The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (4 page)

“Next inbound salvo due in thirty seconds,” the caller
announced.

“All laser power to point defenses,” Howell said. “Fire
Control, launch missiles.”

“Uh, how many, sir?” the fire control officer asked.

“All of them!”

That turned a few heads. Howell was ignoring the commodore’s
order to preserve missile stocks until they closed with the
Gan Ying
.
Neil saw a couple of the older officers nod.
No half measures, not now.

Outside, the first of
Apache
’s forty antiship
missiles exited the hull, floating freely. Small jets from maneuver thrusters
pivoted it to face the
Gan Ying,
and its main rocket fired. It carried a
conventional warhead: While all the belligerents in the war employed nuclear
weapons in space, they existed in finite qualities, and space navies were
saving them for major fleet engagements.

More missiles followed.
Ajax
did not protest the
launch; Metcalf relented, and the Brit issued the first of her own complement
of missiles. As
Apache
’s defenses shot down
Gan Ying
’s latest
salvo, the American missiles at last forced the big cruiser to respond; she
pivoted her nose away from
Edmonton,
and began using her forward laser
emitters to pick off the inbounds. Sixty-two missiles became fifty, forty,
twenty. They burst into clouds of flechettes, all darting toward
Gan Ying
’s
position.

“That’s a hit! Multiple strikes!” the sensor officer called.
“Seeing streamers from the hull.”

Neil stared at the images from
Apache
’s telescopes.
“Looks like the damage is in two clusters,” he announced. “One on the forward
coilgun; the other in her remass tanks. Sir, I’ll call the forward gun
disabled.”

As Neil watched, a double explosion engulfed the ship on
opposite sides. He glanced at the holo:
Edmonton
had turned back to the
fight –
brave, brave, brave,
Neil thought in amazement
–
and her
main laser burned through
Gan Ying
just above her fusion candle, where
remass tanks fed hydrogen into the drive. The cruiser shuddered, and pieces
broke away as she thrust at eighty milligees on a vector away from the fight.

At last the allies’ superior numbers came into play. Lasers
from all three frigates pierced
Gan Ying
’s hull. Counterbatteries
squelched
Edmonton
and
Ajax
’s primary emitters, but the damage
was done.

“Signal from the
Ajax
,” the comms operator announced.
“Give chase.” If the cruiser made a surprise move toward any member of the
convoy, staying close to her would be the best way to defend those ships. But
Gan
Ying
was already spraying coilgun shells and missiles in her wake to delay
any pursuit.

“Astrogation, where’s she headed?” Howell asked.

“Not back to the Sirius or Procyon keyholes, sir,” the
astrogator replied, transmitting from the bridge, several decks above. “Checking
… no destination apparent on current vector. Only vessel anywhere close is the
Euro spy ship, and she’s already moving away.” The Europa Space Force “communications
ship”
Claudio di Cittaducale
had lurked in Wolf 359 for months
,
shadowing
and recording ships from both sides.
Learning that much more about everyone’s
weapons and tactics
, Neil knew
.
It was a running joke in the fleet that
in the war between Japan, China and the United States, Europa was winning.

“Wait … I see it,” the astrogator said. “Whiskey-12 will
pass within three hundred thousand klicks of the asteroid Fortuna-Upsilon;
she’ll have to adjust for docking, but that’s where she’s going. Sir, by the
time she gets there, we’ll have
Kiyokaze
in range.” A fourth frigate
would give the escorts the advantage against the wounded cruiser.

Neil didn’t wait for the question from Howell.
“Fortuna-Upsilon is a mine operated by the Brazilian state-owned extraction
company, with a mean radius of about one hundred sixty kilometers. It passes
close to the Earth wormhole every few months. Probably forty people in there.”

“Neutral territory,” Howell said. “That’s the destination.”

Neil caught some reappraising looks at the XO.
You find
competence in the strangest places
, he thought.

An exchange of fire at extreme range proved ineffectual,
and the allied ships did not attempt to close the distance between themselves
and the fleeing cruiser. Damage control crews on all three frigates returned
them to fighting shape.
Edmonton
had suffered the most; Neil’s eyes
lingered on images of a section of the ship that had been opened to space,
exposing three decks within. He shivered. He was accustomed to viewing exterior
shots of healthy hulls, and he tended to regard ships as tough and solid; this,
though, was like looking at someone’s internal organs, exposed through some
horrible injury.
How fragile and hollow we are.

Ajax
had come through in the best shape, although the
gorgeous lines of her hull were marred by long furrows dug at odd angles by
flechettes and a grazing blow from a coilgun round.
Apache
, meanwhile,
had suffered one dead – a gunner’s mate from Milwaukee, blown into space
when the coilgun had taken the hit – and six wounded, plus Captain Hernandez,
who, the medical officer reported, had suffered a heart attack when the battle
began. He was now sedated and stable.

Maybe he’ll captain a desk
, Neil thought. More
likely he would be medically separated. Regardless, his career on starships was
over.
Apache
now belonged to Lieutenant Commander Nathan Howell.

Neil’s handheld buzzed, waking him, and continued buzzing
as he blinked through his disorientation. The clock told him he had only been
asleep for about two hours. He reached for the device to respond to the caller:
It was Jorgensen, the duty sensor tech, a nervous young astronaut whom Howell
had berated publicly for some trivial mistake in the weeks before Neil had come
on board. Now she checked with Neil on almost everything; although he had
gently tried to rebuild some independence and initiative in her, her fear of
error remained intense. He rolled his eyes but checked the message anyway.
Highest priority, of course.

SIR, WE HAVE DECODED AND TRANSLATED SOME INTERCEPTS OF COMMS
TRAFFIC BETWEEN WHISKEY-12 AND COMMAND GROUP OF CHINESE TASK FORCE AT PROCYON
KH EVENT. RECOMMEND YOU REVIEW.

That
was worth a wake-up call. Neil started to pull
himself upright on a handhold but slipped, sending himself floating toward the
ceiling; he pushed off and settled back to the floor. He dressed and headed up
to the tiny intel office: Information that sensitive would only be viewable on a
few special hardwired consoles on board.

When he arrived, he learned the intercepts had been captured
through a traditional microwave receiver, which made them suspect. Long-range
communications lasers were the most secure means for warships to communicate;
you could realistically only steal such communications by having a tap on
either the transmitter or the receiver. Microwaves, meanwhile, were far easier
to listen in on.

But … if
Gan Ying
’s comm laser was damaged in the
battle, then a radio might be the only way for Qin to talk with her commanders.
Qin, you’ve fooled us once. Are you trying it again?
The encryption on
the messages was a code the Japanese had cracked a month ago – even money
whether the Chinese had figured that out by now.

The contents were fascinating. He summoned Howell.

“Sir,” he told the acting captain, “Qin told the task force
one of the hits
Gan Ying
took is causing her antimatter trap to
deteriorate. She’s losing it a few atoms at a time, so she’s not facing a
catastrophic failure, but she won’t be able to maintain fusion much longer
unless it is fixed.”

Howell rubbed a hand across his shaved head, made a
scratching motion once it reached the back of his neck.

“This another trick?”

“If it’s scripted subterfuge, it’s some extremely detailed
play-acting.”

“What makes you say that?”

“This. Here’s a message from Admiral Liyang at the Procyon
keyhole, ordering Qin to ignore the damage and hurt us as much as possible. And
here’s Qin’s response, an apology that she would be unable to do so until after
she docked with Fortuna-Upsilon.”

“Why?”

“I’m speculating here, sir, but Qin may be trying to save her
crew,” Neil said. “Her history suggests she would have trouble, ethically, I
mean, sacrificing them needlessly.”

“Very good. How can we use that to our advantage?” Howell
said.
I’ve got Howell’s ear, at least
, Neil thought
. Maybe calling it
right on the coilgun ruse earned me back a few points. But it might have been
better if I hadn’t noticed it at all.

“Well, we know the convoy is safe,” Neil said. “And unless
the Brazilians want to abandon their neutrality, they have to eject
Gan Ying
within seventy-two hours. If the cruiser’s drives are anything like ours,
she needs six weeks at a shipyard before she can be fixed. If we delay
rejoining the convoy, we’ll have an opportunity, sir, to go for the kill.” He
edged his voice to sound eager.
Why did I do that?

“I like that aggressiveness, Intel,” Howell smiled. “I’ll
confide something in you. I didn’t think this crew had it in them. Captain
Hernandez wasn’t running a very sharp ship, as I’m sure you’ve recognized. But
the kids really pulled it together. I’ll make the case to Commodore Metcalf
that we finish off the Han.”

The lumpy gray potato that was the asteroid
Fortuna-Upsilon loomed ahead. Arrayed in a semicircle around it were the four
frigates, spaced at forty-five-degree intervals, each about three hundred kilometers
from the asteroid. It was very close range, and Commodore Metcalf intended to shred
Gan Ying
as soon as she cleared the asteroid’s safety zone. She had to
depart soon; otherwise the frigates would be in the legal right in attacking
her at the neutral harbor. The Brazilians knew it, yet the seventy-two-hour
deadline expired with no action. Commodore Metcalf had
Ajax
fire a
series of coilgun rounds within a few dozen kilometers of the station.

The Brazilians never transmitted a word, but, at last, the
Gan
Ying
cut loose, and a small port tug pushed her away from the rock at a few
meters per second before scurrying back to its dock. On four frigates, small
maneuvering thrusters fired, rotating the ships slightly to keep their bow
lasers pointed at the cruiser.

“Whiskey-12 at forty-five kilometers from the asteroid,”
Apache
’s
sensor operator said. At fifty they would fire. Neil watched the camera feed of
the
Gan Ying
in apprehension. Her gun turrets were angled forward. They
should have been tracking the frigates …

“Commander, something’s wrong,” Neil said. He pitched his
voice a fraction deeper than normal, trying to sound confident so Howell would
listen. He described his observation on the gun turret. “The target isn’t
acting like it’s going to fight.”

“But she buttoned up her cooling fins. Trying to ram one of
us?”

“I don’t think so. She isn’t bearing directly on any of us,
and she would have to get a lot closer to have any hope of damaging us, even if
she lit off her antimatter,” Neil said.

Why would Qin come in stupid like this? It’s almost as if
she is asking us to kill her.
The thought triggered a memory, of a news
story he read several years ago, about a guy who wanted to commit suicide, but
couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he threatened some cops, and they did the
job for him.

Neil said, “Commander, we should hold fire. I think
Gan
Ying
is flying dead. We can board her, as long as we don’t blow her apart
in the next ten minutes.”

The XO looked nervous.
Come on, Howell
, Neil thought.
Something had changed in Lieutenant Commander Howell since he led the ship in
battle.
It took killing a bunch of Hans to make you believe in your crew.
Now take a chance. Think of the payoff.

“Comms, kindly transmit the suggestion to the flag that we
wait and see what the
Gan Ying
will do,” Howell said. “Tell them we
suspect the ship may not be a threat. Mercer, make the suggestion to the intel
people on the other ships.”

A flurry of transmissions between the frigates followed, ended
by a curt order from Metcalf to wait. Lieutenant Kerr on the
Ajax
messaged Neil privately that the commodore was about to discard the idea, but
Kiyokaze
had sent something for Metcalf’s eyes only, and he changed his mind.

So they watched. For ten minutes,
Gan
Ying
did
nothing but coast. The wounded cruiser grew closer to
Ajax
, and Neil
grew worried that he had made a mistake, that the ship would try to ram ...

“Seeing multiple streamers on the hull. The ship’s opening
to space,” Neil said. “She’s dead, sir. Scuttled, but there’s a lot left. She
must have been unable to light off her antimatter.”

“Message from the
Ajax
,” said the comms officer.
“Commence boarding operations. Intelligence personnel accompany boarding teams
for exploitation.”

Only the directed energy officer,
Barrett, came down to see them off. Neil lingered on the flight deck as the
Marines and techs boarded the jumper, and she approached him briskly, her
magnetic boots clacking against the metal floor.

“Be careful out there,” she said, squeezing his hand.

DAMASCUS – Arabic and Islamic Federation President
Adnan Kilani affirmed his country’s neutrality in the war Thursday but rejected
Japanese demands for independent inspections of African cargo transiting Federation
territory into Asia. Tokyo and Washington have accused Federation officials of
turning a blind eye to war materiel from factories in Kenya, Tanzania, and
Mozambique transiting their territory with an ultimate destination of China.
Kilani’s careful statement underscored ongoing tensions between the
belligerents and various neutral powers who are struggling to maintain trade
relations with all parties without following Canada’s path and becoming
directly involved in the conflict.

San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente

When Das arrived in Tecolote, the government gave him a
few thousand in the nearly worthless local currency, enough for maybe a week of
food from street vendors and grocery stores. He ate for three days before being
robbed of his cash card by others like him – he recognized several of the young
toughs from his transport from Earth.

Bleeding in the street, Das might have given up then, and
killed himself, a common enough occurrence among some of the older transportees
whose religion did not forbid suicide. Or he might have turned himself over to
one of the unregulated biologics factories on the island’s western coast, which
would be tantamount to killing himself, anyway, but with more pain.

But he saw something odd, a cop giving money to a man
sweeping the street.

The man’s gray clothes marked him as another transportee
recently off the ship. He and Das didn’t speak the same language, but the man
led him to a sign that explained everything in multiple languages.

Das stole a broom from behind a shop the next day, found a
corner, and began cleaning it. He was chased off that one by a competitor, and
then chased off from another, and then another. He spent several days at two
more corners, not earning anything, before he figured out the system.

After President Conrad and his associates took power in Tecolote,
they decided they couldn’t afford much of a public works crew, so they
initiated a program aimed at keeping the streets clean at low cost to
themselves. A few cops would be issued some money to provide to anyone they saw
cleaning up a public street. It was a lottery, more or less, and many of the
cops, not well paid themselves, found ways to pocket the cash. But those cops
were watched by still other cops, so some money did make it to the street. Das deduced
that the best spots were near government and police buildings, so he relocated to
a corner near the presidential residence, and started cleaning. Enough cops and
paramilitaries were around to prevent any fighting over territory, and while he
didn’t make money every day, he ate often enough that he could sense his mind
sharpening again as the dull animal ache of constant hunger receded. In time,
he grew proud of his corner. He was intelligent enough to recognize its
insignificance – his domain was the trash and filth on a section of street in a
minor dictatorship thirty light-years from Earth – but it was his, and he was
determined to keep it.

His corner was at the intersection of Zaragoza and 12th,
behind the residence and adjacent to the six-story office building – the city’s
tallest – that served it. Here he saw the real government at work, not the
pretty veneer for the tourists and diplomats out front. The bureaucrats and
guards walked this way every evening to get to their cars, and the delivery
trucks came by at all hours. To most he was one reedy brown man among many in
the streets of the capital, but a few grew familiar with his presence, and one
of the restaurants even let him use their bathroom once a day.

But one Tuesday night the restaurant closed early, and Das
missed his chance, so he went into an alley to urinate on a wall. He disliked
doing so – after all, it was his job to keep things around here clean.

“I will not do this,” said a voice from around the corner,
causing Das to clench, painfully, to prevent his discovery. “He has been good
to me. It is a betrayal, and he has defenses against such things anyway. I
would be caught, and my family and I will be just as dead as you threaten to
make us.”

“Very well,” said a second voice, this one female. They were
speaking English, which of course Das knew. “It won’t kill him. It won’t even
hurt him. Here, I will take some to show you it is safe.”

“That means nothing. You could have tailored it for him.”

“Indeed we did, and his sensors won’t pick it up, either.
But I promise you it won’t hurt him. It’s something that will help him. It will
make him feel … better. Happy.”

“Happy?”

“Don’t you think he could stand to be a little more happy?
Couldn’t that lead to this being a better place? Or, at least, a less terrible
one?”

Only later did Das remember the first voice, which
belonged to someone he had seen and heard at the loading docks behind the
presidential palace, a man who always wore loose-fitting white clothes and a
funny hat.

The Punjab, Earth

“Are we sure this area is safe?” the senator’s aide said,
his voice sharp and irritated. Now that they were here, flying over what many
locals considered occupied territory, this wasn’t turning out to be the
adventure he had envisioned when he reviewed the itinerary back in Washington.
Mostly he felt tired and dirty, and his intestines were warning him they were considering
forcefully ejecting something within.

His question didn’t draw any response from Senator Gregory,
who was staring out the skycar’s window at the dark, rocky slope along the
western bank of the Jhelum. So the aide stared pointedly at the only other conscious
person in the passenger cabin, the NSS liaison to this expedition, who had the
glassy-eyed look of someone reading text on his ocular implant.

Although the aide was more than twenty years junior to the
liaison, he considered himself acting in the best interests of Senator Gregory
at all times, and he thus believed he shouldn’t be ignored.

“Well, Mister Donovan? Are we safe?” he insisted.

The man who went by the name James Donovan tapped a button
on his handheld and slowly focused his gaze on the aide.

“No,” he said. It was sort of a lie – odds were heavily
against a Punjabi guerrilla taking a shot at their car, but the aide had
annoyed him, so he decided to scare the kid in retaliation.

Senator Darren Gregory of New Jersey, chairman of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, looked up at that. He didn’t like his
aide much – his hiring was a bone to one of his chief supporters in Morris
County – and enjoyed Donovan instilling a little fear into him. Gregory’s brief
smirk was an uncommonly honest expression for him, as had been his placid
countenance as he watched the dawn-shadowed countryside roll by. Shortly, he
would dial up his political persona, smiling and back-patting and making anyone
in view feel like they were important. It worked well with individuals and
crowds: He had a sharp, youthful face, jet black hair and a gringo complexion,
but he lacked the firm jawline that had been associated with male politicians
and newscasters for so long, to the point that people had begun to distrust
such pretty-boy visages. He was a little bit imperfect, and that made people like
him all the more.

They landed forty-five minutes later at an Indian Army fort
on the Indus River, the western border of “occupied Pakistan” or “restored
Greater India,” depending on one’s politics. Their State Department briefers had
reminded Gregory and his entourage to use only the latter term to keep favor
with their hosts.

They were met on the tarmac by a thickly muscled Indian
Space Force wing commander, who introduced himself as Ramesh and cordially
refused to be called anything else. As he led the senator’s party across the
tarmac, Donovan stole glances at the assemblage of combat gear around them. He
was no military analyst, but he recognized Kawasaki fighter and surveillance
drones, Kartsev main battle tanks, and homegrown wheeled LAVs. Surprisingly few
soldiers were in view; when questioned, Ramesh explained that many of them were
out in the nearby communities.

He led them to the base’s busy operations center, where
dozens of officers and enlisted soldiers hunched over their consoles, watching
shaky helmet camera feeds and barking orders into comms gear.
Well put,
Ramesh
, Donovan thought, seeing someone’s front door splinter on one of the
monitors
. “Out in the nearby communities” is a nice euphemism for “raids.”

They were there to meet Lieutenant General Tyag Bahadar Singh,
who was regarded as the most influential military officer in India, and widely
thought to be considering a career in politics. He was the senior Indian Army officer
in occupied Punjab, overseeing a large if low-intensity counterinsurgency
operation, as well as keeping the frontier fortified against those bent on
restoring Pakistan to its former borders.
And so much of India’s energy has
gone into this and places like it, into maintaining a terrestrial empire at the
expense of an interstellar one,
Donovan thought.

They were taken to a Spartan conference room. The general
kept them waiting for only a minute – a short enough delay that Gregory
couldn’t regard it as disrespect. He came in, wearing fatigues and a holstered
sidearm at his right side. He was tall and thin, wearing the salt-and-pepper,
well-trimmed vandyke that he had made so stylish in the Indian military.

Pleasantries in English followed, while an orderly served
tea. When she departed, Singh said, “You’re here because you want India’s
help.”

“We’d like your support in the war,” Gregory said agreeably.

“What do you mean, ‘support?’” Singh said.

“You join us as allies against China. You fight with us.”

The easy out, Donovan observed, was for Singh to protest he
didn’t have the authority to approve such an alliance, which was technically
correct but functionally wrong. But Singh simply nodded, and said, “What does
India have to gain?”

“Worlds. You’re on the edge of the desert, just as we are,
and India needs more than a single colony planet to ensure its future in
space,” Gregory said.

“We can bargain with China to stay out of the war,” Singh
said. “They have offered us a wormhole chain already.”

I wonder if we know that,
Donovan thought. It was
news to him, and it would be the first sentence of his report.

Senator Gregory showed no surprise and said, “You could get
more if you fight.”

“Or we could lose everything. Your control of Earth orbit
hasn’t won you the war.”

“We would support your claim on both South Tibet and Aksai
Chin.” The latter was the region of Kashmir still in Chinese hands.

“At long last. Yes, you certainly would,” Singh said, grinning.
“At a minimum. We would want plenty more.”

The meeting broke up shortly after that. Gregory and
Singh went into a private conference, and some junior officers took Gregory’s
staff on a tour of the base. Donovan and Ramesh picked each other out for some
back-channel diplomacy and walked over to the flightline. It was a crystalline
January morning, calm and clear.

“Which wormhole chain did they offer you?” Donovan asked.

Ramesh shook his head. “It’s largely in Eridani.”

Donovan grunted. “They want you as a buffer between them and
Japanese space. Europa is grabbing stars in Eridani, too. They will all crowd
you out as time goes on.”

“We know.”

“You’ll also have to go through somebody else’s space to get
there from Earth, so they can cut you off whenever they please.”

“We know that, too. Not much different from our current
situation, routing through Japanese space in Barnard’s Star.”

“What would it take for you to join us instead?” Donovan
asked.

“I’m not sure, exactly, because the general isn’t sure,”
Ramesh said. “Some of it depends on whether Russia and Europa join you as well,
which would make our job easier. If the Chinese empire is collapsing, we want
to ensure we are positioned to take advantage of it. Certainly we would insist on
being full partners, with a full share of the spoils.”

“A full share? Your fleet is smaller than ours, and that of
the Japanese.”

“You might recall we have a border with the Chinese here on
Earth,” Ramesh said. “Much of our army will have to be redeployed to deal with
the threat, leaving us vulnerable here in Punjab. As for space, you are
correct; however, unless I’ve miscounted, we do have significantly more construction
docks in Earth orbit at the moment than both you and Japan combined.”

Donovan chuckled. “Yes, it’s no state secret that one is
indeed greater than zero.”

The whine of a siren cut off Ramesh’s reply. Donovan looked
at him to see if the alarm was something to take seriously. Ramesh appeared
impassive, but he slowly walked under an aircraft canopy with a thick roof,
motioning with his head for Donovan to follow. A few aircraft techs began jogging
for a bunker.

They heard a whistle. Several whistles.

“The rebels are attacking!” Ramesh said, grinning. “They try
this every so often, but it never works. Hope springs eternal, eh?”

In front of them, forty meters away, was a laser cannon,
mounted on a truck trailer. It looked like a searchlight. It rotated, pointing
up, and fired an invisible beam. Donovan craned his neck and saw several puffs
of smoke high overhead – some sort of rockets or mortar rounds being destroyed.
Radars tracked the trajectory of the incoming rounds and calculated their
origin at an area in the nearby mountains, and he heard a series of
chuff
s
as mortars on the base fired back.

Donovan saw more bursts in the sky, some of them closer than
the prior ones. The sky grew foggy, and he knew a moment of animal terror,
wondering if the rebels were attacking the fort with chemical weapons.