Lines of Departure

^{CHAPTER 12} ON THE ROPES

If we were half as good at fighting Lankies as we are at wiping out each other, the fleet would assemble a huge task force and transition en masse to the Sirius A system, to kick the shit out of the Lankies and rescue all the troops we left behind. Instead, the only people jumping into instant action are the fleet’s pencil pushers.

All through our transition from the Alcubierre chute back to Earth, the fleet brass tie up all our comms bandwidth to hold video debriefings with the survivors of Task Force Seventy-Two. I talk to an endless procession of majors, colonels, and generals, with a smattering of NAC and DOD officials in civilian garb thrown into the mix for good measure, and I repeat the same narrative dozens of times. Since I am the only surviving combat controller of the entire two-regiment force on the ground, the data storage modules in my battle armor are of particular interest to the brass, and they send a fleet Intel captain with an MP escort to collect my armor for data retrieval, as if I’m dumb enough to accidentally overwrite my computer’s memory with streamed Network news, or broadcast all the recorded plot data to everyone on the Nassau.

After the third straight day of video debriefings, I do something I’ve never done before in my career—I duck out of duty by going to sick bay. It doesn’t take much to make the shrink put me on sedatives and sleeping pills, and I spend the last three days of our trip back to Earth pleasantly doped up on a semiprivate folding cot in Storage Locker 2204L.

“Now hear this: All hands, prepare for arrival at Independence Station. ETA one hundred and twenty minutes.”

“Independence Station?” Staff Sergeant West repeats. He looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “That’s the corporate civvie station. Wonder what’s wrong with old Gateway.”

“Beats me,” I say, and take another sip of my coffee. “Maybe it finally fell into the North Atlantic. Every time we get back there, it looks more run down.”

“You know the fleet. They’ll run it ’til it breaks, and then they put it back together with polyglue and run it some more.”

Sergeant West is one of the troopers who survived the demise of Banshee Two-Five with me. Over the last few days, we have spent a lot of time in the NCO galley, working through the events in the Sirius A system by talking about different things entirely, the roundabout combat-grunt way of dealing with mental trauma.

The change in routine, combined with the fact that our in-system comms have been restricted ever since we popped out of Alcubierre a week ago, seems like a harbinger of bad things to come. When I share that concern with Sergeant West, he just shrugs.

“You’ve been in long enough, Grayson. Never assume malice if you can explain it with lack of planning.”

When we finally dock with Independence Station, we are greeted by a welcoming committee of what looks like a company or two of Intel officers and military police. More ominously, there are also people in civilian garb among them, and I don’t have to look at them twice to know they’re NAC domestic security agents. We’re funneled into separate rooms and split up into ever-smaller groups, until I find myself sitting in a small fabric-walled office unit with a dour-looking Intel captain.

“Staff Sergeant Grayson,” he says, reading off the data pad in his hands. “Sorry about the Manitoba. I’m sure you’ve lost a lot of friends on that ship.”

I didn’t really have a lot of friends on the Manitoba yet, since I had just transferred onto her, but I nod anyway.

“That wasn’t the first ship you lost, I see. There was the Versailles back in 2113. Can’t get away from the Lankies, can you?”

“Not my doing, Captain. I’d gladly stay away from them if they’d let me.”

“Yeah, they’re getting annoying.” He flicks through the screen on his data pad with his forefinger. “You were on the surface when the seed ship arrived. Did you get the flash message traffic that ordered all ground units to stay put and go defensive?”

“I don’t recall that one, sir. Things were a bit hectic, you know, what with the nukes going off in high orbit.”

“Your suit’s computer says you did. You then advised the platoon leader to call down the unit’s drop ship and head back to the carrier, against orders.”

“See those?” I point at the rank sleeves on my uniform, a chevron in a U-shaped border on each shoulder. “That means ‘staff sergeant.’ The platoon leaders had a star on each one. That means ‘second lieutenant.’ Those don’t take orders from staff sergeants.”

The Intel captain looks at me impassively for a moment, like a biologist watching a strange specimen twitch at the end of a needle. Then he puts his data pad onto the desk in front of him, and leans back in his chair.

“You’re a combat controller. You’re the fleet liaison on the ground. Any platoon leader with half a brain will follow your advice. The only reason you’re alive is because you acted against orders, and because your ship’s CAG threatened to shoot nukes at a task force ship. That’s good enough for a court-martial for everyone above the rank of corporal on those four drop ships, as far as I’m concerned.”

I look at the captain in disbelief for a moment. Then some gasket in my brain gives way.

“Are you seriously taking us to task for getting off that rock alive? You have got to be joking.”

“That’s absolutely not the case, Sergeant. I don’t have an issue with the fact that you survived. I just have an issue with the fact that you acted against orders.”

“Fuck you,” I say, and fold my arms across my chest. “I’m done talking to you. Get me JAG counsel in here or get out of my face.”

“You don’t need legal counsel. You’re not charged with anything yet.”

“Then either charge me and have the MP haul me off to the brig, or stop wasting my fucking time.”

The captain picks up his data pad again and taps the screen studiously. I have to suppress the urge to reach across the desk and rip the damn thing from his hands. Right now, they’re looking for a way to pin the tail on the donkey, to find someone to take the heat, to make it look like the brass aren’t the collection of ticket-punching career desk pilots they’ve always been. We’re losing the war for the survival of our species, and the people in charge are still willing to throw the grunts out of the airlock to save their own careers.

“You’re a fleet asset, Staff Sergeant Grayson. We don’t have enough combat controllers to let you spend a month or two in Leavenworth while the corps decides whether to throw the book at you. Rest assured, however, that the incident will go on your record, and that we’ll revisit the issue once things have settled a bit.”

I shake my head and chuckle.

“We just got our asses kicked by the Lankies, seven light years from this place. The way things are going for the home team, I’m not too worried about a fucking court-martial right now, Captain.”

The fleet has an informal term for sailors who survive the destruction of their ship: HLOs, hull-loss orphans. “Halos” usually get shifted from one Transient Personnel Unit to another as the fleet tries to find a new home for them. Those of us who survived the disaster of Sirius Ad aren’t treated like halos, even though we are. Instead, they treat us with a combination of movement restrictions and benign neglect that makes us feel only marginally more welcome than SRA prisoners of war. We’re not allowed onto MilNet, and we’re berthed in a restricted area of Independence Station, with a screen of military police guards keeping us away from the other troopers and sailors passing through the place. The week after our arrival sees an ever-increasing stream of personnel and gear, until Independence looks like a slightly cleaner and newer version of the perennially overcrowded Gateway Station. I’ve been in the fleet long enough to know that our comms blackout means that the brass don’t want the news of our ass-kicking to get out among the rank and file just yet. The meaning of the swelling troop buildup in one of the NAC’s three major orbital hubs is pretty clear—we’re gearing up for a major operation, and Command is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the Lankies this time.

Finally, after a week and a half of more debriefings, extended naps, medical checkups, and long stretches of mind-numbing boredom, the fleet has figured out what to do with me.

“Staff Sergeant Grayson,” the lieutenant says as he walks into the storage room that serves as our temporary mess hall. I put down my ham-and-cheese sandwich and get up to render a salute.

“As you were, Sergeant,” he says, and sits down across the table from me. He is wearing the standard black fleet beret, and his specialty badge marks him as a Logistics & Personnel pencil pusher, not an Intel officer like all the other brass I’ve seen this week.

“Yes, sir,” I say, and push aside my sandwich. “What’s the word?”

“Vacation’s over. The fleet needs you to jump back in, if you’re ready.”

“Of course, sir.”

He produces a data pad, taps around on the screen, and then turns it so I can see the display.

“You’ll be reporting to NACS Midway at 1300 Zulu tomorrow. She’s on her way to Independence Station right now.”

“The Midway?” I search my mental data bank for information. “Didn’t they decommission her a few years back?”

“She was put in reserve. They bumped her back into the active fleet last week. The maintenance crew is ferrying her over from the strategic-reserve fleetyard.”

“Wow,” I say. “Fleet’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Pacific-class ships are eighty fucking years old by now. I thought they were all scrapped already.”

“All but Midway and Iwo Jima,” the lieutenant says. He puts away his data pad and gets up from his chair. “Fleet’s short on hulls, Sarge. The Pacifics are old, but they’re big hulls. Good luck in your new assignment.”

“What about my gear? My bug suit burned up with the Manitoba, along with all my other stuff.”

“Ask the supply guy in charge on the Midway. They’ll reissue everything, I’m sure.”

When they fitted me for my bug suit, I had to come to the fleet’s Special Warfare Center on Luna to get fitted, and the process took three days of adjustments and a week of field testing. I know without the trace of a doubt that the supply monkeys on that scrapyard candidate won’t have a new bug suit in storage. I know I’ll be sent into battle against the Lankies without proper armor, on a ship that got a last-minute reprieve from its date with the scrapyard’s plasma torches. But the personnel clerk in front of me doesn’t care about any of that, nor would he have the clout to do anything about it if he did, so I just salute and watch him walk out of the storage room.

As a civvie station, Independence has some luxuries that austere Gateway can’t match. Many of the public areas have viewports that offer a good vista of Earth through multiple layers of inch-thick polycarb panes. On Gateway, you can look at Earth through external camera feeds, but nothing can match seeing the planet with your own eyes. There’s a small lounge in our restricted area, and I spend much of my remaining idle time until Midway’s arrival sitting there, watching the orbital traffic and the swirling weather patterns in the atmosphere below. Somewhere down there, beneath the cloud cover, Mom is going about her business in PRC Boston-7, warming up her BNA ration while watching Network shows. Luna is on the far side of the station, out of my field of view, but I know that Halley is in a classroom or a drop-ship cockpit right now, teaching the next batch of space bus drivers how to fly a Wasp. The only two people I care about are closer to me than they’ve been for most of my half-decade career, and my travel and comms restrictions mean that they might as well be sixty light years and half a dozen Alcubierre hops away.

For the first time in my life in the service, I don’t want to leave Earth.