Virtues of War (13 page)

She called up the day’s operational schedule. Of her three drop ships, one was in maintenance, one was being used for training, and one was on standby. No lift had been scheduled.

“We’ve got nothing planned,” she said. “Did they give you a movement order?”

“Uhh, no, ma’am.”

“Did you ask for one?”

His dull silence was answer enough. She’d already been wondering how she could put a positive spin on Huebner’s annual assessment.

He’s not very bright, but can lift heavy things.

“Tell them I’ll be right there.” She pushed back her chair and rounded the desk. Obligingly, he withdrew.

A glance at the rain on her window prompted her to reach for her combat jacket. Her hand froze in mid-motion, however, as her eyes fell upon her tunic hanging against the wall. She brushed her fingers on the qualification badges, one for Strike Officer and a second, smaller one for Fast Attack, and she reminded herself that most Terrans would never—
could
never—earn such qualifications.

She was part of an elite, and even if living within that elite made it seem routine, she reminded herself that it was exceptional. Below the badges were the newest additions to her uniform, to her career, to her life. Two medals. On the outside was the campaign medal for the recent troubles—known officially as the Colonial Uprising—with bars for Sirius and Centauria. Next to it, in the place of honor over her heart, was the Astral Star. The third-highest award for valor in the Terran military, it set her apart from her peers, declared her truly exceptional, even among the elite.

Yet it had earned her little more than a glance from her father, and it hadn’t prevented her being shipped off to an Astral backwater to rot while the doctors wrung their hands over her precious mental state.

Maybe those doctors should view the recordings from her helmet-cam. As she reached to pull the tunic from its hanger, she remembered the severed limbs of Centauri crew members floating in zero-g around her, of blood floating in ever-growing spherical globs around the smoky interior of the enemy battle cruiser as she and her three troopers blasted it apart from the inside.

The smoke began to move, sucked by the ominous wind that spoke of an uncontained breech in the hull. The hatch ahead opened for a moment. Bullets pinged off her armored spacesuit as Hernandez pushed her aside and returned fire. She burst through into the darkened space, firing her explosive rounds at the hidden Centauri crew. A bullet cracked off her faceplate. She tucked into a ball as she floated helplessly upward, more shots pinging her helmet.

Maybe those doctors should watch her helmet-cam as the deck exploded downward and revealed an APR robot staring back up at her. As she felt herself flung aside and watched as rockets smashed up into Hernandez, blowing his powerful body apart like scraps of meat. She scrambled along the top of the corridor in zero-g.

“APRs! APRs!” she screamed to Assad and Jackson, still trapped one deck below. “Get out of there!”

Maybe those fucking doctors should watch as Assad and Jackson were blasted to pieces by the Centauri war machines. Listen to the radio chatter as Sergeant Chang reported his own team’s casualties in the engine room. The smoke moved faster, riding the precious air out into the vacuum of space. Katja was cut off and alone. Ignoring Chang’s attempts to fight his way to her, she ordered him and his team to escape even while she followed the river of smoke through a buckled door and into a darkened, outer compartment.

The air pressure dropped outside her spacesuit. On her external audio she heard the frantic calls of enemy troops approaching. Only one way out. She pointed her rifle at the crack in the bulkhead and fired twice. The hull exploded outward and she felt the tidal wave of escaping air carry her forward. She crashed through the opening. Spinning stars, and then darkness.

Silence and darkness.

Silence and darkness.

* * *

“Ma’am?”

She opened her eyes, gaze darting around the dim, gray walls of her office. Rain pelted against the window. The air was still. The walls were stable. The tunic hung from her balled fist, soft fabric clutched between her fingers. She shook off the nightmare and took several deep, calming breaths.

“Ma’am?”

Huebner had reappeared.

Forcing her fingers to relax, she slipped the tunic on in a swift motion.

“Let’s deal with these Army idiots.”

The rain bounced high off the paved surface of the courtyard, breaking down into mud the long tracks of dirt that had fallen off the three dark-green armored vehicles that loomed in front of her. She stepped to the edge of the building’s canopy, just out of the rain but in clear sight of the dozen or so Army soldiers who stared down at her from their machines.

“Which one of you requested the lift?” she asked.

“That’d be me.” It was a man in the second vehicle. “I just need your drop ships for a couple of hours.”

“And you are?”

“Storm Banner Leader Ciotti.” He glared down at her.

Her stomach twisted in a knot. The same rank as her father, and a senior enlisted rank—but still enlisted. She was an officer, whether the Army recognized that or not.

“Well, Storm Banner Leader Ciotti, your command hasn’t sent any requests for Astral Force assistance. Do you have an urgent operational requirement?”

His glare took on a shade of contempt. He glanced at his watching soldiers, then climbed down from the vehicle. He was at least as tall as Huebner, and with his full combat gear could have blocked out the sun. He loomed over her, bare inches away. She fought the urge to step back and tilted her face up to meet his eye. Rain pelted her cheeks.

“You’re new here, Lieutenant.” He spat the rank. “And you don’t know how it works. We have a standing agreement with this station, upheld by your predecessor, where we can use the drop ships when we need them, without having to do all the paperwork. Now I suggest you start issuing orders to make that happen.”

She felt her face flushing, the rage suddenly welling up within her.

“The only order I’m issuing,” she forced herself to say, “is for you to take your vehicles and get out of my compound. If you’re still here in sixty seconds, I’m arresting you.”

Ciotti sneered. “You don’t have the stones, Princess.”

The cheap insult shouldn’t have phased her, but the next thing she knew her pistol was out and aimed at Ciotti’s face. Her hand was steady, finger on the trigger. Ciotti’s sneer vanished.

“Get back in your vehicle.” With vicious anticipation she willed him to disobey. It would be so sweet, and so justified under military law. “Get out of my compound. If you say any words other than ‘yes, ma’am,’ I will pull this trigger. Do you understand?”

He stared at her for a long moment, jaw clenched. There was clear comprehension in his gaze, but no fear that she could see. This probably wasn’t the first time he’d stared down the barrel of a gun—but it wasn’t the first time she’d aimed one either.

Finally he looked away and forced the words from his mouth.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He stepped back cautiously, turned and climbed slowly up his vehicle. A few quick orders and the Army machines whined to life and rolled away. Only then did Katja lower the pistol and holster it.

She kept her grip on the holster to stop her hand from shaking, fighting down sudden fear. Not of any loudmouth soldier, but of herself.

That an entire civilization could forget one of its greatest achievements seemed inconceivable. That the rulers of a civilization would purposefully hide such an achievement from their people, and
make
them forget, was horrifying.

As Kete slipped into his spacesuit, he thought about the explorers who reached this same area of space, more than six decades ago, in a craft that had been state-of-the-art for the time.

His sloop was fitted with all the luxury conveniences expected of a playboy. However, as a civilian craft it was woefully lacking in extra-dimensional technology. While many rich yacht owners demanded the most expensive gear and the navigation system was top-notch, he’d had to delve into the historical records to locate his target—the first jump gate.

It had always intrigued him that the jump gate—the greatest triumph of science over nature—was one of the most unimpressive sights to behold. Invisible save for a slight ripple of the background stars, it was like a tear in spacetime that folded over itself. Kete could understand anew the trepidation that those first explorers must have felt as they activated this first such miracle.

The first gate hadn’t even reached a tenth of the distance to Centauria, and before it could be employed, Terran adventurers had traveled at sublight speed for months in order to set up the opposite gate, sent the ready signal, then waited for months, on station in the deep blackness.

Where Kete sat now, a second ship had then entered the gate, hoping not to be obliterated. Both ships returned moments later, and the concept of the jump gate was proven viable. Subsequent missions had set up a line of jump gates, each four light-months apart, as new explorers pushed further and further into deep space, and finally crossed the vast gulf that lay between humankind’s first and second homes.

Years later, when the modern jump gates to all the “colonies” had been built, Terra had placed them far to the north of Sol, lined up together in order that all traffic could be monitored from the gargantuan Astral Base Five. The old jump-gate-lines had officially been deactivated due to their unstable nature. Yet here they were, forgotten, unmonitored but still very much active.

Kete had used them to make his secret entries and exits to Terran space—although the last time had been hairy, with that Astral Force Hawk pouncing on him as soon as he’d emerged into Terran space. Why “Eagle-One” had been in this corner of space he had no idea, but as he maneuvered his sloop on ultra-low power toward his designated coordinates, Kete couldn’t help but glance nervously at the starry backdrop for evidence of movement. He couldn’t afford to be picked off by a Terran sentry ship.

He couldn’t fail.
Not this close.

Floating across the spacious bridge of the sloop, Kete unlocked the dark-energy sensor he’d used for his past jumps. It was small enough to hold with one hand, and it connected easily to the power supply. He activated it, and within minutes it detected the faint but unmistakable signature of the old jump gate, the spacetime tunnel held open by tiny amounts of dark energy corralled by artificial initons.

Now came the hard part. He could operate safely to within two kilometers of the gate, but Kete had enough self-preservation instinct to keep a bit more distance between the old tear and the one he was about to cut open.

Not that he didn’t trust Centauri technology, but one didn’t just create a new jump gate every day. In fact, no one did.

Those early explorers may have been nervous before they jumped, but at least they’d had dozens of safety vessels standing by, and knew there was a sister ship waiting on the other end. Kete was on his own here, and he was going to jump more than ten times as far. Worse, he would be jumping into a gravity well. Abeona wasn’t that big a planet, but every schoolkid knew that jump gates were only stable in very flat spacetime. Not that he didn’t trust Centauri technology, he reminded himself, but this was insane.

My world is depending on me
, he reminded himself as he sealed his helmet and strapped into his seat. This test jump was only the first phase of getting gates closer to a planet’s surface. If it didn’t work then the whole plan was dead.

Locking his position at twenty kilometers from the old gate he launched the device that had been delivered to him after Valeria’s message. The U-shaped object was no bigger than his chair, and reflected the light of the distant sun as it drifted away from him. At first it remained inert, like a reddish horseshoe sailing in slow motion toward eternity.

Then, as he watched, it flickered with white light.

The stars beyond it began to wobble, shifting violently—just once—before returning to their original positions.

He looked down at his dark-energy sensor. Where before there had been one jump gate, now there were two. To his untrained eye the dark-energy signatures looked identical, except that the new one was larger and more clearly defined than the old. That, at least, was reassuring. And more important tactically, any normal sensor sweep wouldn’t distinguish that there were actually two gates now. The new gate was effectively hiding in the shadow of the old one.

Taking manual control of the sloop’s thrusters he pushed forward, aiming his sleek nose upward so that the horseshoe would pass just beneath him.

Nothing changed in the starscape, and only the gentle push of the chair against his suit hinted that he was moving at all.

The stars directly ahead suddenly rippled.

His entire body suddenly
stretched
, then he gasped at the smack of compression.

Abruptly the starscape was replaced by the massive, beautiful, green-blue orb of Abeona. Dozens of tiny dark shapes moved across the global backdrop, navigation lights blinking as they passed. The civilian radio squawked to life with a buzz of traffic.

Kete started breathing again. Then fought down the urge to vomit as relief flooded through him.

The jump gate had worked, and he was home.

Yet this wasn’t so much the home he’d always known. Even from this distance he could see the ugly black scars on the surface, left by concentrated Terran bombardment, and to the south his eyes were drawn to the sparkling dance of millions of broken fragments spreading out from three separate clouds into a thin, artificial ring around the planet. The wreckage of the mighty orbital stations that had so dramatically failed to stop the Terran attack.

Quickly he activated the sloop’s standard flight controls and scanned for any closing contacts. Before the system could even finish its first sweep, however, a familiar voice sounded through the secure radio routed to his helmet.

“
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?
”