Angles of Attack (7 page)

“We’re not a military anymore,” she finally says to me. “Senior NCOs assaulting, pulling weapons on each other. We’re just a bunch of armed gangs now.”

She nods at me to follow her and starts walking toward the ops center again, a bit more briskly than before. I look over my shoulder to where the SI troopers disappeared around the bend, and follow Sergeant Fallon.

“We need to get off this fucking rock,” she says. “If we don’t find a sense of purpose again pretty damn soon, we’re going to be shooting it out in the streets with each other before too long.”

CHAPTER 3

I’m still buzzing with adrenaline when Sergeant Fallon and I walk into the ops center a few minutes later. The confrontation down in the Ellipse has turned my mood a bit sour, so I throw myself back into work to get my mind off the event. I sit down in front of the comms console and check our situation overhead while I contact the
Indianapolis
for a status update. The holographic display comes to life and dutifully displays ship icons and hull numbers.

Up in orbit, the strangest collection of warships I have ever seen is circling frozen little New Svalbard. The fleet overhead is nominally split up into three factions at the moment. There’s the NAC contingent: the carrier
Regulus
and the battlecruiser
Avenger
. Then there’s the SRA contingent that came with them: the assault carrier
Minsk
, the destroyer
Shen Yang
, the frigates
Gomati
and
Neustrashimyy
, and three unarmed supply vessels that are worth their weight in platinum right now. Finally, there’s the sole remaining member of the nascent New Svalbard Territorial Army’s space arm, Colonel Campbell’s little orbital combat ship
Indianapolis
. On paper, we have force parity between the SRA and NAC units, but the
Minsk
and her escorts are all thirty years old at least, and I would bet heavily on the
Regulus
and her bodyguard cruiser in a tussle. Luckily, we’re all one big multinational refugee family now.

“Stores are topped off, but that ain’t saying much,” Colonel Campbell says over the orbital link from the
Indy
’s CIC. “This boat was never meant for extended deep-space operations. There are only so many ration boxes we can cram into our holds. We’re good for another month of ops, six weeks if we live lean.”

“Anything new on the
Midway
?” I ask. Next to me, Sergeant Fallon’s expression darkens at the mention of the carrier whose commanding officer decided to make a grab for New Svalbard’s civilian food infrastructure, then tucked tail and ran when it looked like the Lankies were about to wipe us off the ice moon altogether.

“Last we saw them, they were headed into deep space. Got a few long-range infrared blips on the scope over the last few days. I think they’re trying to make a very long dogleg back to the Alcubierre chute and get out of Fomalhaut,” Colonel Campbell replies. “Either way, I’m not terribly consumed with finding them.”

“Be a real fucking blast if they showed up again and started shooting at our new pals,” I say.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t really want ringside seats to that show, even if that one-star in charge of that bucket is a moron,” Sergeant Fallon chimes in. “There are a lot of people on the
Midway
that don’t need to be turned into stardust.”

“I don’t disagree with you on that one in the least,” Colonel Campbell says. “I wish them the best of luck in finding safe harbor somewhere.”

The ops center is staffed with a near-parity blend of military and civilian personnel. The colony’s regular team of administrators and technical-operations people is supplemented by myself, Master Sergeant Fallon, and one of the staff officers from Sergeant Fallon’s HD battalion, a Major Frederick. The command structure remains tentatively unorthodox—while the major outranks us both, there’s a common understanding that the master sergeant and her inner cadre are in charge down here, and the staff officers of both HD battalions are content to let her run the show in New Longyearbyen. Of course, Sergeant Fallon would rather be dodging bullets and crawling through ChemWar-contaminated mudholes than dealing with the minutiae of everyday military administration for a two-battalion-strong garrison.

“Weather conditions will be good enough for flight ops for maybe another twelve hours,” Major Frederick says. “The puddle jumpers are drop-and-go right now to rotate people in and out from the terraformers. No idea when we’ll get the next decent window in this frozen shit soup.”

“Let’s get as many people shuffled through as possible,” Sergeant Fallon says. “And any orbital business we have, best get it done in the next half day or so.”

There’s a holographic display on the wall that currently displays a slowly rotating sphere representing New Svalbard, the sole moon of Fomalhaut c, third planet in the vast and very empty Fomalhaut system. There are sixty-four evenly spaced icons dotting both hemispheres, each of them a state-of-the-art multibillion-dollar terraforming station, powerful fusion reactors with giant atmospheric exchange units attached. Each of them has a garrison platoon of Homeworld Defense troops assigned to it—partially for security reasons and partially because New Longyearbyen doesn’t have the infrastructure to support two battalions of soldiers. The terraforming stations have energy and space in abundance, but they are extremely isolated and don’t have much in the way of recreational opportunities, so Sergeant Fallon has set up a rotation schedule, which the harsh New Svalbard climate screws up on a regular basis.

“I’m passing along a request from
Regulus
Actual,” Colonel Campbell says. “The task force skippers want to have a meeting with all the COs to discuss our plans for getting back into the fight.”

“Back into the fight? I could have sworn we’re right in the middle of it,” I say.

“It’s no secret that our supply situation isn’t great. We sure as hell don’t have the resources to winter in this place, let alone spend the next year or two here and wait for the Lankies to come to us. Without a fleet yard for maintenance, half our hulls will be out of commission before too long anyway. Especially those SRA relics. Those people don’t put much emphasis on scheduled service intervals in ideal conditions. I don’t feel like towing one of those overarmed garbage scows to the Alcubierre chute and then back to Earth.”

“All the COs?” Major Frederick asks. “Theirs and ours?”

“Everyone,” Colonel Campbell replies. “Ground commanders, fleet skippers, SRA brass, and our little gang of plucky mutineers.”

“Festive,” I mutter. “We’re like a tiny, fucked-up United Nations now.”

“We can pass a unanimous resolution against Lanky invasion,” Sergeant Fallon says wryly. “Problem solved.”

Strategy meetings are usually hair-pulling affairs just across NAC service branches. The idea of a multibranch, multinational discussion between fleet capital ship commanders, ground pounders, rebellious Earthside garrison troops, and our equivalents from the bloc we’ve been at war with until just a month ago doesn’t fill me with glowing confidence of success. We’ll do well not to light off a localized World War V right here in orbit once everyone figures out just how many pairs of boots we have competing for just how few resources. We have water and reactor fuel to keep everyone running indefinitely, but there are no calories in ice and snow, and the hydroponic farms on the surface of New Svalbard are barely sufficient to feed the civvies, much less five thousand combat troops and another two thousand fleet personnel.

“Well, let’s schedule it,” the major says. “It’s not like we have much else to do right now.”

“But that better be a conference link in the ops center. No way I’m walking into a room with all those people sitting around one big table, spirit of cooperation or not,” Sergeant Fallon says. She leans back in her chair and stretches her biological leg with a grimace. “’Cause I don’t know about you people, but I am fucking sick and tired of this light indoor duty. I still don’t know what exactly I’m good for, but it ain’t answering comms requests and shuffling paperwork from behind a console.”

The strangeness of the day continues at 1800 hours Zulu, when we gather back in the ops center to participate in the conference link requested by the
Regulus
’s commanding officer, Colonel Aguilar. The holoscreen at the end of the room divides itself into ever-smaller segments to accommodate the camera feeds of the conference parties as they join the talk. By the time everyone’s in the link, there are twelve different heads looking back at us from the holoscreen. There’s the commander of the SI garrison at Camp Frostbite, Lieutenant Colonel Reddicker, the captains of every NAC ship in orbit, the commanding officers of both HD battalions on the moon, and the head of the SRA component of our task force, a hard-faced little Korean brigadier general named Park, who looks like he chews bulkheads for breakfast and shits rivets all day.

Colonel Aguilar begins once everyone has joined the link and indicated their readiness.

“The purpose of this meeting is to determine a course of action for the military forces of the Sino-Russian Alliance and North American Commonwealth jointly garrisoning the Fomalhaut system at present. Whatever decision we make at the conclusion of this meeting will be made jointly with input from all parties, both military and civilian.”

Colonel Aguilar pauses as people nod and voice assent. I am watching the SRA officers I can see in the lower right quadrant of the screen. The faces of the Korean brigadier and the staff officers sitting on either side of him are void of obvious emotions. Of all the nationalities that make up the SRA forces, the Chinese and Koreans would make the best poker players.

“If I may?” Sergeant Fallon asks the civilian administrator of New Svalbard, who is seated next to her. He nods, and she clears her throat.

“This moon cannot hold out for long,” she says. “I’m not just talking in terms of military firepower, although that’s an obvious truth either way you slice it. We have a powerful task force, but it’s not even close to what they threw against the Lankies at Mars and lost. But our limited military capabilities are not the biggest fly in this particular soy patty. We are using food and other consumables much faster than we can replace them. Barring a change in the supply situation, we’ll be down to eating ration packaging and hull plating in another three months. Too many mouths to feed, not enough to feed them with.”

“We can take care of our own population, but we can’t keep that many troops fed at the same time,” the colony administrator says. “Our infrastructure isn’t at the point yet where we can sustain a few thousand extra people to keep fed.”

“How are the fleet stores looking?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Oh, we still have rations,” Colonel Aguilar replies. “And we have spare parts to keep most of the drop ships flying for a while before we have to start cannibalizing units. But at this rate, and without any resupply, we’ll be out of sandwiches in ten, twelve weeks. I can’t imagine that our SRA friends are doing any better at this point.”

“Worse,” Brigadier Park says with just the barest hint of a smile. His English is good, hardly accented at all, and his diction as sharp and precise as the creases in his mottled camouflage jacket. “
Minsk
is an assault carrier, not a fleet carrier like your own
Regulus
. Much smaller, less space for sandwiches.” He smiles his tiny smile again at the last word. “Our supply ships have mostly ammunition for planetary assaults, not so much food.”

“Can you put that in a number?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Three weeks, four perhaps,” Brigadier Park replies.

“Super,” Sergeant Fallon mutters. “Starvation or getting blown out of space. No winner in that bunch of picks.”

“If I had to choose just between those, I would much prefer perishing in battle,” Brigadier Park says. “But I suggest we find a way to avoid such a limited variety of options.”

“I’m with you there, General,” Colonel Aguilar says. “Question is, what do we do with all these ships and combat troops if we can’t go back the way we came?”