The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (6 page)

They were in Captain Qin’s quarters. Two Japanese Naval
Infantry floated outside; inside was Endo and the body of Captain Qin.

“She must have scuttled the ship herself,” the Japanese
intelligence officer transmitted. “Too bad for her she needed her computer
working to do it, because she left us some intact data. I’ll say this, though. The
Chankoro went out with more style than I would have expected from one of them.”

Qin was seated, upright, with her magnetized boots attached
to ferrous strips in the floor. She was wearing the slate blue full dress
uniform of the Chinese Space Navy. She had been wearing no pressure suit and
had not inflated an emergency bubble.

Neil regarded Qin sadly. He had come to know her during his time
studying her.
You did your best, fought within your code, for all the good
it did you.
He wondered how Qin would have regarded him.
Would you have
suggested sacrificing a half-filled troopship so the rest of the convoy would
survive? Or would you have thrown me out the airlock for thinking of it?

Endo bumped helmets with Neil for a private conference. “You
know we were on the comms during the discussion about how to protect the
convoy. I must say, Metcalf reacted emotionally. Foolishly. Captain Qin should
have easily defeated three frigates; she was just unfortunate in the damage she
took to her drive so early in the battle. Captain Genda wanted me to tell you
that your reputation was not lowered in our eyes for being bold enough to raise
such an unpleasant but logical option.”

Neil would like to have just nodded in acknowledgment, but
he doubted the gesture would be apparent in the darkness, so he said, “Thanks.”

Endo went on, “If you’re going where Genda thinks you are, perhaps
you’ll meet Kitsune, who is a friend of hers.”

Where I’m going? What does that mean?
But he asked
the question Endo obviously wanted him to: “The fox?” He knew enough Japanese
to know that the term also stood for a clever demigod from Japanese folklore.

“Kitsune will provide you with another name if it is
important,” Endo said. “Captain Genda wanted me to relay a message to you. She
is worried about the lack of cooperation between our senior commands, and she
fears the alliance between Japan and the United States is becoming a mere coalition
of convenience. She wanted me to tell you that Kitsune is skilled and
intelligent, and can be trusted not to let ego get in the way of doing what
must be done. If the opportunity arises, perhaps you and Kitsune can move our
nations in the right direction.”

The Punjab, Earth

It was a good sign for the mission, Donovan supposed,
that they didn’t sequester him and the other Americans in the aftermath of the
attack. None of Senator Gregory’s party had been hurt, but the Indians had
suffered four killed and several dozen wounded. Counterbattery fire and a
squadron of drone gunships had silenced the attackers.

Donovan and Ramesh wandered along the flightline, surveying
the damage. Ramesh had an unlit cigar in his mouth, a salve for his agitation,
but the officer had otherwise regathered his composure.

He kneeled at a small bruise in the tarmac and pointed at
some debris a few meters away. One of the anti-laser rockets had landed near
them without exploding, instead shattering into several large pieces. Donovan
walked over, leaving footprints in a thick film of glittering dust – the
material used to bollix the Indian lasers.

“This hot? Dangerous?” the spy said, pointing.

Ramesh shook his head, so Donovan picked up a large piece, a
chunk of the olive-colored main body, about twenty centimeters long, with a
silvery fin assembly still attached. He turned it over in his hands … some of
the paint had been scraped away by the impact, revealing a slightly different
shade of olive underneath.
Odd. Who repaints rockets?

“Mind if I keep this? It would make a good souvenir,”
Donovan lied.

Ramesh’s head bobbed, a distinctly Indian gesture, and he chewed
his cigar. “It’s all yours.”

USS Apache, Wolf 359

Neither Neil nor Jessica needed to declare the
just-concluded encounter had been intense; they knew it, and they knew the
other one knew it as well.

“I guess we should have close brushes with death more
often,” Jessica said, floating gently downward as the
Apache
went under
thrust.

“I guess we should,” Neil agreed. “Although I’m going to
need to wrap these next time.” He showed her his palms, still red from gripping
the handhold behind him. She smiled her killer smile and playfully pushed
herself off the floor, and twisting in the air and giggling at her own
brazenness. Neil let his eyes linger on her form, enjoying the freedom to do
so.

Normally, they would fall into a particular sort of
conversation at this point, one in which they shared little observations,
sometimes absurd and sometimes meaningful, about the ship, or Space Force, or one
of their colleagues. Tiny intimacies, Neil knew, but they entertained Jessica,
kept her close.

Neil wanted to draw her closer.
I want to tell her about
what I’ve done in the war so far. I want to her to know those things, to
understand me better. Maybe she’ll open up to me, too, tell me things I don’t
even know to ask about.

He decided to test the waters.

“I have to say, it was kind of wild being on the Han ship,”
he said.

She was still cavorting in the near-freefall when he said
this, but she detected a certain tone in his voice, and she turned to look at
him, an inquisitive expression on her face. She settled to the floor and did
not push off again.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

So he did. It did not, however, occur to him to share the
story of the abuse he had received from Commodore Metcalf; being called out
publicly like that had embarrassed him on a very deep level, and he didn’t want
to relive it, even if she might provide a measure of comfort. She might also
reject him over it.

Outside Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

“I love this altitude,” said Private Lopez, stretching
her arms above her head. “Feels almost like home, doesn’t it?”

They were in highlands again, not far from where they had
left the freight train behind. And Lopez was right – here, more than four
kilometers above the planet’s oceans, the air was only moderately heavier than at
sea level on Earth. It felt to Rand like his joints were all settling back into
place for the first time since he arrived on the planet. And it was a lovely
sort of mountain cool.

The peaks around them stood even higher, their reach less
encumbered than Earth mountains, thanks to Kuan Yin’s .88 gravities. They were
south of Sycamore, a city formerly of 90,000 souls planted on a high piedmont
plateau above severe cliffs that led down to the ocean.

They walked until they could see the city below them. It had
been well designed and built, a model colony when it was settled a decade prior,
with a core of red-yellow brick buildings ensconced in green foliage. But two
circular settlements were attached like tumors to the community; one was the
Chinese army base, a series of long linear barracks, guard towers, and an
airfield. The second growth included some of the city proper, but much of it was
a sea of olive-colored tents. It was surrounded by a high wall, with more
towers – this time with the guards looking in. Drones buzzed above it.

This was the internment camp for American colonists.

Rand and the others had picked up sporadic information about
the purpose of the war, which was being fought to secure colony planets after
it turned out they would be far more scarce than expected. But here it was in
the face. Lopez swore. Aguirre sighed and shook his head. Rand felt anger
rising within him. The people down there, the farmers, the engineers, the
researchers and terraformers, they didn’t deserve this.

Only Kelley, stoic as ever, was thinking like a fighter. “You
notice that the eastern wall is right up against the forest and the foothills?
If they were serious about security, they would have cleared those trees. It
might be the Hans are allowing some coming and going from the camp.”

“How would that be in their interest?” Rand asked.

“Maybe they’re short on military police, or maybe they just
don’t care much. Hard to say for sure.”

When no one said anything else, Kelley said, “Night’s
coming, and we might have to walk above that treeline to get to our
destination. So we should move out.”

WASHINGTON – Vowing to a crowd of 750,000 people that
“we will not give ground” in the war with China and Korea, President Alexander
Victor Delgado was sworn in for his second term on Wednesday. As with his 2137
inauguration, he took the oath on his mother’s Bible and later recalled her
sacrifice fighting separatists on Jefferson. Delgado’s election marked the seventh
straight in which the House of Representatives determined the outcome of the
election and the thirteenth such instance since the four-party era began. Police
ejected hundreds of protestors making their usual plea for a constitutional
amendment allowing for popular election of the president, but experts see
little chance of it happening.

New Albion colony, Entente

The Chinese Marine’s left leg was already covered in wet sand.
A rivulet of clear sea water ran over it, splitting where the heel of his boot
emerged and rejoining at the toe before flowing down to the waterline to feed a
few drops into the next oncoming wave.

Neil crouched at what he considered a respectful distance and
stared at the body. Some of the troops on the beach thought him odd, but those
who saw the intelligence badge on his uniform let him be … the intel guys were
always a little weird, with all that special knowledge they had, or something.

Who was he?
Neil wondered. The dead man was
face-down, with no visible exit wound from his back. He had died facing his
enemy, the British and Canadian and Australian soldiers who defended this beach
and their colony beyond. Someone had already collected his rifle, but the rest
of his gear was still attached to his clothes. Was he an Entente colonial, or
from Earth, or one of the Chinese planets? Was he a volunteer or a conscript?
Did he believe in what he was doing? What ran through his head as he and his
comrades ran off the landing boat, charging the gun positions, as
Apache
and
the other ships in orbit swept the beach with lasers? Twenty years ago, some
mother and father, probably, had been happy at his birth and, probably,
invested time and effort into his becoming a learning, thinking,
self-sufficient person, who they, probably, hoped would provide them
grandchildren someday. And he, probably, had twenty years of experiences, of
laughter and pain, and friends and lovers and loss, memories which, probably,
ended with the fragmentation of an eight-gram bullet inside his heart.

Two more bodies were in immediate view, one crumpled, one
splayed out and face-up. Both were Chinese; the British and Canadian and
Australian dead were up in the dunes. Neil wondered if the bodies would
decompose any differently on Entente, where the population of bacteria and
insects interested in them was much smaller than on Earth.

Far up the beach, where sea mist rendered it a pallid,
ghostly blue, was the smoking chassis of a large Chinese hovercraft. Its
operators had beached it to serve as a gun platform during the landing; they,
too, had died fighting.

“Mercer? Learning anything?” a gravelly voice said. The form
of its owner interposed itself between Neil and the body, putting Neil in
shadow.

“Not really, sir,” he said, standing up.

Commander Marc Raleigh, who, like Neil, wore the key, globe
and dagger badge of Space Force Intelligence, regarded him oddly for a moment,
and said, “Score one for the good guys. This defense is the stuff of legends,
Mercer.”

“Yes, sir,” Neil agreed. Neil had mostly watched, rather
than participated. With its damaged gun turret and inexperienced master,
Apache
had not been given a major role; she had been part of the decoy force that
drew off the Chinese and Korean ships orbiting Entente just long enough for the
British transports to land their troops. When the enemy ships returned, the
orbital battle had been fierce, with warships on both sides fighting each other
even as they skipped off the top of the atmosphere on bombardment runs over
this beach. Unlucky
Edmonton
was among the losses; she had been blown in
half by a Chinese missile, and only a third of her crew had been rescued. On
the surface, the senior Chinese general decided to launch an all-out amphibious
assault before the British reinforcements could dig in with their fellows, but
the gambit had failed on this very stretch of coast.

Neil had dropped down a few hours ago, after the battle had
been decided.

“The other two Chinese divisions are withdrawing north, into
no-man’s land. They may withdraw them off the continent entirely,” Raleigh
said. “Command sees this as a significant opportunity. The Hans and Kims are
pushing us on every front, and we’ve got a chance to focus their attention here
on Entente.”

“Sir?”

“We’re going to build defenses against the Han colony across
the ocean. This is the second place they settled, more than thirty years ago,
so it carries some significance for them. The Brits don’t have enough to contain
it, but we’re going to make some moves to force the Chinese to deal with us. We’re
going to take the initiative, Mercer.”

“Sounds good, sir.”
Why is he telling me this?
The
U.S. controlled no territory on Entente, and its military presence was minimal.
The Chinese colony of Huashan had a population of over 700,000 people, a large
naval base, and a reserve division of troops protecting it.

“Between here and there are a couple of strategic island
states with both spaceports and deep-water ports, Ardoyne and Tecolote. Both
are neutral. We’d like to change that: Allying with either would be vital for
us to prevent another invasion of New Albion.”

Here it comes.
“I’m going to Ardoyne, which is a better
bet for a number of reasons, although their port will need some work. I was
going to leave you on New Albion as a liaison with the Brits, but for reasons
unclear to me, their command has expressed a desire to work with someone else, so
I’m sending you to Tecolote as a defense attaché. Your job will be to make nice
with their government, to let them know they have the support of the United
States military. You will give them information, within reason. You will also
gather information about the government and the insurgency, particularly their
military capabilities, in case we have to work with either of them more closely
in the future. You will check with me on anything you aren’t sure about.”

I’m not going back to the ship and Jessica.
“How long
is the assignment?”

“Hard to say.
Apache
will remain in orbit as part of
the blockade, and you’ll still be on the books as the ship intel officer, so
this assignment won’t cost you time as a section chief, if that’s your concern.
Once you’re in Tecolote, you’ll also work with our diplomatic mission, such as
it is, as well as the NSS station chief on the island, who specifically
requested your presence.”

Neil brightened. “Mister Donovan?” Donovan had been a mentor
on Neil’s previous assignment, but Neil had lost track of him several months
ago.
It would be good to see him again.

But Raleigh shook his head. “No, not him. No idea what
happened to that guy. It’s some spook I haven’t met. She said she’s looking
forward to working with you. Anyway, I’ll have your orders and briefing packet
forwarded to you within the day.”

With that, lieutenant and commander saluted each other, and
Raleigh left Neil alone, wondering, as waves crashed over the bodies on the New
Albion shore, and bits of falling debris from the orbital battle filled the sky
with fireflies.

San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente

NSS World Factbook, 2140 edition:
The Republic of Tecolote
is an independent island nation on the planet of Entente (Beta Comae Berenices
IV). It is located in the Apollonian Ocean 1,900 kilometers west-southwest of
the New Albion colony (United Kingdom), 2,200 kilometers east of the Huashan colony
(China), and 900 kilometers south of the Republic of Ardoyne (independent). The
island was initially granted to the Philippines for colonization under the name
San José in 2110, but financial troubles on Earth forced its sale in 2117 to Mexico,
which renamed it Tecolote. Residents of the island, unhappy with management
from Earth, revolted in 2129 and established an independent republic that went
unrecognized by most powers save Japan. Eighteen months later, filibuster Lawson
S. Conrad and a force of 800 adventurers, mostly from Commonwealth, landed on a
chartered cruise liner and conquered the island in 72 hours. Conrad and his
coterie have ruled the island since. The state has a population of 205,000,
about 60 percent of which is urban. The capital city retains the name San José.
President Conrad has allowed significant foreign investment, except from China,
for which he seems to bear a personal antipathy. He has twice seized assets of
companies accused of “unfair” dealings with Tecolote’s authorities. In both
cases, the home country for the company was undergoing significant unrest at
the time, leaving the firm’s assets vulnerable. It was through such means that
the state gained 60 percent ownership of the deep-water port facilities in San
José, a significant economic driver in the country. The political system is based
on the Russian model, in which opposition parties and a free press are
technically legal but in reality face severe curtailments of their operations. Chief
exports are industrial organics, cobalt and nickel ore and citrus fruits. The
island also has assembly facilities for kit watercraft transported from Earth. Tecolote
has also occasionally accepted payments from Earth nations to accept forced
emigrants. The state has an active insurgency, based in the highlands on the
island northern peninsula, which advocates a new constitution and free
elections. Conrad’s regime has frequently employed violent means to repress the
rebels and sow fear in a populace that is sympathetic to the insurgents’
demands.

A young woman met Neil at the Tecolote spaceport.

“Lindsay Trujillo,” she said, shaking his hand. She stood a
head shorter than Neil and had an open, friendly face, mischievous eyes, and
long, black hair. “State Department – for real. Glad to have you. You’ll make
the sixth member of our little outpost on the ass-end of nowhere. Paul Layton
is the chargé d’affaires, Andy Bonaventura is consular affairs, Martina Bandi –
everyone calls her Marti – is our tech support. And Irene Gomez is our, um,
regional affairs officer.”

Code for NSS
, Neil translated.
Never heard of her.
Why would she request me?
“What’s your job?”

“Everything else.”

As they walked, Lindsay reached into her pocket, and a message
alert appeared on the inside of Neil’s eye. OPEN? the alert asked.

OCULAR-YES, he thought, and text scrolled at the bottom of
his vision.

IF YOU HAVE AN OCULAR, WE USE THE STRONGBOW PROTOCOL. LOTS
OF EYES AND EARS HERE, BUT WE’RE PRETTY SURE THE NATUVES HAVEN’T CRACKED IT.

“Got it,” Neil said aloud. He had at long last had an ocular
implanted while stationed at Space Command. Tied to a neural overlay, it could
handle all of six commands from his brain, and it was a fairly advanced model.

Someone shouted from across the cavernous terminal. Airport
cops in white shirts ran to the source, followed by rifle-armed paramilitaries in
olive jackets and red berets. Neil saw one of the cops land a vicious blow with
a baton on a man from his flight, and blood splattered onto the white stone
tile. The man screamed something in Spanish. He was struck again and went
silent.

“You can look, but don’t linger,” Lindsay muttered. “Hard to
say, but this may be for our benefit.”

The paramilitaries dragged the man away. The cops ordered people
to move on.

When they got in their car, Neil turned to Lindsay. “What
did you mean, for our benefit?”

“Conrad’s internal security knows very much who you are and
may suspect why you are here,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past them to pick
on some random guy from one of their many watchlists to demonstrate their
tremendous authority to the American military guy. Sorry you had to see it,
though.”

I’ve seen worse.
“They suspect why I’m here?”

“To turn Tecolote into a base for defending the Brits
against the Hans from Huashan, right?

Great.
“What, did we put out a press release?”

“We’re a small office, but Miz Gomez is pretty plugged in.
We’re not sure how the natives found out. But maybe you can answer something
for me, Lieutenant Mercer.”

“Please, it’s Neil.”

She smiled, happy to learn the new military guy wasn’t some
overofficious asshole. “Neil. We won’t be trying to stage an invasion of
Huashan out of here, will we?”

Neil shook his head. “No way. We’re at war to gain new
space to explore, not to stomp on territory somebody already settled, right?
And the resources it would take to conquer and hold Huashan are immense. It
won’t happen.”

Creases around Irene Gomez’s eyes betrayed her age, a few
years shy of sixty, and her distaste for cosmetic treatments. She stood at a slight
160 centimeters, and she had olive skin, aquiline features and graying black
hair that was cut almost as short as most spacers wore theirs.

They sat in a secure, windowless room in the middle of the
American embassy to Tecolote, which took up half of a floor in a small,
walled-off office building six blocks from the presidential palace. In the same
building were embassies for other countries from the Anglosphere, all save the
two-person British shop left shuttered, but still paid for, in case Tecolote should
ever matter.

Gomez inspected Neil with a stern glare. “I’ve heard you’re
rather opinionated,” she said. “The first thing to learn around here is to stay
out of local issues. You’ll see a lot of abuse we typically don’t have in the
States, and it’s not your problem. Eyes forward, got it?”