Of Fire and Night (24 page)

58

CHAIRMAN BASIL WENCESLAS

A
ccompanied by Deputy Cain, Basil rode a shuttle up to the battered Juggernaut that General Lanyan had liberated from the Soldier compies. He studied notes on his datapad, ignoring the pilot’s announcement that they would be aboard the
Goliath
in ten minutes.

“I’ll have my report to you the moment it’s finished, sir,” Cain said. “I have assigned focus groups to discuss various aspects of the aftermath.” Careful in his duties to the point of being obsessive, the deputy always provided well-considered conclusions with all the supporting evidence Basil needed for making a decision.

With a final glance at the disheartening summary numbers, Basil dimmed the display. “I am not looking forward to the final tally of this disaster, Mr. Cain. I can’t begin to estimate the fallout—
if
we survive the next few months.”

When the Grid 0 flagship loomed before them, Basil felt nauseated to see its singed hull plates from the recent skirmish. The only capital ship left of the main battle group! If Lanyan had stayed a little longer, fought a little harder, could more of the hijacked vessels have been retrieved? Or would the EDF just have lost this one, too?

He suspected the General had made the correct decision. The Hansa media staff would have to bury the knowledge that so many trainees had been left in the clutches of the enemy.
Just like at the battle of Osquivel,
he thought. And that one had recently come back to bite them with the return of unexpected survivors and the embarrassing altruism of the Roamers.

A protocol officer in a rumpled uniform hurried to greet them in the Juggernaut’s secondary landing bay. “Let me show you to the bridge, sirs.” He brushed self-consciously at wrinkles in his shirt. “I apologize for the mess. We’ve been working double duty to effect repairs.”

Basil scowled. “That goes without saying. Save the small talk until after we’ve received the General’s report.”

When the three men arrived on the
Goliath
’s bridge, the disorder made Basil wince. Lanyan was usually a stickler for regulation neatness, but though the General was currently on deck, crewmen bustled back and forth as if he weren’t there, calling to each other, tossing tools. Workers and officers alike lifted debris and installed components without regard to their relative ranks. Circuitry welders flashed fountains of sparks. The air had an acrid tang of oily smoke, hot metal, and something unidentifiable that was vague and unpleasant.

“General!” The protocol officer raised his voice. “
General Lanyan!
The Chairman is here.”

Lanyan initialed an inspection pad that an ensign pushed in front of him, then swiveled his chair. A shadow of beard stubble covered his face (which was also surprising, since he usually kept his face so smooth it looked slippery). He had taken off his uniform jacket and wore an unmarked workshirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Mr. Chairman, Mr. Deputy, I appreciate your coming up to orbit for this meeting.” He briskly shook Basil’s hand, then Cain’s. His ice-blue eyes were bloodshot. “As you can see, I couldn’t spare even a few hours to go down to Hansa HQ. We’ve got to get our asses moving and pull everything together. Ships keep trickling in, but not nearly enough for anything close to a thorough defense of Earth, let alone other Hansa planets. By now the compies have seized most of our grid battleships, and if they all come barreling back here . . . well, let’s just say we want to be as ready for them as we can.”

“Deputy Cain is compiling a thorough assessment.”

Cain activated his datapad and sorted the numbers for display, but before he could deliver his summary, Lanyan ran to the sensor station, shouting, “I told you not to deactivate that system! I don’t care what else you have to bypass, but I need redundancy on our weapons trackers.”

“But it’s for the f-food synthesizer, sir,” said the amazed-looking ensign, who struggled not to stutter. “W-We’ve already sent for replacement parts. They’ll be here from the Moon base within the day.”

“And what if the compies come back within the
hour
? Would you rather have jazers or chipped beef?”

“U-Understood, General.”

Lanyan turned back to Basil. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman. Where were we?”

“I was about to summarize what we know,” Cain said. The deputy might not have the hard edge necessary to be a good leader, but at least he was competent. “By our best projections, we’ve lost approximately seventy percent of our military in the past few days.”

The General looked as if he were in physical pain. “And
seven
of my grid admirals. Unless our crewmen managed to scuttle their own ships, we have to assume those battle groups are now controlled by Soldier compies. As far as we know, only Admirals Diente, San Luis, and Pike survived.”

Cain did not do a good job at sounding optimistic. “It is possible that a few more are cut off from communications and simply not responding. However, I’d prefer not to have an unrealistically rosy picture of the situation.”

“Unrealistically rosy picture?” Basil raised his eyebrows.

Lanyan paced around his chair. “What the bloody hell do the clankers want? What set them off? Are they really controlled by the Klikiss robots?”

Basil took the datapad from Cain, switched to a new screen, and motioned toward the General. “Here is what we’re going to do. In the old days, they called it ‘circling the wagons’—a defensive posture adopted in dire times. We need to get every single functional ship into position around this solar system.”

“Even small civilian craft, Mr. Chairman?” Cain asked. “That could cause a disproportionate amount of unrest among the public.”

“They can do their part, just like everyone else. We know unarmed commercial vessels won’t stand a chance against the drogues or our own hijacked EDF ships, but they can sound an alarm if any enemy comes toward Earth. Set them up as picket ships.”

“We could establish automatic tripwire satellites, too,” Cain suggested. “It’ll increase our coverage, improve resolution and response time.”

Lanyan said, “Distant early warning? That’ll only tell us when to start praying. We don’t have much of anything left to fight with. If any significant force comes here, we’re toast. Burnt toast.”

Suddenly several of the
Goliath
’s bridge stations lit up with a sparkle of alarms. Announcements chattered over the speakers, signals from outlying picket ships. “Incoming vessels, General! Three of them.”

“What are they? How big?”

“The size of Manta cruisers, sir. Broadcasting EDF identification signals.”

“That doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore,” Lanyan growled. “Send intercept ships with enough firepower to snuff the intruders if they turn out to be bad guys.”

Though seasoned repair techs continued to work, two stations were up and running, displaying a tactical plot of the incoming bogeys and the intercept vessels scrambling from defensive points around the Earth system. To their vast relief, the intercept ships broke off. “They’re ours! Three Mantas genuinely piloted by humans. They escaped from Grid 7.”

“How can you be sure?” Basil said in a low voice.

“We’ve spoken to them directly. No doubt about it.”

“I didn’t doubt Admiral Wu-Lin either,” Lanyan said, “and it cost us plenty. Have someone go aboard and verify.
Personally
. Don’t believe it until you see the flesh and blood with your own eyes.”

Before long, the announcement was confirmed. “It really is good news! A hell of a slaughter over here, but it looks like the good guys won this round. One Manta has only seven human survivors—including Admiral Willis! They’ve piloted the ship here after linking their systems to one of the other cruisers.”

A new voice came over the comm circuit, a salty, grandmotherly drawl: “Thank heavens for barfing and diarrhea—otherwise none of us would be alive. Food poisoning saved our lives, General. Funny how things work out.”

“Please explain, Admiral Willis,” Lanyan said.

“Something went wrong with the
Jupiter
’s food-processing systems, and a wave of salmonella knocked an entire shift out of commission. I couldn’t afford to have my Juggernaut drastically understaffed, so I drew the bulk of the Soldier compies from the other grid ships for added manpower, primarily to do menial work in the overflow sickbays we set up. Why not let the clankers clean up all the shit and puke, right?

“Anyway, I was over on one of my Mantas inspecting and rearranging the reduced crews when the compies went nuts. There were so many of them on the Juggernaut, they took over the
Jupiter
in a snap, but at least we had a fighting chance on a few of the other cruisers, where the compy complement was reduced. Three battered Mantas—that’s all I could bring back. The rest of Grid 7 is in the hands of the enemy. Makes me want to crap my pants, food poisoning or no food poisoning.”

Lanyan looked at Basil, oddly relieved. “Admiral, at least you managed to limp home. You don’t know how much those Mantas mean to us right now. We damn well need every piece of equipment, even if it needs some fixing.”

“We’ve done all that duct tape can do over here, General,” Willis said.

Basil looked at the repair crews still busy on the
Goliath
’s stripped-down bridge. The task would get larger and larger as more pieces of equipment crawled home. “Put all skilled space construction crewmembers on the job. I don’t care what else they’re doing or whom they belong to. No excuses. We need everybody. Most of our spacedock facilities are out in the asteroid belt, but I’d feel more comfortable keeping any functional ships closer to home.”

“Give us the parts, and my own people can make all basic repairs here, Mr. Chairman.”

“Good.” Basil leaned close to his datapad again. “If only a third of the EDF remains, then I’m issuing a complete reactivation order. Every soldier from any branch of the service, whether on active or inactive duty, any retired personnel, anyone making a fine living as a consultant in the commercial sector—I want them
all
back. And we need to recall any EDF battleships still under human control, no matter where they are. Every single vessel that survived the robot insurrection needs to come back home. Now. We’re talking about the full-fledged defense of planet Earth.”

Cain frowned, clearly considering the consequences. “Mr. Chairman, we may have cut off supply runs, but we still maintain a presence at colonies that signed the Charter. Your order would force us to abandon every Hansa colony to its fate.”

“They’ll be just swinging in the wind,” Lanyan said. “They’ll have no protection against either the hydrogues or the robots.”

“Focus on the big picture, gentlemen. Earth is our highest priority.”

Lanyan did not look pleased with the instructions either, but he nodded slowly, scratching the itchy bristles of his beard stubble. “You are defining those other worlds as expendable, correct?”

Basil knew that the bridge crewmembers were eavesdropping, but unlike so many other parts of his administration, this was not something that could be kept secret for long. “Without the Earth there is no Terran Hanseatic League. We have to set priorities.”

59

PATRICK FITZPATRICK III

M
aureen Fitzpatrick kept state-of-the-art vehicles for her own purposes: short-range flyers, ground cars, even one elegant spaceworthy yacht equipped with an Ildiran stardrive and a full tank of ekti. But Patrick preferred antique automobiles, mainly because the grease, oil, and sheer clutter frustrated his grandmother no end.

Years ago the Battleaxe had denied him that hobby because greasy hands and dirty fingernails offended her sensibilities. Now, though, she had actually acquired several cars for him to tinker with, encouraging his “eccentric pursuits,” just to keep him out of trouble.

Patrick wanted to be doing something much more significant. He wanted to be talking to interviewers, expressing a positive view of what the Roamers had done to the EDF survivors. But Maureen now kept him safely hidden away in the mansion where no one could see him, while she scheduled him with “the best therapists in the world.”

It had been only a few days since the welcome-home party. He had tried to make postings and schedule interviews in his crusade to defend the Roamers, but in the sudden shock and confusion of the Soldier compy revolt, the returning captives from Osquivel were no longer the story of the hour. The whole EDF had fallen apart, compies had turned against their creators, millions were dead, and killer robots were surely coming to Earth. His grandmother didn’t even need to pull strings to keep him gagged: Nobody cared about alleged injustices to Roamer clans.

Maybe somebody might have noticed danger signs among the compies if they hadn’t been so preoccupied with chasing down Roamer settlements
. . . .

He was sure that General Lanyan and Chairman Wenceslas had somehow brought the EDF disaster down upon themselves, just as they had triggered the Roamer ekti embargo. He couldn’t believe Lanyan had coolly denied the whole incident about destroying Kamarov’s cargo ship! They’d made the current mess, so let them deal with it. Patrick had already resigned from the Earth Defense Forces, and he could not stomach the thought of serving such a flawed organization. How many other eager young officers, like himself, had been ordered to fire upon Roamer trading ships?

Patrick felt as if he would explode from frustration.

Fortunately, in the last few days Maureen had rarely been around to see him. She had suggested that he keep himself busy in the vehicle bay. Patrick did find working with the old engines therapeutic—changing oil, replacing spark plugs, checking fan belts and air filters. The physical work freed his mind and helped him to think more clearly.

Back at Osquivel, he had talked with Zhett about vehicles from the mid-twentieth century, ones built before computer chips and intelligent/adaptive circuitry allowed private autos to diagnose their own problems and repair themselves. The internal-combustion technology was primitive yet effective in a brute-force way. He had downloaded detailed guidebooks for his 1957 Plymouth Fury, his 1972 Ford Mustang, and (strictly for practice) a rusty little 1981 Chevrolet Chevette.

Now that he was done with political nonsense, his military career path, and his family reputation, he made plans while working on the cars. As soon as his grandmother let her guard down, he would do something she’d never be able to prevent. He didn’t think he’d have any trouble fooling the therapists trying to “deprogram” him from Roamer brainwashing. Stockholm syndrome, indeed!

He slipped behind the Mustang’s steering wheel and turned the ignition’s old-fashioned analog key, then pumped the accelerator to awaken the beast under the hood. “At least I can make
something
work right.”

He mused while looking through the windshield at the other ships in the vehicle pool, especially the space yacht. He knew how to fly every craft here. Why not just take the starship and go searching for Zhett? If the Roamers had packed up from the rings of Osquivel, he had no idea where he would even begin to look, but he certainly wasn’t going to find her by sitting in an engine bay and playing with old cars! Patrick began to make more concrete plans.

He released his foot on the accelerator, and the Mustang’s engine stuttered, coughed, then died in a choking gurgle. Bluish-gray smoke curled up from the rear of the car, and Patrick could smell the harsh-sweet fumes of internal-combustion exhaust. Silence returned like ripples fading in a pond after a thrown pebble.

As he climbed out of the driver’s seat, Fitzpatrick spotted his grandmother standing at the entrance to the service bay, watching him. She looked wrung out, her skin pale, her gray hair bound back in a quick and serviceable clip rather than her usual elegant coiffure. He’d never seen her look so haggard.

He slammed the car door, self-consciously looked at his grease-stained hands, then wiped them on his pant legs. “You look like you’ve aged a million years, Grandmother.”

Patrick had long since grown immune to her melodrama. All his life, he had seen her swing through the pendulums of crisis after crisis. She overreacted and exaggerated the importance of every scandal; each time a council vote did not go her way, it seemed like the end of the world.

“Is it any wonder?” She stared at her grandson under the service bay’s intense overhead lamps, and her eyes were sparkling with tears! Patrick had never seen such a thing; the Battleaxe had long ago learned not to bother putting on an act for him. “I’ll get your uniforms ready, and I’ll have your favorite meal prepared.” She hesitated. “But you’ll need to tell the kitchen staff what it is you’d like. I don’t even know your favorite food.”

He scrubbed his hands on a rag. The friction of his actions released a solvent woven into the fabric, and the stains quickly vanished from his fingers and knuckles. “What are you talking about?”

Maureen looked away as if she had failed him somehow. “I couldn’t convince them to make any exceptions. I used every favor I had left, but the Chairman’s instructions are utterly rigid.”

Exasperated, Fitzpatrick slammed the hood of the Mustang. “Are you aware that you aren’t making any sense?”

She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe he was so out of touch. “In the aftermath of the Soldier compy revolt, you’ve been called back to duty. Everyone has. Even I’ll be doing a lot of special projects behind the scenes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“All resignations and retirements have been rescinded, effective immediately. Every trained member of the Earth Defense Forces has to be deployed to protect our planet. Every single one. Killer robots are coming, and probably the hydrogues too. It’s only a matter of time.”

Patrick’s hands went numb, and the cleaning rag fell to the sealed floor of the service bay. Maureen stepped forward as if tempted to hug him, but then thought better of it. “You’re going back into battle. To the front lines.”