocked to a stop. People were running at them from all sides, holding poles and clubs over their heads. MacAdams rammed forward the accelerator. He knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it; the spinning tires smoothed the snow beneath them like glass.

  "Grab the gear and get out!" He reached into the back seat, flinging a pack at Webber and snagging his own.

  He threw open the driver door and rolled out, pointing his pistol at three grimy youths with masks over their faces and bats in their hands. They backed off slowly. MacAdams motioned them to the side. A crowd ran toward them from the south,
howling and throwing rocks.

  Webber gaped at MacAdams. "We're leaving the car?"

  "Forget it!"

  Webber bounced on his feet, then turned to run after MacAdams. The howling men stopped chasing them immediately, sprinting back to the car instead, where others were already shouting and shoving each other for its possession. A man charged another with a butcher knife, slashing past the man's hands and plunging the blade in his gut up to the hilt. He wrenched it to the side. Purplish guts spilled from the gash, steaming in the cold.

  Nobody was coming after them and MacAdams holstered his pistol. People were screaming behind them and every time he looked back he saw the rise and fall of bludgeons and more bodies being dragged off through the snow, leaving red trails behind them.

  They slowed to a walk. Webber gave him a wild-eyed look. "If they're willing to kill to get out of this place, what are we walking into?"

  They reached Khent half an hour later. The outskirts were packed with tents. It stank like grease and cold shit. People gathered around burning trash cans, eyeing the two of them with resentment: every new refugee who came to city made it less likely that they'd be rescued themselves.

  There was a checkpoint at the edge of the city proper with one lane for vehicles and another for those on foot. As they waited in line, the driver of the one car in the vehicle checkpoint was dragged off in cuffs while a guy in a military uniform drove off with his ride. The soldier at the pedestrian stop waved MacAdams and Webber through after the briefest glance at the false documents on their devices.

  MacAdams slouched down the filth-churned street, not looking over his shoulder no matter how badly he wanted to. "You see that? They're confiscating all vehicles coming into the city. If the zombies hadn't stolen the car from us, we'd be in prison right now. You ever feel like somebody's looking out for us?"

  Webber eyed him again. "You mean do I think a higher power just made sure we got robbed and almost had to murder a bunch of people so that we'd have an easier time getting in here?"