Virtues of War (6 page)

“Uhh, Viking-Two… Say again your status?”

“Viking-One, stand by. I think I’ve got something.”

The view revealed nothing in the ultraviolet. It was only when it reached microwaves that the mystery object emerged. Everywhere in the universe there is a background murmur of microwave radiation—a remnant of the Big Bang visible in all directions. Stars and other celestial objects outshine this backdrop, but only two things actually make the microwaves dim: the coldest of deep space debris, and spaceships trying to hide.

“Uhh, Viking-Two, roger… Jack, we’re getting a little low on time here. I suggest you start your search again down a bearing from you of one-seven mark zero-eight.”

Ignoring Stripes, Jack recorded the microwave image.

“This is Viking-Two, tally-ho, one viper bearing three-five mark zero-eight. No duff.”

“Say again?”

Jack repeated his report of a visual sighting, and forwarded the image to Stripes and
Kristiansand.

Several moments of silence followed on the circuit, but Jack was already rushing to gather more information on this mysterious ship he had spotted. He had little doubt that it was a ship. Although the microwave silhouette was fuzzy, there was no mistaking the symmetry of form found in man-made objects.

More than likely this man-made object was up to no good, considering how hard it was trying to hide itself. No EM emissions, no artificial gravity, no speed of note. This ship was moving in the brane, but it might as well have been a stealth ship, for its lack of signature. Civilian ships routinely blared across the full EM spectrum, and those with artificial gravity dug huge wells in spacetime. Even military ships maintained an ID beacon during peacetime.

Jack grinned.

Those Gaians could hunt their asteroids all they wanted. He’d just bagged himself a bad guy.

I
t took an hour to ensure that the strike pods were re-powered and serviced, and to confirm that each of her troopers had stowed the gear properly, secured their weapons, and made the appropriate ammo-free declarations.

Katja took direct control of the evolution, carefully inspecting half of the assault rifles before they were locked up. She personally surveyed each pod for damage that might compromise its hull integrity. She even double-checked the emergency supplies.

Eventually, however, there was nothing left to check. Her troopers and their ships were ready for the next strike. Finally, she ordered Chang to get himself cleaned up.

He floated ahead of her in the passageway, the other troopers already dismissed. His broad, dark face was unreadable as usual, but she saw that he was looking at her with an expression she hadn’t seen before.

“Ma’am, do you want to do a debrief?”

The very thought made her stomach turn. “Not yet, Sergeant. Give the troopers some time to unwind.”

“Yes, ma’am. But do
you
want to do a debrief?”

She suddenly felt like punching him. Her suit was very hot, and she was close to throwing up.

“What the fuck did I just say, Sergeant!”

Chang nodded, but continued to look at her in that odd way. “Yes, ma’am.”

She turned herself awkwardly, then pushed off down the passageway to her own cabin.

The door slid open. Breeze was still in her spacesuit, helmet floating within arm’s reach. She was just beginning to strip down to her coveralls, and looked up as Katja entered, her face severe.

“Hey, Ops,” she said. “Congratulations on avoiding friendly casualties.”

If this was Breeze trying to be nice, Katja wasn’t in the mood. “Thanks.”

She floated past her cabin mate, fiddling with her suit controls. Breeze was squeezing her spacesuit down to fit it back into the warbag clipped to her belt. She seemed to notice Katja’s trouble.

“Do you want me to get someone to help you with that?”

Katja waved her away, and tapped again at her controls. Finally, the uncouple command took. With a soft hiss her suit cracked open and she began to worm herself out. Breeze said something while Katja still had her head inside the suit. When she emerged she looked into the hard eyes of her cabin mate.

“Did you say something?”

“Yeah,” Breeze said, her glare scathing. “I asked if you had a good interrogation.”

Katja felt her temperature rising again. “Not really, no. I don’t have any additional intelligence to report.”

“I hope not, considering you didn’t do anything with the intelligence you had.”

“What?”

Breeze crossed her arms, her anger clear.

“I don’t appreciate risking my life—or the lives of our field operatives—for a complete waste of time.” Before Katja could respond, she continued. “Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to gather intelligence on Cerberus? Do you have any idea how long it took us to find leads like we had today?”

“And I suppose you just expected us to waltz in and find the Centauri sitting at a picnic table cleaning the weapons?” Katja grabbed the edge of the bunk to steady herself, squeezing hard. “If you don’t like how we conduct strikes, then pick up a rifle and join us on the ground next time.”

Breeze rolled her eyes.

“Any monkey can go down and start shooting up the place,” she replied. “We actually had a location for a fucking Centauri agent! And you couldn’t be bothered to search the place before you started shooting the locals.”

“This isn’t training, Breeze,” Katja gritted. “Real shit goes down. It gets messy.”

“Not as messy as it’s going to get for our operatives. They’re going to have to go underground, and we’ll have to start all over again!” Breeze collected her helmet and attached it to her belt, along with her other warbags.

Nor as messy, Katja knew, as her punching Breeze in the face, either, which was perilously close to happening. The last thing she needed right now was a lecture from a staff weenie.

“Next time,” Breeze said, “I’ll have to give you more precise orders before you go down.”

“I don’t work for you.” Katja’s fists clenched.

Breeze stopped and stared.

“Actually, you do,” she said flatly. “I decide our missions based on Astral Intelligence. You carry them out according to my instructions.”

Katja felt her cheeks burn. “No. I decide our mission based on your reports. How I carry them out is between me and the captain.”

“Listen,” Breeze said, “when you’ve been working this star system as long as I have, we can discuss a sharing of responsibility.”

Katja gripped the bunk frame even tighter.

“When you have as much time in rank as I do, we can discuss your attitude.”

“Don’t confuse your seniority with my authority.” Breeze turned and floated toward the door, indicating that the conversation was at an end. “I have to get back on watch.”

Then Katja was alone in the cabin.

She looked down at the dark coveralls plastered against her body, and felt a new wave of nausea wash over her. She swallowed hard, pushed into the heads, peeled her clothes off as quickly as she could, and climbed into the narrow wash stall. A hot sponge was ready, as always, and she scrubbed furiously.

A few moments later, she looked down at her pink skin. It was scrubbed raw. Tiny water droplets floated around her in a thin mist. A vision of her target’s body, exploding through the doorframe, filled her mind. Then the blood that splashed against her armored leg as she executed that man on the ground.

Her guts contracted in white pain as bile burned up her throat and shot across the wash stall. It splattered against the smooth surface and ricocheted around her head. She hunched down under her hands, pulling her legs up as high as she could. Her stomach heaved again, but she curled tightly into a ball and controlled herself, taking deep, gasping breaths.

She floated in her tight ball for a while, resting. She might have cried, but not consciously. When she uncurled, she saw that the wash stall was filled with puke, and she sighed as she reached for the vacuum. Designed to scoop up any stray water droplets, it worked just as well for bodily fluids.

Taking some deep, calming breaths, she grabbed a fresh sponge and quickly patted herself down again. She toweled off and grabbed a new set of clothes.

It took a few minutes to stow her armored suit so that it would be easily accessible for the next time. This routine activity was soothing and she took her time, putting on some music to help free her mind.

She hooked in at her desk, and randomly picked up the framed image she always carried with her. It had been taken just a few months ago, when the whole family had gathered in Santa Fe for Mom’s birthday. Her niece and nephew had probably already changed since then. Her two brothers and her sister looked as they always did, and Mom had looked especially pretty that day.

Father, of course, never changed. Even though he was smiling in the image, Katja could see his dark, penetrating stare. He always looked at her that way, with that same mixture of disgust and curiosity. And, she hoped, some hidden pride.

She wondered what Storm Banner Leader Emmes would think of his daughter’s first operational strike on foreign soil. She frowned, because she already knew. He would lecture her again, using one of the many examples from his long career in the Terran Army, on how important it was to think under pressure, and not react on instinct, as she was so prone to do.

She felt a tear well up and quickly brushed it away. No doubt he would side with Breeze, and tell Katja what a fuck-up she was.

She could see her own reflection in the framed glass and almost laughed for having thought that it was a war face. That wasn’t the expression of a warrior, she told herself. It was the face of a scared little girl who was in over her head.

She put the photo back and pressed her fists against her forehead, trying to stop the flood of tears that were welling up. Sergeant Chang’s expression had probably been his way of hiding the disgust he felt for his new officer—but at least he’d had the courtesy to say nothing. Katja could only imagine what the rest of her troopers thought.

And what did Lieutenant Commander Kane think? Their quick exchange had revealed little of him, other than that he too had more experience as a warrior than she did.

She wiped her eyes. Allowing herself to be weak was not the answer. She hadn’t endured so many years of training and hardship just to crumple after her first mission.

Her fists clenched, focusing her anger. Fuck them all.

J
ack didn’t really understand why the line officers were always in such a foul mood. They outnumbered the other officers aboard
Kristiansand
, and had a complete monopoly on the chain of command. Fleet regulations required that everybody had to do what they said.

Nobody ever made movies about support officers—not that Jack blamed them. Supply and engineering really weren’t that sexy—and most of the Astral Force recruiting posters featured proud, noble line officers.

Jack just couldn’t figure out why they were so grouchy all the time.

As he lay in his rack in Club Sub, enjoying the last few moments of his rest period, he wondered if maybe they all just wished deep down that they were pilots. Everybody knew that pilot officer was the most difficult of the four trades to qualify for. Half the Astral Force were failed pilots, and the other half were wannabe-pilots.

At least that’s what he’d heard.

The soft hiss of the door caught his attention, and he heard one of his cabin mates step inside. Glancing at his chronometer, he realized that the morning watch was already over, and if he didn’t hurry he’d miss breakfast. Pushing aside his privacy panel, he slid off the rack and stepped down to the deck.

The air in the four-man cabin was stale—Club Sub, where the sublieutenants bunked down, wasn’t known for its high standard of cleanliness—and Jack wrinkled his nose slightly. The lights were still dim from the night routine, but as Jack reached for his washing kit, someone switched on the day lights, and he was blinded.

From behind his shielding hand, he shot a look at the other subbie who had just entered the cabin.

“A little warning, please,” he said.

“Oh, sorry, Jack,” came the sharp reply, “did I disturb your beauty sleep?” It was Ethan Kubrac.

“No, no. I was getting up anyway. It’s just easier on the eyes.”

Towel and wash kit in hand, Jack squinted in the harsh light. Ethan had seemed like a really nice guy at the start of the deployment, but like all line officers, he just seemed to get more pissy with each passing day.

Ethan sagged on his feet as he opened his locker, eyes heavy with dark bags. He didn’t even look at Jack, and started to go through the motions of slowly stripping off his gear. He looked terrible—Jack couldn’t remember seeing anyone look so bad since the mandatory summer of strike officer training he’d done after his first year at the College.

“Ethan, I gotta say—you look like crap.”

“Well, try standing a one-in-three watch routine for a few weeks, and see how you look, Jackass.” Ethan didn’t even look up as he spoke.

Jack frowned. He didn’t like that nickname. As he moved past Ethan and toward the heads and washplace, he recalled the expression he’d heard many times.
Line officers eat their young.
The few times he’d seen Ethan or Vijay being grilled on watch certainly backed up the expression.

As he turned on the water and climbed into the shower, Jack wondered if Ethan had come under particularly heavy fire from one of the senior line officers. As he showered and dressed, he thanked God that his aptitude tests hadn’t recommended him for the line. Suddenly, being ASW instead of a fighter pilot didn’t seem so bad.

* * *

The wardroom was a small but pleasant compartment forward in the ship. It was the social space for
Kristiansand
’s officers, with a conversational grouping of couches flanked by a dining table on one side and a bar on the other.

The bulkheads were dressed up with real wood paneling and both the bar and dining table sported a high polish, but there was only so much that could be done to disguise the fact that this was a spaceship compartment, when the deckhead was open to reveal cabling and piping. The furniture was comfortable but had that indefinable “government” look to it, and the carpet looked to be made from the same indestructible material that was used to coat stellar research probes.