The noise in the briefing room was incredible. Not only were the black uniformed Marines physically present making themselves heard, those on duty and present on the monitors were also shouting, trying to speak. Those in the room were on their feet. No matter what exactly they were saying it was a uniform "No!" against Cyrus Waldeck's last orders. In fact it was a "Hell no!"
Elizabeth Van Felsen sat quietly and listened to the wave of anger and fear wash through the room for a long moment. It was not only almost impossible to stop the reaction in these soldiers; it was also inadvisable not to let it happen. She had her teeth set behind her calm face, a throwback to the Northern European type with white-blond hair and surprisingly almond-shaped blue eyes. There was also a heavyset, muscular form under her trim RFN uniform that tended to short rather than rangy. She'd been within a couple of millimeters of being too short to be a Marine. Her cousin Ulla always said that if she weren't training like a maniac, she'd look like round little great-great-great grandmother Anzehla swathed in widow's black. Whereupon Elizabeth would always try to thump cousin Ulla and not succeed because Ulla was a gold medalist on the dojo floor and no slouch herself.
The noise was building to an explosive level when she reached forward one hand and briefly pushed the "panic button" that set off the base alarms. As the raucous tone cut through the hubbub she leaned forward and turned it off, leaning on her forearms. Into the sudden silence she said quietly, "Now that you have that all out of your systems, ladies and gentlemen, may I remind you that you happen to be Marines?" The silence took on a weight as her words marched on inexorably. Quietly. With deadly calm.
"As Marines you will obey orders given by a superior officer even if you don't like them." Her amplified voice was getting slowly louder as she spoke. "And you people will bloody well bust your asses to follow said orders!" She gazed over the rows of faces, her eye picking out NCO Wiese's impassive face here and Lieutenant Cheung's black glower there. "Or are we talking mutiny in the face of the enemy, here?"
The Marines on their feet sat down. Some abruptly, like Captain Peters, or more controlled like Corporals Wismer and Li. As commander, she knew them all, and ran her eyes over them regulars and reservists alike, the bulk of the reservists the presence on the monitors. Lieutenant Alessandro McGee particularly was having a difficult time controlling his feelings about being told to surrender.
"As Marines we will keep our faith, as we swore, but . . ." She stopped and held their attention, focusing them with that single word that could make all the difference. "But, we are not going to follow them stupidly. Is that clear?"
There was some coughing and clearing of throats as people nodded and a rumble of "Clear, Sir" rolled through the room. Van Felsen tapped the red dragon on her collar and allowed a tiny smile to appear on her face. "Sergeant Danilenko, if you've got a pack of Vile Wolves circling the house and barn do you just go charging out by your lonesome with a rifle blazing in each hand?" Igor Illyich Danilenko, whose family was homesteading on Madras, smiled dryly.
"Only if dying young you would be. Unless vid heroes like Awesome Man and his Tabby sidekick you are, with invulnerable purple tights."
There was a rasping chuckle at the image of the cartoon hero and his Orion companion who had muscles on his muscles, rueful as the men and women in the room began to realize that they were no longer in a stand-up war but a guerrilla war.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have only got a few hours before the aliens actually manage to get here so there are going to be some massive changes. All the reservists and one half of you people were never here and never in the military at all. You will disappear into the population and your job is to be available for whatever we need to do. We will be establishing ways to make contact and get orders, without being terribly obvious about it."
She sighed, quietly enough that the pickup didn't catch it. "The fleet withdrew. We don't have support. Commander Wu and the strike fighters are out of contact and though we're trying to reestablish the connection it's slow going. Acrocotinth Base is refusing to respond."
There was a collective inhalation at that particular piece of news and she had no doubt that the rumor mill would be buzzing with the argument that she and Wu had had just before this briefing. The one where he'd hung up on her.
Van Felsen, though she was furious with him and felt betrayed, she knew that he was only doing what she herself ached to do. But her job was to see that she and all of her Marine detachments along with the Peaceforcers obeyed orders.
"We only have maybe forty-eight hours before the aliens get here, Sir." Commander Wu nodded slowly, then more decisively. "Well, we'll do what we have to." He looked down the briefing room table at his officers and behind them, on the wall, his satellite image of the planetary surface. It was the planet he loved, the six island continents, each with its entourage of islands, down to the last rocky shoal and frilly bit of coastline. The sensi-artist had incorporated the acid/iodine smell of the ocean and the faint cry of gulls in the distance into the piece. Some people thought it was inappropriate for a briefing room but he thought that it focused people on what was important, Bellerophon itself, and its people.
He knew that he was disobeying orders but could not see himself as a mutineer. Don't give commands that you know cannot be obeyed. They won't be. His officers' faces showed their mixed emotions, their need to fight an enemy who had killed so many of their own with the sinking sensation of failure to obey direct orders, but they were obeying him. That made it doable. It would be on his head, the way it should be. Acrocotinth would go down fighting.
"We'll do what we can, people."
"Carrying unfamiliar warriors and not refitted enough to fight, our gallant ship, ordered into retreat by the Human planetary defense commander transits to make contact with Vice Admiral Erica Krishmahnta. We will continue recording, even as we lose contact with Kaazyorzza News. Sending, from the front of the new war at Bellerophon, this is the Least Claw Showaath'sekakhu-jahr."
"Cut."
Zheelanak lowered his camera as the ready light went off. "I repeat my admonishment, Showaath." The word he used for admonishment would have translated into Terran as "claw strike across the nose."
"Oh, I know. We should have covered the war from the other side of the warp point. No, my theernowlus"—she used the word that meant personal risk-taking necessary for honor—"says we'd be cut off from information then, Zheelanak, and our duty is here."
He growled as he packed up his equipment, and cast a glance where the Celmithyr'theaarnouw had vanished. "We agreed that the rest of the crew would do better there, but I've noticed which side of the warp point you are on." She preened her face whiskers, smoothing the pale lightning flashes of fur, narrowing her eyes.
He found himself unconsciously reacting to her as a female and turned away, annoyed with himself. It was a quality that carried through the media and made her very popular with Orion males who watched her news.
"Personally," she continued, "Knowing your father, I'm surprised that you aren't trying to get hold of a fighter to go out and engage the enemy personally. It would be the highest honor."
He jerked his chin at her with his chuckle, the closed-lip smile of a fanged species. "And I'm not surprised, knowing your father, that you are going to go underground with the Humans, rather than risking yourself in a fight."
She ducked her head to attend to packing up her own microphones. With the rest of the crew gone, they had minimal equipment . . . all of which could be easily concealed.
"There are those at home who would think we are both theermish for not fighting," she said, unable to keep the reflexive growl out of her tone. He hissed at the word and turned abruptly to face her.
"You are not a risk-shirker or coward. You do not send others out to fight for you." He spat at the thought, his fur bristled out around his harness. "Stop that. We are establishing the honor of the journalist. To knowledge. To truth."
She hissed softly in response to his vehemence, suddenly glad to see that he wasn't automatically being protective because of hormones. "To the truth."
He nodded and picked up his case. "My father once explained the difference between true honor and mere reputation."
Showaath laughed. "Mine as well. He said that if your own honor was satisfied, then everything else was chofaki shit."
"Sounds like him. Let's go, Least Claw."
"Of course, Cub of the Khan."
"Minor Cluster Commander, we are coming up on maneuvering point one."
"Thank you, First Tentacle SenAnkaht." The young Destoshaz visibly colored with nervousness as Daihd acknowledged. Everyone was off color with encountering these creatures and now they were coming up on the planet that would be First Fleet's New Home and it seemed that the surface was teeming with them.
What should have been New Homecoming for the Dispersal was tainted with this, though a surprising number of the Destoshaz were beginning to see it as Illudor's way of validating the Anaht'doh Kainat, the Star Wanderers. Daihd wasn't sure of what she felt, personally. She was as shocked as the rest of the Fleet at all of it, but she set her mind to do her duty.
The bigger ships were coming around from that spot in space where the aliens had disappeared, after clearing away the fortresses that had guarded it. It took time for the biggest to change direction at all, and none of the scientists wanted to shut off the drives that had worked so well for almost fifteen hundred years without some assurance that they could start them again if necessary. Thus it was that Daihd had suddenly inherited command of Mobile Squadron from the unfortunate Junior Admiral Vakelnar.
"Small craft rising from the surface, position ranteen by eighty-six." There was no moon for this planet, with the orbit-grazing asteroids in inconvenient period for any kind of base, which would make this easier.
She clasped tentacles and tapped her main claws together. "Let them come to us, Primes Trumanhk and Ilrasenk."
"Acknowledged." Her two division primes responded almost as one and she felt satisfaction that they worked together so well. The five tenders vastly outnumbered the small fighters rising to meet them and she wasn't terribly worried about what they could do. No matter how many Arduans they would inconvenience with what one of her year-mates had called "a temporary case of death," these creatures would not stop the settlement of New Home—or New Ardu, given that people were still arguing over which would be more appropriate, even after fourteen hundred years.
Lieutenant William Chong tapped the implant over his left ear as he pulled the strike fighter's nose up steeply, juddering just on the edge of stalling as they howled through the fading grab of the atmosphere. He'd been meaning to have the com link looked at, since it was sending annoying, barely audible, bursts of static at random intervals, but now it looked like he just wouldn't have time.
The planet-based fighters were heavier than the carrier birds, given that the support crews were also heavier. The squadrons weren't designed to go into high-Bellerophon orbit but they were heading out past the Roche limit where a moon could exist, if the planet had had one. The aliens were coming and it looked like they were all that opposed them. Chong didn't think about what his orders from Commander Wu meant. He knew. So did everyone in every one of the fighters climbing out of the atmosphere.
For a second he let himself see and feel the heart-stopping blue that the border of the planet, the periphery of the atmosphere was; the shining gleam of the leading edge of sunlight and spangled stars of cities and towns in the night behind it; the towns that he was going to defend if . . . until . . . he died trying. Then he turned his attention outward into the dark into the night were the aliens would come. "Bogart Squadron," he said as the last of his group cleared atmosphere. "Clear."
"Lamar Squadron, clear." He tapped the com unit again and the transmissions came in clearly for once. "Brando Squadron, clear."
The other squadrons cleared cleanly, except for Streep and Zerephi, both of whom had fighters in them that should have been down for maintenance and were lagging. Not that it mattered. As long as they could actually get out to four hundred thousand kilometers and fight when they got there. It would play merry hell with their groups' coordination, but that was better than them not being there at all.
They formed up and headed out to intercept the aliens before they could reach orbit. It took a few hours before they all cleared the last of the shipyards and it gave Chong a chill to see how empty the usual approaches were. The private hulls had left and corporations had pulled out every vessel they'd had in Bellerophon space. There had been an enormous, but mercifully short political battle to get evacuees onboard. There were only a few thousand of those because you could only pack so many private ships to the bulkheads. Anything that could make the warp had. But this space was empty enough now that there was no need for traffic control.
Lieutenant Chong shook off the mood. There were millions still to defend and hostiles on the horizon. He wasn't descended from the humans who believed in Valhalla, but his ancestry was Japanese as well as Chinese. He had bushido in their genes.
"Missiles! Incoming! Incoming!" Chong narrowed green-gold eyes and he heard, over static, Cappelli and Onehawk yell something decidedly nonregulation, but didn't reprimand them, as they engaged. See you in hell, you bastards.
The sound of the vid in the next room kept pulling Jennifer Pietchkov out of her latest attempt at "Flight." She knew that she couldn't work effectively, not now, but it was better than sitting, waiting, flipping through the various shows, knowing that a hostile alien force was approaching the planet; knowing what she did from Alessandro, who was pacing back and forth in the other room, his steps moving from tile to carpet and back again. He'd raged at first when he'd been evacuated from the asteroid mines where his company had based him, and if he'd raged then he'd been white-hot when ordered to "surrender," by Commander Van Felsen. Now his anger was icy, contained in his 180-centimeter frame, clutched tight in his broad hands.
He was a rare redhead, a throwback to his forbearers on a small island on old Earth. Jennifer had always teased him and called him her Abyssinian tiger, all red sand, chocolate stripes and a need to flex his claws. His fellows in the Reserves just called him "Tank."
—ffering theories about the amount of energies contained in the "quantum foam" of empty space. This energy is visualized most readily to a layman by picturing the spontaneous creation and immediate destruction of pairs of particles and antiparticles. This occurs in what would otherwise appear to be all of ordinary vacuum, and since the sum amount of matter and energy involved remains a constant null, it has no direct effect on our perceptions. Thus, the universe is not overwhelmed by the titanic forces erupting from the distance between nothing and nothing.
Some theorists tell of possible means by which the parity rate of particle creation and annihilation could be altered. This excess of either particle would result in a net outflow of energy and matter from what would otherwise seem to be originating from an empty volume of space. Many of these theorists, eager to cling to the basic philosophical prospects of conservation of mass and energy, describe this resultant energy flow condition as a "pinhole" in the fabric of space-time as we know it.
The amount of energy involved is significant: a single cubic centimeter of vacuum contains, in some estimates, more than enough energy to rival the output of a small star. Others claim this estimate is low by a mere factor of thirty-six decimal places. Some amusing wagers have been attached by leading cosmologists should any empirical testing be allowed.
A much smaller pinhole would still create incredible power, but as the energy was radiated into our universe, it would most likely take the form of hard radiation, and extend into creating exotic particles that have not existed in our universe since the primordial monobloc degenerated into the Big Bang. Such particles could range from simple neutrinos to macroparticles massive enough to collapse into quantum black holes, with masses ranging from billions of tons to those of a small asteroid. An adroit physicist—or her competent grad-student assistant—would perhaps promote a more efficient harnessing of the energies from such a pinhole by "throttling" the dimensions of the "opening" of the pinhole into our universe, perhaps to the scale of a few Planck radii, and further discriminate which particles could be permitted to escape out into our own universe.
Sacrificing most of the energy into such a filtering mechanism—and then shielding said physicist and possibly even the grad student from the outflow - would still leave one with an abundant amount of energy. It would be more than enough to propel even the most gargantuan of vessels to the very edge of Einsteinian space. It would be reasonable to surmise that since these visitors have been decelerating with these drives spewing their output in our direction for what would be some time now, and our detection equipment has not noticed an excess of exotic particles in the local solar system's environment, one could assume if this is thei—
"'Sandro, would you please turn that thing off? All we're getting is these university types blathering about stuff that's not important anymore." She put her 'caster down on the work table, sat down with her head in her hands, running her fingers up into her tight, glossy brown ringlets. She was, like most of humanity, a café au lait color and had the sharp-edged features of what had once been Uzbekistan. Those fingers were calloused with use of power chisels, scrapers, and sensi-caster. She'd kept working, even when it had become clear that the alien contact had gone terribly wrong; it was her way of dealing with her feelings, to the point that her insulated cabinets all around the room were full. She'd even had to leave a couple of statues out with insul-blankets tied around them and they still leaked if you got too close.
The fear was almost palpable. Or maybe it was just her own. The unknown, coupled with the knowledge of hostility was enough to ruin everyone's sleep.
. . .hand, if one can "tune" the pinhole to emit specific particles, a spray of positrons and antineutrons could be emitted from the exhaust of such an engine. Alas, while it sounds effective, I would be loath to spray such materials out into the path I was decelerating into. Since they did not do this as a means of defense, I can assume either they cannot, or that I should be on somewhat stronger antipsychotic medication. . . . I would be loath to take such a delicate mechanism into a combat environment, especially one where the dominant energies it would produce are needed to restrain the very forces harnessed. I would certainly not wish to be near one such engine if it malfunctioned.
We must not assume too much or too little of our visitors. All of their vessels function under the same laws of physics we dwell in. Their smaller vessels seem to function using technology similar in design to our own, if not in scale. None of the "tenders" seem to use the more flamboyant drive of the larger vessels. Perhaps there is an economy of scale in the support mecha—
With a snap, Alessandro finally cut off the droning voice of the university fathead, before coming into the room and enveloping her with a hug. "You're right, ma sweet."
He buried his face in her neck as she clung to him, for a moment just resting in each other's strength, breathing together, as if they could hold off the anxiety with sheer will.
"You're reverting to your accent, love," she said, finally as she raised her head. "I knew that Ruari Mac Ruari would get you one day." Jen managed to startle a laugh out of him. His arms tightened as he did.
"You think?" he said quietly. "If there's anyone we're going to need it's that character." The persona he'd created, of an eighteenth-century Scottish highwayman for a group he'd belonged to in university, had been a joke between them, since that had been how they'd met, Jennifer being Bess, an English innkeeper's daughter. It had been years since they'd played at being historical figures but Jen always had to smile because 'Sandro reverted to Ruari's accent when he was severely stressed.
"I know it's hard to wait." She put one hand on his cheek, feeling the bristle of whiskers. Even if he depilated twice a day, his beard always seemed to be just ahead of it all the time. "You'll manage. Your commander's a sneaky one."
"Ya. I just . . ." He shrugged, lifting her right onto his lap. "I suppose I'll learn patience."
"You'll have to." They both glanced upward as though they could see through the ceiling and miles of atmosphere and space to see what was happening off-planet, then away. "Why don't I make us some coffee," she said. Though I'm going to let mine get cold again. "Then you can help me position the holo generator for the Thai Gallery's new piece."
She could feel the effort he put into relaxing his muscles, making himself stand down. "Sure and I'll help you, lass." He lifted her off him and set her gently down on the cough, easy as thistledown though she wasn't a small woman. Jen sighed and bit her lip. She loved the man dearly but he wasn't the sort of partner you'd call into the bathroom to watch you pee on the little plastic strip. This was just the lousiest time to tell him she was pregnant. Hell, it was the lousiest time to be pregnant.
Lieutenant Chong ignored the shrieking alarms and redlining gauges. He was close enough inside this monster's shields that he could see, even as he focused on his last missile target. My last missile. Everyone's last missiles. Out of the corner of his eye he could see, by eye, the fireball as the last of squadron Streep plowed into the alien SD, gouging a glowing hole in the hull. We can't do enough damage. We . . .
He whipped his fighter around in a maneuver that he shouldn't have tried, as the energy emplacement sheared through his port side. Hull breach. His suit air kicked in and he blinked watering eyes, shaking his head, trying to keep his target clear. Missile away. Somehow he pulled the limping fighter out of the chaff, and his drive cut out.
Then, astonishingly, there was silence. He was still alive. His gauges were still red or amber. His drive was dead. That wasn't supposed to happen. Generally any kind of engagement was all or nothing. He hadn't expected to survive that last run. He had no ammunition left. His primary was nonfunctioning. And they hadn't killed him. Was anyone else left? He tapped the implant . . . got only silence. He wasn't aware that there were tears on his face.
Was there something else he could throw at them? Anything? Only his unvoiced curses. He could only sit and watch as they shrank from enormous to merely huge as they bypassed him, then they were small against the darkness and smaller until they vanished, heading into a lower orbit. "Squadron, respond. Respond." They hadn't blown him out of the sky, but they hadn't stopped to pick him up, either.
Nothing. He rerouted power feeds, sent the repair protocols running. The memory metals and transpolymer filaments made it possible that he might be able to get some kind of power. His hands moved on the controls lightly. One of his gauges flickered from red to yellow and then another. His engine readouts bounced from zero to max and back before coming up to five percent power. He couldn't catch up to those . . . He struggled to control his emotional reaction. The aliens. He would not allow himself to hate.
His first duty was to see if he could even get home at all, then he'd report and see if he could continue the fight, somehow. He touched the sleeve pocket where he kept Jeannie's pic. It hurt, having hope, even the little he had now. But it was better than being dead.
Daihd flexed her claws absently working the kinks out as she watched the screens. (Concentration.) The bridge of the Nasanhkorat would have looked very strange to human eyes. Not only was the light wrong, but all of the stations were set in a ring that mimicked their clusters, with open space around the outside. It had, of necessity, expanded past the tight ring that physical defense required, but retained the ancient quality. This was one of the older tenders. Daihd would have preferred the new designs that incorporated the vertical as well. She didn't maintain minimum gravity in the ship the way some did, but did drop it considerably in all her training, and now, combat. She'd be a fool not to take advantage of something that reduced fatigue and raised reaction times.
The shaxzhu might nag about maintaining gravity at "normal" levels to facilitate the transition to planetary life, but they hadn't even had a good argument for that until four hundred years ago when it became clear that the target system had nongas giant planets for Arduans to settle on. Up until that point they might have had to create space stations around the star. Daihd herself wasn't sure if she even wanted to become a planet dweller.
"I have a fix, Cluster Commander. That island, there." (Excitement, willingness.)
"They are broadcasting something, Cluster Commander. Audio only, again." (Fear, disgust.)
"Put it in the files, perhaps we'll figure it out sometime. Prepare to bombard that island." (Satisfaction, completion.) "I want kinetic strikes because we don't want to dirty up our nice new home now, do we? There was a ripple of amusement around the control circle. "Then we need to try to communicate with these things. After the strike, respond to that broadcast. I will speak to it and see if it can understand language."
The handful of missiles slid out of their launch tubes. Against the darkness and vacuum silence, their launch flares sparked like small stars, winked out, blinked on twice more as their courses were corrected, went out as they fell noiselessly toward the planet. They entered the atmosphere under power, their tracks lighting up white, like magnesium flares. The shock wave didn't roll across the sky until long seconds later.
Alessandro had turned on the vid again and stood in front of it, clenching and unclenching his hands. "Jen." His voice was flat.
She came out of the workshop and stood as well. The BRR news satellite showed the missiles hitting the upper atmosphere, red glows brightening to eye-hurting brilliance. The news cams were in the wrong position to show people what happened, but an independent feed on a sailing craft gave them the images.
"—Jeez, Hal, can't we get any more speed out of this bitch? . . . Oh, shit, there go the aircraft. They cut it fine— . . . could the engine help? No, dammit. Oh. Hell. Here it comes."
The picture, tipping up and down with the movement of the ship shifted from the aircraft evacuating the fighter base to the streaks of light across the sky, blocked for a second by the edge of sail. They seemed to become dimmer as they hurtled deeper into the atmosphere. The camera lost their track, picked up the old, old thunder of their initial entry. It focused on the shimmer that was Acrocotinth in the distance and for a moment nothing happened, the peculiar ringing hush before disaster: seeing the first motion in an avalanche, understanding that the volcano is belching a pyroclastic flow of superheated gas and rock that can outrun a car.
Alessandro put his arm around Jen and held her tight as they, like everyone else on the planet, watched. There was a multiple blink like a string of firecrackers going off at one's feet, only a thousand kilometers away, that overwhelmed the capacity of the screen; it blanked white for a moment. An expanding ball of dust rose, its core glowing as the air caught fire, towering up into the sky as the dome of expansion was pinched in by the inrush of air. The shock wave hit the boat, a confusion of images, a wild swinging of the camera, spume and a sail in tattered flames tilting upward to gray-green and white; then nothing.
In the tank before Van Felsen's desk there was finally an image, with a voice that the translators sputtered and struggled with for long moments. The thing in the image was bald and bright gold, had three eyes—one larger and centered above two smaller ones and what seemed to be masses of tentacles on the ends of its arms. Its expression blank, it clicked two claws on one "hand" together and said, "### #### stop ### #### fighting."