Wilson sighed. “With all due respect, sir, unless you authorize me to utilize our own first strike potential, there’s not a lot we can do.”
Ryan shook his head. “The Confederates still have plenty of missiles here on Earth, and so do we. If we destroy the last dregs of their fleet, we’ll be backing them into a corner, and they may feel they have no choice but to bring on Armageddon.”
“You really think they’d do that after there’s already so much devastation on both sides?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to comprehend the mind of the Confederate ant. They don’t think like we do. What alternatives do we have?”
“We could get some distance between us and them. That would reduce the danger of a first strike.”
Ryan frowned. “And abandon the Looking Glass?”
“Under the circumstances, what makes the Looking Glass so important? We’re fighting for our lives here, and we’re risking all of our assets to defend a gateway to a planet that may or may not even be habitable.”
Ryan set his tumbler down and steepled his hands beneath his chin, contemplating how much he should tell the admiral. The fewer people who knew the better, but it would be nice to be able to share his burden with someone. Particularly someone who would understand the importance of what they were doing.
“First of all, I’m sure you know that our unwillingness to share the Looking Glass with the Confederacy is what sparked this war, so there is the principle of the matter to consider. Giving up the Looking Glass now would be tantamount to saying that all of those millions of people died for nothing.”
Admiral Wilson nodded. “I understand that, sir, but we can’t repair one error in judgment with another.”
“Perhaps not, but we can give meaning to an otherwise senseless war. What if I told you that if Operation Alice is successful, we will be able to wipe out the entire Confederate Fleet, bankrupt their economy, and ultimately defeat them once and for all?”
“Then I would say it was worth it.”
Ryan smiled. “Suppose I also told you that we could do all of that without firing a single shot.”
Wilson’s lips parted, his expression frozen halfway between surprise and disbelief. “Then I would say there’s something you’re not telling me, and Operation Alice is a lot more important than it appears to be.”
Ryan nodded gravely. “There’s a lot of things I’m not telling you, and as for Operation Alice being more important than it appears—it’s actually the most important mission in the history of the Alliance. But—” Ryan raised a finger to point out the all-important caveat. “—if we give the Confederacy access to the Looking Glass now, the mission will be forfeit.”
Wilson blinked and swallowed visibly. “Maybe you’d better fill me in, sir.”
Ryan picked up his tumbler for another sip of Scotch. “That’s why you’re here, Admiral,” he said, lowering the glass from his lips. He tipped it toward Wilson. “Maybe now you’d like to have that drink?”
“Perhaps, yes… Vodka. Neat.”
“Coming right up.”
CHAPTER 26
Catalina awoke to the sound of an alarm screeching at her. The alarm was inside her head, a phantom sound that disappeared as soon as she woke up. It was more reliable to set a mental alarm via her parietlar implant than it was to set a physical alarm via her government issue comm band.
Caty sat up. “Lights,” she said, whispering to the home’s control system.
The lights rose gradually to full brightness, and Caty rolled out of bed. She shuffled to the home’s only bathroom, and found the door already shut and a warm bar of light creeping out along the floor.
She knocked lightly. “David?”
“¿Si?”
“Are you almost done?”
“Casi, casi. Puedes prepararnos un cafe mientras.”
Caty sighed, annoyed by his constant use of Spanish. She turned and went to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee like he’d suggested.
Coffee was one of the few things the government didn’t ration, but that was because all of the plantations were in the South, and the Confederacy hadn’t nuked anything below Texas.
Scarcity, crime, poverty, and misery in general were all on the rise in the North, and if trends continued, soon the North and South would be on a par with each other. All that trouble to immigrate up here, and soon we’ll be flocking back down south, she thought.
Caty set a pot of water to boil. They didn’t have a real coffee maker yet. Too expensive. She glanced down the hall to see that the bathroom light was still on, and this time she sighed audibly.
Sharing a bathroom was difficult, but everything else was made easier by having David living with her. They’d pretended to be a couple in front of the government workers in charge of assigning homes to refugees so they could get a two bedroom bungalow instead of a one-bedroom. The extra bedroom provided for couples was there in case they chose to get pregnant—something the government was actually encouraging now—but that was far from the real reason they wanted a two bedroom house. The government loan on a two bedroom place was easier to pay than two separate, slightly smaller loans. Not to mention Caty slept better knowing that David was in the room next to hers.
The interviewer’s suspicions about their marital status turned to sympathies when she learned that their previous spouses had been officers in the fleet. Officially both of their spouses were MIA—Missing in Action, and had been for more than a year. To the government that meant they were dead, but Caty knew better. Alexander’s mission had been top secret, so his official status wouldn’t be accurate. Besides that, he’d left at least a week before the fighting had started, so she was sure he’d escaped.
Caty had a friend in Sacramento, Lieutenant Tatiana Muros. Tatiana was quietly looking into Alexander’s MIA status for her. So far no news, but Caty was hopeful that might change now that the Alliance was getting more organized.
The pot on the stove began whistling and Caty took it off the hotplate. She heaped instant coffee into two cups and began pouring in boiling water. As she was pouring the milk and spooning out sugar, she heard the door to the bathroom open and footsteps approaching. David dialed up the lights to full brightness as he approached, and she turned to him with his cup of coffee.
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “Gracias, cariño.”
“I’m not your honey,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him.
He grinned and took a sip of coffee. “But you are sweet like honey,” he said.
“Mmmm, smooth-talker.” Caty sat down at the kitchen table, regarding David over the rim of her coffee mug as he poured cereal for himself. He was already dressed in his work uniform—jeans and an old t-shirt. He’d had an easy time adapting to life after the attacks. Before the attacks he’d been a handyman and carpenter. Now he was working with a large contractor to help build more homes and infrastructure for the refugees.
Caty hadn’t been so lucky. Before all hell had broken loose, she’d been finishing her doctoral thesis in fine arts while working as a museum curator. Under the current circumstances, appreciating art was the last thing on anyone’s minds. Not to mention that the Alliance’s greatest art collections had all been incinerated along with its largest cities.
Now the best job Caty could find with her skills was cleaning house for rich geners in Sacramento. That meant spending two hours on a bus every morning to earn a paltry thousand sols per month. She had to be thankful, though. Unemployment was around thirty five percent in her neighborhood. People were tripping over each other to get jobs like hers, and the only reason she’d gotten her job at all was because her employers, the Waltons, had an extensive private collection of art, and Caty had managed to impress them with her knowledge of that collection.
Caty smirked around another sip of coffee. It’s a bold new world out there. Now you have to study for eight years just so you can go scrub toilets for a living.
“What are you thinking about?” David asked, sitt
ing down with his coffee and bowl of cereal. “Something funny?”
Caty shook her head. “Something sad.”
“You were smiling.”
Caty shrugged and wiped the smirk off her face. She pretended to study the bottom of her coffee mug.
“Was it Alex?”
“No.” Caty didn’t look up. She didn’t feel like talking—especially about Alex. David was sure he was dead, and she was never going to accept that. Not until she had some kind of proof.
“Has your contact found anything yet?”
Caty got up from the table. “Not yet.” She put her mug in the sink.
David paused for a spoonful of cereal. “Maybe there is nothing to find,” he said.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
When she was done, he was waiting for her at the front door with a puppy dog look in his eyes.
“I thought you would have left already,” she said as she put on her shoes.
“And leave you to walk to the bus alone?” He shook his head. “Something could happen to you.”
As soon as she was done putting on her shoes, he lifted her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m sorry, Caty.”
“For what?”
“For not being more understanding. I miss my wife, too.”
Caty shook her head. “I know, but this is different. Alexander really could be alive. He—”
“I know. Top secret mission. I get it. You have hope, and I don’t.” His face fell dramatically and the light left his eyes. “Maybe that’s why I am not more sensitive. Maybe I am jealous.”
Caty felt a pang of guilt and she rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry, too.”
They stood there for a long moment, whole sentences hanging in the air unspoken between them. “We’re going to be late for work,” she eventually said.
He nodded, and they went out the door together. David walked her to her bus to make sure she got on safely. Everyone in the North was supposed to be well-adjusted and non-violent thanks to their endocrine implants, but crime was still rising steadily. There was a standing nationwide order for all natural-borns with behavioral implants to go get them adjusted, but Caty had a feeling people were reluctant to dial back their primal instincts when they couldn’t be sure that their neighbors were doing the same.
“See you tonight,” David said, waving to her as she climbed on her bus.
Caty nodded and waved back. “See you.”
Three hours later she was busy dusting an explicit Kama Sutra-inspired Koons sculpture in the Waltons’ master suite when her comm band rang with an incoming call.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Caty? It’s Muros.”
“Tatiana?” Caty’s heart became a drumbeat in her chest. “You heard something?” There was a notable pause on the other end. “Taty? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Your husband’s ship was the Lincoln, right?”
“Yes, why?” Thud-thud. Thud-thud…
“Maybe you’d like to meet with me for lunch today?”
“I’m working.”
“I could come to you.”
“If you know something, just tell me. I’ve waited long enough. I need to know, Taty. Is he okay?”
Caty heard the other woman sigh. “The Lincoln is listed as a confirmed casualty in our records. I don’t know why your husband’s status is still MIA, but the crew went down with the ship. They didn’t have a chance to deploy lifeboats or escape pods.”
“That’s impossible! They would have updated Alexander’s status.”
“Maybe, but everything is a mess right now, so a lot of things can slip through the cracks. Checking personnel records is a low priority. I’m really sorry, Caty. If there’s anything I can do, you just let me know, okay?”
Caty’s eyes blurred with tears. “No, thank you. Goodbye.”
“Bye, Caty… Take care.”
Caty ended the comm call on her end and walked over to sit at the foot of the Waltons’ bed. She sat staring at her hands as her tears rained into them, slipping between her fingers.
“Caty? Are you all right?”
Caty looked up to see Mrs. Walton standing in the doorway, an uncomfortable look on her face. “I’m fine,” Caty said.
Mrs. Walton frowned and stared at her pointedly. “Clearly you’re not fine. Otherwise you would be doing your job rather than wrinkling a thousand sol bedspread with your posterior.”
Caty stood up quickly and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry… I just heard news about my husband.”
“Captain Alexander?”
“He’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. So many months of holding onto hope and for what? She had written literally hundreds of letters to him. Letters he was never going to read.
Mrs. Walton’s disapproving frown gave way to another look of discomfort. “Oh… I see. You can take a personal day if you like, Caty. I’m sure you can catch up on all the housework tomorrow.”
Caty wiped her tears again and managed a broken smile. “Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Walton.”
The subsequent hours both dragged and raced, passing in a dimension where time had been replaced by a terrifying void. The bus ride was shorter than usual—no traffic at this time of day. Caty walked alone from the bus stop to her home, scarcely noticing the hungry, desperate faces peering at her from curtain-less windows and barren doorsteps as she passed by.
She went straight to bed and slept a haunted sleep until she woke with a knock at her door.
“Caty?” It was David. The door cracked open. “Are you asleep?”
She didn’t reply, hoping he would leave.
“You weren’t at the bus stop. Did something happen?”
“No. Nothing. I’m fine.”
The light from the open door increased. More footsteps. “Obvio que no estas bien, mi chiquita.”
“Go away!” she sobbed.
The bed sank with his weight, and she buried her face in the pillows. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. You lost your job?”
She shook her head.
“Then what?”
Suddenly she was furious with him. What right did he have to intrude on her like this? What was he even doing sharing a house with her? He should just go! Caty burst from the covers, her eyes flashing, her heart pounding. “He’s dead. Are you happy now? Alexander is dead!”
David’s lips parted and his brown eyes grew wide. It took him a moment to recover from her outburst. “How do you know?”
Caty looked away. Hot tears welled in her eyes once more. “They called.”
David said nothing, seemingly frozen in place.
A tear fell from Caty’s eye lashes and ran down her cheek. David snapped out of it and pulled her into a strong embrace. She sobbed anew while he whispered in her ear, telling her everything was going to be okay.
He was wrong. Alexander wasn’t coming back to save her. The world was never going to go back to the way it had been before. Nothing was going to be okay ever again. She soaked David’s shirt with her tears, and he rocked her back and forth, stroking her head for what seemed like hours.
Eventually the cold fury of grief gave way to the warmth of that embrace, and Caty began to notice David’s hands running lightly beneath her shirt, up and down her back, making her skin tingle.
A part of her that had been denied for more than two years came roaring to life, making her blood sing in her veins. Pent-up grief became red hot desire, and everything else ceased to matter. Why hold back any longer? The words till death do us part came to mind, and suddenly she turned her head from David’s shirt to face him.
She pulled his lips down to hers and drank him in. He smelled like sweat and tasted like beer, but somehow that was better than perfume and mint. He was real. He was alive.
With every desperate touch and gasping kiss, she realized that this was something they’d both wanted for a long time. Caty surrendered to
the moment, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt while he ripped her blouse open and stripped her naked. He spent a moment admiring her before she pulled him down on top of her.
A few minutes later, she lay gasping on the bed beside him. The heat of the moment was gone, leaving her cold and shivering. Suddenly she felt smothered under an impossible weight of grief and… guilt. She bit her lower lip and rocked her head from side to side on her pillow. What have I done?
David lay on his side, staring at her, his hands running lightly over her naked chest. Her skin glistened with sweat in the dim light pouring in from the hallway. David’s eyes glinted at her, diamond pinpricks of light adrift in a sea of darkness.
“He would want you to be happy, Caty.”
Shock coursed through her. Was she that easy to read?
“I know, because that is what I would want, if I was him.”
Caty nodded. Alexander would have wanted her to be happy, but this still felt wrong. It felt like she’d betrayed him. She hadn’t even waited a day between hearing that he was dead and moving on with another man!
Ice crept inside her soul, making her shiver. What kind of wife jumped into bed with another man as soon as she heard that her husband was dead? A painful lump rose in Caty’s throat, and David began showering her with kisses. David stroked her cheek, wiping away a fresh tear.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. I’m here, and I’m not going to leave you. Not even death can take me, mi chiquita. It already tried. I will make you whole again.”
Caty nodded once more even though she knew those were all lies. It wasn’t okay; she wasn’t safe; and David could try all he wanted, but he would never be able to fill the hole that Alexander had left in her heart.
“I think… I need to be alone,” she said, not looking at him.
David’s expression darkened. “Alone? Despues de lo que hicimos?”
“I’m sorry. I just… it’s been a long day.”
He looked angry, ready to object, but all he said was “Entiendo,” and then he rolled out of bed and walked away, not even stopping to put on his clothes.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 21
