Angles of Attack (28 page)

Dmitry is asleep in his berth when I come to fetch him, but he seems to sleep in his battle dress uniform, because he’s dressed and ready to go not sixty seconds after I rap on the hatch of his berth.

The briefing room on Delta Deck is one of the larger spaces on
Indy
. It’s not quite as spacious as the enlisted or NCO mess berths, but it’s bigger than the CIC pit. Most importantly, it has about twenty chairs bolted into the deck, all facing the forward bulkhead, which holds a single large holographic display that goes from the top of the bulkhead all the way to the bottom.

Dmitry and I walk into the briefing room to find half the chairs in the room full already. Most of the department heads are here, including the lieutenant in command of the embarked SI squad. He gives me a nod when he sees me stepping through the hatch, and I return it. Everyone in this room looks in need of a daylong appointment with their racks and then a month of R & R.

“Philbrick told me about the hand,” the lieutenant says when I sit down in the chair next to him. “Doc couldn’t stitch ’em back on?”

I shake my head curtly. “Those fingers are all over the deck liner on the concourse,” I say. “Nothing left to stitch back on. I’ll never talk smack about those shitty little cop buzzguns again.”

“At least it’s not your gun hand,” he says.

“Yeah, I lucked out, huh?”

The hatch opens again, and Colonel Campbell and Major Renner walk in. The XO takes one of the empty chairs while the colonel walks to the front of the room and turns on the holoscreen with a gesture. It comes to life and shows a tactical orb, a mirror image of the situational display in the CIC. The group of auxiliary fleet freighters is sitting in space, flanked by the small group of warships in attendance. Well off past our starboard stern, the picket force is doing its patrol, lighting up the tactical display with occasional flares of active radar energy as they shine a light into the black to flush out intruders.
Indy
is like a burglar listening in to a family meeting in the living room after having snuck past the armed guards at the neighborhood gate.

“Situation,” Colonel Campbell says. “We are in deep space a million kilometers from Earth, in optical sensor range of an uncharted installation that is very clearly military in nature. There is a sizable civilian cargo fleet nearby, and some very powerful deep-space combatants escorting them. That includes three frigates that aren’t even listed in the fleet register, and two warships under construction that are bigger than anything we have in the fleet right now.”

He turns around and marks the respective icons on the screen. The icon for
Indy
is coasting away from the station and the picket force again slowly, but the eight stealth drones are keeping station all around the anchorage and the assembled fleet.

“Based on our reception when we got back to the solar system unexpectedly, I am convinced that this anchorage and the ships all around it aren’t common knowledge back at Earth. They tried hard to keep a lid on our arrival, and they were perfectly willing to blow us out of space to keep us from leaving again. It’s clear that they are up to something they don’t want to become general knowledge. The question is, what do we do with this intel now?”

“Go back to Earth, send the coordinates of this little party to every ship we see, and then down to the civvie networks for good measure,” Major Renner says.

“To what end?” our tactical officer says. “That’s a bad idea, ma’am. No offense.”

“Elaborate, Captain Freeman,” the colonel says.

Captain Freeman probably only has ten years on me, but at the moment, he looks like he’s pushing fifty. He’s haggard and tired, with deep rings under his eyes. I haven’t looked in a mirror in a while, but I suspect I’m not looking all that youthful and fresh anymore myself.

“Well, that force sitting there obviously doesn’t want to be discovered,” the tactical officer says. “And they’re the only task force close to Earth right now. Anybody goes checking out the coordinates we give them, they’ll get the shit shot out of them.”

“So we’ll send the info down to the civilians,” Major Renner says. “Let the Networks run with it. Story of the century, right?”

“And then what?” I ask. “The civvies find out that the fleet is tucking tail and evacuating? You’d cause a riot from coast to coast.” Then I have a nasty, unwelcome thought. “If the authorities even let the Networks air that sort of thing. All those civvie freighters? I’m sure they don’t just hold military assets. Hell, I’d be shocked if they don’t have mostly ’burbers and government employees on them.”

“Now that’s a cheerful prospect,” Lieutenant Shirley murmurs next to me. “The rats leaving the sinking ship.”

“The well-connected rats,” I correct, and he smiles weakly.

“So what do we do?” Major Renner asks. “Run off and leave them be? They’re fixing to leave with most of the combat power on this side of the blockade. Maybe on both sides. Who knows what’s left out there?”

“That’s precisely what we should do,” Colonel Campbell replies.

“You can’t be serious, sir,” the XO says.

“I can.” Colonel Campbell brings up the date-and-time window of the tactical display mirrored on the screen.

“We’ve been away from Fomalhaut coming on fifteen days now. We don’t have time to sit here and keep an eye on this happy assembly out here. This detour has cost us enough time and fuel already. Let them pack up and leave the system—I don’t give a shit right now. We have thirty thousand people waiting for us to come back to New Svalbard and tell them where the Lankies are lying in wait. We’ll leave the drones on station. If we ever get back, we can collect them and download the recon data.” He looks around in the briefing room. “Does anyone present disagree in any particular aspect?”

Major Renner doesn’t look happy, but she shakes her head curtly.

“I want to hear if anyone dissents,” the colonel says. “I am serious, people. You’ve all put your head into the noose with me when you decided to spring me out of the detention berth. You’ve earned the right to a choice here.”

There’s silence in the room except for the faint rustling of uniforms as people shift in their seats a bit. Then Major Renner clears her throat.

“We don’t go back and complete our mission, none of this is going to be worth the court-martial, sir,” she says. “They won’t risk the task force on a blind transition into the solar system, especially if we go missing.”

All over the room, there’s murmured agreement.

Colonel Campbell nods. Then he exhales slowly and pinches the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Very well. Then let’s figure out how to get back to Fomalhaut, and then get the hell out of here.”

“Two options,” the XO says back in CIC. “And you won’t like either one.”

She highlights two different trajectories on the hologram in front of her. The display table shows a long-scale three-dimensional map of the inner solar system, or at least the slice of it that stretches from Earth to the asteroid belt beyond Mars.

“Option one,” she says, and the first trajectory lights up briefly in pale yellow. “We go back the way we came, through the blockade and around Mars. We’d do another slingshot burn and hope we get lucky again. If we make it past, we’ll stealth to the Alliance transition point again, wait for a gap in the Lanky patrol pattern, and slip through into Fomalhaut. Same run we took in, only in reverse. Ten days, little less if we manage to use Earth’s gravity well for a nice push.”

She highlights the second trajectory, which lights up in pale green.

“Option two, we go the long way. With the current alignment, we can take the deep-space route here, but there won’t be anything to slingshot around. It would take a lot more time and energy.”

“How much longer?” the colonel asks.

“If we want to have any juice left in the tanks after we get to Fomalhaut, we can’t go full-out burn on that leg. Thirty-five days at one-g sustained for both legs of the burn, and I wouldn’t advise going any faster, or we’ll be coasting through the transition point with vacuum in the tanks.”

Colonel Campbell studies the map while rubbing his chin. There’s gray stubble on his face that makes him look uncharacteristically untidy.

“I like fast,” he says. “Thirty-five days is more time than we can spare. But the fleet back at Fomalhaut can’t make the run past Mars.”

He reaches into the display and zooms in on the area around the Alliance’s Alcubierre node. The two alternate trajectories converge or separate here, depending on your perspective and starting point, and he flips the map around a bit as he follows both tracks with his finger.

“We go the deep-space route, we may find a different way back from the node to Earth. Could be they don’t patrol that stretch of space as heavily.”

“Or at all,” Major Renner says.

“God knows there’s precisely fuck-all between here and the node on that route. If we get stuck out there, we’re truly stuck. Not even a comms relay in that area, never mind a depot or a mining outpost. But thirty-five days.”

I watch the exchange with some anxiety. I don’t know which fills me with more dread: the prospect of doing the death ride around Mars again in reverse and rolling the dice on those fifty-fifty odds one more time, or spending over a month in this ship scouting out the middle of nowhere.

Then Dmitry, who has been standing next to me and politely observing the exchange, clears his throat, and everyone in the CIC pit turns to look at him.

“Is not fuck-awl between here and node,” he says.

“Excuse me, Sergeant?” Colonel Campbell says with a raised eyebrow.

Dmitry steps up to the holotable and pokes the pale green option-two route with his finger. “You go this way. Is not just empty space. We call this
Krasnyy Marshrut Odin
. Red Route One. Like in old capitalist military film. There is anchorage for refuel and supply.” He taps a point halfway on the trajectory. “We use this sometimes when we have new ship to keep secret. Or for specialist operation. Black ops,” he adds, in his best version of an American accent.

“Whoa,” Major Renner says. All around, there is some incredulous chuckling and tittering in the CIC. “You are telling us that the SRA has a secret supply point for refueling Special Forces units. That sits near the trajectory we have to take to get to the SRA transition point.”

“
Da
,” Dmitry says agreeably.

“And you are volunteering this information. As if it isn’t a major military secret.”

“
Da
,” Dmitry says again.

“Why would you do that?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Is best way to get back. Not quick like go around Mars again, but more safe. You go faster burn, use more fuel, fill up again at Alliance anchorage. Can get food, too, but I would not recommend.”

“You have the coordinates for this anchorage,” the XO says.

“Is in suit, in computer.”

“And they’ll let us refuel there? Think you can convince them to refuel a Commonwealth ship? That’s mighty risky.”

“Nobody there,” Dmitry says. “Is automated.”

“They’ll throw you into military prison and throw away the access card when they learn that you gave away a major military secret, Sergeant Chistyakov,” the colonel says.

“Then you will not tell,” Dmitry says with a wry little smile.

“Assume we can get there at full burn, fuel consumption be damned. How much time would we need if we can top off the tanks at the Alliance anchorage?” Colonel Campbell asks the XO.

Major Renner consults her PDP and taps around on the screen for a few moments. “Seventeen days, sir.”

“To the anchorage or the turnaround point?”

“To the transition point, sir. The whole run.”

Colonel Campbell looks at the major, then me, then Dmitry, and then he shakes his head with a smile.

“What weird and wonderful times we’re living in, people.”

“
Khorosho?
” Dmitry asks. “Is good?”

“
Ochyen khorosho
,” the colonel replies. “Very good. XO, lay in the trajectory for option two and prep the ship for departure. We’re going the long way in a hurry. And let’s hope there’s light traffic along the way.”

CHAPTER 16