The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (14 page)

Aziz gritted his teeth. “Bet you guys never run into
problems like this.”

“You’d be surprised,” Harkins said, smiling grimly.

Ten more spotter craft appeared, followed by the heavies. The
six AI-flown gunships were large, propeller-driven aircraft, about twenty
meters long.

Aziz’s soldiers fired off their three remaining SAMs at the
gunships, which released sunbursts of yellow flares in response. Two missiles
chased flares and exploded harmlessly, the third didn’t turn at all, ignoring
both the flares and the big drones in front of it to shoot straight into the
sky.

Busted seeker.
The useless fifties made their clatter,
and the gunships began a slow circle, spitting thunder and fire from their
side-mounted cannons. The truck Neil had rode in on vanished in a fiery cloud,
followed by the power truck serving the battalion’s sole antiaircraft laser. Other
gunships began firing into the treeline. The small spotter drones swooped and
banked, each with a single gunship following them. They concentrated on firing
into the trees, rather than at the tents, trucks and supplies arrayed around
the camp.
Makes sense, they’re going to kill the troops first, then
concentrate on the gear.

It reminded Neil of the time his ROTC class was called out to
the mountains to help fight a forest fire – the spotters would mark hotspots
for the big tanker drones to drop fire retardants.
Except the hotspots here are
Aziz’s men and women.

Neil heard a tone in his ear marking an incoming
communication from
Apache.

“Sneaker, this is Foxtrot Alpha,” said a different voice.
Carruth,
the ops officer. I guess she’s acting XO now.
She sounded bored.
“Say
again, what exactly do you need this information for?”

“Foxtrot Alpha, I am taking fire! Just get me the damn data,
now!”

“Calm down, Sneaker,” Carruth said irritably. “We don’t have
it on board, but the Brits are digging it out of their archives on
Formidable.
Two minutes until we can transmit. And Callahan says they operate in the
C-band.”

Neil put the connection on hold and slid beside Colonel
Aziz. “I think I can help. I need access to your C-band transmitter.”

“The console is back in the command tent. You’ll need to
circle around the camp and then cross about thirty meters in the open, Mercer.
Know how to operate a Norcom NKT-3300?”

“No.”

“I guess I’ll have to come with you, then,” he said. He
nodded at his aide. “You’re coming too, lieutenant, in case one of us twists an
ankle.”

“Yes, sir.”

To Harkins, Neil said, “Gunnery Sergeant, you’ll need to
draw their attention when we run for the command tent.”

Harkins nodded. “Sure thing, L.T. You owe me a beer. See you
afterward.” She pulled leggings from her pack and fastened them before moving
off in another direction, still hidden by the trees.

Neil and the two Tecolote officers worked along the
treeline, encountering some other hidden troops, and, in one case, the wreckage
of four bodies blown apart by gunship shells. Aziz’s fifties had all gone
silent, their crews either dead or fled, and the unceasing noise from the
gunships became sporadic outbursts, as they hunted for less obvious targets.

“Sneaker, this is
Formidable,
” said an English accent
in Neil’s ear. The British flagship orbiting Entente wasn’t bothering with the
thin veneer of codenames.
“
Transmitting your data now.”

Neil pinged Harkins once. She had donned her dragoon suit,
and it was propelling her across the camp clearing faster than Neil’s brain could
accept. He saw two spotter craft immediately bank toward her, diving to mark her
movement for the JZ-11s. One gunship began a lumbering turn to present its side
toward her, the menacing barrels of its autocannon angling into position …

“Now, Mercer!” Aziz said.

They sprinted across the opening and into the tent. Neil
heard the cannons of two gunships open up, close.
Harkins …

It took about thirty seconds to boot up the transmitter
console and connect Neil’s handheld. The broadcasts from the transmitter would
certainly attract attention, but if this worked, it wouldn’t matter.

“Transmitting command codes, getting acknowledgements! We’re
in!” Aziz’s lieutenant said. “They’re responding in fucking Chinese!”

Aziz, at the tent entrance said, “Gunship turning toward us!
Get down!”

Neil’s Chinese was improving, and he scanned the characters.
He pressed the screen in one place, then another. A window appeared, asking him
to confirm the odd sequence of orders. He did so.

Outside, the low rumble quieted, as did the sounds of
gunfire. The higher-pitched buzz of the spotter drones did not abate – those,
Neil did not have stolen command codes for. But they carried no weapons.

Neil and Aziz stepped outside the tent. Above them, the
propellers on the great gunships had stopped, and the craft had become giant
careening gliders. Neil watched as one passed overhead, dropping steadily to
the ground, its descent almost stately until its wing clipped a tree and tore
off. The plane disappeared into the trees, and Neil heard a series of snapping
trunks as it crashed, followed by cheers from Aziz’s troopers.

Aziz started to speak, but Neil ignored him and ran to where
Harkins had fled into the trees.

“Gunny! Harkins!”
Please be all right …

“Here, sir!”

Relief washed over him. He found her kneeling, her rifle on
the ground beside her.

“Are you hurt?” Neil asked.

“No, I’m fine. I slipped on some leaves, and I got to watch
two gunships walk lines of fire toward me from two directions when they shut
off.” She shook her head and let out a cathartic laugh. “Won’t forget that for
a while.”

Aziz caught up with him.

“That was a good trick, Mercer,” he said. “You able to turn
off everything the Hans throw at you?”

“No. That was old hardware, retired from the Chinese inventory
decades ago. When they start selling their equipment to other countries, we can
sometimes get the root command codes if the Chinese don’t change them. And they
usually don’t – they want to make sure nobody uses their weapons against them,
either.”

“I take back all the bad things I said about you,” Aziz
said. “You’re welcome to stick around. This attack shows some desperation on
their part, don’t you think?”

“They should have saved the gunships until they could
coordinate with their ground forces.”

“Exactly,” Aziz said. “Someone panicked, and we got lucky.
Doubly lucky, that you were here.”

They returned to the command tent, where Aziz had an exchange
with some of the junior generals in the capital. He didn’t kick Neil out of the
tent when it grew heated, or when the generals reported that the rebels had
ambushed the interceptors sent to chase the spotter planes, shooting down five
of them.
I guess he really trusts me now
, Neil thought.

An hour after the attack, Aziz’s XO reported that the junior
officers and sergeants had accounted for the rest of the battalion. Twelve had
been killed, and fourteen were missing and presumed deserters, and Neil wondered,
yet again, whether the U.S. was backing the wrong horse.

Combat Supply Cache Falcon, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

Rand found Kelley in the officer’s mess, eating with
Lieutenant Commander DiMarco. Though he wasn’t hungry, he grabbed a snack, and
parked himself in a corner where he could watch her.

She’s acting weird. Enthusiastic, almost. Whoa. She just
touched DiMarco’s arm.
He couldn’t recall her ever smiling like that.
Go
figure. Not an ounce of sexuality during more than a year fighting the Hans, but
I guess she gets to make friends here. I could use a friend, myself.

He caught up with her as she was leaving.

“Got a minute?”

She sighed. “Sure, Castillo. Did Aguirre already talk to
you?”

“Yes.”

“Want to get out of here?”

“You know I can’t. I’m back in the chain of command.”

“You’ll also be dead soon, along with the rest of these
idiots.” She paused, considering. “There’s one thing I can’t figure out,
though.”

“Talk to me, Kelley. We’re still on the same side.”

“I don’t know why they aren’t hitting us already,” she said,
averting her eyes, as if admitting ignorance marked some kind of personal flaw.
“Resistance 101, the difference between guerrillas and a true rebel army. Guerrillas
survive by not getting any bigger or more organized than the situation allows.
Sequoia is big, but it’s uninhabited, and the Hans control all the urban areas.
We shouldn’t be operating in groups larger than about a dozen people. This
place should be a resupply point with a small guard. Instead, DiMarco and Cruz
have collected a small, capable army here. It’s a barracks, and it’s far too
big to escape detection. The Hans should be bombing us from orbit.”

“Are you sure they found it?”

“Well, there were only about eighty people here until about
three months ago, when Foster and the one-star on
Vincennes
called
everyone to gather. There’s a chance the Hans may not have figured out its
precise location yet, but they for damn sure have sensors in every river that
flows into the ocean, and they should be able to detect evidence of upstream
human habitation in them. So there should be drones overhead daily looking for
us.”

“Then the only thing I can think is that they are allowing
us to mass here, so they can hit us with a knockout punch,” Rand said.

Kelley said, “Yep. And DiMarco tells me just about everyone
who is coming has arrived here. If the Hans know that, and I bet they do, that
means the strike will be very, very soon.”

“Is that what you are talking to DiMarco about in the mess
hall?”

Kelley’s eyebrows went up. “Spying on me? I’ve taught you
too well, Castillo.”

“Not spying. Just found you there, and I didn’t want DiMarco
to be a part of this conversation, for your sake.”

“Trust me, he’s aware of my feelings. Actually, I convinced
DiMarco to give us a job – you, me, Aguirre and Lopez, along with Ruiz – that
should keep us outside the base when the hammer falls.”

Rand said, “Let’s hear it.”

“So Violet wants us and Ruiz to go with her to Sycamore
to contact the American civilians in the detention camp,” Rand told Aguirre and
Lopez. “We’ll be covert. We’re going to let them know our plans, organize them
so they can help us without getting slaughtered.”

“What about our skywatching job?” Aguirre asked.

“I’m supposed to teach a couple of guys the basics before we
go, but I guess DiMarco doesn’t think it’s that important after all.”

Aguirre grunted. “If we’re going to the camp, does that mean
we’ll go in civilian clothes? Wouldn’t that violate the laws of war?”

Lopez muttered, “Who cares about the rules?” and Aguirre
gave her a sharp look. Rand knew it was her usual bravura talking, but he
clarified anyway.

“We don’t have a JAG officer nearby, but my understanding is
as long as we don’t fight any bad guys while we’re in street clothes we’re in
the clear. There’s good reason for this, Lopez. We don’t want to give the Hans
an excuse to start popping our civvies, so we gotta follow the rules.”

“So we aren’t taking any weapons, sir?” she asked.

“No, we’ll go in combat gear until we get close to the site,
then we’ll change into something less conspicuous.”

Aguirre nodded. “Ruiz is going because he’s Special Forces
and has been inside the camp walls before. I guess you’re going because they
need an officer. What exactly do Lopez and I bring to this?”

“Security.”

“Really, sir?”

Rand shook his head. “We might need messengers, too, but I
think Violet just wants to make sure you’re not on base when the Hans hit.”

Aguirre said, “You lead; we’ll follow, sir.”

ORISKANY, INDEPENDENCE – Efforts to introduce a wider
variety of sea life into the oceans of this American colony suffered a major
setback after carcasses of thousands of dolphins and hundreds of pilot whales
washed ashore over the last three weeks. “Our team is shocked and heartbroken
over these events,” said Maryanne Costello, chief terraforming officer on the
planet, which orbits Sigma Draconis. “While we’re still investigating the
cause, we have ruled out any of the indigenous microorganism playing a direct
role. Our chief suspicion is that some vital and benign parasite or bacteria
has failed in its role in sustaining the animals in the new environment.” Conservation
groups renewed criticism that the terraforming effort in Sigma Draconis is
haphazard and poorly researched. “To secure funding from donors, terraformers
tend to transport only well-loved animals to the colonies. But each of these
animals is part of a complex interconnected ecosystem on Earth; remove them
from it, and they will not prosper,” said Michael Lassiter, president of the
World Wildlife Fund.

Chita, Transbaikalia, Russia, Earth

From his hotel room, Donovan could see the charcoal moonscape
of strip-mined land extending to the horizon. The earth had given up so very
much here: gold, uranium, and nickel chief among its offerings. The growing
warmth over the last 150 years was turning the ancient subarctic taiga into
grasslands, and the Siberian cities had seemed not so dark and frozen to
workers wishing to seek their fortune with one of the mining conglomerates. But
Russia hosted a declining population, and millions of Chinese were a short
distance away, willing to work for low wages. They were allowed to come and dig
as guests of Russia. Most of the minerals they dug went south to feed the
Chinese industrial beast, and Russia happily extracted a third or more of the
revenues. It was a system that more or less worked for several decades; the
Chinese workers lived as second-class citizens, but most came from the poorer
rural provinces, where life was often worse, and they sent the bulk of their
pay home. And Russia’s taxes were still cheaper than the costs China estimated
it would face conquering the territory outright. In recent years, however,
economic troubles in Russia had bred resentment against the
Chitajoza,
even
as some of the miners began advocating for better treatment.

That was the fault line Gardiner Fairchild and Donovan were going
to exploit. Already, two of Fairchild’s younger NSS operatives, posing as NGO
members from Reunion, had gained access to the labor movement. A third officer,
of Chinese descent, had been hired to operate a truck in the mines. In front of
Donovan was a fourth, Finn Kintsel, a child of Russian immigrants who spoke the
language like a native. He had arrived in Chita the night before, and Donovan was
in the middle of coaching him about applying for a job in the mining company
security forces when a call came in.

“Jim, it’s Riley in S-and-T.”

“Riley! Not the voice I was expecting to hear. How are your
boys doing?”

“Well, thanks. Terrence let a grounder go between his legs
last night, so hopefully he’s good at math.”

Donovan chuckled. “He takes after his old man.”

“Yeah, nobody’s recruiting me for the agency softball team; that’s
for sure. Say, I was calling because we finally got around to the analysis on
that chunk of rocket you sent us. It’s definitely Chinese, a design they’ve
only started using since the war kicked off. They’re pretty effective, and they
used a ton of them to beat the Japanese out of Korea. DoD tells me we’re still
trying to reverse-engineer the mechanism that expels the anti-laser dust.”

“Anything about this particular rocket, where it was made,
and so on?”

“Well, when we scraped through the outer paint coating, we
got a serial number, which we believe tells us it was made in a factory outside
Hangzhou for the PLA. But we don’t have any more history on it than that. I’ll
send the serial to you, if that helps. Where’d you find it?”

“An unexpected place,” Donovan said. “Thanks, Riley.” He cut
the connection.

Finally, a break. Proof the Chinese are supporting the
Punjabi rebels. Stupid move, on their part, one we can exploit.

He made a note in his handheld to make a quiet inquiry about
the rockets to a young friend in military intelligence, and then he called
Ramesh. His aide said the officer was in geosynch and temporarily out of contact.
Donovan left an urgent message.

South of U.N. Terraforming Station 27, Republic of Tecolote,
Entente

Harkins felt a little sheepish bouncing along in her
dragoon suit, next to all the Tecolote soldiers walking in their boots. But
she’d be damned if she’d wear herself out before a fight.

The battalion was trudging north and slowly uphill, walking
along a dilapidated road that led to the terraforming station. Thin trees with
healthy green leaves grew up along the hillsides to either side. Beta Comae
Berenices had burned off the morning clouds and was shining gold and bright
above them.

It seemed strange to Harkins that any of the colony planets
could host something in as bad a shape as this road, even if it had gone
unmaintained for two decades.

She was walking with the lead infantry company; Mercer, back
with the haughty little colonel, had given her permission to go forward. “You
can observe the ground-pounders better than I can,” he had said. “Let me know
how well they fight, what they might need.”

Other Tecolote army units nearby had been driving the rebels
north toward the U.N. station, and Aziz’s battalion was expecting contact with
the enemy soon.
Stone age,
Harkins thought, looking at the soldiers
around her. No powered armor, and only the platoon leaders had any kind of
networking with the headquarters unit or each other.

They had left most of their trucks at a staging area several
klicks back, but they at least had a few working mules to carry their heavy
gear. One trundled up alongside, its robotic legs navigating the potholes and
ruts in the road without difficulty. The company had apparently taken a shine to
it; someone had painted shark’s teeth on its forward sensor array. This one,
too, had an aerostat tethered to it; the six-meter-long white balloon was
trailing gracefully above, its cameras feeding information to the company
commander.

But he apparently failed to detect the enemy; the rebels’
first shots cracked overhead without warning. The lead squads in the company
dropped to the ground; everyone else dispersed into the tall yellowed grass
alongside the road.

Harkins’ touched a button on her gun’s handheld mount, and
the HUD lit up her goggles. The computer was already calculating the origin of
the shots, based on the characteristics of the supersonic crack as they went
by. White circles overlaid on the terrain in front of her. Some members of the
company were firing back, randomly, into the trees.
Might as well help these
yahoos.

“Over there!” She pointed at a thick brush. Some of the soldiers
near her looked at her strangely.
Right, don’t have the English in the ranks.
Harkins looked around for an officer, didn’t see one, thought
Oh, fuck
it
, took the M6 off safe, and fired. The troops around her understood, and
followed suit.

A great volume of fire followed, barely aimed, and shots
returned from the brush. Above, the aerostat crumpled, and began an ungraceful
fall to the road. Harkins heard screams to her left. After a long, fruitless
exchange, the company at last set up some crew-served machine guns and raked
the area, and the rebel fire stopped.

Two veteran squads carefully moved forward, a thin, gray-stubbled
sergeant at their fore, and they found a single dead woman in reddish
camouflage appropriate for another part of Entente. Her rifle was gone; others
had been with her, but they had escaped.

The company’s scouts were alert after that, but the next six
hours were more of the same: a small ambush answered with a massive volley of
fire, and none or a few or some enemy dead, and greater casualties in the
battalion. The firefights were typically at extreme range, necessitating
massive expenditures of ammunition to kill or drive off an enemy. At one point,
they encountered more than a dozen rebel snipers, and the battalion had to set
up its mortars to smoke them out. But one mortar round fell short and exploded
among a squad in the lead company, killing four and sending another seven to
the medical unit.

Harkins knew she had killed at least one bad guy – she had
seen him in her scope, watched the red burst when she put a bullet in the back
of his head.

Stone age,
she thought again, enjoying herself
hugely. It was a fierce sort of contentment, a giving over of herself to her
training and instincts, and all the usual guilt and resentment and anxiety
washed away. Some deep hole inside her was filled; she realized she hadn’t
wondered who her biological parents were, and why they hadn’t wanted her, since
she had landed in Tecolote. She cherished the freedom from her usual unpleasant
pathways of thought.

Beta was dropping lower in the sky when they reached the
terraforming station. It was an expansive compound, walled off to create a
closed environment for biologists to test how various Earth plants and animals
did in the native regolith. A few intact domes were spread around the site,
built to experiment with the sort of things that might float or fly away, but
the view through Harkins’ scope showed the station was in deep disrepair. The two-
and three-story square white buildings that once housed administrative offices and
dormitories were at the center, a cluster of sugar cubes in the dirt. Steep,
heavily forested inclines bordered the other three sides of the compound.

With a rise in the earth to protect them from any direct shots
from the station’s defenders, the lead infantry company spread out in a loose
line, about a kilometer from their objective. Harkins dismounted from her
walker gear and joined a column of scout-snipers making their way into a
forested hillside that looked down into the compound. The old sergeant she had
seen earlier was their leader.

“Harkins,” Lieutenant Mercer’s voice said in her ear.

“Go ahead, sir,” she said quietly. The mic would pick up her
voice at a whisper.

“We’re getting the CP and the artillery set up, and I’m getting
information third-hand. Can you fill me in?”

“Sure, sir,” she said. At least he was asking; a lot of
officers would simply demand information with no consideration that she was busy
dealing with a dangerous situation. Her opinion of him climbed back up a step;
she had wondered if a re-assessment of her former shipmate was in order during
the long march to the compound.
Why did he send me to be the decoy for the
gunships when he could have run some of the mules out into the open to draw
their attention?
He was an officer and owed her no explanation for his
orders, but what if the idea hadn’t occurred to him? A good sergeant could make
such a suggestion, but she had hesitated to do so: She would push an option
like that to protect the people in her unit, but to protect her own ass?
No
way.

She went prone, raised her rifle and peered through the
scope with her right eye.

“I’m looking down into the compound,” she muttered, keeping
the connection open to the lieutenant. “There’s about fifty bad guys spread out
along the wall. I guess the wall is about two-and-a-half meters high, because
there’s a bunch of chairs and crates and benches for them to climb up and shoot
over. You might want to have the wee colonel tell his troopers to expect that
enemy heads will tend to pop up in the same place.”

Neil chuckled. “Will do.”

“I can probably shoot a few of them from here, but it’s long
range for me, and the snipers can do better. Unless you can order up an
airstrike, sir?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Neil transmitted. “Tecolote
just lost a bunch of planes, and I’m hearing that their senior command isn’t
going to cut loose any more today.”

“Stupid,” Harkins commented. “We’ve got these guys by the
throat, and that would save some lives. Anyway, near the buildings I can see an
unarmed guy pushing a bunch of boxes on a cart. He’s in a hurry.”

“Do you see any heavy – ”

“Hold on, sir,” Harkins said. She needed silence to clarify a
sound she thought she heard. She fiddled with some settings on her handheld to
turn up the mic sensitivity, listened …

Presently, she said, “Sir, they’re powering up some skycars and
buses in the middle of the compound. The vehicles are obscured behind a
building, but there are several of them back there.”

“You sure they aren’t launching some combat drones?” Some
drones used turbofans that weren’t all that different from those on skycars.

“Negative. I know my cars, sir.” Her adoptive father, a
mechanic in Tallahassee, had made sure of that.

“All right. I’ll let the colonel know.”

Harkins watched the compound for a while, repeatedly switching
between the scope and her own eyes. The activity picked up; people were
scurrying, but the general direction of motion was toward the apparent parking
area. Still, no cars rose.

Then she saw the little ones running and put it together.

“Sir,” she transmitted, “there are civilians down there,
including children. I think they’re evacuating.”

The whistle of an incoming artillery shell cut off Mercer’s
reply. Harkins saw a black blur in a single frame of her vision, and then the
shell exploded against the wall of one of the sugar cubes. It released an
orange gout of flame, and Harkins heard debris clattering to the ground.

The defenders panicked after that, and Harkins watched as a
beige civilian skycar rose from behind a building. To her left, one of Aziz’s
snipers fired a giant anti-materiel rifle, sending a round through the hood of
the car and into the interior. The vehicle lurched, pitched forward, and crumpled
against a building.