Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) (18 page)

T
he doctors
at the station patched me up and let me go. They didn’t even try to keep me there. Under ordinary circumstances I’m sure they would have. They might have tried, anyway. I wasn’t in the mood to lay around myself.

But the station was a the center for a mass casualty event right now. Most of the personnel had been sent to the surface when Earth attacked. The idea was that would be the safest place for them. If the station had been destroyed in the battle, everyone aboard would likely have died. On the surface they would have at least a little security.

Now we had injured and dead being shipped over from the Hermes. Some of the casualties were in very bad shape. The couple of doctors and handful of nurses who’d volunteered to remain behind on Mars Station were doing everything they could just to keep those patients alive while they had more staff and supplies shipped up from the surface.

The hospital wing looked like a war zone. Which was appropriate, I supposed. This was the inevitable aftermath of war. People hurt. People dead. Wreckage, ruin, and devastation. We’d survived this fight by the skin of our teeth. And Earth was still out there, getting ready to come back at us again.

I had mild frostbite. My lungs were going to be sore for a bit - seemed maybe I had tried gulping some frozen air at one point or another. The left side of my face was a mass of blisters from the heat of Kel’s missile exploding. The cut on my arm was superficial, but the gunshot wound on my leg was a bit worse. No bullet - the round went right through - but I’d bled a lot. A nurse bound it up with a pressure dressing, stuck me with an IV, and two liters of fluid later told me to get out so that the bed could be made available for someone who needed it more. I left with orders to rest that we both already knew I wasn’t going to follow.

I wandered out of the triage area with some thoughts about finding Kel, thanking her again, and then seeing if I could help with search and rescue for the Hermes. The ship was still floating dead in space. It was going to take months to get her back into any sort of fighting shape, if it could be done at all. With so much damage, the ship might need to be completely scrapped.

My watch buzzed at me for an incoming call. I looked down and recognized the caller ID at once. George was calling me? I wondered if that was good news or bad.

“Thomas here,” I said. “What’s up?”

“They’ve found your father, Thom,” George replied. For once he wasn’t beating around the bush. His face was beet red, his eyes dark. “It’s not good.”

“Where is he?” I asked. I looked around. Were they bringing him here?”

“On his way to the surface. He was impaled by a fragment of his ship during one of the last missile strikes. He’s alive, but in critical condition. The station doesn’t have the equipment to save him.”

“But down in the base?” I asked.

“Maybe. If they can get him there in time. Keladry is flying him.”

I chuckled. “She’ll get him there in time.”

I felt a pang that I wouldn’t be able to see her right away. But it was good to know that he was in her hands. If anyone alive could deliver him safely in time, it was her.

George grinned back. “I think so. She’s done this before, for he and I. After the station bombing.”

“I’d love to hear the story sometime,” I said. “Right now, what can I do to help?”

“Are you fit for service, Thomas?” George asked. He seemed suddenly serious again.

“Fit as a fiddle,” I lied.

He didn’t blink, although I thought he knew I wasn’t in as good condition as I was saying. George had an uncanny ability to know when someone was lying, bluffing, or otherwise full of shit. He stared at me for a long moment, and then it seemed like he had decided I was well enough, and went on.

“Then as President of Mars, I hereby promote you to Commodore within the ranks of the Mars Space Service,” he said. “Effective immediately.”

I was still a little woozy from the hammering my body had taken over the last few hours. The implications didn’t sink in right away. All I felt at first was annoyed. We had people hurt, dying, even dead. My father might be dying. The Space Service was a mess, what we had left in tatters, and Earth was sure to come at us again as soon as they could.

The last thing I needed right now was a promotion. Who cared? I’d always done what was needed anyway. Rank be damned. I simply took the actions I thought were necessary. It had worked out well enough so far.

“Thanks, George,” I said, keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself.

“Oh, don’t thank me,” George said. His voice had turned positively grim. “You’re now the senior MSS officer until your father returns to duty.”

Shit. That sank home like a pile of bricks. George wasn’t promoting me. He was putting me in charge. We had several Captains. But only one person ranked above Captain - Dad, who was the Admiral and the buck stops here man for the entire MSS. It was still a small service, and Dad hadn’t gone hog-wild promoting people. He’d set up ranks which made sense for the structure that we needed. There hadn’t been time yet for anything more than that.

“Oh,” I said, floored.

“We are at war, Commodore,” George said. “I am empowering you to take any and all actions you deem necessary to protect Mars from United Nations aggression.”

I could think of a couple of actions right off the top of my head. They were not the sorts of things Dad might do if he were still in charge. But he wasn’t here anymore. He might not be here again anytime soon. He might not even survive. The burning pain I felt from that thought crystalized my thinking. I was going to end this. For him and all the other people Choi had made suffer.

And besides, maybe that was why George was handing the job to me in the first place. It was time for a different touch.

“I can do that,” I said slowly. “It might require some extreme measures.”

“Then be extreme, Thomas,” George replied. “We may not survive their next attack.”

He cut the link, leaving me to my thoughts.

I took a walk to clear my head. The main passages were filled with people rushing about, trying to help bring in our wounded, so I headed inward toward the core of the station. Less people there. I needed to think.

Earth still had their massive station. They might be reeling for a moment or two from the loss of their fleet. But they would simply build another. The next would be even larger. Mars would toss together whatever we could in the short time we’d have, but this time we wouldn’t have the R&D station building ships for us. Nor would we have the missile pods there to take out most of the enemy fleet. And now they knew about the Hawks, so they’d be ready for the fighters next time.

If we didn’t come up with something brilliant, the next attack would sink us.

My wandering brought me inevitably back to my ship, the Constellation. My Connie had served well during the battle for Earth. I’d fought against ships trying to control the space around the planet, pirates who’d smashed whole cities by throwing asteroids at them. Only to find out later that the pirates were being controlled by the man who now ran the UN.

This area was still in micro-gravity. I pushed off from the deck toward the Connie, running my hand down her side. She was just about ready to fly again. Another day or two and she’d have been right out there alongside the Hermes in the middle of the firefight. And she probably would have been destroyed. This ship was a converted cargo-carrier. She had some anti-missile guns, and a few new toys the engineers added. But she wasn’t meant to go toe to toe with a ship like Perrault’s dreadnought.

For what I had in mind, she might just do the trick.

I activated my watch, turned on the Stein override again, and dialed up an all-station broadcast. Every radio and public address speaker in the station would play what I was about to say.

“All able bodied Mars Space Service personnel, this is Commodore Stein. Report to the dry-dock immediately for orders.”

I was done standing here and taking whatever Choi decided to dish out.

S
omeone was tapping my shoulder
. My brain was still foggy with drugs, and it took a few moments for me to realize where I was. I was in my hospital. Safely tucked deep underground on Mars, not up in space fighting that battle. I seemed to be back up there, out there, every time I closed my eyes.

Which was quite a lot. The doctors were pumping me full of pain medication to alleviate the agony my adventures had left me with. I recognized the floating sensation I was feeling as drug-induced. I knew that it, like the pain, would pass in time. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“What?” I growled. Or tried to growl. My voice sounded weak to my ears, which I hated.

“Someone here to see you, sir,” the nurse next to my bed said.

“I was sleeping,” I groused.

“Yes, but…you left orders…” She seemed flustered.

Finally what she was saying broke through the fog a little. I’d left orders to be woken if Thomas arrived back on Mars while I was asleep. It must be him. I tried to sit up in bed, but the movement made my guts clench in sudden pain.

“Don’t move, Dad,” Thomas said. He crossed the room to stand on the other side of the bed and pressed a button. The head of my bed raised a little so that I could see him better, and the pain slowly ebbed away. Keladry was there, too, standing just inside the doorway.

“Thomas, Keladry,” I said, smiling. “It’s good to see you both.” I reached out a hand for my son’s.

He took my palm in his own. I recalled when his fingers had been tiny enough that they could barely wrap around one of mine. I felt a pang of loss at that. Where had all those years gone?

Thomas pulled a chair over and sat down next to my bed. He kept his warm hand around mine.

“I wasn’t going to have them wake you,” he said. “Just wanted to peek in and see how you were doing.”

“Well enough,” I said, my thin voice belying the words.

“I heard they had to sew about half of you back together,” he said.

“I hear that I have your girlfriend to thank for being alive,” I said. “Again.”

She shrugged. “I’ll expect to see a good bonus in my next paycheck,” she said. But she was grinning.

“I’ll leave you two alone a bit.” She waved and slipped out the door.

“She brought me down here to see you,” Thomas said. “I wanted to check in, see for myself you were all right.”

I felt content and closed my eyes, which was a mistake. The drugs began floating me away again. I heard a few whispered words. If I stayed like this another moment or two, I’d drift back to sleep. They’d leave me to rest. I’d been told I would be weeks recuperating from my injuries. I knew that I’d almost died. And I had certainly earned some rest. But there were other things I wanted to say. With an effort of will, I forced my eyes back open again.

“The battle? Perrault?” I asked.

“Gone,” Thomas said. “His railgun backfired, and then he lost engine containment.”

“Your missile?” I asked.

“Yes. We got the shot in.”

I nodded a little, the smallest movement. It hurt like hell even to shift my body that much. “Thomas, they’ll be back. Have to prepare…”

Even drug-addled, I knew that we didn’t have much time. Earth had blasted apart every space-based defense we had. They’d come back at us as quickly as they could, with the first force they could muster. They’d blow Mars Station. Once they controlled our orbit, they could make whatever demands they wanted. The people on Mars would have no choice but to capitulate.

Even one or two ships might be enough to do the trick. If they set their full effort into it, they could have a tiny fleet of converted merchant vessels here in days. And I was out of ideas. The Hawks might provide some defense, but we were in trouble.

“I know, Dad,” Thomas said. “George put me in charge of the MSS while you’re injured. I have a plan for dealing with Earth.”

I looked at him. Really looked. He reminded me of myself, all those years ago. When I’d had my back against the wall, and made terrible decisions, the consequences of which had resonated through decades. Everything that had transpired in the last year was set in motion the moment I sent the Chinese ship back home armed as a nuclear weapon. And now he’d been handed all of this, suddenly and without warning. I knew all too well what it felt like to have the weight of an entire planet drop on your shoulders.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

He looked away from me, his face troubled. A few moments passed, and I wondered what he was thinking. What would I do, if our roles were reversed? If it was my son on death’s door - or dead - thanks to Earth’s attack, how might I have responded? I had a good sense of myself. And the strong feeling that I might not show much restraint.

“If we wait for them to come to us, we’re toast,” he said. “The Connie is almost ready to fly. I’m taking the fight to the enemy.”

“You’re going to do to them before they can do to us?” I asked.

“I am going to stop them from coming at us ever again,” he replied, the fierceness in his tone challenging me, daring me to argue.

He paused again. I didn’t interrupt, willing him to go on.

“The thing is, Dad, I don’t know what I else can do,” he said. “Choi has to be stopped, but he’s almost untouchable. If he comes at us again, we lose. This is the only way.”

I squeezed his hand in empathy.

“I faced a similar set of choices, a long time ago,” I said. “And I hit back in the hardest and most damaging way I could.”

He started to interrupt me, but I waved him down.

“Let me finish,” I said. “I wanted to hurt the enemy. So I did. I made them pay, but I created new enemies in the process.”

I thought about Shaughnessy, who’d hated me with such vehemence right up until the moment he drew his last breath. And Choi, who I’d made powerful entirely by accident. My actions ended the last world war, but the United Nations which came out of the peace that followed was more powerful than any body on Earth had ever been. Too powerful, and ripe for the plucking by an ambitious man like Choi.

When I blew up Beijing with their own nukes, I sowed fear across the planet. So much fear that terrified people were willing to turn anywhere for peace and security. People openly begging to give up too many liberties and freedoms to buy that peace and security.

“I hit them as hard as I could,” I said. “You…can show mercy, Thomas, where I gave my enemy none.”

His eyes were wet with unshed tears. I would have done anything to spare my son the pain he was feeling, to take the burden from him. But I wasn’t leaving this hospital for a long time, and there was no one else who could do what needed to be done. George had chosen well, damn him.

“I’m proud of you, Thomas,” I said. “I know you will do it better than I did.”

“That’s a tall admission, coming from you,” he said, sniffing a little. But I had won a small smile from him. It would be enough, for now.