The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (24 page)

“A lot of people. During Kennedy, I pulled the trigger on
the troop transports that were going after the station. Not many people
survived on those ships. One thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six human
beings died, because of me. The only person I know of who has killed more
people in this war is whoever fired the missiles when that Japanese admiral
shot down some Chinese colony ships.”

“Wow, Neil,” she whispered after a time. “That’s … that’s a
lot to live with. But you can’t stop thinking about everyone as people.
Normally we just to that to the enemy, but you’ve done it to everyone.”

He blinked. “I had a friend on Entente … I think they killed
him, too, because of me.”

His head went to her shoulder, his worst fear unsaid. That
night, for the first time since returning to
Apache,
he didn’t need to
take a pill to get to sleep. He felt no absolution, just a measure of
self-understanding, but that was something.

Near Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

The Chinese LAV looked a little lonely at the intersection,
but Rand wasn’t about to complain.
If they want to make it easier on us, who
am I to argue?

He was out with one of his new squads, observing the troops
in action.
Lead from the front
, his favorite ROTC instructor had advised
him. He handed the binoculars to Sergeant Ruiz, who was lying on the ground
next to him.

“If you can get above them, the top-facing armor on those is
pretty weak,” Ruiz commented.

Rand hadn’t known that. “I hate those things,” he whispered.
“Lost a couple of my people to one of them.”

“Well, we’ll have one less of them to deal with,” Ruiz said.
He tapped his ear, activating his radio. “Goot, give ‘em a ‘lil kiss for me.”

PFC Gutierrez’s response was the whoosh of a shoulder-fired
antitank missile, which rocketed down from her hiding spot, on a rise about
thirty meters away from Rand. It struck the armored eight-wheeler’s top deck,
just behind the turret, which went flying into the air. Debris kicked up lines
of dust in several directions. A burning man emerged from the front of the LAV
and stumbled silently to the ground, and he did not move again.

Ruiz said to Rand, “All right, sir, unless they have some
air in the area, we’ve got about twenty minutes until they put a squad down to
investigate. So we’re going to leave a few surprises behind.”

Rand nodded. A few of Ruiz’s troopers gingerly approached
the burning LAV, more out of fear of some of its ammo cooking off in their
direction than anything else. They buried little proximity bombs in various
spots, including the obvious landing site for a troop transport.

Then they fled.
I missed this,
Rand realized.

USS Apache, SZ Ursae Majoris

Apache
’s little convoy made
poor time; the accelerations in the battle with the Korean frigates had used up
a lot of its remass, and the loss of the
Aquila
cost them their ability
to refuel midway through the long trip to 11 Leonis Minoris. So the convoy
coasted for much of its flips through GJ 1151 and SZ Ursae Majoris, and they
would have to do the same through the next three systems before reaching their
ultimate destination. A faint hope that the Israelis would send a remass tanker
from New Canaan was dashed: The comm buoys up and down the Alley were out of
commission, likely felled by a Chinese virus, and
Apache
couldn’t
transmit the request, nor could her captain send for help from Space Command.

But a few of Neil’s spy and repeater drones back in Beta
Canum Venaticorum were still functioning.
Incheon
had shot down several
orbiting near the GJ 1151 keyhole, but she apparently missed one hidden in the
Aquila’
s
debris cloud. The drones hadn’t transmitted much, and Neil feared the
increasingly agitated Howell would chew him out for expending resources
unnecessarily.

So it was during a particularly boring staff meeting that
Neil idly checked in on the processed feeds from the drones, and he saw
something that made him bolt upright in his chair. All heads turned to him.

“Something to say, Mister Mercer?” asked the XO, who was
running the presentation.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, his ears reddening. “A fleet just
entered the Beta Canum system from Chinese space.”

“Are they headed our way?” Ortega asked.

“No. Looks like they are going to Commonwealth.”

“Not my problem, then,” Ortega said, and some of the other
officers snickered. Carruth continued her presentation, and Neil studied the
meager data his drones had sent.

The mass readings say that fleet has two battleships and
several brigade transport groups, plus several cruisers and other ships. Those
have to be the ships they pulled out of Kuan Yin, but they also had to weaken
their lines somewhere else to put that kind of fleet together. Where are they
going? No reason for them to go to Commonwealth; if they can win the war they
can try to clean up that planet at their leisure. So they’re just passing
through, and unless they’ve declared war on Brazil or Israel, they’re going to
DG Canum Venaticorum, and then either up to Wolf 359, or over to Entente.

Entente. It has to be Entente. They lost at New Albion,
and we’re threatening their control of the Apollonian Ocean from Tecolote. That
fleet is big enough to beat what the Brits and Aussies and Canadians have in
the system. The Brits won’t just lose Tecolote; they could lose New Albion as
well.

We’re the only ones who know this. With the comm buoys
down, I can’t warn Space Command. And we’re going so slow, the Chinese fleet
might reach Entente before we reach a point where we can send a message!
It
was maddening.

HUDSON, INDEPENDENCE – Vice President Dale arrived here
Thursday, becoming the highest-ranking government official ever to travel to an
American colony world. Her visit is to include tours of several cities and agricultural
sites, but her spokesman denied rumors she would meet with leaders of a growing
movement advocating for decreased direction from Washington. Administration critics
have remarked that Dale’s trip was a thinly veiled effort by President Delgado
to get her out of the nation’s capital; her selection by the Senate was widely
regarded as a way to ensure Union Party support for Delgado in the House.

Sycamore, Sequoia continent, Kuan Yin

Lieutenant Colonel Shen’s teeth chattered. “General, we
have had three more attacks on our patrols last night. One roadside bomb
against a vehicle, one rocket attack upon another vehicle, and an infantry squad
that was attacked and suffered eight casualties. We must assume there is still
a sizeable enemy force operating in the hinterlands.”

“And they may still have contacts with the internees,” Major
Wong added. “We have determined that explosion that awoke us last night was
from a mortar round, fired at the guard barracks. Fortunately, it did not
injure anyone and did minimal damage.”

Shen said, “Those weapons could be fabricated by civilians,
Major. Have you not heard of a ‘barracks buster?’ They use cleaning chemicals,
fertilizer, shotgun cartridges, flammable lubricants, and so on. It takes some
knowledge to produce such weapons, but the materials are not difficult to
find.”

General Xie unbuttoned the top button of his uniform and
wiped his brow. “Can we confiscate all those materials?”

Wong shook her head. “I am sorry, General, but no. We have
not been able to find all of their small arms. Rounding up common cleaners
would be far more difficult. There are simply too many people in the camp, and
my forces aren’t sufficient to conduct such in-depth searches. It would simply be
better if we began shipping all the civilians out of the colony.”

Now Xie shook his head. “That is on hold. The Americans have
informed Europa and the Federation they do not have the ability to resettle so
many people, and for the moment said they will refuse entry to the transports
should they attempt to enter American territory.”

”Pihua!”
muttered Shen, and Xie and Wong nodded.

“Yes, it is pure nonsense, we know,” Xie said. “Clearly the
Americans prefer their civilians to suffer here, so they do not lose some part
of their claim on Kuan Yin. We are asking the Europeans to take the Americans
anyway, but so far, they are balking. It is therefore time we altered our
tactics against these groups. Major Wong, I want a human presence on the
streets of your internment camp, and I want anyone showing disrespect to our
people detained and questioned. I will also exchange the LAVs at the gate for
two Z202 tanks. We must demonstrate our resolve to the civilians and crack down
before they grow any bolder.”

“Yes, sir,” Major Wong said.

“Lieutenant Colonel Shen, I intend to tell the infantry
commanders to operate only in company-sized groups or larger when out in the
field, and keep them well within range of a battalion quick-reaction force and
air power. They will not be as mobile, but we should be able to contain our
losses. We will rely primarily on air units and special operating forces to
search for the enemy.”

That is unlikely to work,
Shen knew.
These are the
last of the American forces who were defending this continent nearly two years
ago. They are the strongest, the ones who survived.

USS Javier Benavidez y Diaz, Gliese 338B

Combined Joint Task Force 21 settled into orbit around
Washburne, the second planet of the Gliese 338B system, and prepared to transit
the nearby keyhole to the next system upstream. Washburne was what astronomers
called a “failed gas giant” – a world that apparently had Jovian aspirations
early in its life, but wasn’t quite able to keep most of its atmospheric
hydrogen, and instead settled on a life as a big, hot rock with a dense,
helium-filled atmosphere. Indeed, Donovan thought the appellation “failed” was
a little harsh – the planet was a deep, placid blue, with a few white clouds
near its poles, and it seemed content with its station.

He set down his handheld on the
mess table and shook his head.
I’m reduced to anthropomorphizing planets. My
breakdown must be imminent.

“Mister Calvin, are you unwell?” Counteradmiral Komarov said
from behind him.

“Just an idle mind, Sergei,” Donovan said. “Please, have a
seat.”

Komarov cheerfully sat across from Donovan, attaching his
feet to the ferrous strips embedded in the floor and his dinner tray to the
smaller strips in the table. He glanced at Donovan’s handheld and saw the image
of Washburne.

“I have wondered, Mister Calvin, what all these dead
statesmen from prior eras would think about us naming obscure planets after
them? Would your man Elihu Washburne be honored or insulted, given this planet
is two hundred trillion miles from Earth, and neither man nor woman is likely
to ever set foot on it?”

Good chance to play up the persona of an overeducated
Colonial Affairs functionary,
Donovan thought. “Well,” he said, “we take
care to avoid naming them for living persons, despite our Congress trying to do
so every once in a while. We don’t want to venerate anyone before their full
story is written.”

Komarov grimaced. “On the contrary, Mister Calvin. Have you
seen some of these worlds? Around Seventy Ophiuchi is a planet with oceans of
sulfuric acid that would strip the flesh from your bones. I personally support
naming these hellholes for some of our living politicians, and then sending
them there.”

Donovan grinned. “I will suggest to my superiors that my
government adopt such a policy, Sergei.”

“Excellent! You see, these sorts of exchanges of ideas can
only serve to strengthen our nations’ friendship!” The admiral suddenly leaned
forward, his voice low and conspiratorial. “Speaking of which, have you heard
that it is already paying off?”

Donovan played dumb. “No, no one tells me anything.”

“The Koreans have reached out to us, offering to negotiate a
separate peace. It will be difficult for them, with so many Chinese troops on
their soil, but clearly they fear the hostile nations encircling them.”

“Really!”
Don’t play too dumb.
“What do they want?”

“They haven’t said. They fear a Chinese-backed coup and
occupation of their two colony planets. So we expect they will want security
guarantees. It must be difficult for them to play second to the People’s
Republic; the average Korean lives a much better life than the average Chinese,
but China is just so large.”

“That it is. So why did Russia choose to become involved?
Surely the trouble on your border wasn’t reason enough.”

Komarov looked thoughtful for a moment. “No, of course not.
It certainly did anger segments of the Russian public, which in turn made
peaceful courses of action more politically costly for President Maslov. But I
doubt it was decisive. No, we Russians still view ourselves as the first
spacefaring nation, and while we are not so numerous as the Chinese nor so rich
as the Japanese, we still have earned a stellar empire greater than the two
colonies we have founded. You know, we even considered an offensive against
Lambda Serpentis, but in our experience Arabs have not taken kindly to
occupiers on their territory. In any event, we attempted to negotiate with
China, but they simply demanded far too much in exchange for a single wormhole
chain.”

“What did they want?”

“Siberia.”

“All of it?”

“Oh, no. Just everything east of the Lena River, except they
would let us keep Vladivostok.”

Ouch. That’s all of Eastern Siberia.
“For what, in
exchange?”

“A rather unproductive wormhole chain that runs through
Cancer and Gemini. There’s a candidate terran world around 56 Aurigae, but we
won’t be sure it’s habitable until 2146 at the earliest.”

Donovan scratched his chin. “Are you sure you should be
telling me all this?”

Komarov smiled. “Mister Calvin, I imagine your NSS spies
learned this before I did.”

Does he know?
Donovan wondered. He had known about
the Korean feelers, but not about the Chinese offer to Moscow.

Komarov went on, “The madness is my leaders actually
considered this offer, or, at least, considered counteroffering a smaller but
still significant piece of our territory on Earth. Giving up part of Mother
Russia, all for a
chance
at another colony, that we would have to travel
through Chinese space to reach? We still have no idea if we’ll find any more
useful planets. The Chinese may have already hit the far edge of the bubble and
simply not told us.” He shook his head. “In any event, the gamble the Chinese
offered us was a poor one. So we decided to gamble on war instead.”

USS Apache, Gliese 373

The unexpected but welcome presence of an Australian
squadron guarding the keyhole into the Gliese 373 system solved
Apache
and her consort’s remass shortage. The squadron’s six ships – comprising a
significant portion of Australia’s space fleet – were protecting access to
their country’s newfound treasure, a habitable moon one system downstream.

It also marked their return to space still in communications
with Earth; the Chinese virus infecting the comm buoys had been rolled back
here, and Neil immediately sent off an emergency message to Space Command
describing the Chinese fleet heading to Entente. It would take all of twelve
minutes to bounce between the relays back to Earth.

That finished, he contacted the Australian flagship and
asked for their intelligence officer.

“
Apache,
this is Flight Lieutenant Wu. Go ahead.” A
familiar face resolved in Neil’s console screen. “Neil! Good to see you, mate!”

“Kieran,” Neil said. “I wish I had better news.” He hadn’t
seen his friend since his visit to Sydney a year ago. He told him about the
Chinese fleet.

When he finished, Kieran said, “At the moment, we’re in
touch with DG Canum and Entente, and I haven’t seen any reports that the Hans
have been sighted. So they’re still in Beta Canum. But they can cross DG Canum
in two weeks, and it will take at least six for any relief to arrive from
Earth.”

“You don’t have anyone already en route, then.”

“No, nothing significant, although I’m sure we’ll launch all
we can once your report gets through,” Kieran said. He shook his head. “This is
bad. Hopefully our new allies can pull us out of the fire. I just don’t
understand why the Hans would be willing to risk Kuan Yin for another chance to
invade New Albion.”

They chatted grimly until Kieran’s captain called, and they
cut the connection.

The Chinese pulled out half their defenses from Kuan Yin
and hurried them to Entente. They’re acting like we’re threatening Huashan.

He thought that over.

Are we?

No. We’ve committed forces to Saturn and Kuan Yin, so
we’ve drawn heavily from the Earth blockade already, and we’re relying on the
Russians and the threat from India to keep China from making a play to get back
into Earth orbit.

But we’re building up on Tecolote. It’s supposed to be a
base to defend the Apollonian Ocean, but it might look like a staging ground
for an invasion force. All the Hans would need is some bad information about
our intent. The kind of information a spy like Irene Sato could have provided
her Chinese contacts. If so, that means everything on Tecolote was one big feint,
an attempt to draw the Chinese into committing too many forces there, I guess
to give us a chance to go after Kuan Yin again.

And it worked. Except for our friends on Entente.

Apache
and her consorts stayed with the Australians
just long enough to refuel, and then thrust toward the next wormhole. They met
the joint Russian-American fleet at GJ 1119, Kuan Yin’s doorstep, three weeks
later.

Combat Supply Cache Condor, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

Aguirre knocked on Rand’s door and entered without
waiting for a response. “Cap, sentry just said Third Platoon’s coming back.”

“All of them? Too soon. What’s wrong?”

“Patterson didn’t say.”

An excuse to get out of this chair, at least.
Rand
went to the main tunnel.

In fact, only two squads of Third Platoon had returned, one
guarding the other. A Squad and the heavy weapons team were still out in the
field. B Squad looked ragged and grimy.

Rand took the squad leader, a junior sergeant named Alicia
Patterson, aside. “What happened, Sergeant?”

She shook her head. “We found a pair of skytrucks, parked on
the ground, with only a couple of Hans guarding them. So we attacked. I don’t
know if it was bad luck or a trap, but they had a platoon plus some air on top
of us within thirty seconds. They got Ski and Jimmy Pasker before the rest of
the platoon saved our ass.”

“Dammit, Sergeant! We can’t afford to lose anyone! Did you
have lookouts in place?”

“Yes, sir. But with only a squad and primitive comms it’s
hard to watch every possible angle of approach.”

“No excuses, Sergeant. Go see to your people.” Patterson
left, looking abashed.

More of my people, dead, and a vow broken.
Rand went
back to his office. Unbeckoned, Aguirre followed him in and closed the door.

“You were too hard on Patterson,” he said. “Sir.”

Rand felt conflicting emotions: A desire to yell at Aguirre
for being out of line, and a fear that his sergeant was right. He took a deep
breath.
Don’t alienate your right arm.

“She’s gotta do better, Hal, or she shouldn’t have a squad,”
he said, shaking his head. “I never paid much attention to politics or any of
that shit; hell, we’ve been here so long we don’t know if we’re winning the war
or have already lost. But someone has to make it off this rock, Hal. It’s my
job to make sure these people survive and make it home.”