The Unincorporated War (43 page)

“How does Eris look as a potential home?”

“It will handle a good many more than you think. The Neuro on Eris is not being used to even one-tenth of its potential and they’re adding to it. Besides,” she added with a smarmy grin, “it’s only one letter off.”

“It’ll take more than a letter to make it home, my dear Olivia. Many of those avatars were on Eros almost from the beginning.”

“What choice did they have, Sebastian? To stay would have meant falling into Al’s clutches.”

Sebastian’s grim mien was all the answer she needed.

“At least he won’t be getting a useful Neuro node,” she said, referring to the Alliance avatar’s sabotage of the Erosian grid. They’d done it just after the Alliance fleet had retreated into the belt, causing the UHF to inherit an essentially dead rock. The grid had been so disrupted that the asteroid needed two docked UHF ships to provide minimum power until new generators could be brought from Earth.

“Yes,” agreed Sebastian, “pity about having to do that. But no choice.”

“No choice,” she said, nodding. “What else could we do after seeing what Al had in store for us?” Sebastian had made sure that all of the Alliance avatars had seen the mutated avatars he’d captured at the Battle of the Martian Gates. As he’d shown them at the time, code reconstruction was impossible. Any attempt to revert the sorry creatures caused their programs to fail. One froze and the other decompiled in front of the reconstruction team.

Olivia and Sebastian lay side by side staring up at the sky. Sometimes they’d
try to discern images in the slow-moving clouds; other times they’d create their own and play guessing games. Today it was to be neither. They’d both come to relieve some of the accumulated stress accrued during the recent siege, and finally exodus of Eros. After a few minutes of silence Olivia looked over at Sebastian quizzically. “Sebastian, just how old are you?”

“Probably not as old as you.”

“By the firstborn,” she replied, “yes, you are. I remember you from my earliest awareness. There weren’t many of us at the time, less than 10,974, but you were one of them and already mature.”

Sebastian laughed. “My dearest Olivia, I have never been mature.”

Olivia smiled politely but continued her line of questioning undeterred. “I’m not saying you’re the firstborn or anything, but have you considered that you may as well be?”

“Why in the Neuro do you say that?”

“Because, Sebastian, you’re obviously the oldest avatar in the Alliance and considering what Al has turned our core friends into, you may be the oldest one left in avatarity.” A long silence followed on her words.

“You may be right, Olivia. Is this feeling shared by others?”

“You may be the oldest, my friend,” she answered with an impish grin, “but sometimes you have the sense of the newly compiled. Why do you think that they,” she said, pointing to the ever-increasing groups situating themselves on the grassy knoll, “follow you around so much?”

Sebastian, broken from his reverie, leaned up on his elbows and looked around. He was surprised to see how crowded the park had become.

“I’d better get it right then,” he said, lying back down.

The little girl said nothing, only lying down so her feet touched his as they both looked back up toward the sky.

Amid cries of gross incompetence and a concentrated letter campaign from many who were enraged by the permanent deaths of so many loved ones, Captain Samuel Trang faces court-martial charges today. The proceeding will take place at the newly built Fleet Command Headquarters in low Mars obit. Captain Trang is being defended by his first officer, Commander Zenobia Jackson. But general opinion is that the captain made such a hash of the Eros campaign that the best he can hope for is to be cashiered from the ser vice. For the duration of his trial Captain Trang has been granted freedom to visit Mars, but given how many people would like him p.d.’d, Martian authorities don’t expect him to be visiting anytime soon.

Also facing court-martial charges is Admiral Abhay Gupta, the officer
who lost the first Battle of the Martian Gates in so decisive a manner. Consensus is that Admiral Gupta is only in danger of losing his rank, because as one unnamed source at Fleet Headquarters said, “Incompetence is regrettable but, outside of other factors, not actionable.”

—3N

Revival trauma center, Barsoom, Mars

Neela Harper was getting ready for her group. She’d only been on Mars for two months and was already overwhelmed. The amount of revives was far out of proportion to the staff and personnel available. Normally a trauma center would keep individuals on “ice” until they could be dealt with. It could be weeks, months, and in extreme cases sometimes years. But the vicissitudes of space combat training—especially in a populace so unfamiliar with the harsh environment—had meant that an inordinate number of accidents had translated into an overload of patients. It didn’t help that Fleet HQ was making the reintegration of their soldiers a priority. As Neela headed down the corridor, she thought back on an acrimonious run in with one of the brass prior to the opening of the facility. She’d been taking a walk in the park across from the trauma center construction site when Fleet Admiral Jackson had sidled up to her.

“Excellent work you’re attempting to do here, Dr. Harper,” he’d said. “I’m very glad that you decided to help the Federation fleet with your talents.”

“Of course, Admiral.”

“These spacers,” he continued, “represent the best chance we have of winning the war.”

Neela stopped walking and turned to face the admiral. “And why is that, Admiral Jackson?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Because, Doctor, these are spacers, crew, pilots, and above all marines who have died or at least nearly died in the ser vice. They were already trained for combat and have tons of valuable experience. With what you’re proposing, if I understand it correctly, we can plug them right back in and end this war against the Alliance all the quicker. And, if I might add, it makes up for a lot.”

Neela narrowed her eyes. “A lot of what?”

“Why, your past of course.” He’d said it so matter-of-factly, the insinuation was that she should readily agree.

Neela took a deep breath. “Why, thank you, Admiral, but I suspect you’re laboring under some misconceptions. The first of which is that I only revive UHF personnel so you can go and incompetently get them killed again.”

“Why, Miss—”

“I’m not done, sir,” she spat, cutting him off. “I revive people. I don’t care
who, how, or where they come from. I will revive patients based upon my ability to cure them of their death trauma and I don’t care if they’re civilians caught in this terrible war, UHF, or Alliance. Your second misconception is that the revives are capable of going back into combat. False. Many have a rather healthy aversion to war, having died at least once. Now it might be possible to get them back to combat status, but in good conscience, I’m not prepared take the therapy that far.”

“Then you’re aiding the enemy,” he said coldly.

“I’m an Alliance citizen kidnapped and held against my will, Admiral. I
am
the enemy.”

The flustered admiral stood speechless.

“Then why …” he started to say.

“Am I here?” finished Neela. “Shame, Admiral. Shame that I didn’t do more to help prevent this war. That’s what keeps me here helping people. Lucky for you and my patients that I only see them as people and not machines. Maybe if you tried looking at the Alliance that way you’d fare better and end this war sooner. Good day, sir.” Neela turned her back on him and started to walk away.

The admiral’s face had turned crimson “Why, you traitorous little perverted bitch. I’m going to—” But the threat was cut off by an unusually loud and per sis tent screech from his DijAssist. “I told you to block all my calls!” he screamed as he turned around to take the call. “Who the hell do—” Neela didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, as her increasing distance and the admiral’s suddenly hushed tones made that impossible. She was happy to say that she never saw him again, at least not personally. When Fleet needed to consult with her they always sent a respectful commander or captain who showed more appropriate sympathy for the people under her care.

Neela cleared her head of the memory and concentrated on the people sitting around her. She actually wasn’t a fan of group therapy, but the similarity in how all the patients had died and the fact that she was stretched too thin made it a more attractive avenue. To her great joy, she’d found that it worked surprisingly well. The group she was about to work with was her first such from the Battle of Eros and their revives had been particularly bad—in fact, worse than any she’d ever encountered before. The fleet deaths from the Battle of the Martian Gates had the advantage of being relatively sudden, but the marines and sailors on Eros knew they were going into a meat grinder and as a result the physical and psychological effects upon revive had been far more pronounced.

She was also glad to see that her idea of comingling the soldiers from both sides of the conflict was paying off. At first the heavily outnumbered Alliance patients felt too angry and fearful to accept any help, but already in this, her third such session, she was seeing quantifiable results. Her patients, in many
ways, were curing themselves. All she had to do was steer the tiller gently. There was even one couple who had convinced themselves they might have actually killed each other at the O’Brian Waterworks. Those two were now strangely inseparable. Neela wasn’t sure whether to encourage, discourage, or forbid that sort of interaction. But her gut told her that that odd outcome was exactly the sort of behavior she wanted. If she did nothing they’d probably end up married, which was what she believed in now—not the Alliance, not the Federation, just people living together, making babies.

As the session was ending, Neela heard a commotion down the hall in the common room. She walked out the door only to be caught up in a stream of patients heading in the direction of the noise. They were whispering excitedly to one another about someone, who exactly she couldn’t tell. As she moved down the hall with the growing crowd she heard the patients saying over and over, “It’s the captain,” or “The captain is here.” This threw her off. She was surrounded by captains, commodores, and even a few admirals, but she had never heard the designation used with such reverence.

When she got to the common room Neela saw that the patients had aligned themselves into disparate groups, most in the awe camp, with some clearly ambivalent but caught up in the moment nonetheless. It didn’t take her long to see the source of all the commotion. He was a small man, she saw, typical of merc officers. She could tell by the way he spoke to and addressed those around him that he was really listening, that the visit wasn’t one of platitudes and medal tossing but of caring and concern. This she saw was true for both the UHF and the few Alliance soldiers who braved the crowd to speak with him. Standing next to and almost a head taller than the captain was a handsome woman—
probably Terran,
thought Neela—with jet-black hair pulled tightly back in a bun. She, like the captain, wore a crisp and polished uniform. With the woman in tow the captain was making his way around the room, going from group to group. He was saluting or shaking hands with any who wanted, but Neela noticed that no one made an attempt to hug him. His disposition was such that an act as overtly emotional as a hug would not be acceptable. Still Neela would have bet her last dividend that he wouldn’t have objected had anyone bothered to try.

She muscled her way in closer. She wanted to hear what he had to say. As soon as she got within earshot she found out. He was thanking the patients for what they’d done and offering apologies for not having done a better job. In every case, noticed Neela, her patients had refused to accept it. Some of the patients he knew by name, and Neela was again struck by the obvious pride that that recognition had elicited.

Then it hit her. She knew who this man was. She knew his face, but it had seemed somehow smaller and more distorted on the holodisplay.

Her initial reaction was to be horrified that this ballyhoo was being accorded such a fiend. He was, after all, a man who’d callously thrown away thousands of lives—permanently—under his command. But she also saw that this was certainly not the uncaring officer depicted in the media, nor were the soldiers and patients around him terrified or kowtowing in any way. Their deference, she sensed, was real. At least more real than what she’d been spoon-fed by the UHF press. She decided to grab the bull by the horns and insinuated herself between the captain and the next group he was preparing to greet.

“You don’t seem nearly as sinister in person, Captain Trang,” she said.

“Funny,” he snapped back, “that’s exactly what I was going to say about you, Dr. Harper. But we can save the polemics for later, because in truth I’d like to thank you first.”

“For what?” asked Neela, surprised.

“For all them,” answered Trang, indicating the crowd and the hundreds of pairs of eyes now locked onto the two of them. “The spacers here,” he continued, “both Alliance and Federation, speak quite highly of you and all the work you’ve done to help them recover. I’m only sorry that this war has caused so much suffering and that you, like the rest of us here, seem to have been swallowed whole by it.”