Battle Station

— 28

I spent a long night in the command center on Actium, which ended with me slumped over the screens. When I finally headed to my bunk, it seemed like my head had only just hit the foam when a chime went off in my darkened chamber.

“What is it now? Are they hitting us?”

“No, sir-but we have a new contact.”

I groaned and climbed out of my bunk. I was talking to a voice in the ceiling-a voice with an Eastern European accent.

“You sound a little like Dracula. Has anyone ever told you that, Miklos?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, let’s just say your voice is not the best to wake up to. What is this new contact?”

“An Earth ship, sir. It’s arrived at the Helios ring. They want to talk to you.”

I groaned aloud. Crow had finally sent someone out to check up on me. I’d been expecting this, but I’d hoped it would all go away somehow. Now, they were finally here. I hoped it wasn’t Commodore Decker again. I couldn’t stand the man.

“I’ll be on the command deck in eight minutes.”

I was ten minutes late, but I wasn’t counting. In that short amount of time, I’d taken a shower and munched on some artificial bacon. It was discolored and tasted like someone had applied a layer salt and grease to corn husks. No one dared question the origins of this kind of food. We didn’t want to know how they made bacon out here. We all knew that finding out what it really was wouldn’t make it taste any better.

My first shock of the day was the newly arrived ship itself. The image swam onto the central screen. It was big-bigger than one of our destroyers, but smaller than a Macro cruiser. I stared at it, admiring the sleek lines. The vessel’s shape was uniquely contoured and reminded me vaguely of a spoon. It had a rounded prow, with armament in the form of a six-gun battery arranged around that curved nose. Three engines were arranged in a tripod formation at the stern.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“We’re calling it a light cruiser, sir,” Miklos answered. “It’s a new Star Force hull-the ship is definitely a friendly. It has a displacement of about four thousand tons, nearly half that of a Macro cruiser.”

I frowned at it. The ship didn’t look terribly friendly. The fact the design was unknown to me filled me with unease. What was going on back home? The trouble with these long campaigns was I inevitably became disconnected with events on Earth.

“It looks fast,” I said reaching out to zoom in on the three engines with my fingers. “Crow’s getting better at design.”

“You think he did this by himself?”

“No, he definitely had help from other military organizations,” I said. I straightened and heaved a sigh. “He obviously sent this ship to impress me. Unfortunately, he’s succeeded. Patch me through to the commander. Let’s do this.”

When I stepped up to the communications screen, I received another shock. It wasn’t Commodore Decker’s gnarled face that looked back at me. It was Jasmine Sarin’s.

“Well, hello Major!” I said. “It’s good to see you again. What brings you so far from Earth?”

Jasmine cleared her throat. To me, she looked slightly nervous, but determined.

“Colonel Riggs,” she began.

My heart sank as I heard her tone of voice. I could tell she was going to give me a lecture.

“I’ve come from Star Force to relay new instructions. You are to make an immediate withdrawal from the Eden system. Your ships are required for the defense of Earth.”

I frowned up at her. “Are we under some kind of attack at home?”

“No Colonel, not at this time.”

“Then please come to my command ship. We need to talk this over. In the meantime, you should scan the system. It is full of alien ships, and they aren’t friendly.”

“We have already done so, Colonel. The orders stand.”

My frown deepened. She was calling me ‘Colonel’ not ‘sir’, and she was trying to pass an order on to me from Crow-one which I didn’t want to hear. She wasn’t even willing to talk about it in private. My neck felt hot, and I knew a shouting session was near. Around me, my command staff shuffled, tapped at screens, and generally pretended not to be hanging on every word.

“Major-” I began.

“I’m sorry Colonel, but that is no longer my rank.”

I stared at her in surprise.

“I’m a Rear Admiral now-I’ve gone Fleet.”

My jaw jutted in annoyance. I knew that was her new rank, of course. Forgetting about it was my way of reminding her who she used to be-my exec. Now I felt betrayed, but I tried not to let it show in my eyes. I think I failed, as Sarin looked even more stressed than before.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Let’s talk plainly. If you want to complete your mission, you have to come to my ship and talk to me in person. Is that clear?”

Sarin thought this over. No one was sure how to proceed. Crow had always maintained the fiction that I was under his command. I disagreed, seeing my role as that of an equal partner, rather than an underling. Star Force was far from clearly defined at the top. In fact, authority between Crow and I had been a loose arrangement from the start. We’d done a fair job of managing the organization by separating Star Force into land forces and space forces, and dividing our jurisdictions accordingly. In general, Crow ran Fleet while I ran the Marines.

But in practice, it had never worked out so neatly. What had evolved was a regional power system, based on who was where. When I was running a task force in space, I commanded it, both ground and space forces. When I wasn’t near Earth, Crow asserted his authority there with glee. Crow never ventured far from Earth, so conflicts usually arose only when I was in the home system. When we were both at home, things often went badly. We invariably stepped on each other’s toes.

This time was a special case. Crow was trying to order me around while I was out on a campaign. As I saw it, he was the one trying to alter our arrangement of power.

I think it was my jutting jaw and flat stare that convinced Jasmine. She realized she wasn’t going to get me to come home just by showing up in the system in her fancy new ship and passing on Crow’s edicts.

“All right,” she said at last. “I’ll meet you on your ship.”

Several hours later, the light cruiser arrived in orbit over Eden-11. I watched it come in, admiring its sleek lines as it drew close.

I retired to Actium’s conference room, and the rest of my command staff knew enough to keep out as I waited for Sarin. Only Marvin tried to follow me inside. He’d come back up from stirring his mud soup down on the Eden-11 and was craning his cameras in my direction, trying to see and hear everything. I was vaguely amused by all of them. They were all dying to know how this command struggle would play out. Marvin was just more obvious than most.

“Major-ah, excuse me, Rear Admiral Sarin,” I greeted her as she stepped through a melting door.

Behind her, Marvin’s cameras appeared to be riding on stalks. The wall reconstituted itself, shutting him out. I gestured to the table, and she moved to the far side. She extended her hand, and I shook it. A few months ago she would have saluted me-but now she saw herself as something of an equal. A handshake was the protocol between Crow and me. I let the matter pass without comment, taking her offered hand and smiling before I released it.

She was Fleet brass now, but I was still the Marine commander. As I saw it, she was under my command out here. I kept these thoughts to myself. There was no need to push things right away. Possibly, we could work this out amicably.

“Shall I begin briefing you?” I asked.

“By all means.”

“First off, I’m sorry Crow and I have put you in this position, Jasmine,” I said. “We’ve never really gotten our act together, you know. The chain of command should be perfectly clear to all. What I want to do today is explain the Eden system situation clearly. Then you can make up your own mind how we should proceed.”

“I’m not in that position, Colonel-”

“Oh, but you are. You’ve been moved up to command rank. That has responsibilities. Right now, if I pitched over dead onto this table, you would be in command in this system.”

Sarin looked mildly alarmed. I wondered if she was really ready for her new rank. I knew she was ambitious and competent, but she was young and she’d run every battle from behind a touchscreen. Making strategic decisions that sent people to die-possibly millions of people-wasn’t the same thing as running ops.

I proceeded to lay out the situation in the system. I showed her the planet we’d liberated, vids of the Crustaceans who’d we made contact with, and the Nano ship fleet that were parked in orbit over the gas giant. She was particularly impressed by the Macro production facility I’d put to work for us, and the new gunship design. She was alarmed, however, by the alien forces that were staring us down over these lush worlds.

“It’s like the war never ended,” she said.

I almost laughed. “Ended? Why no, it hasn’t ended. Is that what Crow’s been telling everyone back home? Because if so, he’s full of crap. I don’t know if we’ll ever have peace out here for any significant length of time-but I’m trying.”

Sarin’s tongue wet her lips and she leaned forward. “Colonel Riggs, that is precisely how the talk is going back home. You are depicted as being a warmonger-someone who won’t take a victory and leave matters alone. Someone who wants to build an empire.”

“An egomaniac, is that it? A charge from Crow, no less? I’d laugh, but I’m too bitter for humor. I’m trying to keep our species and our biotic allies one step ahead of extinction. We need to stop the next alien incursion before it begins. I’d like to do it with as many allies and planets on our side of the fence as possible.”

“What fence?” she asked.

I smiled. It was the precise question I’d hoped she would ask. I dragged a file onto the desktop between us and showed her the plans I’d drawn up. My new battle station would bristle with weapons. If I could capture a few more Macro factories, I could make it happen. She watched carefully, and I could tell I’d impressed her.

“I see the strength of the plan,” she said. “Using the rings as a natural bottleneck, we could outgun any enemy that came through by placing a massive defensive fortress there.”

“Exactly.”

“I understand your plan, and I approve. But Fleet believes you should build your battle station closer to Earth-preferably in the home system.”

“It might end up like that,” I admitted. “But I want to try to put it out here instead, giving us six lovely new habitable worlds. Just think of that, six new Earths. On top of that, we’d save two allied species, the Worms and the Centaurs. We need help, I don’t want to do this alone.”

“What about the other races?”

“Right now, they are either hostile or uncooperative. Take the Blues, for example. I think they have something to do with the Nano ships that have abandoned the Crustaceans and now orbit the gas giant, Eden-12. They are barely willing to communicate with us. But I have hopes for cooperation with them in the future. We have the same strategic difficulties to face in the long run.”

“You mean the Macros.”

“Yes.”

Jasmine rubbed at her neck, deep in thought. Her hair had slipped from the tight bun she’d worn upon arrival. She still kept her hair long, and loose strands hung around her face as she studied the data intently. To me, she looked as pretty as ever.

“What did you name the ship?” I asked her.

“What?”

“Your shiny new ship. The one Crow bought for you to go along with your new rank.”

She sat back and glared at me. “It is named Goa — after a lovely region of India. But Crow didn’t buy me off. I’ve earned this promotion.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

Sarin didn’t answer, because we both knew I was lying. I absolutely thought she’d been bought off. Crow was a crafty old devil. He’d found out what my most loyal supporting officer wanted, and given it to her to place her under his spell. He’d figured out she wanted rank, so he’d provided an impressive one. Then he’d built her a nice ship, and sent her out here to rub her change of loyalties in my face. He wanted to force her to prove her new loyalty to him. It was hard not to be annoyed with both of them.

I wondered if Crow knew that last time Jasmine and I had been alone together in a command conference room, we’d kissed. If he ever did learn about that, I was sure it would make this awkward moment he’d created for the two of us even sweeter for him.

“I’m not sure what I should do,” Jasmine admitted at last. “I have my orders-but you make a compelling argument. You always do.”

I smiled slowly. “Welcome to one of the secret hardships of command. Sometimes, the path is not clear-or there are several reasonable options. It’s your job to choose one and stick with it. You have to display conviction. The troops have to believe you are sure of yourself, even if you’re not.”

She looked at me. “That’s the thing about you, Kyle,” she said softly. “Somehow, you are always self-assured. You always proceed without the slightest doubt.”

“That’s a combination of a character flaw and an elaborate fiction,” I said. “It’s true, I choose a path and follow it tenaciously, but I’m not always sure it’s the right one.”

Her eyes narrowed and she squinted at me. “You fake it?”

“Sometimes,” I said, shrugging.

She snorted softly and smiled. It was the first honest smile I’d seen on her face for months. I had a thought then-a nice thought. I considered reaching out my hand and clasping hers. I’m an impulsive guy, but I made no moves. I just returned her smile with one of my own. We both sat quietly for a few seconds, enjoying the moment.

At that point, the ship’s inner wall melted. We both looked up in surprise. My surprise changed into shock as I saw who stood there in the opening. The nanites in the smart metal didn’t see too happy, either. The intruder moved faster than they did, not allowing them time to get out of the way. They moved in dribbles and slagged away from an outstretched, thin-fingered hand that punched its way through them.

The figure was female, and she advanced into the room so quickly the nanites didn’t have time to dissolve completely. They stretched over her like a bubble-which quickly popped and sent bits of semi-liquid metal everywhere. It looked like a shower of mercury. The beads of nanites quickly found their brothers on the deck of the ship and merged together, smoothing out.

The wall closed behind her again, and she loomed between us at the head of the conference table. She placed her palms flat on the table and suspiciously eyed each of us in turn.

“I couldn’t take anymore whispering and giggling,” she said. “I could hear you right through these thin nanite walls, you know.”

“Sandra!” I said, standing up. “I had no idea you’d come on this trip!”

I was honestly glad to see her, even if she was in one of her jealousy-fueled moods. She looked at me with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

“You didn’t think I’d let Jasmine come out here to see you alone, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said, laughing nervously.

Jasmine didn’t make eye-contact with either of us. I sensed these two had endured a tense voyage on the way out from Earth.

I stepped to Sandra and attempted a hug. It was like hugging a manikin at first. She stiffened and I felt nothing but her bones and hard muscles. After a second however, she softened a little.

Internally, I complimented myself. I was very glad I hadn’t grabbed Jasmine’s hand.