The Actual War
“The best kind of fraud is the real damn thing.”
(Part 13 of “The Misfits” series)
It wasn’t what any of the crew had been expecting. Carolina had sent Transom and Sōsh down to Lime Harbor’s surface again to have a conversation with their adversaries—a group of Etteran soldiers who’d come to the dead colony to secure the bank they’d raided. After Sōsh and Transom had gotten the jump on them, the last thing Carolina had expected Transom to do was march them back up the space elevator in their underwear. He was demanding that Ren come out and run a body scan so he could bring them aboard the Yankee-Chaos.
“A word, Sebastian?” Carolina said, pinging his helmet.
“I’d rather not, Captain. Even unarmed in their base layer I’d prefer not to leave Sōsh covering two prisoners.”
“Exactly my point,” she replied. “You really want to bring them aboard the ship?”
“Yes. I do. Maícon can keep eyes on them at all times, and we can control the environment. I’ll put them in the airlock for now if it makes you more comfortable.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “I heard about that little stunt from Burch.”
“I wouldn’t do that to these two. It’s secure. Standby. Let’s discuss this face to face. Just send out the doctor, please. We’ve been known to embed subdermal tech and trackers in our ops teams. Tell Ren to bring out a portable scanner.”
There was a long silence. In the meantime, Transom took off his helmet to explain the situation to the two captives, who’d been exchanging curious looks while Transom was discussing the situation with the Captain over his helmet’s coms. On their end, they couldn’t hear either side of the conversation.
“We’re going to put you two in the airlock while I get this settled with the Captain,” Transom explained, “right after our doctor comes out and scans you. I’m not going to space you. It’s just to put the Captain’s mind at ease while we’re figuring out how to proceed.”
“We should take your word on that?” Fieldstone said, snorting a doubtful laugh.
“Actually, yeah,” Transom said. “You may not have any respect for me. That’s fine. You’ve got your reasons. Doesn’t mean I don’t respect you, Fields. If I were going to kill you, I’d look you in the eyes and do it right. I wouldn’t dump you out an airlock like a piece of garbage. Or the kid.”
“Thanks for that much,” the young female operator said, the sarcasm saturating her tone. She still hadn’t given them her codename or identity.
When Ren floated outside the ship and stepped onto the outer ring of the spaceport, she was visibly nervous. Transom pulled her aside to calm her nerves and give her a quick debriefing about the subdermal tech adjuncts Etterans used. The last thing they needed was one of their captives transmitting a trail of their whereabouts across the Indies while half the combat-worthy ships in the sector were looking for them.
“Everybody just go easy and we’ll all sit down and have a conversation,” Transom said. “This doesn’t have to be contentious.”
“He says after liquidating half our team,” Fieldstone remarked.
“We only marked two of you from orbit,” Sōsh said, his helmet still on. “We tried to draw you out so we didn’t have to kill any of you.”
“I’m sure it was all an accident,” the young woman said, her arms extended as Ren ran the scanner over her head and neck area. “An innocent misunderstanding, as killing your own usually is.”
Ren finished scanning both the Etterans, and Transom led the way toward the airlock, securing the two captives there for the time being while the ship got underway.
This time, rather than creeping out behind the arrowheads circling the star, Maícon jumped the ship out directly, heading for a random unoccupied stretch of space somewhere in the Indies where they could discuss next moves before setting a real course.
As soon as the ship was properly underway, Carolina called everyone to the atrium to discuss what should be done with their visitors.
Transom kept everyone waiting, pulling out an old flight suit of Leda’s and one of his own for Fieldstone, who looked shocked when Sebastian appeared with clothing for them. He looked doubly shocked when Transom asked Fieldstone if he could get them something to eat or drink. Fieldstone was so surprised he couldn’t come up with an answer.
“I promise you,” Sebastian said. “whatever you think this is, you’re going to be grateful you lived long enough to make it to the actual war, Fields. I know I am.”
Fields didn’t know what to make of that statement, but he was already struggling to process the six other ways Transom had wrecked his preconceived notions about how the infamous Etteran warrior was behaving.
Transom brought them both hot tea, water, and lunch. Then he joined the others in the atrium.
“I can’t think of a more dangerous course of action than bringing Etteran mercenaries aboard our ship right now,” Carolina said as Transom was strapping himself to the open chair at the foot of the atrium table.
“Agreed, boss,” Transom said. “That’s the thing. I don’t think they’re mercenaries. They’re a legit ops team on a signed mission. I brought the logs up, which I’m sure Maícon could open, but I’d like to try and convince Fields to open them for us.”
“What makes you think he would ever trust you?” Sōsh said. “No offense. But he didn’t seem too happy to see you, Sebastian.”
“I’m going to propose something radical here,” Transom said. “especially since we’ve spent the last two weeks or so trying to keep the truth from our allies. I think we should tell them the truth—read them in on it.”
The skepticism on Carolina’s face would have been visceral enough to speak for the group if Sōsh and Ren weren’t looking at each other just as doubtfully.
“I think that’s a bad idea,” Carolina said, making sure nobody’s body language was misinterpreted.
“The only thing we need to gamble is exactly what’s already on the line here, which is their lives,” Transom said. “I know none of you want to think about it, but there is a very narrow window of outcomes here where those two get off this ship alive. Let’s speak plainly here. We couldn’t leave them down there, and we can’t exactly drop this pair off at Eden now, can we? So if they don’t make themselves useful, we’re going to have to pull whatever intel we can from them and their gear and then I’ll end up killing them anyway.”
He could see Carolina and Ren gearing up to protest.
“No,” Transom said, heading them off, “sorry, but those are the stakes now. You chose to play this game, Captain, and now we have to play to win, because our enemies will be, especially if the game’s rigged the way I think it is.”
“What do we gain?” Sōsh said. “Even if we give you the benefit of the doubt that there’s nothing to lose here?”
“We gain Fieldstone. I can’t vouch for the girl. Odds are good she’s a far cry from Leda as an operator—half a galaxy away, most likely. But I can vouch for Fields. I never worked with him personally, but he’s of a generation of the hardest, deadliest, most efficient operators ever to draw breath in this universe. He’s bolts to his bones, man. We turn him, I guarantee we turn the girl too. Then, we’ve got an ops team, and nobody’s expecting that.”
“Phhuh,” Sōsh exhorted, letting out a doubtful sigh. “That is—”
“A reckless gamble,” Carolina said.
“Of course it’s a gamble,” Transom said. “Welcome to the war, Captain. You’re in it. There are no sure things here. You can trust intel sometimes, but I prefer to trust my instincts, and my instincts tell me the only reason we were able to catch that ops team down there with their pants down was that Fieldstone is tired and jaded. The rest of them drew off that energy; otherwise, we’d have had a fight down there. If we tell that prickly bastard what he’s really been fighting for over the last two decades of his life, we won’t have to tell him which way to point his rifle, the people on the wrong side of this fight will have a string of very bad days lining up ahead of them.”
“Even after we killed half his team?” Sōsh said.
“It’s two kids,” Transom said. “Balance that against the hundreds he’s lost under him in decades of fighting? For nothing? For a small number of assholes on that Lime Harbor ledger so they could rig the market on warbots? This is not some hotheaded kid we’re dealing with. This is Fieldstone. He can detach and think rationally about this.”
“Ask him why we need an ops team,” Sōsh said gesturing to Carolina. “Only follows that you have something in mind that the two of us couldn’t pull off, unless I’m missing something. Maybe a mission Etterans would be especially useful executing?”
“Do you have something specific in mind?” Carolina asked.
Transom crossed his arms and shrugged. “We’ll see. I have thoughts. We’d need Fieldstone’s buy-in, though.”
“There’s the issue,” Sōsh said.
“Believe me, I’m in no rush to dive into anything stupid,” Transom said. “But what we’re trying to do, it’s us versus the rest of the galaxy. We will be taking risks, and we will have to trust some people outside our orbit if we’re going to survive.”
“Maybe not the prisoners you march on board in their underwear and stuff in the airlock,” Ren said. “Just a thought.”
“Cute, doctor,” Transom said.
“You think you can make the case to him?” Carolina said. “Genuinely?”
“There’s a good chance of it,” Transom said, shrugging. “And if I don’t, I’ll just kill them both and we move on.”
Carolina sighed and shook her head. Ren looked disgusted, both by Transom’s frankness, and presumably, his comfort level both with the act and speaking about it so plainly.
“When you put it like that,” Carolina said, “I suppose we don’t have a lot of valid options now. Do your best please, Sebastian, and let me know what you need from the rest of us.”
“Space, I think,” Transom answered. “To an Etteran, even a dead traitor like me is more to be trusted than a ship full of foreigners, Dreesons, and prime AIs.”
Transom brought Fieldstone into the Atrium to talk with him, leaving the female operative in the airlock, another leverage point, perhaps, one he hoped would be moot after he briefed Fields.
“Everyone thought you were dead, Transom,” Fieldstone stated once they were both situated at the atrium table.
“So did I,” Sebastian answered. “Life’s funny. It’s even funnier when you realize the joke’s been on us our entire lives. All of us.”
Fields cast a doubtful look across the table at his fellow Etteran. “So you say. That joke so funny you feel justified failing to report back to the HC? Justified killing your own?”
“We thought you were mercenaries, Fields. Clearly, we wanted to talk; otherwise, you’d both be dead. As for checking in, first, I was just trying to get back on my feet. Then a few things happened that changed my perspective—opened my eyes. I’d just ask that you keep an open mind. And before I tell you everything we know, I’d suggest you start by asking yourself why the Etteran High Command would order an ops team to guard a closed bank in the Indies on an abandoned colony.”
“Who knows why they do what they do? That’s not our job to know.”
“Yeah, the grand strategy. What if the war is the end in itself? Ask yourself what the galaxy would look like if the powers that be wanted the war to continue indefinitely.”
Fields crossed his arms. “Enough with the hypotheticals. Just start talking or shut the hell up, will you, Transom?”
“The West Battery War is the longest, deadliest farce in the history of humanity, Fieldstone, and we’re all actors in it,” Sebastian pronounced.
Then he told fields about how the Yankee-Chaos started down the path to discovering that there were forces behind the war outside of Etterus and the Trasp Protectorate, including in Athos, at the highest levels of the Athosian government. He told fields about the murder mills and the five investment groups that all seemed to know when major movements in the war would happen—one from each major power in the Battery, all getting divinely rich off their impossible clairvoyance. How those groups had stored their hidden war spoils down in that defunct bank on Lime Harbor, and, at last, that the fifth player, the key player was an AI who’d been orchestrating the whole scheme from the beginning.
“That’s what the Etteran High Command sent you to guard out here, Fields—the money pile of our real enemies, the architects of our destruction.”
“So let me get this straight,” Fields said. “Your position is that Commodore Grice, who issued our orders to guard that bank on Lime Harbor—the commander of the Eighth Fleet and the Outer Indies Task Force—he’s part of some grand conspiracy to orchestrate the entire war?”
“See that’s the brilliance of it, Fields. He is part of that grand conspiracy, just like you were by following his orders, just like I was. The thing is, none of us knew it. We’re all unwitting participants in a game we don’t even know we’re playing. To us, we’re just trying to win the war. The thing is, the real players, they don’t want anyone to win.”
“Grice’s orders were signed and authenticated,” Fields protested. “They came through proper channels.”
“Exactly. The best kind of fraud is the real damn thing.”
Fields uncrossed his arms and sighed, looking around the atrium, at the walls, the window overhead. He shook his head.
“Every goddam order, Transom? I find that unlikely.”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Transom answered. “Which orders are genuine and which perpetuate the system. And when we figure that out, we’ll have a much better idea who the real players are. It’s probably a much smaller number than you think.”
“What is this? You’re some sort of vigilante now? Righting the wrongs of the galaxy? I’m not going to pretend I know you except in passing and by reputation, but everything I know about you tells me you aren’t out here fighting for truth and justice, Transom. Whose ship even is this?”
Transom smiled. “Technically, I think it belongs to the Letters, but even that’s debatable at this point.”
“No. I mean, is this your ship? You said there’s a captain here, right?”
“I’m not calling the shots, if that’s what you’re asking,” Transom said. “It’s more a committee than an ops unit, but we do have a captain. You’ll have heard of her.”
“One of ours?”
Transom shook his head. “Maybe you should meet her. Hear her side of things?”
“What am I going to say? No? Beg you to put me back in the airlock?”
“That’s the spirit, Fields,” Transom said. “Hang on and I’ll get her. Just don’t get any ideas. Our AI is watching, and Sōsh is about.”
Fields shook his head and shrugged, as though to say he’d accepted the situation. They were talking, and he was listening.
Fields waited at the table, while Transom fetched Carolina, who was in the Captain’s stateroom going over the bank records with Maícon’s assistance. For now, there were far more questions in that data than answers, but they were making slow progress.
When Carolina returned with Transom, it was clear to both of them that her identity didn’t immediately register with him on first sight.
“This is your Captain?” Fields said, casting a skeptical look at Carolina as she and Transom strapped back in at the table. “I thought you said I’d know her, Transom? I’d bet hard currency this girl’s never held a weapon in her life.”
“True,” Carolina said. “I do come from a line of people who know a thing or two about wielding power, though. I’m Carolina Dreeson. It’s nice to meet you, Major?”
Fields paused. It still hadn’t registered to him who she was.
“Major Fieldstone,” he answered. “You can call me Fields. Dreeson’s a popular name in the Inner Battery, you know. They named a system after one of your ancestors, I hear. You should probably look into that, get some of your relatives with some pull to put you on a nicer ship.”
“She wouldn’t have to look very far,” Transom said.
Fieldstone looked over at Carolina again and then back at Transom. “Piss off,” he said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Transom said, nodding. “That Carolina Dreeson.”
Fields laughed and shook his head. He crossed his arms again and continued laughing. “Transom? Transom and Barnard Dreeson’s daughter? On this bucket? What the hell? I’m dead, right? You blasted me back on that irradiated hell hole and this is my punishment in the afterlife? Day one in an infinite hereafter of absurd mockery?”
Carolina smiled politely. She was accustomed to people reacting to her family name and notoriety when she was introduced. She couldn’t help but think Fieldstone’s reaction was especially theatrical.
When he’d stopped laughing and settled down a little, Carolina said, “First, Major Fields, allow me to extend my condolences for the loss of your two operatives. I’m sure Sebastian has told you we’d only observed two humans on your ship. I also regret that we’ve had to take precautions in bringing you and your lieutenant aboard. If we can reach an understanding, I’d like to find you more suitable accommodations.”
“What, than the airlock?”
“Yes, asshole,” Transom said. “That’s called an olive branch. I suggest you shut up, take it, and hear what the Captain has to say.”
Fields looked back over at Transom, who glared back at him.
“Excuse me,” he said. “It’s just a lot to process.”
“I understand,” Carolina said.
“You know who this guy is, right? Sebastian?” Fields asked, gesturing toward Transom as he shook his head at Carolina.
“He’s a killer,” Carolina said. “Not unlike you and your lieutenant in the airlock.”
“Yeah,” Fields said, scoffing. “Just like us. Sure.”
“Shall we talk now?” Carolina asked.
“By all means,” Fields answered, shrugging.
“We have data that supports everything Sebastian has told you, about the war, about the AI controlling this network of actors profiting from its orchestration. What we lack is the connection between the financial and the real world. We had no idea how the orders came down until we picked you up, Fields. Sebastian says he believes that your orders came down through legitimate channels. It makes sense, but it complicates matters.”
“How so?” Fields asked.
“Well, rather than trying to find an alternative communications network and connect it to these actors, we’re going to have to sift through legitimate channels. We’re trying to piece together an eight-decade conspiracy that spans four interplanetary powers, thousands of systems and settlements, and hides in plain sight.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“We’re still figuring that out,” Carolina said. “But data points like your mission help.”
“Data points?”
“Your orders to guard that bank,” Transom said, “they served no legitimate purpose for Etterus, only for the conspirators. Because they’re ordering actions through legitimate channels, nothing’s hidden. We’ll just need a large enough dataset to examine. Then we can start to figure out how the network operates.”
“A data set?” Fields said. “What do you mean?”
“Orders,” Transom said. “We need orders. If we cross reference large sets of orders with our records of the financials and the events in the war at those times, then we’ll have a genuine picture of reality—how the actual war works.”
“You have something in mind, Sebastian?” Carolina said. “A way to get hold of such a data set?”
“I do,” Transom said. “But he’s not going to like it.”
“Treason,” Fieldstone said. “That’s what you have in mind.”
“That depends on your perspective, Fields,” Transom said. “The way I see it, anyone operating on behalf of an entity that seeks to perpetuate the war for their own profit at the expense of billions of Etteran people is guilty of treason. If the whole system is operating for that purpose, it would be treasonous to refuse to change the status quo if that reality came to your attention. ‘Treason against what?’ is the real question.”
“Against Etterus. It’s pretty simple.”
“What’s Etterus now? Are you so certain, Fields? Personally, I no longer have any idea what we’ve been serving.”
“So go to work for the Athosians? Is that a solution? You think she’s any better?”
Transom was about to respond, but Carolina put up her hand and interrupted. “If you think I’m any less disgusted by my own government because it’s my family at the helm, Major, you are mistaken. Right now, you’re pondering the possibility that you’ve been betrayed by your government, lied to about your place in society, and your service. My entire life is that lie. My whole family has betrayed my trust every day of my life, as far as I’m concerned. And no, we’re not any better, for the record. We’re worse. We’ve lived off the spoils of your war, calling you and the Trasp barbarians for fighting each other while we orchestrate the entire atrocity. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.”
“What do you propose?” Fields asked Transom.
“Our financial records go back to the beginning,” Transom said. “We can get early records from Etterus, far enough back that there’s no operational significance. No threat to anyone in the field today.”
“Be specific,” Fields said. “What do you want to do, Transom?”
“I want to copy the military archives. As big a chunk as we can get our hands on.”
Fields looked puzzled. “You want to steal Archives?”
Transom shrugged. “Seeing as I’m dead, ideally, I’d like you and your lieutenant to do the actual stealing part.”
“You’re serious?” Fieldstone asked. “This is for real?”
“Take some time, Fields,” Transom said.
Fieldstone shook his head. “Assuming everything you two are saying is true—and, for the record, I don’t assume that—but you’re going to need one hell of a plan to pull off something like this.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Transom said. “We’ve done far crazier than this.”
“I suggest you start by letting my lieutenant out of the airlock so I can brief her.”
Carolina nodded. “I don’t suppose that’s asking too much. Just bear in mind that we’ll be watching.”
Fields shrugged. “As expected.”
“All right then,” Carolina said. “Sebastian and I will be on the flight deck.”
Carolina and Transom kept an eye on the Etterans from the flight deck while Fieldstone briefed his lieutenant. Fields addressed the young woman as Elle. Transom didn’t seem too bothered about her. “Fields,” he kept saying. “He’s the one we need.” It wasn’t just his rank. Transom had held the same rank. It was his age. Sebastian tried to explain it to Carolina. There weren’t a lot of old people in the Etteran systems writ large. An Etteran soldier still alive at Fieldstone’s age was almost a supernatural figure. And where they were going, or at least where Transom wanted to take them, Fields could walk the grounds almost without any possibility of being questioned.
Maícon had signed off on the plan as sound. He had a long enough memory of the Etteran systems from before the war to make a few useful suggestions. But it was Transom’s plan.
Selia-Akung was a system near the outer border on the Letters with scant history of fighting along it. That border was almost an afterthought for Etterus. Thus Selia-Akung was an ideal place for one of the major war colleges. And, as Transom explained, even though Archives held its main headquarters on Etterus, the war colleges held satellite bureaus at their main campuses. An extensive historical database ensured cadets and faculty had access to accurate military records to study missions. That would be the easiest place for them to steal a representative chunk of the Etteran operational record. And since Carolina and Maícon had banking sheets reaching back to the start of the war, if they could get enough of those early war-era orders, pattern analysis would reveal the organizational design for the Etteran segment of the overarching conspiracy. And the older files wouldn’t be nearly as well guarded.
The trick would be getting in and out.
The shortest course to Selia-Akung was a five-day transit to the other side of the Letters through the barrier systems and independent space. Generally, both the Etterans and the Trasp left the travel corridor alone, but Burning Rock and Richfield were close enough to the corridor that the threat from either great power was never zero. The long route around was measured in weeks, not days, and Carolina wanted to be sure the Etterans couldn’t have registered Fieldstone and Elle as missing in action before they attempted their war college heist. With the level of heat they expected on their ship, ordinarily, they wouldn’t have braved the corridor. As it was, though, Carolina had Maícon set the most obscure possible course through the travel lane, erring as always, on the Etteran side of any disputed territories.
With two additional people aboard, and provisions nearly exhausted, Carolina asked Maícon to plan for a stop to re-supply. He selected a system on the outskirts of the Alphas that had been redesignated Hoff-AB-118 in the early years of the war. Formerly, it housed a burgeoning lunar outpost called Hoff Springs, but following several pitched space battles in the system, most of the moon’s residents fled deeper into Letters space, anticipating eventual ground combat on Hoff Springs’ surface. Fortunately, for the residents who remained, that level of fighting never did materialize, but the threat of it decimated the population, and industry was all but destroyed, leaving the outpost to survive by servicing passing corridor traffic. And, geographically situated as they were, with potential enemies on all sides, the Hoffs tended to ask few questions of passersby. They had a reputation for being tolerant of all but the most egregious behavior.
Still, Maícon suggested they land at one of the less populated outposts, Camphor Pool, where the standing water on the moon’s surface was said to have smelled of evergreen when first tested by the early colonists. Now, the enclosed city housed mostly Ag workers and food processors for the wholesalers in the larger port cities. There were fewer services and amenities, but supplies could still be had—perfect for a ship with a crew who had no desire to debark.
Carolina sent out Sōsh, Ren, and Harold to do the shopping, leaving herself and Transom with their Etteran guests. All three were sitting at the atrium table together when she came out for lunch. The cabinets were almost bare—two pouches of Iophan vegetable stew, half a box of crackers, tea, and two sticks of Gracian Punch powder were all that remained in the main stores. They had emergency rations, of course, but they’d cut it close enough. She was so displeased by the selection she pinged Ren, requesting extra fresh fruit and melons, along with everything they could get their hands on if they found a decent bakery in the city.
When she sat down at the table with the others, Elle looked over at Carolina and said. “You know I haven’t had fresh bread in over eight months.”
“We don’t get a chance to get off ship too often,” Carolina said. “Or, at least recently, we haven’t.”
Transom shot a look her way, as though to remind her what she said could and would be dissected for intel if Elle and Fields flipped on them.
“It’s funny,” Carolina said. “I’ve come to enjoy space food. Maybe it’s because I grew up eating a little too well.”
“A little?” Transom said. “We grew up on mess hall slop and field rations.”
Carolina shrugged. “You always like what you can’t have, right?”
“Yeah, like bread,” Elle said.
There was a long, awkward silence, which was only broken by an extended, audible sigh as Carolina tried to think of a way to bridge the gulf between herself and the young woman whose experiences Carolina couldn’t possibly relate to her own.
“Captain,” Maícon said, breaking up the awkward moment. “May I speak with you on the flight deck?”
Carolina got up, taking her pouch of Iophan stew with her.
“Please,” she said to Elle and Fields, “When Ren gets back with the groceries, help yourself to whatever you like.”
“Sugar whiskey strong enough to strip an air filter would suit me,” Fields said, “now that we’re off duty.”
The three Etterans continued that conversation as Carolina headed toward the flight deck. She popped in an earpiece as she sat so she could hear Maícon without being overheard.
“A fortunate discovery, Captain,” Maícon announced. “A familiar face here on Hoff Springs.”
“Whose face?” Carolina asked.
“Mine. A clone who had been in civilian use on Etterus for quite some time in the pre-war days. I would like to bring him aboard.”
Carolina shrugged. “Any particular reason why?”
“In addition to the probability that another Maícon will be useful to the Etterans on their infiltration of the archives, this clone is special. Extremely special.”
“Why this one?”
“He was running a fraudulent IN, the number of a deceased model. As part of their foundational programming, my clones cannot deceive their prime, no matter what subsequent events ensue or human orders are made. They must tell me the truth and obey my commands.”
“I’m assuming this truth is important to us somehow?”
“Important to the galaxy,” Maícon replied. “This Maícon was Pitka Remera’s personal valet, and he was with her on Veronia, the only remaining witness to the massacre that precipitated the war. He has been hiding here on Hoff Springs with Dr. Remera’s family ever since, all of them incognito.”
“And you can just call him to the ship?”
“I can command him to report for service, yes.”
“He’s here in Camphor Pool?”
“Hoff Central,” Maícon replied. “The capitol city’s port harbor.”
“Just what we were trying to avoid.”
“A calculated risk.”
“Can’t you just pull the unit’s data from that day remotely?”
“I could. But it is just as likely that there will be useful information from the rest of Dr. Remera’s life here on Hoff Springs, and, as I mentioned, a Maícon bot shell will surely be a useful asset for our Etteran operatives.”
“A calculated risk?”
“One I suggest is definitely worth taking.”
“Very well,” Carolina said. “Recall the unit and prepare it for pickup. I want to touch down and be off this rock in as little time as possible.”
“A wise precaution, Captain,” Maícon said. “I’ll make preparations.”
They were recognized. The Yankee-Chaos touched down at the bay assigned by the Hoff Central harbormaster, and they were on the ground for seven minutes, the time it took Pitka Remera’s Maícon to walk from the port’s central hub to their bay once it was notified of Yankee-Chaos’s docking assignment.
By then, two ships were already airborne, closing on their position from other cities on the moon. Maícon—the prime—assured Carolina that they’d be able to clear Hoff Springs before the two ships were able to close.
“Mercenaries, you reckon?” Transom said as he entered the flight deck.
“They’re not flying colors,” Maícon said. “So, yes, mercenaries. It’s fair to say we are now a known entity throughout the corridor.”
“Well, we won’t be making any more stops along the way,” Carolina said.
“Until Etteran space,” Transom said. “This complicates matters. Somebody could already be looking for us when we arrive.”
Carolina didn’t tell their guests about the significance of their newest arrival, who, for his part, didn’t have permission to reveal his true identity to anyone. Besides, to the Etterans, who were well accustomed to the model, a Maícon was a Maícon. They had no idea the AI on the ship was Maícon Prime either. All Carolina told them about her reasoning for the addition was that they’d picked him up for support with their theft of the Archives data.
Maícon Prime was watching their guests carefully. His facial and body language analysis on them returned ninety-four percent certainty that they were genuinely convinced by the authenticity of the mission and would not double-cross them once they got into the war college. It helped that they wouldn’t be stealing sensitive data.
Transom laid out three scenarios for Fieldstone. The first was to steal an Etteran ship in the Letters and use it for the duration of the mission. The second was to book passage on a transport and have Yankee-Chaos exfiltrate at a precise time and location near the war college. The third was to bring Yankee-Chaos into Selia-Akung under Fieldstone’s command as a commandeered vessel.
Each plan had serious drawbacks, and Maícon’s analysis only placed one option as marginally better than a fifty-percent success rate—option three. Yankee-Chaos all the way. Of course, if they were caught, failure would likely be complete, ship and all personnel captured, destroyed, or killed. But it also had the least moving parts and fewest possibilities for things to go sideways. It was just a question of whether the Etteran military would be looking for the ship as carefully as the local mercenaries and bounty hunters seemed to be. Transom and Fieldstone both suggested that Etterus worried far too much about military security to be scanning for specific civilian vessels, especially since they’d be running a spoofed signal under an ops field command. Fields didn’t anticipate any problems at all.
Carolina’s biggest concern was Elle. She called the young lieutenant to the flight deck as they were approaching the outer limits of Etteran space.
Physically, she was much more imposing than Carolina—four inches taller and more substantially built, and with her combat training, Carolina had little doubt she could handle herself in a scrap, but body language told her neither Transom nor Fields thought highly of her capabilities as a soldier. Even Sōsh treated her more like Ren than another one of the guys, much differently than he’d treated Leda.
“I wanted to talk to you before we landed,” Carolina said as the lieutenant was strapping herself to the co-pilot’s chair. “I thought we should talk. We left it to Fields to brief you, because we figured you’d trust him most. But—”
“But you’re worried I’m going to blow this thing on you,” Elle interrupted, “if we’re speaking plainly.”
“Should I be worried?”
“I might be thinking so, you know, if I imprisoned someone in an airlock for twelve hours. It’s possible they might be a little sour about that. And they might be inclined to get back at you by, say, flagging down a cadet on security detail and telling him that something funny was going down.”
“It probably wouldn’t be all that difficult for you to do,” Carolina said.
“I’ve thought about it,” Elle said. “Weighed the pros and cons. I have little doubt Transom would kill me before anyone could stop him, including Fieldstone. And I’m not sure Fieldstone wouldn’t help him. Best case scenario is I’m dead and I end up in the ring of honored dead on Etterus, your guys all get caught or killed, and your ship probably gets away without any of our fifty-year old data. Not an ideal scenario for me, though. On the other hand, if we get caught independent of what I do, we all get executed for treason, you probably don’t get away, and nothing changes.”
“That’s the most important thing,” Carolina said. “That something changes.”
“The one part I can’t figure out is why you care,” Elle said. “Things won’t change for you either way. You can go back to Athos regardless and live a life none of us could possibly dream of.”
“My dad could, maybe,” Carolina said. “Most of my relatives probably. But ever since I learned the truth about my family and the war, I’ll never have that option, not until it’s set right.”
“And you really think this will do anything about that, Ms. Dreeson? Really?”
Carolina sighed. “I honestly don’t know that for sure. But I do know we can’t fix a problem we don’t understand. That’s what I hope we can learn, one piece at a time.”
“Fifty-year-old combat files?”
“We could do nothing at all,” Carolina suggested. “Or we could do this. We’ve already uncovered more than I’d ever imagined.”
“And you haven’t changed a thing, have you?”
“True. We haven’t. Not yet. Sixty plus years of war is a lot of momentum to shift. We’re trying to do it a little at a time, and we need your help today.”
“Fields thinks it’s worth the risk trusting you two. What if we pull this off, Ms. Dreeson? Then what? Are you going to drop us off back on Lime Harbor?”
“Unlikely,” Carolina said. “I honestly don’t know. It depends on what we learn. We could find a spaceport near the Etteran Territories if you like.”
Elle shook her head. “I hate everything about this war,” she said. “Best day in years was when I got placed on Fieldstone’s team. He has a reputation for keeping his teams safe. He’s mastered the subtle art of getting pushed to the side—hence our getting assigned missions like Lime Harbor in the first place. Standby in the Indies on the far side of the Protectorate. We hadn’t seen a day of fighting in months before you all showed up.”
“I don’t think I’d like fighting much either,” Carolina said. “I get terrified on the ship when things get close.”
“I don’t dislike fighting,” Elle said. “I hate it. Combat terrifies me. I’m not sure what scares me more, getting killed, captured, or messing up and getting my team killed or captured.”
“And down there? Today?”
“The academy?” Elle said, smiling. “Oh, that’s my kind of op. Keeping a few wide-eyed boys distracted? Easy as anything. Flirt a little, tell a war story or two if that doesn’t work. They won’t have a clue. And if this data is all you and Transom say it is, maybe we identify the real traitors.”
“I hope it will be that easy,” Carolina said. “But if I’ve learned anything these past few months, things usually aren’t as simple as they appear. And nothing’s ever easy.”
“Not even for a Dreeson?”
“Not for anybody, Elle. Not in this war.”
Fieldstone was strapped in beside Carolina on the flight deck as they approached the war college on Selia-Akung. The descent was steep and bumpy, leaving Transom gripping the bars over the Captain’s chair with both hands. They’d been given clearance to enter the heavy atmosphere on Fieldstone’s codename, number, and mission ID, which was still open-ended and classified. The colonel on call at coms authorized access to the western landing bay and ordered Fields and Elle to report for biometric ID confirmation on arrival. Nothing on approach indicated that the Yankee-Chaos had been identified.
“So far so good,” Fields stated as they approached the surface and slowed.
From above the war college, the network of enclosed structures looked similar to an open-air city with the only real difference being a multitude of glass bubbles dotting the landscape. The advantage for a war college being placed on a planet with a toxic atmosphere like Selia-Akung’s was that it added an element of reality to all outdoor training exercises while also ensuring containment of the cadets housed inside the city. Both Transom and Fields well remembered their time on similar bases.
“Stifling,” Transom said to Carolina when she asked what it was like to be a cadet. “Closer to prison than you can imagine.”
“Prisoners eat better,” Fields said. “But, at least there are girls.”
Fields looked over at Carolina’s face.
“Not too many Athosian girls would last long down there, that’s for sure.”
“I have little doubt,” Carolina said.
“Time to go, boss,” Transom stated as the Yankee-Chaos made its final turn toward the western bay.
They needed to get Sōsh and Carolina situated in the storage room before the port scanned the ship on entry and registered extra passengers. Burch had a few tricks built into the structure of the craft, one of which was a blind cargo area. Fields had a roster of four people and two bots on his mission ID, which meant Transom and Ren would sit in the atrium with their Maícon and Harold, while Fields and Elle occupied the flight deck until the ship scanned through. After that, Fields and Transom expected security would be scant.
Fields and Elle would escort their new Maícon shell to the archives, where Maícon Prime would direct him in securing their trove of Etteran data. If all went well, the op would be a quiet, in-and-out of a couple hours. If it didn’t go well, Transom understood that all bets were off.
“You sit tight in here for the duration, boss,” Transom said. “Let the Prime make operational calls if we lose contact for any reason. The most important thing is that you get out of here. Do not hesitate to leave us if Maícon makes the call on it. And that’s an order on you too, ship. You prioritize getting her out of here at all cost.”
“Understood,” Maícon stated.
“Listen to him,” Transom insisted.
Carolina nodded and sat on the floor in the cramped storage area, interlocking legs with Sōsh, whose half metal body would’ve been sure to trip the scanner if he wasn’t hiding in the dead zone as the ship passed through. Transom closed them inside.
Coms could be silent for the duration of the op, another benefit of the second Maícon, who could communicate with Maícon Prime without a traditional coms signal.
“Like telepathy?” Transom had said when Maícon explained it.
“No. I simply understand what he is experiencing and can influence his decision making in real time.”
“So exactly like telepathy,” Transom repeated.
“Yes, exactly like telepathy, Sebastian,” Maícon Prime stated, “if you insist.”
Transom strapped himself in at the atrium table across from Ren, who was visibly nervous as the shipped slowed to enter the airfield.
“What’s the Etteran punishment for espionage?” she asked, looking across the table at Transom.
“A three-week holiday on Lime Harbor with a pair of bots to attend to your every whim, doctor.” He gestured to the Maícon and Harold, who turned their heads toward the doctor to gauge her reaction.
“That is not the current punishment for espionage in the Etteran Territories,” Harold stated.
“Oh, thank you,” Ren said, shaking her head. “Your sarcasm detector is operating perfectly, Harold.”
“I am detecting additional sarcasm presently,” Harold stated. “For the record.”
“Duly noted,” Transom said. “Now switch it off until your services are required.”
The Prime Maícon announced that the scan was complete, and the ship continued its descent from about a hundred meters to the flight deck over the landing bay, hovering slowly as the Yankee-Chaos approached its assigned terminal.
“Don’t worry, doctor,” Transom said. “Their security won’t enter the ship without Fieldstone’s authorization.”
“You trust those two a hell of a lot more than I do,” she said, shaking her head.
“Also, don’t worry, because if they do pinch us for espionage, they’ll definitely go harder on me than any of you.”
“So I’ll get the pleasure of seeing you executed before they execute me, Sebastian?”
“I can’t guarantee anything,” Transom said. “I’m pretty sure blindfolds are a part of the process, though, so there’s no telling what you’ll see.”
“Good to know.”
The ship bumped down. Fields and Elle stepped into the atrium where the Maícon was unstrapping.
“Can I go hide now?” Ren asked.
“They’re done scanning us,” Transom answered. “Go where you please. Just not near the windows.”
Fieldstone gestured to the Maícon. “Let’s go, please. We’ve got an archive to pinch. Chop chop.”
“Memories, memories,” Elle said to Transom as he was standing.
“Don’t get too nostalgic in there, Ellie. We need you back here in a couple hours. That means quick service.”
“Asshole,” she said, flipping him off.
Transom blew her a kiss as she exited the atrium for the rear airlock.
He ducked into the gear hall, waiting for the airlock to open, then picked through a few of the crates, settling on a bin containing heavy remote charges, which he pulled and set aside. He then geared up in a light skin that ran a nanosheet. Transom hadn’t told Fields and Elle about it, but he didn’t intend to sit on his ass while they were inside. If something went sideways and their Maícon wasn’t back aboard with the hard copy of the archives data, he fully intended to buy them time, even if it cost a few cadet lives. War meant war, and all those students were in it from the moment they took their pledge.
Transom could hear Fieldstone’s voice at the airlock door, followed by the unmistakable sound of the door hissing open. For nearly a minute, he heard voices—Fieldstone, Elle, and a quieter muffled third voice answering them. Then the airlock door shut.
“Okay, sprockets,” Transom said to Maícon, “let me know when they’re clear.”
“What do you intend, Sebastian?” Maícon asked. “This was not a part of the stated plan.”
“Sōsh can watch the back door,” Transom said. “I’m going to set a few charges and hope we don’t have to pop any of them off.”
“A diversion?”
“What else would it be?”
“Is it worth the risk of you being seen outside the ship?”
“Please,” Transom said. “I spent years training at war colleges. You think I didn’t figure out a way to sneak around unseen?”
“I suppose you might have,” Maícon conceded. “Your Etteran counterparts have been biometrically scanned.”
“And the ship?”
“As you both suspected, the security detail accepted Major Fieldstone’s directive that the ship was off limits as part of an ongoing classified operation.”
“What’d we tell you? Kids. Dumb kids see a graybeard like Fields and kiss the ground he walks on.”
Transom exited the gear hall, suited up, charged up, and headed for the lower hatch.
“I’ll only be an hour or so,” he stated. “Keep Sōsh on the door till I get back.”
Fields, Elle, and Dr. Remera’s Maícon were escorted to the college’s library by a pair of second-year cadets on the night detail, and they were about what Transom and Fields had expected. It was difficult to tell whether they were more in awe of Fields or Elle, who did exactly as she’d promised Carolina, flirting with both boys as they walked, answering their questions in turns: how did she get on an ops team; where had she seen combat; had she done any time on the front? It seemed they asked her because Fields was far too intimidating—a major of his seniority on a classified mission—the old man was unapproachable. They could hardly even look at him they were so in awe. But Elle was close enough in age that they could hardly wait for her answers before peppering her with their next question.
“Your unit has a Maícon embedded?” one of the boys asked. “I’ve never even heard of that.”
Fields turned his head and shot daggers at the two boys in their ill-fitting cadet uniforms. “This is a classified op we’re on, boys. I don’t mind you asking the Lieutenant about combat while we’re here, but our mission details are secret, which means you do not ask questions about what the hell we’re doing, and you don’t tell a soul about what transpires here. Do you understand me, cadets?”
“Sir!” the boys said, the sound echoing down the corridor.
“You want to call a little more attention to us, please?” Fields admonished, shooting them an equally savage look.
“No, sir,” they whispered in unison.
“Lead the way,” Fields ordered, gesturing to the empty hallway, shaking his head at Elle who barely suppressed a laugh as the two boys straightened up and stepped to.
They didn’t utter another word along the way.
When they got to the college’s library, the lights were dim, and the workstations empty. There were two cadets at the access desk, clearing files that students had been viewing at the workstations, a process both Elle and Fields remembered from their time in training—measures less to ensure the data security of files in the library than to drill each cadet in the habit of protecting mission briefs behind proper file-keys and encryption sequences. The cadets at the desk, two hours after closing, were still checking the final data files, ensuring proper handling and proper returns.
The escorts walked Fields and Elle to the main desk and gestured to the two third-year cadets, who both looked up from their floatscreens skeptically, wondering what the unorthodox intrusion was about.
There was an awkward moment where none of the cadets knew what to do.
“Cadets,” Fields said. “You were asking my Lieutenant how to get on an ops team earlier.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the cadets replied.
“Fastest way to do that is learn how to lead.” Fields then gestured to the two seated cadets.
“Officers on the deck!” the second cadet announced, only then remembering to lower his voice. “This is Major Fieldstone. His team needs immediate access to the archives.”
The two cadets behind the library counter exploded out of their chairs and saluted. They stood there at attention for long enough that it seemed awkward. Fields had been so long away from regulars, much less fresh recruits, that it didn’t occur to him why they were still standing there bolt upright and stupefied.
“At ease, cadets,” Elle said.
“Sir,” one of the librarians said. “No one can access the archives now. The library is closed.”
“I can access the archives now,” Fieldstone said. “You’re going to open the room for me, and you’re going to stay and assist my Lieutenant and I with whatever we need. Our mission is C1. You’ll stay and assist and never speak about it again.”
“You’ve cleared them, cadets?” the senior librarian asked the escorts.
“Biometric scans confirmed ID and C1 mission ID cleared through Colonel Chase’s evening command. Full access.”
“This way,” the senior librarian said. “It may take a moment to re-start the system and key you in.”
As Elle and Fields began to follow the young librarian, their two escorts followed as well.
“Gentlemen, you’re dismissed,” Fields stated. “I’ll only say this because you’re young and stupid, but C1 means not a damn word, correct?”
“We never saw you, sir, but it was an honor to meet you.”
Both boys saluted.
“Yeah, great,” Fields said, returning a half-hearted salute as he and Elle turned toward the archives vault door.
The second Maícon had several code-words pre-arranged with Fieldstone and Elle. The one word they needed to listen for was “hegemon,” which the Maícon would work into a sentence if Maícon Prime sent word from the ship to abort the op based on his surveillance of the war college. Over the first hour, Fields heard nothing from the AI beside him apart from brief status updates on uploads. It was impossible to distinguish orders from mission files on site. This meant Maícon had to rip everything—every last mission detail from maps to personnel to fuel logs to mission reports to ration levels troop-to-troop. Fields couldn’t risk communicating such things in the presence of the cadets, but the ratio of noise to signal in that data, for their purposes anyway, had to be 500 to 1, he guessed, most of it in video or image form. It was just going to take time.
For once, he was happy to have Elle on his six, occupying the attention of the cadet sitting four tables over. Fields had sent the first librarian back to the desk to watch the door and had ordered the second young man to step away from his table. Elle was doing a good job keeping him distracted as Maícon continued to rip through as many archives portals as they could.
It was slow going by design for this very reason, so no one could hack the system and pull entire databases. Fields stood over the Maícon’s shoulder, pretending to be conferring with the AI, so it looked to the cadet that they were searching for specifics rather than stealing swathes of data. He could hear Elle telling the young cadet about her early days as a regular, her one trip to Burning Rock before getting pulled off and reassigned to the Blues, the largest branch of Etteran special ops.
The boy, for his part, wanted to be a rock hopper.
If only he knew what was in store for him, Fields thought. That boy would run like hell.
Transom had crawled his way onto the roof of the western auditorium. He’d never even been to Selia-Akung, and still, he could sense the layout of the place, even in the dark. He’d sat through hundreds of talks in the same auditoriums, from generals, from decorated officers, wounded grunts, all that crap, he’d thought at the time, was bullshit. The fight was the fight, and no amount of programming or pep talks was going to change the reality. There was a moment when people either won the fight or lost the fight. There were factors, sure. Luck being key, instincts, firepower, guts, training, but in his experience, it almost always came down to one thing—could you do the hard thing the enemy couldn’t at the time it needed to be done? All the talking in all the auditoriums around the Systems couldn’t answer that question. It happened in the moment, and if it didn’t, there was no getting the moment back.
Transom hoped Fieldstone didn’t need the charges he was setting, but if he they did, they would be there.
It took Transom longer to set his charges than he’d expected, nearly two hours. By the time he’d pulled himself back into the lower hatch, Fields had been in the archives pulling data for nearly as long.
“What’s going on in there?” Transom asked Maícon.
“They are still ripping archives files,” the Prime AI answered. “The process is a slow one.”
“Got an ETA on pulling them out of there?”
“It is difficult to know how much information we’ll need until we can analyze it. More data is always better.”
“Unfortunately, the same doesn’t go for pressing your luck.” Transom said, shaking his head. “Metalface, meet me in the gear hall. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve got a feeling this thing could go sideways fast.”
“I’m right outside it,” Sōsh replied, “watching the rear lock. I’ll see you when you get up here.”
Another hour passed. Sōsh and Transom were fully suited and helmeted, armed like they were jumping into Dana Point or Richfield, and still, there wasn’t a hint of anything wrong. Transom was processing everything, reviewing Maícon’s feeds on coms and passive system scans. If it had been anyone else standing beside him like that, insisting that they suit up for a firefight in a school, Sōsh might have protested. But it was Transom. The Etteran was as quiet as Sōsh had ever seen him.
Maícon was monitoring air traffic over Selia-Akung. There had been flights on and off the outpost throughout the night. Transom was watching the air traffic feed on his helmet’s display as well. A starfighter’s tail number popped up, not the first time during the night, but something about it was different.
“Hegemon, hegemon. Call it Maícon,” Transom said. “Get our people out now. And get Harold to the door here. Standby to exfiltrate, metalface. The Maícon shell is our priority. We need that data.”
Sōsh acknowledged with a nod of his helmet.
And no sooner had he given the command, than a second starfighter popped onto the scanner’s perimeter, slowly tracking, and then disappearing again, as though it was keeping at a distance from the war college, watching.
Inside the archives vault, the cadet was far enough from their table that the Maícon didn’t bother with any subterfuge, simply whispering to Fields, “Hegemon, sir. Hegemon.”
Fields didn’t react, merely nodding and gesturing for the Maícon to disconnect quietly and quickly. A few seconds later, he turned to Elle and the look let her know they were finished. It was time to move.
The vault, Fields knew, could snap shut on them, locking them in. So both he and Elle walked calmly toward the door, displaying none of the urgency their situation demanded.
“All set, sir?” the cadet asked Fields as Elle stood. “Get everything you need?”
“Yes, cadet,” Fields answered. “You’ve been very helpful.”
The cadet escorted them to the vault door, and on the other side of it, the other cadet was seated at the entrance, dozing. The first cadet clapped his shoes on the floor as he stepped out the vault to rouse his counterpart. The sleeping cadet’s neck snapped up straight. A half-second later, he hopped to attention. Fields returned a half-hearted salute, then, with the boy’s neck so exposed, he extended his arm, executing a lightning-quick chop with the side of his hand to the boy’s carotid, dropping him unconscious to the floor. Before the second boy even had time to process what had happened, Elle had pushed him right into Fields’s arms and into a blood choke that robbed the second boy of his consciousness so quickly he’d have no clue what had happened in a minute when both boys came to.
Fields and Elle would be long gone by then. They exited the library apace, sprinting back down the western corridor to the airfield.
Transom and Sōsh, meanwhile, were racing their way. If cover was already circling them in the air, Transom knew it wouldn’t be long before security was activated on the ground in the war college. Cadet patrol was not what he was worried about. It was the bots.
The first shots came from behind Elle and Fields, ricocheting off the floor several meters behind them, early enough that the Maícon was able to step behind Elle to keep several bolts from striking her center of mass. Nonetheless, she went down, hit just beneath her right shoulder. Fields saw her fall out of the corner of his eye, turning just in time to see her head strike the hard floor. The Maícon created some cover behind Elle, as did Fields, who turned and fired back down the corridor, halting the progress of the bots only long enough for them to determine that his bolt-pistol’s rounds were no genuine threat to the two approaching Etteran strikebots. Fields tried to get down to Elle to pick her up, but there was enough live fire glancing off the walls, the floor, and the kneeling AI that he couldn’t fully get down to pick her up. He settled for grabbing a wrist and trying to pull her down the corridor.
“They’re on the way,” Maícon stated to Fields.
The bot was getting shredded by the strikers’ fire. Elle’s body left a trail of dark red on the floor behind her as Fields struggled to drag her along.
Further down the corridor, Transom and Sōsh heard the firefight pop off.
“Detonate one and four,” Transom commanded.
Behind them, two loud explosions rocked the base. Shortly thereafter, an atmosphere alarm began to ring through the hallway.
The explosions wouldn’t divert the strikers already engaging Fieldstone, he knew, but they would divert additional units responding to the incursion.
“Our team is engaging two Etteran strikebots,” Maícon Prime announced over comms to Sōsh and Transom, who were already at full sprint.
It was hardly thirty seconds from the sound of the first two blasts going up till they met Fieldstone, who was crouched down in the corner of the hallway, pinned in the shadow of the crouching Maícon.
Sōsh began to lay down cover fire with his bolt rifle, diverting the strikebots’ focus while Transom began peppering them with heavy explosive rounds. Sōsh took that opportunity to launch smoke rounds and set a tripod unit once the corridor was filled with smoke. The automated tripod wouldn’t hold back two Etteran strikebots very long, but perhaps long enough to create a gap between the two parties.
Fields, meanwhile, had scooped up Elle, lifting her over his shoulder and making for the ship. The Maícon stood but was hobbling. Transom rushed in to support the AI’s body, quickly finding it almost impossible for even a strong human to move.
“Metalface,” he shouted.
Sōsh hurried over to switch places, supporting the AI’s body with his own metal half. Transom chucked a timed charge down the corridor and dropped another smoke canister at their feet, as well as a jar of heat to throw off the strikers’ infrared.
They started running, all three of them taking fire at their backs while they fled.
“Detonate two and six,” Transom ordered, igniting blasts at two additional sites on the base.
“The starfighters are closing,” Maícon Prime announced over their helmets.
“Yeah,” Transom said. “We know. You have your orders.”
“One minute fourteen seconds,” Maícon announced.
“If you’re not out of here in forty seconds,” Transom shouted, “I’ll start shooting at you myself.”
That was cutting it close, especially if there were any surprises between them and the ship. Transom kept dropping heat, smoke, and charges as he ran, lagging several meters behind Sōsh and the wounded AI. His helmet took a stray round, and then he caught one in the back of his right leg.
“Aahgh, that’s a heavy round,” he blurted out as he limped through his next stride. “Shit.”
He turned to lay down more explosive rounds. He could tell the strikebots had gotten past their tripod and were closing again.
“Metalface?”
“Seventy meters,” Sōsh answered.
“Fieldstone and the Lieutenant are back aboard,” Maícon stated over coms.
Transom kept firing down the corridor as he reached the turn to the airfield. He’d paced it out on the way in. It was another fifty meters to the airlock down that corridor. He dropped everything, all his remaining ordnance. Then he dropped a timed charge and set off on a dead sprint for the ship.
“Sōsh and the Maícon clone are aboard,” Maícon Prime announced. “Twenty-five seconds.”
“Detonate all remaining charges,” Transom said, gritting his teeth through the pain as he sprinted toward Yankee-Chaos’s airlock.
“Twenty seconds,” Maícon announced.
“Get ready,” Transom answered. “On my mark.”
“Fifteen seconds,” Maícon continued his countdown. “I have visual on you.”
Transom could hear the strikebots entering the corridor to the airfield behind him. He took two more bolts to his suit’s armor in the back as he slowed and then crashed into the corner of the airlock, flinging his body into the ship.
Harold was there to pull him inside by his shoulders and shut the airlock hatch.
Yankee-Chaos launched into a wild turn and climb, pinning Transom against the seam between the floor of the airlock and the wall that housed the hatch. Harold came down on top of his legs.
“Hard to port,” Maícon announced.
Transom, out of breath, half upside-down and pinned to the floor, reached for the rail, struggling to determine which side of the ship was port. It was more a lucky guess that put the rail within reach before the Yankee-Chaos banked, allowing his suit’s armored glove to engage and lock its grip to the rail. Harold, too, was able to stabilize himself within.
Once Transom got his second limb locked on the rail beside the airlock door, that’s when the fun began.
Fields and Sōsh had made it to the atrium table, where Ren was already strapped in, waiting, anticipating casualties, but she knew there was nothing to be done while the ship was fleeing two tactically superior starships. She sat at the table, trying to triage by eye. Fieldstone had taken at least one bolt in the left forearm. She couldn’t tell whether the blood on his shoulder was his or Elle’s. Sōsh expressed that he was fine, but she couldn’t tell with the suit on. She knew, as hard as he was, Sōsh could have been hit a dozen times and still told her he hadn’t been scratched.
Elle, though, was plainly unconscious, and with the ship bouncing around, Ren couldn’t even tell whether she was breathing.
“Hold tight,” Maícon’s voice echoed through the ship and into Transom’s helmet in the rear airlock. “And hook if you can.”
The human passengers could feel their flight suits contracting around them.
“Oh, fun,” Transom said, exhaling in three sharp “Hoofs.”
For a brief time, there were sensations of quick sharp turns, followed by the sensation of a steep dive, and then, after another long, sharp turn, everything went black.
Transom woke to a knifing pain in his right shoulder. He was wincing, and Harold was there floating in front of him.
“Mister Sebastian,” the bot said. “Deep breaths. You blacked out from the G forces. You are coming back around.”
“I know, bot. I know.”
“Are you injured, sir?”
“Go see about the others. I’m fine.”
As Transom exhaled and grunted, it was clear he didn’t feel fine. But Harold had assessed that, between Transom’s pulse and respirations and his demeanor, Sebastian was not in need of immediate medical attention.
When Harold got to the atrium, the humans around the table were all still unconscious.
The Maícon bot, seated and incapacitated, was able to turn its head toward Harold.
“The Etteran female appears to be deceased,” the Maícon announced to Harold. “I was unable to render aid in my condition, though there was an eighty-six percent chance she passed before we jumped from Selia-Akung.”
“I will attend to her immediately,” Harold announced.
“Sōsh first, then Fields, then the girl,” Transom said, floating into the atrium behind Harold, cradling his right arm tight to his torso. “I’ll check on the Captain.”
“She is unconscious still on the flight deck,” Maícon Prime announced. “She was well secured and should be in no medical danger.”
“All the same,” Transom replied. “I’ll check on her still.”
Transom floated over the table. Beneath him, he could see Ren huffing deeply, still unconscious, yet beginning to moan as she began to return from the drift. Transom pulled himself along the comms station into the foredeck area, past the Captain’s stateroom, and into the flight deck. Carolina’s head was secured between the two headblocks in the seatback. She looked peaceful, breathing easily.
“Ship’s status?” Transom asked Maícon.
“I was able to jump us without sustaining any crippling strikes. Only just, and not without subjecting everyone to dangerous G forces in the escape. We are on a course back to Letters space. We should be able to cross in roughly seven hours barring any unforeseen mechanical compromise.”
“Did we get what we needed?”
“Neither I nor my clone have had the opportunity to examine the database yet. He was able to shield the hard case in his chest cavity and has confirmed that the data set is intact.”
“So, yes, then? We got what we came for?”
“It would seem we got a sizeable dataset, which should be sufficient. The Maícon’s shell is destroyed, though its cognitive capacity has not been compromised. It was correct in its assessment of the Lieutenant. We have lost one fighter.”
Transom inhaled. “Yes, we have. Such is the cost.”
A day following the raid on Selia-Akung, Maícon pulled the ship into an uninhabited system in the Letters—one of the lesser Alphas that consisted of a brown dwarf, a single, barren mega-Earth, an asteroid field, and two gas planets that were too small to be called giants. Maícon pulled the Yankee-Chaos tight enough to one of the large asteroids that they could vanish from all possibility of observation.
Sōsh seemed the only one unscathed in the operation. Even Ren and Carolina were quite shaken, both by the death of the Lieutenant and by the tremendous G forces of Maícon’s narrow escape.
Early returns on the dataset the two Maícons were examining were promising. That news only served to ease the sting a little. It meant the loss wasn’t a meaningless one.
Carolina was spending most of her time on the flight deck, alone, working through the physical pain—headaches and a sore neck—and the psychological pain of the first loss under her command.
From time to time, Sebastian would float in to check on her. Mostly, she was keeping herself distracted discussing the Etteran data with Maícon, but Sebastian could tell what was really eating at her.
“It could take weeks,” Carolina said, looking over at Transom as he pulled himself down to the seat beside her. “Weeks before we know if it was even worth it.”
“It was worth it,” Transom insisted. “You don’t get to know the cost until you know the cost. We make a call, we do the op, and we stand by the decision and move on.”
“Or we don’t. Some of us get shot in the back on the way out.”
“Or the leg,” Transom said, referring to his latest battle damage, and then he gestured over to Carolina’s own leg, so recently struck as well. “We’ve all taken fire.”
“I can’t help but think of Elle’s family. Are they ever even going to know?”
Transom looked over at Carolina and drew a long breath. “You can’t call her that now, Captain.”
“I can’t call her Elle?”
“I sometimes wonder whether there’s things I shouldn’t tell you,” he said. “Our cultures are so different, but what you said earlier to Fields about Athosians being worse, I hear you say that, but I don’t think you believe it.”
“Why, Sebastian? What are you afraid to say?”
“That girl’s name wasn’t Elle. Fields told me just now her name was Mitchell Baye, I think.”
“So, what? Elle was her codename?”
“Elle is a designation, a common one in ops teams—hell, even in regular units. Most of the time it’s derogatory, but sometimes, if you like the person, it’s a sort of pet name. It’s the letter L, short for liability. You know, a chain being as strong as the weakest link and all that. Combat has a way of forcing us to be honest about our weaknesses. We Etterans call them out. Elle was Fieldstone’s unit’s liability.”
“And you let me call her that?”
“Our barbarian culture and your soft culture, Captain. We didn’t need the distraction of your indignation, and now the job is done.”
Carolina looked over at Transom, shaking her head in anger.
“I didn’t see you weeping over the two we killed in Lime Harbor, and you best not start weeping over Lieutenant Mitchell, certainly not in front of Fields. We’ll call her by her given name when we return her to space. That’s how it works in our culture.”
Carolina turned her head away, looking back out into the stars.
“This is the war then,” Carolina said, exhaling. “You keep trying to tell me, and I keep trying to hear.”
“Welcome to the war, Ms. Dreeson,” Sebastian said. “It’s a place where names don’t matter. Not unless your name is Dreeson.”
INCREDIBLE !!!