Chains of Command (41 page)

“You used me,” I say. “You used the whole SI detachment. Three platoons of distraction. So you and your boys could bring the place to its knees.”

“Yes, I did,” he says. “I needed their eyes on your platoon so they wouldn’t look where it counted. And make no mistake, Lieutenant, I’d do it again tomorrow.”

“We lost thirty-eight men and three drop ships,” I say.

“And we got off easy,” he replies. “We won. And we got it done with minimal casualties. Do you have any idea how many we would have lost if the Fleet had staged a full task force for the raid? Gone head-to-head against those ships in orbit? Thousands of lives, Lieutenant. Yes, I’ll trade thirty-eight troopers and a handful of drop ships for that.”

I glare at him, murder in my heart.

“You were willing to nuke every single terraforming plant on this moon?”

He nods. “Believe it. Although I bluffed a little. We only had time to set the charges on fourteen of them. We had to cut things short when you staged your assault.” He smiles a very sparse smile. “That was excellent initiative. When we get back, I’m putting you and the other platoon leaders in for some major awards.”

“I don’t want any,” I say. “I don’t want a thing from you. I don’t do your kind of war.”

Major Masoud shakes his head.

“There’s no ‘my kind of war,’” he says. “There’s only war. It’s about breaking the enemy as quickly and thoroughly as possible, by any means necessary. That’s all it is. That’s our business, Lieutenant.”

“You were looking forward to this. You came here just to stomp these people and make them bleed.”

“I came here to win the battle,” he says. “So we can take it to the Lankies and win the war.”

“I’ll believe that when I see you in formation with the rest of us to drop onto Mars. With all those kids they’re training as cannon fodder for you and your high-speed brotherhood here.”

“You will,” he says. “
Portsmouth
and
Berlin
will be in orbit in two days and take command of the renegade task force for the transit back to Earth. And then we’ll get ready for the main event. With the gear in orbit here, we’ll double the Fleet’s combat power. We’re bringing back a supercarrier and six capital ships, Lieutenant. We’ll both be on the ground on Mars in a month or two.”

“Yes sir,” I say, and sketch a cursory salute that’s just on this side of insubordination. I know he’s right, and I hate the knowledge, the near certainty that I would have made the exact same trade in his stead. A hundred dead and three drop ships gone, traded for a quarter-million tons of first-rate warships to take into battle against the Lankies. A hundred deaths for the chance to save hundreds of millions, maybe the entire human race. I’ll come to terms with it later. But right now I am angry at the man who made that call for us all, without letting us in on the whole plan.

“Your wife doing all right?” Sergeant Fallon asks a little later, when we’ve finished stacking rifles and sitting down in the shell-marked vestibule of the admin building. I’m so tired I don’t even have the energy to open a ration bag—not that it’s advisable to eat outside when irradiated particles are falling from the sky.

“She has more broken bones than intact ones,” I say. “The ejection capsule closed on her arm and leg when she bailed. Crushed them both in half a dozen places. Broke her hip, too.”

“They’ll stitch her back together,” she replies. Then she stretches out her leg—the artificial one—and gives her titanium shinbone a good rap with her armored fist.

“I didn’t get a scratch on me this time,” I say. “Nothing. Not even a bruised knuckle. I’ve had guys blown in half right in front of me, and I didn’t shed a drop of blood. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

“You’ve bled your share,” she says. “You have credit.”

We watch the scene in front of us—the troops clearing rubble and carting away weapons and body bags, the civvies milling around in radiation ponchos, the smoke still pouring into the nighttime sky from the dozens of fires our battle kindled. We turned a paradise into something worse than the shittiest PRC on Earth, a post-apocalyptic, irradiated urban wasteland. The population of Arcadia City has already begun the evacuation to the other settlements, because this place isn’t livable anymore, and won’t be for decades to come. And I have no doubt that Major Masoud would have let the other settlements suffer a similar fate if the chief of staff hadn’t taken charge and surrendered his troops unilaterally, without word from the president, who is still in his hiding hole deep underneath the admin center. I know that what we did was necessary, but I can’t bring myself to say that it was right.

There’s only war
, I hear Major Masoud in my head. And it occurs to me that despite all his experience and his Medal of Honor, the major is wrong about the nature of this profession to which he dedicated his life. There’s war against the Lankies, which is right and necessary and a question of survival. And then there’s war against our own—the SRA, the renegades, the welfare rats, the smaller nations on Earth—which is stupid and wasteful and demoralizing to the extreme. I’m willing to risk and give my life fighting the former, but I am tired to the bone of fighting the latter.

“I’m going to go check on the troops,” I say, and get up. “They’ve had a shit day.”

Sergeant Fallon shakes her head.

“That’s what you don’t get yet,” she says. “We’ve all had a rough day. But those guys and girls are already sharing battle stories in the shower. It’s how you get over shit like seeing your buddy get blown to pieces in front of your eyes without losing your fucking mind.” She stands up and brushes the concrete dust from her leg armor.

“And in twenty years, if we still exist as a species, they’ll be having drinks at their reunions. And you know how they will remember today? They’ll say it was one of the best days of their lives.”

She pats me on the arm and nods toward the rubble-strewn hallway in front of us.

“Come on, Lieutenant. You’ve earned a shower and a drink.”

“I’m right behind you,” I say. She nods and walks into the building. I watch as she makes her way down the hallway and disappears around the corner of the intersection.

On the western horizon, the bright blue orb of Leonidas c takes up most of the sky. On the eastern horizon, the far-off system sun creeps across the peaks of the low mountain chain where we sought refuge just two days ago. The sky in the middle graduates from blue to black to red in the span of fifty degrees. This was a beautiful place before the commandos set off that nuke, and it will be beautiful again, far prettier than most of what Earth has to offer to a low-rent hood rat like me. But right now I can’t wait to go back to our overcrowded, filthy old Earth.

Two months until Mars
, I think. And now we may actually have a sliver of a chance.

Acknowledgments are terrifying to write. Regardless of how long you take or how many times you read over them, you end up forgetting someone you meant to thank. That’s because nobody writes a novel in a solitary vacuum, and the number of people that had a role in the making of the novel in your hands is as high the personnel roster of a Fleet carrier.

Major thanks to my friends at 47North, the small, hardworking, dedicated, and professional team that has published four of these novels so far: Britt Rogers, Alex Carr, Ben Smith, Adrienne Lombardo, and Jason Kirk. The FRONTLINES series wouldn’t be what it is without you, and I’ll have drinks with you all in bars with historic urinals ANY TIME.

Thanks as always to my writer friends, the Daydrinkers: Claire Humphrey, Julie Day, Erica Hildebrand, Chang Terhune, and Scott H. Andrews. Our semi-regular long weekends together keep me on track and help see things in perspective, even if they’re hell on my liver. Team Pantybear forever!

Some of you may be aware of the circumstances surrounding
Lines of Departure’s
2015 Hugo nomination for Best Novel, and my subsequent withdrawing of the novel from consideration. In the wake of Sasquan, I feel compelled to offer thanks and appreciation to everyone who voiced their support.

Firstly, thanks are due to my awesome publisher 47North, who supported me in my decision even though it cost them the first Hugo nomination for the house. Thank you, Adrienne and Jason.

I want to thank my friend John Scalzi for his kind words both before the shortlist was made public, and after I withdrew my nomination. (And thank you for the most excellent bottle of single malt.)

Thank you to George R.R. Martin, who did a wonderful thing for the SF/F community in general and me and Annie Bellet in particular at the absolutely epic Hugo Losers party, and who was very kind and gracious throughout.

Thanks to the Atomic Nerds, Jess and Tom, for yet another excellent bottle of single malt, craftily dressed up by Tamara to look like a Hugo rocket (albeit one that had a repeated high-speed interface with an asteroid).

Thank you to everyone who sent me messages of support, whether via email, Facebook, Twitter, or in person. There were so many of you that I can’t list you all, but you know who you are, and you have my gratitude.

And lastly, thank you to my readers. You keep buying these books, and I get to keep writing them, and if that setup works well for all of you, it sure works for me.

While I was writing this novel, I decided to raffle off some of the names of the troopers in Andrew’s company, so I started a little contest on my blog. The naming rights for the platoon troopers fetched a total of almost $1,300 for the Semper Fi Fund, which provides immediate assistance and lifetime support for wounded, critically ill and injured service members, veterans & their families. Here are the names of the donors who got to name Spaceborne Infantry troopers:

SSGT Welch, Scott

SGT Wilsey, Martin

CPL Ponton, Chad

CPL Sharps, Nick

CPL Nealis, Rob

PFC Von der Linden, Meg

PFC Whipkey, Sean

PFC Mekker, Anthony

PVT Best, Daniel

PVT Gilroy, Alden

PVT Harris, Devin

PVT Minie, Christopher

PVT Oakley, Stan

PVT Schneider, Kurt

Photo
©
2013 Robin Kloos

M
arko Kloos was born and raised in Germany, in and around the city of Münster. In the past, he has been a soldier, bookseller, freight dockworker, and corporate IT administrator before he decided that he wasn’t cut out for anything other than making stuff up for a living.

Marko writes primarily science fiction and fantasy, his first genre love ever since his youth, when he spent his allowance mostly on German SF pulp serials. He likes bookstores, kind people, October in New England, Scotch, and long walks on the beach with Scotch.

Marko lives in New Hampshire with his wife, two children, and a roving pack of vicious dachshunds.