Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) (22 page)

“Not was. Is. A surgeon’s family. They’ll get it back as soon as their papers clear. Meantime, the SR is renting it from them at market plus ten percent. It’s practical. Walking distance to my office.”

“Which is convenient for your chauffeur. Where’s the surgeon’s family ’til their papers clear?”

Jude paused with a butter knife in one hand, and a muffin in the other. “Stop trying to make something out of everything. With the mobs after the Armistice, people were happy to leave town.”

“So I read in the
Voice Republican
.” I pointed my silver spoon at the newspaper on the tablecloth, then at the back wall. “Did the surgeon take his oil paintings along, to brighten up the barracks?”

Jude wiped his lips while he rolled his eyes. “The SR stored displaced persons’ valuables for them.”

“How thoughtful.”

Three stories below, we heard the Tressen door chime, which sounded like a music box with a bad cold.

Jude chucked his napkin onto the tablecloth. “I hope that’s Howard and the Sergeant Major. Because you’re a pain in the ass for a houseguest.”

It was. And I suppose I was. But I wasn’t sure whether Jude was naïve about his employer, or he wasn’t. The latter possibility scared me worse.

Jude and I met Howard in the townhome’s parlor, with their baggage. As we entered, the downstairs maid scurried out, eyes wide.

Howard, his uniform as wrinkled as his face, sucking a nicotine lollipop, was scary enough. But on his shoulder perched a six-legged Plasteel and Ultratanium cockroach as big as a turkey. Jude elevated his elbow, and Jeeb telescoped out his wings and fluttered over to settle on Jude®€ iv . Jeeb’s diagnostics purred as Jude stroked the antique TOT’s radar-absorbent ventral fuzz. Early TOTs were so expensive that the J-series numbered just six units, identified “A” through “F.” The second unit deployed was J-series B, thus and forever Jeeb.

Jeeb wasn’t obsolete just because he relied on solar panels for power. Brain link robotics got scrapped years ago, but not because they didn’t work. Their radio transmissions, TOT-to-Wrangler, were effectively unjammable. A Wrangler effectively saw and heard everything the TOT did, and the TOT

responded to the Wrangler like a virtual extension of his body and mind. Which was the problem. A Wrangler who lost his TOT in combat was like a GI who lost a leg and a brain. The Wrangler suicided on the spot, or spent years in therapy.

All robotics texts will assure you that the relationship didn’t wash back the other direction. TOTs were non-self-aware machines, period. Claims that they imprinted their Wrangler’s personality were anthropomorphic rubbish. But I saw Ari Klein in Jeeb every day. When I overpaid the Department of Defense for Jeeb’s salvage title, I was really adopting an orphan, and all that remained of my friend. Jude scratched Jeeb behind his optics, which looked like a pair of shiny Oreos. “How could you leave him home, Jason?”

According to the texts, Jeeb couldn’t have cared less. But I had cried the day I left him, and the guy I left him with ’mailed me that Jeeb’s diagnostics whined for twenty-six hours straight. I said, “The only person left on Earth who knows how to maintain a J-Series is a retired veteran in Philadelphia.”

Ord handed me a chipboard, which showed on its screen the manifest of personality transported aboard the
Yorktown
. “You have to thumb for Jeeb, sir.”

I did.

Ord scrolled down, then handed the reader back to me. “And for these.”

I read the line item, then glanced at Ord. “More of your antiques, Sergeant Major?”

“I believe they could be useful, sir.”

“Four hundred of them?”

Ord shrugged.

I thumbed, then I handed Ord back his reader.

I extended my own elbow, and Jeeb hopped from Jude’s shoulder to my bicep, using four of his six legs. I scratched the joint where his sensor lobe joined his carapace, like it was a kitten’s neck. Jeeb had no nerve endings that could feel my fingertips, as any wiring diagram proved. But when I scratched him, his diagnostics purred.

I smiled. “He looks good, Howard.”

“Ed in Philadelphia overhauled him before we left,” Howard said.

Jeeb preened his antennae with his forelimbs, as I sighed. “My friend, all things considered, you’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

My next task for that day considered, so would I.

<¶€ fonfont size="6" face="sans-serif"> FIFTY-SIX

“THERE WILL STANDthe Prime Ministrate.” Later that morning, our guide, a scrubbed teen girl in the sunshine-yellow uniform of the Young Social Republicans, pointed across the fresh stone bowl of the Stadium of the Republic to a podium set above the opposite wall, and shouted over the murmur of a crowd of a half million. The Social Republicans needed a new venue for political rallies. The
Voice
Republican
pointed out that all political parties would have equal access to the new stadium. Jude, Howard, Ord, the Duck, and I leaned forward to hear her over the squeal of cranes lifting the SR

insignia, a carved stone medallion twenty feet tall, into place behind the podium, which cast the equal-access rule in a different light.

The Slug War had forced each of mankind’s three developed worlds to remake itself. The new Earth sought for humans the very opportunity to be. The new Bren sought for humans the opportunity to be equal. The new Tressel sought opportunity for humans, by declaring Iridians less than human. Could this crowd, and perhaps my godson, distinguish the first two from the last?

The guide led us along the curving, stone top tier of the stadium, and I looked out across the treeless, blocky capital.

The guide led us downstairs into the dim corridors beneath the stadium. The Duck and I brought up the rear. I said to him, “Look, do we really need Tressel?”

“It’s four jumps from anywhere. Isolated from our enemy, like the oceans isolated the U.S. last century. The arsenal of democracy.”

“Isolated? Mousetrap’s one jump from Tressel.”

“That won’t matter once you recapture Mousetrap.”

“Then Mousetrap can be the arsenal of democracy.”

“Democracy needs a bigger arsenal.”

“Arsenal of democracy loves totalitarian dictatorship. You’re a regular cupid, Duck.”

The Duck faced me, hands on hips. “Were you this sarcastic at the Pentagon?”

“More.”

Planck was at this new stadium to dedicate it, later that day. We met with Aud Planck, one-third of the ruling triumvirate of Tressel, in a conference room beneath the Stadium. Even the Duck, an Ambassador, got frisked by Planck’s bodyguards before we got within fifty feet of Aud. Aud Planck was fifteen pounds heavier, and wearier in the eyes, than when I last saw him. We shook hands, then he pulled me to him, and patted my back. “It’s good to see a friendly face.”

Aud’s comment was as upside down as everything else since the Armistice. When I left Tressel, most faces on the planet were friendly to Aud Planck. Now, theoretically, they all were. In the last election, ninety-nine point six percent of the electorate voted Social Republican, according to the
Voice
. If so, there weren’t enough opponents left to throw a decent assassination.<»€€ eldiv height="0%"> Aud motioned us to sit, then turned to the Duck. “You requested this meeting, Ambassador?”

The Duck nodded, then folded his hands in front of him. “Sir, the Human Union has appreciated your government’s cooperation in military affairs—”

Aud waved his hand. “You mean you’re here to present the bill for ending the war in Tressen’s favor.”

I hid a smile. If Aud had patience with anything, it wasn’t with diplomacy. The Duck made a tiny shoulder shrug. “If you like. Sir, we are preparing an operation—”

“To retake the Mousetrap. You may stage the operation from Tressel. We will contribute two infantry divisions. You will train them. General Wander will have operational control of embarked forces, including the Tressen divisions. Overall control will reside with Tressel.”

The Duck’s mouth hung just a bit. Staging rights. Two divisions. Exactly what he was supposed to ask for. Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail, except in police states. The Duck stiffened, then cleared his throat. “Sir, I don’t have authority to cede overall control.”

Maybe the Duck didn’t have authority, but it wasn’t so odd for the tail to wag the dog in coalition operations. Rommel had run the North African theater during World War II, even though much of his army and logistic support was Italian, and even though Rommel reported through the Italian
Commando
Supremo
. During the same war, the British accepted Eisenhower as the supreme commander of the invasion of Europe, even though the invasion was mounted from their soil, and the Brits committed more ships and troops to the landings than the Americans. Aud had been my friend. But based on the society that had festered under his leadership, I wasn’t so sure Tressel should be in charge. Aud smiled at the Duck. “Of course. It’s a question that doesn’t need answering today.” Aud stood. “I have to make a speech.” He shook hands all around, then was gone.

The stadium walls, even its ceiling, shook all around us with the crowd’s roar. The Duck chuckled. “He’s a better politician than you give him credit for, Jason. He could have received us at the Capitol. He wants us to know that Tressel’s strong enough that it doesn’t need us. We need it.”

“You think your bosses will agree to Tressen control?”

“I know they will. I already have that authority, off the written guidelines. I just wanted Planck to think he got
lagniappe
.” The Duck shrugged. “You said he’s a good general. So is there a problem?”

FIFTY-SEVEN

EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER THAT DAY, the Human Union had built up not only new cruisers, but Scorpions for the cruisers to carry into battle. These had made their way around the horn via Bren and the other jumps to what we hoped was the safe harbor of Tressel.

Troops, my troops, were trained and embarked. Aud Planck got the control he wanted, an¾€ nt>d decided to lead from the front, as always. Mimi and I remained at arm’s length. Jude was detached from the SR to command the Scorpions.

We built, we planned, we worried. We worried that if we went too soon, we would fail. We worried that if we went too late, the Slugs would beat us to the punch.

When the fleet finally jumped off for Mousetrap, we weren’t ready to go. But we weren’t ready to stay, either.

FIFTY-EIGHT

WHAT’S IN A NAME? If the name is Union Humane Star Ship
Emerald River
, everything, and nothing. To maintain harmony with the French aerospace industry back home, the diplomats changed the primary spelling of “Human Union” to “Union Humane.”

On
Emerald River
’s Bridge, harmony was real enough. Mimi, Aud Planck, Howard, Ord, and I stared into the Bridge’s holo display. The older
Metzger
-class cruisers made do with flatscreens, which seems strange since every living room in America’s had holo for years. But what you see in your living room, or at the Holoplex, lacks the reliability and freedom from linear distortion required in a modern combat display. Whatever. All I know is that I would love to watch the WorldBowl from Mean Green’s Bridge. Mean Green’s display filled the Bridge’s center space, ten numbered, winking red dots hovering in front of a purple doughnut. Actually, they tell me that if you put the dots under a microscope, you would see the ship itself at the center, so perfect that you could read hull numbers. The doughnut was the Temporal Fabric Insertion Point that would spit the ten red dots of the fleet out, a few hours’ flight away from Mousetrap.

Mean Green’s dot was numbered “1.” Theoretically, there was enough room to pass multiple cruisers through a TFIP simultaneously. But the tiniest fender bender would be terminal, and Mimi was too smart to risk it. That meant the cruisers would jump one at a time. The most recent drone to peek and return showed nothing but empty space on the other side, immediately inside the Mousetrap. Nonetheless, we would pop out on the other side newborn-naked. Mean Green would spray thirty-five Scorpions from its bays immediately. Unless we were butt deep in Firewitches, these Scorpions would loop beyond Mousetrap and make a pass at it from the side opposite the TFIP entry point. This would draw off Slug interceptors.

More importantly, it would distract the Slugs so that the Scorpion in Mean Green’s thirty-sixth bay could squirt out direct to Mousetrap itself. Nestled in the stinger of the thirty-sixth Scorpion was Jeeb. Jeeb flew great in atmosphere, by flapping wings like a hummingbird, but he was helpless in vacuum. The thirty-sixth Scorpion was to deliver Jeeb onto Mousetrap’s surface, then beat it. From there, Jeeb would do what TOTs did, crawl into the first nook or cranny that would get him inside, then snoop around. Jeeb couldn’t send out the information suite he could to a brain-linked Wrangler, but we would get rudimentary audio, which was more than we had now.

Mimi asked her executive officer, who stood alongside the console nearest her, “Status?”

“All in the green, ma’am.”

Æ€ nt> “Take us in, Mr. Burke.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

The only way you knew a cruiser was moving was to watch the sidescreens’ display of space. The stars around us began to slip behind us, then they became streaks, as the cruiser accelerated into the Temporal Fabric Insertion Point and the TFIP’s core mass began to suck in even starlight. Then the stars went out altogether, as the light itself was sucked in parallel to us.

The ship groaned around us. Planck looked around, his eyes wide. I’d like to say mine weren’t, but they probably were.

Then the light—different light—came back, first in streaks, which resolved into new stars in the new space we now shot through.

The first thing I did was check the display for the red dots of objects moving toward us within threatening range. Our green number-one dot was the only thing floating in the display.
Emerald River
shuddered, as her thirty-five Scorpions launched from her bays. A heartbeat later, a smaller shudder rippled beneath our feet as the Scorpion bearing Jeeb launched. Only moments later, the display got measles. Red Firewitch dots, too many to count, swarmed toward our Scorpions.