The war had come home. Representing the might of more than a dozen star systems, the combined fleets of Bretonia and Liberty launched the first serious challenge to the Gallic Royal Navy’s ownership of Leeds, dozens of battleships setting the skies over the planet afire as machines and men alike died by droves.
That was five months ago.
Jane Hartman’s war was over. Crippled by an enigmatic enemy, her flagship little more than a few thousand tonnes of dead steel etching a long scar on an occupied world, she found herself fighting a very different sort of war in the wards of a naval hospital on Los Angeles. Assailed by smiling doctors, grim-faced psychologists, and a profound absence of actual duties, Hartman found solace in the presence of old memories and an old friend.
Reginald Lewis stood silent vigil over his superior and friend. The final conversation they’d had before marching to the war effort kept echoing in his mind, and seeing her broken like this evoked old, dark thoughts. Alternating between rage, tired resignation and weariness, he’d spent most of his time in the same Hospital as Hartman, recuperating from his own injuries which were not insignificant.
All wars left scars. Scars on worlds, scars on flesh, and scars on souls. Time would repair the first, medicine the second, but for Hartman and Lewis the key to the last lay buried five months in the past.
More accurately, she heard noises. Noises that shifted and flowed from moment to moment like water down a river, drifting over and around the ringing in her ears. The deep, hungry rumble of aircraft turbines, steadily rising in pitch until they slipped from her hearing. Condors, whispered some fragment of her that was still clinging to consciousness. She ignored it. Screams rose in a demonic chorus to fill the silence, though whether they were men or machines she could not have said. Could not have cared.
Every breath hurt. Every inhalation sent spasms of pain arching across her chest, her arms, her back, as though her body was being dragged, time and again, through a meat grinder. Her head pounded like a drum, like her brain was trying to push its way out through her eyes. She felt a jolt, a shudder, as the aircraft struggled into the air.
Each jerking movement sent another lightning bolt of agony through her, and the pain flashed white-hot in the darkness of her mind. She whimpered and bleated through gritted teeth and behind closed eyes like a child, like a wounded animal. Perhaps she cried, but the blood pooling over her eyelids made it impossible to tell. Blood pooled on her back, behind her head, over her eyes, down her leg, clinging and warm in the night air. Someone had pressed a mask over her face, but every gasping breath she took was heavy with the sickly, metallic smell of it.
Something shuddered beneath her, and suddenly, blissfully, darkness took her. The last thing Hartman knew was the taste of blood on her tongue.
*
Herbert Beeler Naval Hospital, City of Medford, Los Angeles
+148 Days Since Planetfall.
Patient S062 (Grade A-2, service number NF-403198) floated in endless darkness.
Her heart pulsed lethargically in her chest, neurons fired, and time flowed like molasses, thick and slow. Occasionally voices drifted across her silent mind, ghosts through a graveyard, but she barely heard them and what she did hear was nothing but noise, forgotten as soon as it occurred.
Amid the ocean of silence there were waves of noise, light, pain. A shifting, rolling, pounding in her skull like a swarm of fist-sized insects searching for an exit. Shrieking computers, monitors screeching steadily faster, higher, demented birds pushing out their last breaths. Glimpsed walls the colour of ice, uniforms that blurred and shifted as she watched them, questions she could barely hear and rarely answer and then, inevitably, a dull numbness spreading up her arm as the darkness washed over her again.
This time was different.
Touch was the first to return, slowly and hesitantly, like an old lover drifting across an empty room. There was something beneath her, soft cotton made warm by long physical contact. Her body was nothing but a gentle numbness, the sensation of something, but nothing specific. It was like trying to draw with a cotton bud, all vague lines and uncertain textures. She had the rough impression of restraints cuffing her wrists, her ankles, a tightness in her arms and a cool, dull sensation in her stomach and side that shifted when she breathed.
Hearing slowly drifted to prominence, the same steady beat of a digital tone, pulsing in her time with her heart. A scratching, bleating alarm like a warship’s depressurisation warning scaled back to a fraction of the volume, rang in her ears. S062 felt the beginnings of panic flutter in her chest, heard the tone change pace to match.
Attack. Her brain supplied, struggling like an decrepit archivist with the weight of the revelation. The alarm meant they were under attack. The ship was losing atmosphere.
S062 tried to scramble for her sidearm but her arms stubbornly refused to co-operate, twitching and turning in their restraints. The movement sent a pinprick of pain through her arm, so she stopped.
Slowly, over the course of what felt like an age, S062 opened her eyes. The ship was dark, lit by a single length of strip lighting directly overhead, and her room was more spacious than staterooms usually were. Glacier-white walls skulked all around her and a viewscreen on the far wall showed a starlit park, frost gathering on vacant tables and chairs. She rolled her head to one side and felt something shifting against her scalp. A squat cylinder, hanging by a wire, dropped into the corner of her vision. She ignored it.
The depressurisation alarm rang on.
Someone was sprawled in a chair next to her bed. Lying, her head came about level with his chest. A cap with the distinctive silver star of the Liberty Navy had been shoved unceremoniously under the cheap plastic chair. The gray speckled combat uniform made her vision swim, so she let her half-closed eyes drift across the sea of gray and blue until they settled on a name tag. After a dizzying moment, the letters consolidated themselves into a word: Lewis.
“Lewis.” S062’s voice came out dry and weak, slurring her words like a drunk that had spent the last six months wandering a desert. She gathered a breath and tried again, barely more than a hoarse whisper. “Lewis. The alarms. Where’s my gun?”
Lewis started awake, dark bags under his eyes a testament to sleepless nights and days spent worrying. He blinked, looking confused. “What alar-Oh.” Realization set in. “We’re in a hospital, Jane.” He rubbed his forehead tiredly, forcing a smile. “Welcome back.”
“We’re under attack, Lewis. I need my gun.” Hartman roved her eyes around the room, too tired to move her head again. Behind her, the alarm rattled on. Her voice was low and urgent. “I need these things out, get them out. Get them out.” Her vision drifted down towards the tubes hanging from her arms and side like giant, parasitic leeches. “Need to get out. The air…”
Lewis put a hand to his ear, murmuring quietly for a moment. After a terse exchange, he nodded in affirmation and walked closer to Hartman, until his face was directly over hers. “We’re not under attack, Jane. Look at me,” He said quietly, remembering the nurses’ briefing. After this long spent in a medically induced coma, she’ll likely not realize where she is, and may hallucinate. If that happens, call a nurse immediately and keep her stable.
He held one of her hands in his, grimacing at how pale and frail her forearm looked in comparison to his. “We’re safe now,” He said, nodding firmly.
“The air…” Hartman repeated, her voice little more than a whisper. Then, slowly, something like realisation dawned in her drug-dilated eyes. Lewis looked more exhausted than she ever remembered seeing him, dark bags hung under sincere brown eyes, eyes you could wander in, but his uniform was still carefully pressed, hair cut short. Relief rushed through her, vague memories of flashing barrels and the reek of cordite, and a thin hand tightened around Lewis’. “Lewis. Oh, God. Lewis. You’re alive.
I thought-” A shudder ran through her, a soft croak that cut the word off halfway, replaced it with a sob. Relief, joy, and confusion mingled in her gut, and Hartman wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. Her hand shook in a way that had nothing to do with the restraints, and she took another shuddering breath as the tears began to roll down her face. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to reach up and hold him, something steady, something dependable, in a world where nothing was making sense, but her arms were tied, her head too heavy.
“God, where are we?” Her eyes drifted down her body, taking in the tubes, the restraints, the screech of the monitor. Almost silently, despair creeping in with the tears, she added. “What happened to me?”
Lewis patted her hand gently. “Don’t worry about it. You did good.” His smile was genuine. You saved my life, Jane.“I’ll be here. Take some rest.” He gently released her hand as a harried looking male nurse walked into the room, all-business.
“Okay.” Hartman nodded, the slow, trusting nod of a small child as the nurse shepherded Lewis from the room, tears drying on her face. “Okay.”
She was asleep again before the door closed behind him.
Herbert Beeler Naval Hospital, City of Medford, Los Angeles
+153 Days Since Planetfall.
”We’ll finish with the basics, ma’am.” The doctor didn’t look like a naval officer. He wore his black hair shaggy, complete with sideburns that would never pass an inspection. Instead of a uniform, he wore a red and grey chequered shirt, complete with pinstripe tie and name tag identifying him as Ray. The end result was enough to make Hartman’s head spin. She focused on the wall behind him instead. ”Can you please tell me your name, rank, and serial number?”
”Is this really necessary?” Hartman hated how slurred her voice sounded. Like a drunk, lying twitching in the gutter. ”Someone’s already asked me today.”
That got her a note. The doctor glanced down at his datapad, fingers dancing across the surface. Patient remains uncooperative, no doubt. Hartman was trying to cooperate, but damned if her patience didn’t have limits. The doctor’s gaze was sympathetic. Hartman hated him for it. ”The last time I spoke to you was last week, ma’am. Four days ago. Do you remember the vision tests?”
”Yes. Sorry, I remember.” Hartman nodded, smiled as if it were nothing, and didn’t remember a thing. She couldn’t remember seeing this man before today in her life, but she was very quickly learning that her memory, like her body, couldn’t be trusted with even the most routine tasks. It had taken her twenty minutes to sit up that morning. ”With the charts?” She guessed.
”Yes, ma’am. With the charts.” There was a moment’s silence before the doctor prompted her again. ”Your name, rank, and serial number, ma’am?”
”It’s service number, not serial number.” Funny, the details she could remember.
”Even so, ma’am.” The doctor said.
”Admiral Hartman, NF dash four oh three one nine eight.” Hartman recited. Whose idea had it been to hire civilians to staff a naval hospital? ”Do you want my flight school results too?”
The doctor jotted down another note. ”Your full name please, ma’am.”
”Hah.” Hartman snorted. The whole charade was ridiculous. She was a flag officer, and apparently the best thing they had to do was put her in a bed and throw questions at her that a two year old would have laughed out of the room. She opened her mouth to speak, and only then realised that her mind was as blank as slate. Her name had been there. She knew her name, for Christ’s sake. But when she tried to call it up she drew nothing but emptiness. ”I’m -. My name is -”
The doctor sat, that damnable sympathy in his eyes, and made another note.
Hartman swore, balled her fists beneath the blanket. It shouldn’t have been like that. Her mind shouldn’t just be empty all of a sudden. She knew her own name.
”Jane.” The doctor said softly, glanced up at a noise from the door. ”Your name is Jane Eliza Hartman. We’ll leave it there for today, I can see you’ve got a guest.”
The doctor stood, tugged the creases out of his shirt, tucked the room’s one plastic chair back into the corner, and stepped towards the door.
”Wait.” Hartman interrupted. The doctor paused halfway to the door. ”When can I go back?”
”Back where?” The doctor asked, half-smile on his face as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
”You know where I mean. Back on duty. Back with the fleet.”
”Back on duty?” The doctor glanced down at his datapad, avoided her eyes. ”It’s still early days, ma’am, and your injuries were, are, significant. Hard to say if you can go back.”
”I’m going back.” Hartman stated, iron in her voice.
”Yes ma’am.” The doctor didn’t sound convinced. ”Yes, I’m sure you are.”
The checkered shirt left the room. Hartman watched him go.
*
High Planetary Orbit, Leeds System
+6 Days Since Planetfall.
The warm air blowing through Glenbrook’s vents still carried the acidic smell of overheated equipment and cut metal. Footsteps reverberated through the hull of the troopship, the steady, crisp beats of the ship’s crew mingling with the staggering footfalls of the walking wounded. Somewhere, Hartman heard a scream, trailing off to an anguished sob that hung in the air for the space of a heartbeat before the wounded sailor lapsed into silence.
She flicked on the bathroom tap, splashed her face, and tried to wipe the exhaustion from her eyes. Dark rings hung under her eyes, lending her face the same mottled pattern as her grey and white BDUs. If nothing else, at least it was consistent. Regimental. Admiral’s stars rested on her collar, metal bright against the fabric. They still felt like they belonged to someone else, to some other scar-faced woman in the mirror. An infantrywoman’s instinctive fear of brass got damn disconcerting when you were the brass. A shudder ran through the ship, metal and composite panels groaning in unison with the thrusters. Hartman ignored it. After a day of intermittent maneuvers, it was just more background noise.
Propped up next to the sink, her datapad blinked at her. Hartman cut off the flow of water, wiped the moisture from her face, and answered it. The screen filled with the image of a frazzled-looking serviceman, the harsh lighting of the CiC silhouetting him like a halo. ”Admiral Hartman. You asked to be informed when the last of the Woodmoor survivors were transferred.”
”Thank you.” Hartman gave a curt nod. Until two days ago, Woodmoor had been a siege cruiser attached to Davie’s First Fleet. The cruiser had strayed too far from its assigned orbit and drifted into range of a gallic ground-to-space battery. Since then it had been nothing more than a few hundred thousand tonnes of scrap metal trapped in a decaying orbit. Damage control efforts by the crew had been called off when the ship’s life support failed, and the Tenth Fleet had been called in to handle the evacuation. Seemed to be all she was doing now. Coming in after the battle to clean up the mess. Hartman didn’t feel like a commander in the largest fleet in modern history. She felt like a janitor with a troopship instead of a broom. ”Tell the Captain I’ll be in the CiC in five.”
”Aye aye, ma’am.” The CiC cut the connection. Hartman straightened her uniform, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the ship’s hallways.
Glendale’s passages were scattered with a handful of enlisted personnel officers. More than the troopship had seen since deploying its marine contingent, but still far from enough to make the big ship seem full, or even properly inhabited. The members of Woodmoor’s crew that hadn’t merited an infirmary visit would be below decks, slowly seeping into the marine’s abandoned quarters. Sailors stepped aside as she passed, mentally counting the hatchways to the bridge.
Before the war Glendale had been a merchant hauler and, despite the Navy’s hasty modifications, the ship still felt more civilian than military. Railings and handholds, essential for a transport not willing to splash out the credits on artificial gravity, lined the walls and ceiling and retracted handholds clicked on the floor beneath her boots. The military retrofit had left them in, just in case, but had covered everything with a flexible gray and light-blue foam to prevent them killing anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the hallways during maneuvering. Windows, a luxury unique to civilian craft, had been ripped out and armored over. Hartman was grateful for that. It might have been an illusion, but it made the ship feel just a little more secure. Unless they had the luck of the damned, Glendale’s crew only saw vacuum through the ship’s displays.
Nothing more than a converted cargo compartment close to the centre of the ship, the CiC was the same chaotic mix of hardware. Civilian damage-control consoles that were old before Hartman was born sat alongside cutting-edge fire control banks and sensor arrays. Acceleration chairs sat bolted on long rails securing them to the floor. Uniformed enlisted and officers alike sat strapped to their chairs, typing at their displays, tossing commands and acknowledgements back and forth across the room. If not for the exposed ducts creeping across the walls and ceiling like insidious steel vines, Hartman could have been aboard any warship in the fleet.
Michael Ellis, Glendale’s Commanding Officer, was deep in conversation with a marine Lieutenant, both pausing now and then to glance toward the datapad in Ellis’ hand. Razor-thin and clean-shaven, with wide eyes that made him look perpetually shocked, Ellis looked like someone had taken a teenager and stretched him until he fitted into his uniform. Hartman nodded to Ellis and called up her display, fixed to the observer’s seat. ”When you’re done, Lieutenant Commander.”
Ships flashed into position on her screen, Tenth Fleet in blue, the remainder of the Libertonian fleet in green, and the Gallic fleet, biding their time out beyond Leed’s orbit, in red. Glendale sat among a cluster of three other ships, literally within spitting distance. Woodmoor, the crippled siege cruiser was alongside, fixed to the troopship by a pair of airlocks, and held secure by the two Hercules-class heavy lifters assigned to the fleet. It was the intermittent bursts of their engines that sent shudders through both larger ships.
The rest of the 10th hung in geostationary clusters over contested areas of the planet. Bison-class landers and gunboats hung over their respective landing zones, watching for any munitions lobbed at their troops from out beyond orbit. Cloverfield; however, dominated approaches to the Liberty-occupied segments of the planet, the dreadnought floating above the landing zones like a small, heavily-armed moon. Occasionally, her display marked a new course as the warship flung a round down the gravity well to smash some hostile installation, or knock out a tank identified by troops on the ground.
Sophisticated as Cloverfield’s sensors were, the perpetual smog that shrouded Leeds blinded them as surely as any human. Like the rest of the fleet, Cloverfield was utterly dependent on the marines for target acquisition. A few billion credits of hardware reduced to utter insignificance by a cloud. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been her people dying down there. Further afield Brighton, a militarised refinery ship, skimmed the cloud around the Magellan jumphole for raw materials to keep the fleet moving, fighter escort nothing more than an icon on her display.
”Ma’am.” Ellis raised a hand in salute, still red-faced from his discussion with the marine. Hartman returned it. The junior officer shook his head, raked a hand across his forehead. ”Woodmoor’s CO has been asking when he can expect a new command. He’s sending my marines up now to ask on his behalf.”
”What did you tell him?” Hartman asked.
”That he can take it up with fleet command, ma’am.” Ellis shrugged, glanced guiltily at the stars on her collar. ”Sorry.”
”So I should expect a visit from an irate siege cruiser commander? I’ll pencil him in for next Thursday.” Hartman turned back toward the display, made a mental note to pull up the name of Woodmore’s CO. She tried, and failed, to grasp the colossal arrogance required to ask for a new command less than an hour after being dragged from the wreck of your former one. ”How long until we push away?”
”Seabees are shutting down the reactor now. We should be okay to go in twenty minutes.” Ellis said. ”We’ve got an extra ninety eight hands aboard, but it’s nothing compared to the marines we had on the way over. I’ve got a few people raiding Woodmore’s supply bunkers to top us off, but even without that we’ve got more than enough to handle the numbers.”
”I’ll contact the Fleet Admiral, see about reassigning them. They shouldn’t be your problem for too long, Lieutenant Commander.” Hartman exhaled, tapped her screen, and called up another report. ”Woodmore had a hundred and twelve on records. How many dead have we retrieved?”
Ellis shifted a little. He tried to pretend otherwise, but Hartman knew it was his first command. Ships weren’t the only ones the Navy was throwing, untested, into combat. The concept of deaths in combat was still a new one to him. It fitted her like an old coat. Hartman wasn’t sure which of them that reflected better on. ”Nine fatalities, ma’am. They’re strapped down in the number four hold.”
”Depressurised?”Glendale and her escorts were a long way from home, and the campaign was a long way from finished. The last thing Hartman needed was disease spreading through the ship. Cold, perhaps, but infinitely preferable to losing a dozen crewmen to illness. If one person got sick in the cramped confines of a starship everyone got sick.
”Yes ma’am.” Ellis nodded.
”Let me know when medical gets them ID’d.” Hartman paused, considered. ”Disregard that. I’ll reassign that report.”Woodmore’s commanding officer could tell her the names of the dead. Best case scenario, it gave him some time to think on what command meant. Worst case, it kept him out of her hair a little while longer. ”Advise the crew that we’re pushing away in half an hour. Northview’s due to -”
”Admiral, Brighton’s escorts are reporting contact.” The comms watch reported, a trace of panic in her voice. ”Gallic bomber wing, ma’am.”
”How far out are they?” Hartman called up the ship’s sensor data, was rewarded with a handful of flickering red dots encircling Brighton and her escorts. The big refinery ship drifted through a field of red, the blue of her own fighters dancing around over and around the crimson. The gallic signatures shifted and turned as she watched, changing position from one second to the next, far beyond the agility any craft that small should have had. Stealth ships.
”Comm delay’s twenty minutes, ma’am.” There was fear in her voice.
Hartman forced herself to breathe, to release her hands from the display controls. What she was watching had already happened twenty minutes ago. The light from the attack only now reaching the rest of the fleet. Whatever was going to happen to Brighton had already happened. Forty minutes delay between sending a message to the assailed group and getting a response. There was no order she could send that wouldn’t arrive so late it was meaningless, if there was even anyone left to receive it. Frustration curled in her stomach, and Hartman fought down the sudden urge to hit the display. The fighter escort was intended to head off hostiles before they closed to engagement range, give the auxiliary a chance to power its shield and engines, not fight a battle right on top of the ship they were supposed to be escorting. Cloaks changed all the normal rules.
”Holy shi-.” The servicewoman quickly corrected herself. ”We’ve got two fast movers.”
A pair of new courses flashed into existence on her screen, torpedoes streaking their way away across the intervening space towards Brighton. The ships that launched them might be messing with Glendale’s sensors, but the plasma trails of the torpedoes glowed on her screen like tiny suns. Hartman gritted her teeth and watched the screen, waiting for the retaliatory flash of Brighton’s guns.
Nothing. The auxiliary didn’t even fire its thrusters. There was no reassuring flicker of blue on her display, no power spike as the weapons armed. Then, with all the shocking finality of a guillotine dropping, the auxiliary’s shields dropped. Not faded, not shot, not burnt out. Just dropped, like someone flicking a switch.
The first torpedo smacked into the unshielded hull, then the second, and the ship vanished from her sensors in a sea of radiation. If Glendale had windows, she would have been able to see the flash.
”They got Brighton, ma’am.” The comms watch didn’t sound afraid any more. Just stunned. Hartman could sympathise. The whole engagement, from the moment the ships appeared to the instant the torpedoes impacted, couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds. Brighton’s fighter escort was chasing down the bombers, harassing them, but the Gauls were steadily pulling away.
Glendale’s CiC was silent. Uncertain faces glanced up from their displays, looked at Hartman. Waiting for orders. Hartman exhaled. What orders did you give, when the enemy came and went like a predator in the night, took one of your ships from a field that should have been beyond their reach?
”Contact the other auxiliaries, tell them I want them and their escorts back in orbit with the rest of the fleet as soon as possible.” Hartman said. ”Brighton’s escorts are to stay with the bombers as long as they can, prevent them from cloaking and going after the fleet again.”
”We’re retreating, ma’am?” Ellis sounded like she’d just suggested he load himself into a torpedo tube and launch at the Gallics.
”We’ve got enough raw materials between the other auxiliaries and Glendale to last us for now.” Hartman shot the troopship’s CO a look that could have pierced armor plating. Enough expendables and materials to handle one or two fleet engagements, enough to manufacture ammunition for the fleet. As long as she didn’t lose any more refineries. ”We’re not risking the other two auxiliaries until we know what we’re dealing with here. In the meantime, I want a copy of that engagement log sent down to intelligence and one to my datapad.”
”Aye aye, ma’am. Er-.” The comms watch paused, frowned at her screen, and tapped the outline of Brighton’s escorts. ”Hostile bombers have broken contact. Looks like they cloaked again. 6 Flight’s reporting three of their ships damaged and one hostile kill.”
”Can they make it back?” Hartman asked.
”They didn’t say they couldn’t, ma’am. Those bombers were slinging a lot of EMP around, so it’s probably computer malfunction.” Comms’ display beeped, a second message. ”Correction, ma’am. That wasn’t a hostile kill. 6 Flight’s reporting one Gaul pod recovered.”
A captive. Hartman allowed herself a thin smile. Perhaps there was some justice in the world.
”Belay that last order. 22 Wing’s to rendezvous with 6 Flight and make sure they get back in one piece. Fighters are to sweep Brighton for survivors on the way back through, if they haven’t already.” 22 Wing were one of a handful of gunboat squadrons assigned to Hartman’s command. Short of sending out a siege cruiser or pulling Cloverfield out of orbit, the Defiants were the heaviest combatants in the 10th. ”Then I want that prisoner transferred to Glendale’s intelligence section. Perhaps they’ll have some answers for us.”
*
Herbert Beeler Naval Hospital, City of Medford, Los Angeles
+153 Days Since Planetfall.
Reginald Lewis sighed and leaned back in his chair. The plastic alloy did not yield, so the movement was not comfortable. He was visiting Jane again, it had become a ritual. He’d taken up lodgings at Fort McCreary on the planet as well. On most days, he’d spend a few hours sitting by her bedside. Most days, she was too weak to talk, so Lewis kept her updated on the goings-on in the Navy. He carefully steered clear of news that’d upset her, such as the loss of San Diego Border Control to the Gallic counter-offensive, and how all their efforts had basically amounted to little.
Today, things seemed to be different. He’d found Jane agitated for some reason that she would not tell, and after a few minutes of silence, began recounting the events that had led them here. Lewis thought about changing the topic, but something told him she needed to get it off her chest. So he sat, and listened. It clearly took a lot out of her, her voice was croaky and a far cry from the firm tone that she’d used both on-duty and off duty.
Her recollections were spotty, but unblemished and to the point. Being on the ground during the Leeds Offensive, all of this was news to him. Brighton’s destruction and the situation surrounding it raised all sorts of alarm bells in his head, but this was hardly the place for a tactical reanalysis. Instead, he nodded and waited.
”I should’ve seen it then.” Hartman croaked. ”But I was too focused on the small-picture stuff. Woodmore wasn’t the first ship we lost. Mount Rainer got hit by three Valors on the day of the landings. Wasn’t much left for us to clean up.”
Eventually, she seemed to drift back to the present, dragged her mind away from wrecked starships. ”Thanks for visiting, Lewis. I know you’ve got better things to do then wait around listening to me. How’s the Fleet?”
”The best thing I can do right now is be here. No arguments on that point.” He paused, thinking about what news to tell her. ”We’re holding up. A bit battered and sore, perhaps...but we aren’t down for the count yet.”
Lewis smiled faintly, remembering something. ”Mehndi nearly got court-martialed.”
A frown creased Hartman’s forehead. ”Who’s Mehndi again?”
Lewis sighed. ”Never mind. Tell me, how’re you feeling?”
”Honestly?” Hartman shrugged, her right shoulder barely moving. ”Not a whole lot. The doctors are saying that most of the physical damage had time to heal while… While I was asleep. They’re saying it’s all connections now. Like replacing a disk. They repaired most of the wiring but the data’s still gone. I’m pretty much learning to use this side again.” She jerked her head to her right. ”I’ve bullied them into letting me try walk in a week. All in all, I’ve had worse. Not by much, though. What about you? Someone mentioned you spent some time in here too.”
Lewis nodded slowly. ”The..thing we fought, it didn’t let me off lightly either. Thankfully, the armor suit is tough...I got lucky, really. Not much more to be said about it.”
”You’re good at your job, Lewis. Don’t go pilin’ it all on the hardware.” Hartman yawned. ”Sorry. Don’t have a pencil and paper, do you?”
Lewis raised an eyebrow. ”Don’t have any on me, but I could get ‘em. What do you need it for?”
”You’re a great officer, Lewis, but you’d make a crap Sergeant. Didn’t you ever get ‘a good NCO always carries a pen?’” Hartman gave a thin smile. ”I’d like to write down what happens here. Keep track of things. Feel like it’d help.”
Lewis smiled. ”We have datapads now. Sure, I’ll get those. Anything else you need?”
”I guess a line posting isn't on the list?” Hartman asked.
”Not in the near future, no,” Lewis replied. ”You’ve earned the rest anyways, lady. Stay put so I can have one less thing to worry about.”
”You think I don’t worry about who’s watching your ass out there?” Hartman glanced back at the window. ”I know. I just hating lying here, watching it all happening. I read Lambert’s report. You’re going to need people out there who know what they’re doing.”
”So be it.” Lewis said firmly. ”Until you’re well again, I won’t hear any talk of you worrying about us.” He smiled faintly. ”And once you’re good to go, I’ll bust you out of here even if I need a SEAL team to do it. You have a promise to keep.”
”And I thought you’d forgotten.” Hartman gave a genuine smile. ”I’ll hold you to that.”
”Besides, it just doesn’t feel right without a pair of eyes boring into my ass.” Lewis got up and patted her hand. ”I’ll be back soon. Take care.”
”You too.” Hartman watched him go. Lewis limped a little as he walked, favouring one side. Hartman wasn’t watching the limp.
Herbert Beeler Naval Hospital, City of Medford, Los Angeles
+161 Days Since Planetfall.
”That’ll do just fine, thank you.” Hartman stopped, leaning against the glacier-white walls of her room, and peeled the orderly’s arm out from under her shoulders. A slow burning pain pulsed along the scars on her shoulder and back in time with her heart, but it wasn’t so bad that she let it show. Held against months of numb reverie on a Herbert Beeler hospital bed, the pain was almost welcome. Pain meant that she was alive. Pain meant that she was moving again, that she was acting instead of watching. It might never have been pleasant, but Hartman knew how to deal with pain.
”Alright, Miss Hartman. Is there any pain? How are you feeling?” The orderly was polite, but the doubt in her voice couldn’t have been obvious if someone had stencilled the word on his forehead. She was a young woman, about her height, and evidently descended from somewhere nature had built human beings like mountains. Prior to her hospital stay Hartman had never been scrawny, but even when she had been a marine at the height of her fitness she would have been a lightweight next to the blue-and-white uniformed woman. She’d wrapped an arm under Hartman’s shoulders and supported most of the older woman’s weight on the slow stagger across the room with barely a blink.
”None.” Hartman shifted her position on the wall, took a little more of the weight off her legs. She didn’t need to look at them to see they were shaking with the effort. Pathetic. She kept the grimace from her face. ”And it’s Admiral.”
”Pardon me, miss?” Her voice was low and soft, something more appropriate to animals and small children.
”I’m not miss. I have a rank.” Hartman growled. How many times had she had this conversation since her eyes had flickered open? Holes in her memory or not, it felt as though she was on a loop. Remembering a rank wasn’t hard. It was on the sheet at the end of her bed, for Christ’s sake. ”Worked hard for it, and I’d appreciate it if you used it.”
”Oh.” The orderly staggered a little, but recovered remarkably quickly. Half a second later and the pleasant, empty, meaningless little smile common to put-upon employees everywhere slid over her features. ”I’m sorry. Of course, Admiral.”
She reached out a hand and opened the bathroom door. ”The bag’s a twist nozzle, so all you need to do is sit down like normal and twirl the –”
Hartman stared at him. The orderly shifted a little and gave a half-cough.
”- nozzle.” Her head bobbed a jerky nod in the direction of the open door. ”Clockwise.”
”Thank you.”God preserve me from well-meaning hospital staff. She was wounded, not dead. Wearing the bag was bad enough without the help of the walking how-to guide. ”How long do I have to keep this for?”
”It’s just until you’re walking steadily again, Admiral.” The woman’s tone was apologetic, but there was an undercurrent of iron to the statement. Not his first unhappy patient, then. Maybe she could start a club. ”We had to fit the catheter while you were under. Otherwise you’d be sleeping in a heap of your own -”
”I’m aware, thank you. Don’t need to paint a picture for me.” That was one mental image she didn’t want to add to the gallery. The orderly gave a grin that Hartman was reasonably certain qualified as sadistic.
”Shouldn’t be more than a week or two.” She gave that same apologetic shrug. ”The surgeons have had their hands full lately.”
”Outstanding.” Hartman breathed. Two weeks with this thing hanging off her. It was a profoundly uncomfortable thought, and her disapproval was about as likely to change it as it was to flip the planet’s orbit. She might as well have wished for her fleet back while she was at it, for all the good it would do.
One step at a time.
Hartman closed her eyes, exhaled and, inch by inch, slowly pushed her weight off the wall and back on to her legs. There was no pain, but she was precisely aware of the sensation of weight on her limbs. It felt like she was carrying a hiking pack instead of a thin hospital gown. She staggered into the bathroom and closed the door in the smiling orderly’s face.
A week or two.
*
High Planetary Orbit, Leeds System
+10 Days Since Planetfall.
All considered, Glendale’s intelligence section could have been worse. They would have to have been banging rocks together and trying to get strategic information off the sparks, but Hartman supposed that it was technically possible.
The troopship’s intelligence section was housed in what had been a pair of passenger quarters but now looked like the wreckage of a particularly electrically minded smart bomb. The interior dividing wall had been cut out, and more light blue crash foam had been hopelessly pressed into the gaps where the new rooms joined like an ancient surgeon gluing a wound closed. Conduit snaked across the ceiling, feeding a pair of old civilian-grade workstations, screens faded almost to illegibility under the glare of the strip lighting nestled into the ceiling. Two grim faced servicemen hunched over the desks, engrossed with their screens.
”He’s about as co-operative as we could hope for.” Lieutenant Sellers gave an apologetic shrug, honey blond bun bobbing in time with the motion. The intelligence officer was young for her posting, probably no older than twenty, but that wasn’t unusual in the Tenth. The Fleet had called up damn near everyone they could get on a shuttle on short notice, and the sheer scale of the mobilisation had jostled the young and untested a couple of rungs further up the chain than the peacetime navy would have seen as prudent.
And for good reason. A foreign front was not a place you wanted to start fighting out just what cracks people broke along. The posting wasn’t Seller’s fault, but that didn’t mean that Hartman had to like it.
Sellers trotted over to the table and scooped up a datapad. ”Which isn’t saying a whole lot, ma’am. He’s given us a name, rank, serial number, and not a word else. He’s been in there for five hours and hasn’t so much as asked for a glass of water. Smart man. He knows we can see in to his head.”
The petite intelligence officer gave a predatory grin and handed the pad to Hartman. It showed a young man in a Royal Navy uniform, slouched in a room with little more than three cheap plastic chairs and a table bolted to the floor between them. Strapped to his head was what looked like an ancient infantry helmet. He could have been sleeping, but for the pad’s steady insistence that his brain was lighting up like a firework. Hartman tapped the pad and the feed swapped to a camera directly overhead. Tapped it again, and it gave her a view of the room from the door. ”Impressive, Lieutenant. How many angles are there on this thing?”
”There are three hundred and six cameras in the room with him, ma’am. Counting IR and non-visual. Pressure sensors on the chair and the floor too.” Sellers was practically glowing with pride. She tapped a finger at the helmet. ”The monitor’s chunkier than I would have liked, but we made it work.”
”I thought the fleet had phased those out ten years back.” Hartman said.
”They did.” Sellers spared the room a vaguely apologetic glance. ”Most warships have the monitoring hardware built into the interrogation cells now. Harder for the captive to damage it that way. Too many rogues smashing their heads into the table and breaking the equipment.”
”But Glendale isn’t a warship, Lieutenant?” Hartman’s eyebrow inched up. Like she’d needed another reminder.
Sellers shifted uneasily. ”Yes, I mean- No, ma’am. Not like Missouri is. We make do. It’s not as tough as the integral versions, but the MPs trussed him up tight enough that he shouldn’t be able to do any damage.”
”And it can tell us when he’s lying?”
”When he thinks he’s lying, ma’am.” Sellers corrected. ”The system doesn’t read minds. Just physiological clues. Brain activity, pupil dilation, small facial twitches that a human would miss. That sort of thing. There are certain physical tells when someone lies. They’re not universal, but enough of them are common enough that everyone has some. It’s enough to give us a general read on his emotions and tip us off on deliberate falsehood. As long as the monitor’s there, he can’t lie to us any more than he can turn his brain off.”
”How is he holding up?” Hartman asked.
”Right now?” Sellers took the datapad from her and glanced at the readout. ”Not a whole lot of change since we bought him in. Calm, heartbeat’s steady.”
”You sound impressed.”
”I am.” Sellers nodded. ”The Gallics know their stuff. Rogues are usually starting to panic now. Even the military’s not usually this good. I ran a few interrogations back in Texas when we caught a BDM U-Boat. Nice and collected on the outside, but still panicky emotionally. No-one wants to be captured, no matter how well they’re trained.” She gave an appreciative whistle, which Hartman severed with a glare. ”Sorry, ma’am. It’s impressive. The man’s as cold as ice. It’s like he honestly doesn’t care that he’s sitting in a cell.”
”Is he drugged?” Physical control was one thing. To be picked up and dropped in a cell without so much as a ripple on the emotional pond was borderline sociopathic.
”No ma’am.” One of the analysts, a middle-aged petty officer with a creased uniform and once-broken nose, spoke up. ”Coral Sea took samples immediately after taking the prisoner on board. Sick bay ran a second round of tests when we took custody. He’s as clean as a newborn. Hell, cleaner. No combat stims, no painkillers. Nothing.”
A hint of trepidation laid icy fingers on Hartman’s spine. Stims were a standard part of space combat. Even with dampners, the lightening-quick changes in acceleration fighters experienced should have been more than capable of knocking a pilot senseless without the drugs. ”Was he conscious when 22 retrieved the pod?”
Sellers nodded. ”Yes ma’am.”
”Did the ship that kept him conscious?” Hartman asked. ”What do we know about Gallic dampners?”
”Possible, but not likely, ma’am. We don’t have a complete database on the Cougar, but if it’s built along the same lines as the Lynx-class, acceleration tolerance shouldn’t be too far away from our birds.” Sellers shifted a little. ”They could have been fitted with extra hardware, but manoeuvring didn’t seem to suffer when 22 engaged, which tells me that whatever they had on board wasn’t substantially different from the standard loadout.”
”I see.” Hartman added another unanswered question to the steadily growing list. ”Brighton was a long way out of the combat area. What do we know about how they got there?”
”Not a whole lot.” Sellers’s brow creased with remembered frustration. ”Looked like a cloak, but if it was it’s way more advanced than anything we’ve got. The nearest ship they could have been based from was halfway across the solar system. There’s no way anything on our side could manage the flight cloaked without stopping to dump heat.”
”Which we should have seen.”
”Which we should have seen.” Sellers nodded. ”You can’t hide a ship forever. Either Gallic cloaking technology makes our active camouflage look like a tin of paint and a twig, or they were already in the field when Brighton arrived.”
Hartman paused. Fighting the Gallics was hard enough already without believing that they outstripped her forces technologically as well. ”You think they had a carrier in the area.”
”It’s just conjecture, but it’s the best explanation I’ve come up with, ma’am. A carrier could stay cloaked a lot longer than a bomber could. That close to the Magellan jump point, it could leave the system when it needed to vent heat without us ever seeing it.” Sellers said. ”It would be easier if we’d been able to recover his ship, but…”
”But we’ll take what we can get. I know.” Hartman finished. The strategy made a certain degree of sense. Keep a handful of ships back, behind the enemy’s combatants, and use them to rip apart the support elements the fleet depended on to keep fighting. Sooner or later, the enemy ran out of fuel, food, or ammunition, and you could waltz in and mop up the pieces. The Gallics didn’t need to fight the Fleet to win. All they had to do was cut the supply lines and wait.
There was one man on the ship who could tell her how to stop them. ”I’ll speak to our guest now, Lieutenant.”
”Of course.” Sellers collected an earpiece from the table and nodded. ”If you’ll put this in and follow me, ma’am.”
Inch-high letters on the corridor outside identified the room as ENG WORKSHOP #02. If Glendale’s converted interrogation cell retained any other relics of its former purpose, Hartman couldn’t see them.
The Gallic pilot was the only person inside the cramped room. Two empty chairs sat opposite him, across an unmarked composite table. The Gallic was resting, helmeted head settled awkwardly on the table, slumped as far forward in the chair as his bindings permitted. Faded acne scars pockmarked what Hartman could see of his face, and his brown hair had grown out beyond reg. No surprises there. Prisoners didn’t get issued razors. He had the knife-thin build of a lifelong runner, and there was an ugly bend to his nose where it rested on the table, as though it had been broken long ago and never set right. Combined with the creased uniform and the scraggly beard, it made him look older than the twenty-one years Seller’s file flagged him at.
If Seller’s voice in her ear had not said otherwise, Hartman would have thought he was sleeping. Thick straps snaked around his ankles and wrists, fastening him to the metal and plastic frame of the chair. Glendale’s marines had not been gentle with their restraints. Red lines creased the prisoner’s wrists around the straps, and the back of his neck bore a pair of ugly purple bruises that Hartman recognised from a dozen ejection drills. He didn’t stir when Hartman sealed the hatch behind her.
Clusters of surveillance equipment hung from the walls and ceiling like electronic wasps’ nests, lenses that were at least twice as large as they needed to be fixing dozens of unblinking eyes on the Gallic. Wherever Hartman looked her eyes found another camera, lens glinting like a sniper’s scope. It was a distinctly unnerving sensation, and Hartman had a sudden inkling of how a fly caught in a web must have felt, trapped under a legion of eyes.
The only illumination came from the strip lighting in the ceiling, dialled a few increments brighter than any sane person would have found comfortable. How the Gallic maintained even the illusion of sleep under it was a mystery all by itself. Hartman added it to her rapidly-growing list.
”Lieutenant Plourde.” Hartman settled into one of the chairs opposite the Gallic. The discordant grind of metal on metal drifted through the room as she slid the chair under the table. ”My name is Admiral Hartman. Your squadron killed one of my ships four days ago.”
It was not an accusation. Only a statement of fact. The Gallic did not move.
”I know that you’re awake, Lieutenant, and I’m fully aware that you can understand every word I’m saying.” Hartman said. ”I’m also aware of the carrier your squadron used to hit my transports.”
That got a response. Plourde slid into apparent wakefulness with entirely more grace than his situation warranted and fixed her with the lazy stare that of a theatregoer that had seen the movie before and hadn’t liked it the first time. His eyes were the colour of polished sapphire, the sort of piercing blue that drew modelling agencies and casting teams like flies to honey. If there hadn’t been a war, it would have been easy to imagine those eyes showing up on vids. The nap was a good act, and without Seller’s all-knowing commentary Hartman would have probably believed it. He raised a single eyebrow, and when he spoke it was in the crisp, unaccented tone of an academic speaker. Someone who’d learned the language without ever hearing it spoken. ”Lieutenant Michael Plourde, la Marine Royale, M954371.”
Hartman continued as though he hadn’t spoken. ”And, as of two days ago, so is the rest of the First Fleet. Third Battlecruiser squadron’s already en-route. They’ll be matching orbit with the Magellan jumphole in a little over sixty hours.”
Plourde’s chin bobbed in a fractional nod. An acknowledgement of her words without a jot of agreement implied.
”Lieutenant, when they get there they’ll find that carrier.” It was a lie so blatant Hartman had to wonder if the Gallic wouldn’t pick up on it. Davies didn’t have ships to spare on a hunch but, right now, the lie was the best she had. ”Granted, they might not find it immediately. Your boys have been playing possum since the fleet arrived, haven’t you? Gotten good at it too. So, I figure, six hours, maybe eight, after they arrive before the battlecruisers pull together enough data to get a fix on that ship. Longer if no-one gets twitchy and tries to run. But they know what they’re looking for. They’ll find it.”
The Gallic’s shoulders rose and fell in what would have been a shrug if his hands hadn’t been secured to the chair. Instead, it was more a suggestion of motion than the thing itself. ”Lieutenant-”
”I know your rank. I’m not here to interrogate you, so you can stop acting as though I am. If I wanted to hear you talk fleet intelligence would’ve had you spilling your guts before I finished my morning coffee.” Another lie. Torture had faded from military intelligence’s toolbox centuries ago, when the ancient precursors of Seller’s lie detectors rolled off the production lines. There was no sentimentality behind the decision. Information gained under torture was about as reliable as asking your own intelligence section, and several orders of magnitude messier. The tortured tended to repeat whatever it was they thought you wanted to hear, and damn the truth of the thing. That hadn’t stopped several organisations without access to military-grade equipment trying it anyway, and SERE was still a dreaded part of any would-be pilot’s course. A sharp knife appealed to something universal in the human psyche. ”I’m here to offer you a deal.”
”And, if we were to entertain the possibility that there was anything at all to be gained from making a deal with you, what would that be?” The tone of his voice didn’t waver from polite, tired, indifference. A party guest whose speech was as much a part of the furnishings as the wallpaper. If Hartman had closed her eyes, she wouldn’t have heard a thing in it to suggest that he was doing anything other than making conversation.
”I figure this goes one of three ways. One, someone on that carrier sees the battlecruisers and gets nervous. Hits the thrust and tries to run. Shows up on every sensor in the fleet doing it. If they’re not carrying a lot of excess mass, they make it a quarter, maybe a third, of the way back to your fleet before the battlecruisers get them in range.” Hartman said. It wasn’t a fair fight, even as a hypothetical. The fleet’s battlecruisers were like hunting dogs; bred to chase down and kill anything slow enough for them to catch, and a stealthed-up carrier, the bastardised result of a hundred compromises to heat management and fuel efficiency, sure fit that definition. ”Then our ships open up and everyone on that carrier dies. Ship like that, running that far from home, I figure most of your mass is going to be life support and internal sinks to keep that cloak going. Not much left over for armour and guns, and sure as hell not enough to stand up to one battlecruiser in a fight. I’ve got three.
”Option two.” Hartman raised a finger. ”Your friends out there hold their nerve. No-one gets twitchy, no-one runs. They just sit there, sucking up air and fuel and watching the temperature creep up. Somehow, the battlecruisers miss them, and it’s all right dandy for them until they have to dump heat. If they do, my ships pick it up, and we’re right back at scenario one. Or they get heroic and keep holding their breath until the life support gives out altogether. Either way, we’re back at ‘everyone dies’ and I still find that ship in a few days when the systems overheat.
“Three.” Hartman let the finger drop. ”You tell me where that ship is and how she’s laid out, and I send a boarding team instead of the battlecruisers. They go in ballistic, radar-absorbent pods. No-one on that carrier knows a thing until they start knocking on the hull, and my people are in the CiC before anyone gets to the armoury. I’m not going to lie to you, maybe a couple of folks get unlucky, try to shoot back. Maybe they catch a few bullets. Fewer casualties than a battlecruiser’d cause. End result, I still get that carrier off my back, and most of your friends’ll be spending the rest of the war alive in a camp instead of sucking vacuum. You might even get to see them again.”
”This is your idea of a negotiation?” The Gallic almost laughed. Hartman expected to hear nerves behind it, but the sound was genuine. That was almost as jarring as the smile on his face. ”Tell you what you want to know or everyone dies?”
”Sure looks that way.” Hartman forced a shrug. Taking the ship intact would have been preferable. Would’ve meant a shot at pulling the Royal Navy’s encryption keys off the computer, and that was the sort of thing that turned the tide of wars. But beyond that, Hartman was a little surprised to find that she meant every word. She didn’t hate the Gallics, didn’t want them dead any more than she did anyone who put themselves between the Navy and its objectives, but the thought of blasting that ship to ash didn’t discomfort her any more than the notion of capturing it whole. If it happened, it happened. She wouldn’t lose sleep either way. ”However it happens, that carrier’s off the board. Doesn’t matter to me whether we do that with a boarding team or a warhead.”
”Do you honestly believe that we would give you that information, even if the squadron had it?” Plourde’s smirk hadn’t shifted. It was the sort of expression a teacher wore while explaining the concept of personal space to some particularly dense child.
”That’s the notion, yes.” Hartman matched his tone. Calm, conversational even. Old friends discussing the deaths of a few hundred people half a solar system away. That it was all bluff didn’t do a thing to change the absurdity of it. ”Think about it. You change your mind in the next forty eight hours, you let intelligence know. That’s our window. I’ll have the ship post a countdown to your cell. After that, that ship’s scrap.” She let the silence gather for a long minute, until it was almost a physical presence. The Gallic didn’t break it. Finally, Hartman glanced towards the cell wall.
”We’re done, Lieutenant.” She turned to the closest wall-mounted lens and nodded to Sellers. The intelligence officer was a room over, watching the feed. An acknowledgement crackled in her earpiece a moment later, and she heard boots moving in the hallway outside.
”Do you know what we think, Admiral?” Plourde was still smiling to himself, as though at some private joke. ”You’re full of sh-t. You’re full of sh-t, and you’re scared. You don’t have a clue where the carrier is. You wouldn’t risk talking to us if you did. You don’t even know if it exists. We can hit your ships whenever and wherever we like, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. And that scares you.”
He leant forward a degree, half a dozen bindings groaning in protest. ”It should. Just like it scares her. ” The gallic paused, eyes lingering on the cameras. ”She thinks you’re all going to die. Smart woman.”
Plourde gave the hatch behind her a knowing nod. Half a second later, the steel slid aside with a cheerful ring that was as out of place as a balloon at a morgue, and Plourde slid back into his seat like a snake retreating to its burrow. Sellers stepped into the room, a pair of armed marines at her side. The honey-blonde officer didn’t speak until they were both out of the cell – Hartman found she couldn’t think of it as the workshop any longer – and halfway back to the intelligence section.
”Well.” Sellers ventured. ”That could have gone worse.”
Herbert Beeler Naval Hospital, City of Medford, Los Angeles
+173 Days Since Planetfall.
They let her watch the news now. Under careful supervision, of course.
None of it was good. Hartman shifted against the chair, slid her back up another few inches against the cushions, and thumbed the datapad closed. The viewscreen on the wall traced the lazy passage of the midday sun across the wire and plastic furniture of the hospital yard. The clock on the screen said one thirty, but the display may as well have been written in German. Her head was a hive of dates and events that had about as much meaning to her as an entertainment vid. Without the time lag between them, they were just words on a screen, as fleeting and illusionary as the pixels that formed them.
Royal Flush had failed. The aftermath had devolved into a political slaughterhouse back home, and an army of media-sponsored armchair generals had dissected and publicly critiqued every poor decision that had contributed to the campaign’s failure long before the last of Davies’ warships limped back into friendly space. Naturally, that list of errors had included the DoD’s choice of fleet commanders. They were calling it the worst military defeat since the Eighty Years War. Of the five fleets that had set out for Leeds, the ships that came back were enough to field maybe two. Casualties were still being tallied, but the estimates were in the hundreds of thousands. Hartman was almost relieved when they didn’t let her view the names.
The government had copped the worst of the public backlash, but some of the resentment had trickled down to the fleet. Liberty had been fighting in space since before she was born, but no-one had fought an honest-to-God ground war since the colonies were founded. Certainly, the houses had planned for one – every major power still maintained a sizeable land army – but they were deterrents. The big guard dog you kept in full view, just to make sure the neighbour didn’t think about jumping the fence. No-one had actually expected to use them. But they had, and suddenly there were a hell of a lot of injured veterans who needed someplace to go.
Naval hospitals hadn’t coped with the tide of wounded, and a handful of civilian installations had been nationalised to deal with the overflow. Civilians without the cash to hold a place got kicked out of beds and to the back of waiting lists. A swarm of unlicensed clinics had sprung up on the borders to suck credits from the resulting tide of desperate evictees. By the time law enforcement came knocking they were gone again, swallowed by the churn. Maybe some were genuinely trying to do the right thing, but a hell of a lot were just happy empty their patient’s accounts, medical care be damned. A lot of dead people, and not all of them wearing uniforms.
The blame had shifted to the navy. There had been three retaliatory attacks on servicemen on the streets of Houston. One vet dead, two muggers with broken bones and brain damage. Public outcry was inevitable, and the LPI had come down hard. The Gallic counteroffensive, when it came, was almost a relief.
The assault on San Diego border station hadn’t been much more than a probing attack compared to the Leeds offensive. Three dreadnoughts and supporting ships, up against the ragged remnants of Davies’ First Fleet. The fleet’d lost that one too, but the incursion had galvanised public support in a way Royal Flush had failed too. The enemy was in Libertonian space now, and just because they hadn’t pushed the advance yet didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen. The protests had quietly died off and, when the dust had finally settled, the old man was still in the chair.
Academically, she knew all of that. It still didn’t make it feel real.
”How have you been sleeping?" The psychiatrist was a fatherly commander in grey and white BDUs, a lattice of wrinkles under his eyes that put him somewhere north of sixty. He wore the trappings of age well, testament to a life lived rather than one on the brink of decline. Apparently he’d been some bigwig back in Fort Bragg, before he’d been shipped out to Medford to help deal with all the wounds the hospital staff couldn’t. The weekly evaluations were just another part of her routine now. Each was a stepping stone towards active duty, so she smiled and tolerated the recycled questions and professional platitudes.
”Same as last week, Commander." Hartman tried for a shrug. Draper’s eyes narrowed fractionally at the use of rank. The psych liked his interviews informal, Hartman preferred hers with the comforting insulation offered by the chain of command. She was the Admiral, so they used rank. Small victories. ”More than I’d like and less than the doctors say I need to."
”I see." A stylus scratched across a pad. ”Are you having any strange dreams?"
”The usual nightmare." Hartman’s lip curled in distaste. The questions were just a formality. She was wired in to medical monitoring equipment twelve hours a day. There wasn’t a lie she could have told that wouldn’t have been outed by her own traitorous physiology. ”Dark room, lot of casualties. Kinetics bouncing off the walls. Can’t see a thing except muzzle flash. I’m suited up, but the power’s dead and there ain’t a damned thing I can do except stand there listening to the screams and waiting for my turn to die."
”Okay." The stylus touched the pad again. A checkbox, maybe. There was nothing in Draper’s voice except gentle understanding. ”And how long have you been having these nightmares for?"
”Almost since I enlisted." Hartman said. She’d had this conversation before. ”Fourteen, fifteen years now."
”Have you ever been prescribed medication for them?" Draper glanced down at his pad. He already knew. The Navy didn’t forget things like that, but he wanted to know if she had. If she was the sort of person who’d lie to preserve her career. Just like every other psychologist in the fleet. Here they were, different dancers skating through the same old routine.
”I was issued pills after the incident. Stayed on them for the full course, maybe two years. Regular psych evaluation, physical rehab, I did the whole treatment. Most of us did." It should have been a long time ago. Practically, it was a long time ago. Still, it felt more recent than the events in the newsfeeds. ”Got the all clear from the Corps before I rotated out."
”Which incident would that be?"
”We’re not doing this again, Commander. It’s on record." Hartman’s fingers drummed an impatient beat on the bed’s railing. Draper looked up at her expectantly, an eternity passed, and Hartman caved to the inevitable. ”]Black Rock."
Draper nodded, made a note, and set the pad down. They were back in familiar territory now, and he knew it. Can you tell me about any other nightmares?"
”No. It was always the same one. Still is."
”The nightmares were still troubling you when you discharged." Draper gave a vague wave towards the hospital ”Why did you re-enlist?"
”Met a few old friends. They convinced me it was where I needed to be." Remus Sius, now on indefinite psych leave. Jimmy Patterson, now missing in action. Old friends that had slipped out of her life so quietly she’d never noticed them fading until they were gone.
”The Fleet’s family, and a lot of folk got a lot worse out of Black Rock than bad dreams. I was lucky, for me it never got worse than the dreams." She didn’t meet Draper’s eyes. ”I’m not about to kill myself, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’ve been managing it for fifteen years. I’ll keep managing it, Commander. "
Draper said nothing, but he picked up his pad and scratched another line.
*
High Planetary Orbit, Leeds System
+14 Days Since Planetfall.
”Enemy forces have launched counterattacks at Beggar’s Ridge, here," A pale red dot flashed into existence on the map suspended over Hartman’s desk in time with the General’s voice. ”And Point Channel, here."
Glendale’s fleet briefing room was tiny, a square of floor space that Hartman honestly suspected had been a closet before the transport had been militarised. The room was barely adequate to fit her desk and chair, and leaving meant carefully tucking in the chair and either squeezing herself against the desk until her ribs ached or clambering atop it to get enough clearance to swing the hatch open. Neither was a particularly dignified position for a flag officer. It didn’t help that, with the briefing software powered down, the room had no lights of its own. Some software safeguard had stalwartly refused to let her use the room’s floor-to-ceiling projectors for light until she closed the exterior hatch; so, not only did she have to climb over furniture to attend a briefing, but she had to do it in pitch darkness. Not for the first time, Hartman wished she’d had the sense to turn down the transfer to logistics.
It wasn’t so bad once she was in place. The room’s systems linked into Glendale’s subspace relay, and it let her converse with the other fleet commanders aboard their own relay-equipped flagships in a fashion that bore some passing resemblance to a real-time conversation. Projectors hidden in the roof above her painted an unerringly accurate picture of the fleet brass, stretching out her tiny desk until it seemed to span several feet in either direction, eight linked desks, each occupied by another senior officer. Provided she resisted the urge to stretch out her legs and ignored the half-second lag between asking a question and the flash of recognition, the illusion of a real-world conference was flawless.
”Captain Britton’s company repulsed two attacks on Beggar’s Ridge, at 0300 and 1300 hours, and enemy fire has been strictly indirect since the last assault. Our spotters expect to have co-ordinates for anti-battery fire from Cloverfield within the hour." Brigadier General Amos Mandela stood behind his desk, arms locked at ease behind him and voice steady. Mandela was the only marine hooked into the meeting, and the only officer without the privilege of a subspace relay. This early in the campaign, a relay on the surface wasn’t much more than a massive ranging point for hostile indirect. Instead, his transmissions had to make the long climb up the gravity well at lightspeed, and from there to her where they could piggyback onto Glendale’s systems. ”We lost contact with the Channel garrison at 1425, last report indicated they’d been engaged by enemy infantry in platoon strength. B Company has been dispatched to retake the Point, with 2 Squadron providing CAS. I have every confidence that our forces will be back in control by this time tomorrow, sir."
Mandela nodded to the Fleet Admiral. Like everything else about the General it was sharp, professional, and dog-tired. Mandela’s marines were two weeks in to fighting a war against an entrenched enemy on a world where prolonged exposure to the air alone was enough to kill you. It said something about the environments the marines expected to operate in that the Corps database classified a smog ball like Leeds as ‘hospitable.’
”However; if we’re unable to retake the Point, I’d prefer to see it a pile of rubble than in Gallic hands. The Bowex offices in Wilkinson were housed in a skyscraper that’s still holding together." Mandela paused, as though the implication was obvious. He received blank stares from a roomful of flag officers. The marine didn’t quite sigh, but it was in his eyes. ”Short of deploying AOPs, that building’s the best spotter’s nest in the city. Without their satellites in orbit, the Gauls need the altitude to maintain communications. It’s a bigger loss to them than it is to us, sir."
”Thank you, General." Davies nodded, Fleet Admiral’s stars glinting on his collar. ”Admiral Hartman, can your people take care of that?"
”Yes, sir." Hartman jerked her attention away from the strategic map, Wilkinson city stretching out in a dozen shades of grey. Lewis was down there somewhere. She pushed the thought from her mind almost as soon as it occurred. ”I’ll have Cloverfield in position to drop rocks when the General makes his attack."
”Outstanding. I trust that will be satisfactory, General?" Davies statement wasn’t really a question, and Mandela knew it. The marine nodded his assent and returned to his seat, fatigue usurping interest in his eyes. He’d done his part. Anything else the fleet did was outside of his control and, as long as they controlled approaches to Leeds, irrelevant to the ground war. Hartman envied him that focus. Davies’ attention slid to the next officer in line. ”Now, Admiral Tobias, regarding those interceptors…"
Two hours passed in that cramped little room before Davies called an end to the briefing, and Hartman returned to her stateroom with cramps in her legs and enough work to make a fully-fledged shipyard weep. Mercifully, she’d missed the watch change, and she passed through Glendale’s rough-cut corridors with a minimum of startled salutes and accompanying ‘ma’am’s. She slumped to a seat in front of her terminal, closed the system’s borderline sadistic declaration that she had forty eight new messages, and set to work wading through the sea of reports and requests.
Two of the Third’s siege cruisers had suffered damage to their dampeners in engagements with Gallic screening patrols and were requesting assistance with the repairs. She assigned them both orbits alongside the landing pickets and sent notifications to the Bison’s commanding officers to prepare working parties. Jacobi’s CO was reporting a shortage of torpedoes for his bombers, Plymouth Rock was burning more than the system’s projected fuel allotment, and no fewer than four companies dirtside were requesting supply drops. Hartman sent materials where she could, ETAs where she couldn’t, and filed another half-dozen resupply requests with command that, by her reckoning, had about an eighty percent chance of arriving before her own stores ran low enough to limit manoeuvres.
Under ordinary circumstances keeping the fleets supplied would have been just about possible, but the enemies’ cloaking commerce raiders were wrecking merry havoc with her supply chains. Despite the best efforts of Lieutenant Seller’s intelligence section, their prisoner had kept his stony silence, and the enemy carrier had remained as invisible as it was deadly. She’d detached a flight of gunboats to escort transports from Magellan, but they couldn’t be everywhere, and every ship she pulled away from Leeds orbit increased the time it took to respond to fire support requests from the surface.
She could make do with the supplies coming in on the transports for now, but once the task force met real resistance and started chewing through munitions she’d have no choice but to send the refineries into the clouds deeper in-system, closer to contested space, if she wanted to keep the fleets operational. Which meant creating even bigger holes in the Leeds grid to escort them, which meant exposing the troops on the ground, and if Mandela’s force got blasted off the surface it wouldn’t matter how well supplied the ships in orbit were. They could all sit there with full magazines, link hands, and watch Troy burn together.
Hartman crinked her neck and tried to ignore the headache pulsing somewhere behind her eyes. Amber rows of figures continued their taunting dance across her stateroom terminal. The problem was simple enough. Davies had assembled the biggest fleet the Navy had ever seen and, for all its tremendous power, the fleet’s resupply network had never been designed to deal with that many ships that far from home simultaneously. It hadn’t needed to. The Liberty Navy was a defensive force, not an invasion fleet, and the idea of sustaining month-long multi-fleet manoeuvres without the support of local infrastructure simply hadn’t been a consideration until Gallia had shown up. Fleet command had press-ganged merchant haulers like Glendale left and right to fill the holes, but it wasn’t a long-term solution. If the fleet got involved in proper, consistent combat, instead of the probing attacks both sides were sticking to now, Hartman would only be able to plaster over the cracks for so long before the underlying rot showed through.
Largest fleet in recent history, and Hartman’s problem was that she didn’t have enough ships to feed it. Impossible was the word that came to mind, but that didn’t do a thing to change the fact it needed to be done. Impossible was what Admirals were for, and damned if she didn’t have her orders. She gave a humourless smile and returned her attention to the display. She was still there when Sellers’s voice crackled from datapad.
”I need to talk to you, ma’am. In private." There was no mistaking the strain in the intelligence officer’s voice. ”It’s about Brighton."
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