Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (35 page)

Early
in the planning for Operation Blowback, it had become very clear that if
everyone in the new colony was a scientist or technician or family member, then
the colony would soon be in trouble. There was a limit to how much storable
food the ships could carry. The colony had to start farming in order to have a
locally grown food supply ready by the time they ran out of low-bulk, long
shelf-life food. That was one reason why he picked Vril for the temporary stop.
Most of the farmland was owned by Earth-chartered companies, and a lot of the
people doing the actual farming didn’t own any farmland of their own. Once the
new colony was established, he would send ships to Vril to bring back
volunteers, and not just farmers either. The new colony would need a lot of
skills that the Brain Trust didn’t have. He would risk one more massive
evacuation with the whole fleet. If there happened to be a FED cruiser at Vril,
his cruisers should be able to take it out.

He
reminded himself that the crews of the ferry ships would be sworn to secrecy
regarding the trips to Vril. Security had to be absolute. There was no point in
temporarily shifting the Brain Trust to Vril if the FEDs found out about it as
soon as they arrived here at Zanzibar. He had come to terms with the knowledge
that if the FEDs couldn’t follow them to Vril, then Lorelei wouldn’t be able to
either, even assuming that she would try to find him. And he wasn’t sure if she
would. The odds of her making it to Vril in time for the second and last
evacuation was so small that he didn’t even want to think about it, but he was
determined to wait until the chance was zero before allowing himself to be open
to another relationship. He chided himself for letting his focus drift to
something that would not be resolved for quite some time. He had to get his
mind back to more immediate concerns.

Day
151/2549

To
her surprise, Stevens insisted that Remington accompany him down to Hadley and
witness the transfer of command from Trojan to himself. She was a savvy enough
Navy officer to understand that lower ranked officers like herself should try
to not get involved in what could turn out to be a nasty political confrontation
between two flag officers, but she had no choice in the matter. Their shuttle
was ordered to land right in front of the hidden entrance to the Majestic
Complex. As she followed Stevens down the boarding steps, she was surprised to
see a substantial welcoming party that included a platoon of armed infantry and
two officers, one of whom she  recognized as General Trojan. Part of the
surprise was the fact that Trojan, the other officer and the platoon were all
wearing jet black uniforms rather than the standard navy and army uniforms.

As
Stevens approached the entrance with Remington off to one side and a half step
back, the platoon came to attention with impressive precision. She could tell
that even Stevens was impressed. He acknowledged the act with a quick nod of
his head. He stopped roughly a meter from Trojan and the two men looked at each
other. Remington suddenly realized two things. One was that while Stevens was
relieving Trojan as Commander-in-Chief/First Fleet/Army Force, Trojan had three
stars on his collar and Stevens only had two, which meant that Stevens should
salute Trojan first. The other thing she noticed was that the other officer,
whose collar had the insignia of an Army Colonel, was wearing a handgun with
the covering flap open.

Stevens
finally offered Trojan the salute that protocol required of him, and Trojan
returned it with what Remington couldn’t help thinking was an amused smile.

“General
Trojan, I’m here on specific orders from the Council to relieve you of your
post as CINC/1FAF. I’m also instructed to tell you that you are ordered to
accompany Commander Remington,” Stevens turned in her direction, “to her ship
for immediate transport back to Earth where a Disciplinary Hearing will be
convened to determine if your actions here have exceeded your authority.”

Trojan’s
amused expression didn’t change one iota, much to Remington’s surprise. After
about three seconds of silence, Trojan turned to look at the Colonel. “Well,
Colonel Ericson, the Council wants to relieve me of command here. What do you
think of that?”

Remington
watched in horror as the Colonel took out his handgun, pointed it at Stevens’
head and pulled the trigger. She jumped to one side as Stevens’ now headless
body hit the ground. She glanced up and froze when she saw the Colonel’s gun
pointed at her head.

“Not
her, Colonel. We can always use another ship commander.” The Colonel put away
his gun and Remington started to breathe again. “You can dismiss the Honor
Guard, Colonel. Commander, come with me please.” As Trojan turned to go back
inside the Complex, Ericson brought his right fist up against his chest and
said in a loud voice, “Long Live The Empire!” Remington jumped when the platoon
immediately did the same thing in perfect unison. Trojan acknowledged their
salute with a wave of his hand.

An
hour later, Remington stepped back aboard her shuttle, which proceeded to lift
off on its way back to Trafalgar. She was deeply conflicted. Trojan had shown
her the Majestic computer in all its awesome size and let her read Majestic’s
prediction of the future of Human Civilization with and without a single,
all-powerful, central authority. The evidence was compelling. The machine’s
impeccable logic was impossible to refute, but even that might not have been
enough to convince her to abandon her oath to the Federation if Trojan hadn’t
also told her about the new stealth technology and Majestic’s prediction that
Commodore Romanov’s three stealthy cruisers would sweep rebel defenses from
Sparta’s orbit. The war was effectively over, he told her. All that was left to
do was to land troops on the main rebel planets and pacify them. He needed her
cruiser to escort the troop transports in case the troops needed orbital
bombardment support when they landed. Could he count on her to see where her
greater duty lay? Her conscience fought a losing battle to convince her to keep
her honor and refuse. The prospect of centuries of chaos and anarchy among
hundreds of planets, including Earth, was just too horrible to ignore. It was
the fanaticism that Trojan was actively promoting that caused her the most
anxiety. She was enough of a student of history to understand how easily that
kind of movement could take on a life of its own, and she was certain that she
didn’t want to be a part of that. He could have her co-operation, but not her
soul.

Three
days later, Trafalgar received new orders from Majestic. Word had come back
from Sparta that Romanov’s ships were in total control of Sparta’s orbitals,
and the coast was clear to send troops there. Trafalgar would be one of two
conventional cruisers escorting the troop transports. This was her moment of
decision. So far she hadn’t disobeyed any orders from Navy Chief of Staff
Chenko, but if she obeyed Majestic via Trojan, she’d be committing treason, no
ifs, ands or buts. She gave the orders that would take Trafalgar to Sparta. The
die was now cast.

Day
206/2549

As
Trafalgar’s shuttle carried Remington down to Sparta’s Capital, she reviewed
the events of the past 24 hours. With the arrival of his troops, Romanov had
demanded Sparta’s surrender, explaining that if the rebels resisted, he would
order orbital bombardment of cities, with the attendant risk of collateral
damage to civilian structures, and civilian casualties. The surrender demand
also included a thinly veiled threat that his troops would shoot first and ask
questions later if there was resistance of any kind. The Sparta Chancellor
surrendered the planet and promised that there would be no resistance.
Remington was relieved to hear that Trafalgar would not be ordered to fire on
the planet. If Drake was down there, she would never forgive herself if he died
while stationed at a military facility targeted by her ship. When it became
clear that the Spartans would not resist, Romanov had ordered Trafalgar and the
other escorting cruiser to stand down from Battle Stations, and the status
change opened up the window for her to go down to the surface. If questioned,
she would claim that she was gathering information for her own After Action report
to Majestic and General Trojan. In fact, she was hoping to find Drake and
escort him personally into FED custody to avoid the possibility that some
trigger-happy, black-uniformed fanatic would shoot him for ‘acting in a
suspicious manner’. Her contemplation was interrupted by the shuttle pilot’s
voice.

“Commander,
we’ve been ordered by Assault Ops to stay in a holding pattern until the rest
of their troops are on the ground and the landing zone is clear.”

Remington
shook her head in dismay. Why did everything have to be so damned difficult?
“Stand by, I’m coming up to the flight deck,” she said. When she entered the
cockpit and was standing behind the pilot’s right shoulder, she asked, “Where
are we now?” All she could see out the windscreen were clouds.

“We’re
about three klicks out from their spaceport at an altitude of 2500 meters,”
answered the pilot.

“Can
we at least drop down below these clouds?” asked Remington.

The
pilot nodded. “THAT we can do. Here we go.”

The
shuttle dropped quickly until they were below the cloud cover. The city was now
laid out before her. In the distance, she could see multiple tiny dots moving
down to the spaceport landing sites. More troops were coming in by anti-gravity
troop carriers. The nose of the shuttle started to swing away from the
spaceport in what Remington knew would be a curving path around it.

“Bring
us over the city center and lower too if you can. I’d like to see how our
troops are doing for my report to General Trojan,” said Remington.
Might as
well give some support to my excuse
, she thought to herself.

“I
can get us over the center but not much lower. However, we can use our nose
camera to zoom in on anything you’d like to get a good look at, Commander.”

“That’ll
be fine, Lieutenant.”

It
wasn’t long before the shuttle was nearing the administrative center of the
city. Remington recognized the building where the rebel government had its
offices. The flat top seemed to be crowded with people.

“Okay,
can we zoom in on the top of that gold-colored tower?” asked Remington.

The
pilot nodded. “Take the flight controls, Shooter. I’ll operate the zoom,” he
said to the co-pilot. Remington watched the video screen in the center of the
cockpit console. The image zoomed in, and she gasped as she recognized who was
standing in a line at the edge of the roof and what was about to happen. The
SSU Chancellor and a dozen others who were probably his cabinet were standing
right at the edge of the roof with their hands behind their backs. In front of
them was a line of Colonel Ericson’s black-uniformed troops holding weapons
that were pointed at the rebel leaders.

“My
God, that’s a firing squad,” said Remington in shock. She could tell by the
recoil that the troops had fired. The Chancellor and all his people spun around
and fell over the edge. As she tried to understand why Ericson would feel the
need to conduct summary executions after a peaceful surrender, her peripheral
vision detected the pilot turning to look at her. She looked at him and saw
that he was also disturbed by what they had just seen.

“Going
to put that in your report, Commander?” said the pilot in a low voice. It
wasn’t so much a question as a challenge and was borderline insubordinate. She
could tell that he was expecting to be chastised for it, and when that didn’t
happen, she saw both men relax.

“I
won’t need the zoom anymore, Lieutenant,” said Remington finally. The pilot
turned the screen off and took back control of the shuttle.

Remington
was about to turn around and go back to her seat when a thought came to her.
“Listen, you two,” she said as she turned back to the two men. “I suggest you
watch what you say when we’re down there. Those black-uniformed troopers are
fanatics, and I don’t think you want to draw their attention. Got it?”

The
pilot looked over at his co-pilot and then at her. “Oh, yeah, Commander, we
definitely got that.”

It
was almost an hour before the shuttle was finally allowed to land and she could
disembark. Two assault troopers were standing beside a commandeered vehicle as
she stepped off the shuttle. As they approached her, the one on the left spoke.

“By
what authorization are you on Sparta, Commander Remington?”

She
gave him her cover story. The troopers looked at each other. The GENERAL’S
orders were not to be disobeyed or questioned. Challenging her right to be here
might be considered as questioning the Big Guy’s orders. Better to play it safe
and let her go ahead. All of this had passed between the two troopers
non-verbally, and Remington understood it completely.