B009NFP2OW EBOK (12 page)

By stressing his rank, Delattre was putting him in his place, or trying to. Gray was already angry, but now he came close to losing all semblance of professional detachment. “
Sir!
As Admiral Steiger’s flag captain, it is my responsibility to point out both strategic and tactical options, and to raise issues that have a bearing on the entire battlegroup.”

“And you have done so, Captain, thank you. And I suggest now that you return to your bridge and see to the handling of the
America
. We will begin acceleration as soon as the remaining ships of the fleet have checked in.”

Gray glanced at Steiger, but the admiral was staring into the flag bridge navigational tank, as though lost in thought.

“Sir!”

Gray turned in midair, grasped a nearby cable guideline, and hand-over-handed himself back toward the carrier’s command center.
The idiot!
The self-absorbed, condescending, blind-to-reality, couldn’t-find-his-ass-with-both-hands
idiot
 . . .

By the book? Well, yeah, the book stressed having your entire fleet linked in after emergence . . . but it
also
stressed moving quickly—even beginning acceleration before all of your ships had checked in, in order to win as much of a tactical advantage over the opposition as possible. Such decisions were judgment calls, pure and simple. Delattre seemed convinced that twelve enemy ships could not pose enough of a threat to the battlegroup to justify accelerating immediately, before the more far-flung stragglers of the fleet even showed up in
America
’s navigational tanks. The delays imposed by the speed of light meant that as much as half an hour or even more might pass before all of the vessels were accounted for.

With Tango One just eighty light minutes away, it was sheer stupidity to just sit there adrift for thirty minutes, doing nothing, and stupidity again to assume that twelve ships posed no threat to the battlegroup. By all accounts, the Slan had made short work of the squadron defending Arianrhod.

Angry, Gray hauled his way through the hatchway between the flag bridge and the ship command bridge, the door hissing shut and sealing as he floated over to his chair, hauled himself into its embrace, and felt it close around his legs. He fumed for a moment, fingers drumming on one arm of the chair, then opened a neural link to Connie Fletcher. “CAG?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Have our CAP squadrons move out ahead of the ship . . . make it one AU. And in the direction of Tango One.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And do it gradually. I don’t want anyone to notice.”

He didn’t specify who “anyone” was—the Slan or Admiral Delattre—but he knew Connie got the message.

“We’ll do it on the sly, Captain. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks, Connie.”

It was a hell of a note when you had to keep your maneuvers secret not only from the enemy, but from your own side as well. . . .

Chapter Nine

12 November 2424

Executive Office, USNA

Columbus, District of Columbia

United States of North America

0835 hours, EST

President Koenig, once again, was linked in with Konstantin, the hyperintelligent AI located within Tsiolkovsky Crater on the lunar farside. His body was relaxing in his office recliner in Columbus; his mind’s eye was within a virtual reality created by Konstantin, an old-fashioned study, this time, with the elderly avatar of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky seated in front of a log fire. Through a window in one massively timbered wall, heavy snow was blowing in a windy night.

Koenig was concerned. Normally, he, as president of the USNA, would request time on the Konstantin array. The trouble was that Konstantin was autonomous. While technically he was the property of the USNA government and the research organizations that had overseen his development, Konstantin, as a self-aware individual,
belonged
to no one. Each time Koenig requested time on the Tsiolkovsky Array, he wondered if the hyperintelligent AI would even deign to receive a mere USNA president.

This time, however, Konstantin had requested to speak with him. Having the USNA president summoned by the AIP was, if not unprecedented, at least a rare occurrence. The last time Koenig remembered it happening was . . . when? Not during his tenure as president, certainly. He remembered reading that USNA President MacIntyre had been summoned by Konstantin during the H’rulka Incursion, late in 2404. It might have happened during the Avalon Crisis eight years later. AIPs were not in the habit of going to humans for advice. . . .

“President Koenig,” the Konstantin avatar said, nodding. “Thank you for linking in. We have a . . . problem.”

Koenig’s mind flashed back across several potential crises, wondering what a being as powerful as Konstantin would perceive as a
problem
. The Confederation fleet should have emerged at 36 Ophiuchi by now . . . might already be engaged with the Slan warships occupying the system, but it would be more than another day before the outcome of that strike could be known back here in the Sol System, across 19.5 light years.

The Confederation Senate in Geneva had recently issued what amounted to an ultimatum. Under certain terms of the Confederation Treaty, the Periphery regions of the United States of North America were to be turned over to Confederation control. That was a likelier source of trouble. Columbus had a month to respond to the directive, though, so any threat of USNA-Confederation hostilities was less than immediate.

“How can we help, Konstantin?” Koenig asked.

For answer, a transparent display materialized to one side, and an image winked on. The view appeared to be from the forward scanner of some type of spacecraft, but traveling at an extremely low altitude across a dark and crater-pocked surface. Electronic view overlays showed range and navigational data—altitude 20 meters, velocity 1330 meters per second, mission elapsed time 9.3 minutes . . .

The scene could have matched any of a thousand airless bodies in the solar system alone. “Where is this?” Koenig asked. He looked more closely at the display. The transmission was coming from something identified as Bruno One. “Where’s it coming from?”

“A Confederation/EU Type 770 VA gunboat seven hundred forty-two kilometers south-southeast of Giordano Bruno Base on the lunar farside. Approximately sixty kilometers from the northern rim of Lobachevski Crater.”

The scene jolted a bit as the craft accelerated, rising 50 meters to clear a low rise ahead.

“Giordano Bruno? What the hell are they doing with a Type 770 there?”

“Judging from their current course, I believe they mean to capture me.
Possibly
to destroy me, but more likely they intend merely to take control of me in order to deny this facility to the United States of North America.”

The information hit Koenig squarely in the gut. If it was true, he was witnessing the opening round in a civil war between the USNA and the Earth Confederation. . . .

Giordano Bruno was a particularly bright and young crater on the lunar farside, a crater so young that many selenologists believed it to be the impact crater caused by a celestial spectacle witnessed by five monks at Canterbury in the year 1178. Bruno Base was a Confederation facility located at the bottom of the crater’s twenty-two-kilometer-wide basin. Established in the early 2200s, the outpost had begun as a selenological research station, but eventually had become little more than a surface communications relay on the moon’s northeastern limb. Lunar libration—the moon’s slow nodding back and forth as it circled Earth, periodically brought the region into view from Earth. It was one of a dozen Confederation bases and outposts on Earth’s moon, and the only one on the lunar farside.

But it wasn’t a military base. Although . . .

He remembered seeing a report to the effect that a Confederation freighter, the
Dione
, had landed at Bruno Base two days earlier. Perhaps the freighter had not been carrying routine supplies after all.

He pulled up some calculations from his in-head connections with the Net. Bruno Base was 1853 kilometers from the Tsiolkovsky Array . . . a twenty-two-minute trip for a military force skimming the lunar surface at close to orbital velocity. And they were almost ten minutes into their flight.

“A flight of fifteen Type 770s was noted on radar by the L-2 Station eight minutes ago,” Konstantin said, apparently anticipating Koenig’s next question, “though they have not yet formally reported it. I used the L-2 communications array to hack the craft’s navigational AI and retrieve these images.”

Koenig nodded his understanding. Against an AI as powerful as Konstantin, normal encryption methods were useless. L-2 referred to the Earth-Moon LaGrangian Point, above the lunar farside, the gravitationally stable point at which the farside’s communications net station and some orbital logistical depots were located.

“According to standing orders,” the AI went on, “your release order is required to defend this base. Failing that, your order to the base personnel to surrender might save more than two hundred lives.”

“Surrender? Fuck that. Where are the nearest Marines?”

Tsiolkovsky Array

Tsiolkovsky, Lunar Farside

0838 hours, EST

Captain Barry Wizewski was getting old, was
feeling
old, and he didn’t like it. He was still in excellent health due to the effects of modern nanomedicine, but his religion prevented him from using anagathics—especially for cosmetic purposes—and as a result he
looked
every one of his eighty years.

It might be, he decided, finally be time for him to retire.

The Purist sect of the Rapturist Church of Humankind believed that they were expected by their Creator to be fully human when He returned for His people. Some of the more extreme members of his congregation refused even the most basic implants that might tinker with their humanity—cerebral and neural implants that let them control automated home systems, pull data down off the Net, communicate mind-to-mind, or receive in-head entertainment.

Wizewski had never gone that far in his own beliefs. He’d joined the USNA Navy almost forty years ago, and that meant either receiving a whole suite of neural implants, or getting a technological deferment that would have put him into dead-end career track. Wizewski had taken the implants, eventually becoming a captain, and the
America
’s CAG.

For the past twenty years, however, his religion had—be honest, here—begun holding him back. For almost 350 years, now, the White Covenant had made it illegal to try to spread religion—
any
religion—to others, and, while it wasn’t illegal to hold religious beliefs, it often seemed like people with religious preferences recorded in their personnel files tended to be passed by for promotion or for important commands.

Wizewski now found himself in command of the tiny naval-Marine garrison at Tsiolkovsky—a hole if ever there was one. He was still a captain and had no hope of ever commanding anything larger than a desk. Antireligious prejudice, pure and simple, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

Emigration had been much on his mind of late. There were extrasolar colonies founded by various churches and religious groups . . . if only to get away from the secular intolerance on Earth. Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, Gardnerian Wiccans, Mormons . . . even the Ancient Alienists all had founded colonies off-world where they could practice their own beliefs and not worry about the White Covenant laws.

The trouble was, colonies tended to look for younger men and women, not sour and wrinkled seniors ready to retire. Even the orbital colonies wanted youngsters; the O’Neil cylinders had been built with custom-created biospheres, but they still wanted men and women who could work the hydroponic arrays, tend the fish farms, and otherwise pay their keep with hard work. A kid nowadays might look forward to two or three centuries of active life, thanks to nanoanagathic life extension. Wizewski—unless he violated one of the prime tenets of his faith,
might
manage another twenty or thirty years.

And . . . would it be so bad to accept some of the life-extension options offered by modern medicine? That was the worst part of where Wizewski found himself wondering if his lifetime of faith in a Father-God Who demanded that His children be fully human when he called for them had been . . . a mistake. Lately, God had seemed increasingly petty; surely it was the
soul
that counted, and not the details of body shape or genetic prosthesis or electronic enhancement. . . .

His in-head comm chirped him out of a depressive cycle that had been gnawing at him for months, now. And the ID on the incoming call startled him to full awareness.

“Barry? This is President Koenig.”

ID verification codes dropped into place in Wizewski’s mind. This was the real deal. “Sir!”

Twenty years ago, Koenig had been the commanding officer of the star carrier
America
, when he’d been commander air group. The skipper had come a long way. . . .

“This is a formal and direct order, Barry. You have at least fifteen weapons carriers coming toward you from the north. Their intentions are believed to be hostile. You have full weapons release. Do what you feel is necessary to defend your base.”

“Yes, sir. Uh . . . is this the Sh’daar? Who’s attacking, Mr. President?”

“The Confederation, Barry. Konstantin can fill you in . . . but he needed my decision on whether to fight or not. What kind of defense can you put up?”

Wizewski chewed at his lip. He never had liked giving the Old Man bad news. He’d already opened a side window that showed a graphic of the approaching threat. They had less than ten minutes now before the hostiles reached Tsiolkovsky.

“In ten minutes? Mr. President, I have one Marine weapons platoon and about twenty naval personnel, plus two hundred civilians.”

“We’re looking for Marine or naval assets that can reach you in time. You’re going to need to buy us that time.”

“Yes, sir. How much time do you need?”

“Not sure yet, Barry. As much as you can manage.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

As the connection with Columbus switched off, Wizewski was already giving orders over the base Net channels. Forty-two Marines—a platoon of three squads and an HQ element—plus twenty Navy people, most of them his own staff. And they had to buy time from fifteen . . . oh, God. Type 770s?

He shook his head as data came avalanching in from Konstantin. This was not going to be pretty.

Executive Office, USNA

Columbus, District of Columbia

United States of North America

0839 hours, EST

“Please hold, Mr. President . . .” the in-head voice of an AI told him.

Koenig scowled. Geneva, evidently, wasn’t taking his call. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he’d thought they would have
something
to say to him.
Surrender or be destroyed
, perhaps.

The timing of the attack at Tsiolkovsky, obviously, had been carefully calculated to coincide with the Confederation fleet action at 36 Ophiuchi. Geneva, obviously, had been planning this for some time—use the Military First Right law to dragoon the majority of USNA warships within the Sol System and get them out of the way, then lay claim to the Tsiolkovsky Array.

And what else might they try to grab while the USNA fleet was absent?

After thirty more seconds, Koenig thoughtclicked the disconnect in his mind. Marcus Whitney stood before his desk, a quizzical look on his long face. “No go, sir?”

“Seems like they don’t want to talk to us, Marcus. You’ve got the alert out to all commands?”

“Yes, sir. General Mancuso at the Hexagon says that all USNA military forces are going on full alert, but it’ll be a few minutes before all commands check back in.”

The Hexagon was the iconic building north of Columbus that had housed the USNA’s command center ever since the drowning of Washington, D.C., and the earlier Pentagon.

“Fighters?”

“Two Starhawk squadrons at Oceana, sir.”

“Get them in the air.” He hesitated. He wanted to send one to Tsiolkovsky, but didn’t dare. If the Confederation was making a grab for Konstantin, it might also take advantage of the moment to grab the Periphery, those stretches of flooded USNA coastline abandoned by Columbus . . . and only now being reclaimed. “One to the Manhat Ruins, one to Washington, D.C.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell them if Confed forces show up, don’t shoot until I give the order. We want to keep open the possibility of a peaceful resolution if we can.”

A communications request chime sounded in his head. It was Ilse Roettgen.

“Excuse me, Marcus.” Within his mind, he opened the link. “President Koenig.”

“Yes, Alex,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Were you just trying to call me?”