Originator (48 page)

“Hello, Strike One, we're all good.” And she relayed that status to Reichardt, who would see it indicate somewhere on his vision. He didn't need the details; he was far too busy—just that little green light to tell him his strike force was ready. Now he just had to deliver it in one piece.

“Okay, boys and girls,” she told her team, “looks like we're in and clear. Should be quiet for another few minutes, then it gets interesting.”

Approach was the worst. Thirty minutes. You could die any second, though the statistics said it was most likely immediately after arrival (if the enemy had a good ambush set up) or as you neared your destination. They were still alive, so it seemed there was no ambush. And now began a space of time too long to be lively and too frightening to be boring, where the seconds felt like minutes, and the minutes like hours, where at any moment all hell could break loose, or some piece of unseen ordnance or dark obstacle on the approach could kill everyone onboard before you even knew you were dead.

To calm herself she flipped a recording onto her vision, where it played as background, unobtrusive enough to not be distracting. It was the kids, out surfing—she'd tasked a micro-drone to film them a few times, ostensibly so they could watch their best rides together later on. But also, she'd known that when the inevitable foreign mission came, leaving them was going to be hell,
and a few still images weren't going to be enough. And so she watched them now, multitasking on several things as she in particular knew how, and smiled at the sight of Danya on a wave, with Svetlana whooping in the background.

The kids were with Rhian. With Svetlana's leg healed enough to let her walk on crutches, Rhian and husband Rakesh had agreed to take their whole family—eight-year-old Salman and baby girls Maria and Sunita—into FSA protective custody. That meant weekly transfers between heavily guarded residences that now, with the latest network tech upgrades, they had a reasonable chance of defending against even Talee. Rakesh had waved away any notion that it was a sacrifice—Salman got along well with the Kresnov kids, and the Kresnov kids were good with the babies, and Danya was practically a third adult anyway. So now it was Rakesh and Rhian, and six kids, and various FSA-appointed security, including several GIs. And it was a stunning gesture, for all Rakesh's protests to the contrary—to knowingly place his entire family in harm's way, given what had nearly happened before, just so Danya, Svetlana, and Kiril wouldn't have to spend these upcoming weeks alone. Even if, as it seemed, the worst of the threat had temporarily passed.

Rhian had of course wanted to come, but that wasn't going to happen with only one eye. Several of Sandy's underground contacts had suggested ways to procure new ones in time, but Sandy had quietly instructed FSA legal to come down very hard on the prospect, when it seemed they might have looked the other way. And so Rhian remained one-eyed and medically unfit for combat duty, much to Sandy's delight. Whatever happened out here, at least Rhian would be okay. And her own kids would have the best possible surrogate parents, and in Rhian, a protector nearly the equal of herself. Surely even trusting Rhian had become a little suspicious at the end, with FSA legal's sudden obstinacy regarding black-market eyes. Sandy didn't care, and she was pretty sure Rakesh didn't either.

Amirah was looking out for them too, at Sandy's insistence. She'd been gearing up to come and do her duty as a high-des combat GI, but Sandy had noticed the atypical lack of smiles, the distraction, the general distress. She'd arranged with Ibrahim for Amirah to stay—she was genuinely becoming too important for FSA command to risk on such operations anyway. Amirah had protested and eventually cried, saying that she didn't want to let anyone down. But was relieved, in the end, when her synthetic comrades had made
clear that she'd done enough already and was due to sit one out. Sandy was nearly as delighted at her absence as she was Rhian's and knew most others felt the same.

Ari and Ragi, sadly, she hadn't found a way to leave behind. She opened a direct line to them both, plus young Yogendra, who was one of Ari's friends, an underground net freak with an uncanny knack for the stuff most people found too advanced to handle.

“Guys, you okay?”

“
I'm okay
,” said Ragi. “
Systems functioning, everything looks good
.”

“
Damn that sucks
,” Ari groaned. “
Fucking space travel
.”

“Drink your liquids, get your blood sugar up, then as soon as you can hold it down, eat something.”

“
Yogie? Hey, Yogie, if you're gonna be sick, use the damn bag, I'm not cleaning that up
.”

The three civvies were in Engineering, often called B-Bridge, from where technical aspects of the ship were managed in detail. With no hope of making real sense of Talee net technology within the time scales required, Ibrahim had done a most un-dictator-like thing and released it wholesale to the Tanushan underground. Ranaprasana and FedInt had again been horrified, but Sandy thought it a good move regardless—the Talee had used the entire Tanushan network against them, and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure was as much a problem as that of military and security systems.

The underground would no doubt now start using the technology for nefarious purposes, but as long as the authorities had GIs like Ragi and herself on their side, the new net-tech arms race between legal and illegal users should remain balanced. The Provisional Grand Council's horror stemmed mostly from the massive technological edge this was giving Callay, on top of its existing edge, no matter that the FSA made it available to everyone as fast as starships could bring it to them. But whatever the additional consequences, there was no choice either way—humanity had to catch up fast, and that meant everyone: governments, civilians, cities, and planets.

First to have their systems stripped, shielded, and massively improved were these Fleet ships and all accompanying elements. But that took operators who understood the systems, and that meant the three best that Callay could spare. That they weren't combatants was irrelevant—they just needed to keep
everything together once contact with the Talee began. Given the difficulties of hacking ship networks from other ships, at distances where light took many minutes to reach its target, and would Doppler into alternative spectrums due to the variable relative velocities of the combatants, Ragi was relatively confident that network attack would be the least of their problems.

That left the captains to worry about the fact that Talee ships had massively advanced engines and navigation, were nearly impossible for human sensors to detect unless they manoeuvred or fired, and had been observed doing things that twisted the laws of physics to degrees that even the most daring FTL practitioners found baffling. Playing games with them in deep space was not an option. This plan was all attack.

“
What's it look like?
” Reichardt was asking tersely.

“
Can't tell yet. Station's there. Looks intact
.” That was Antibe Station, where negotiation between League and Federation Fleets had been taking place on and off for the past year.

“
Regular station chatter. Sounds normal
.”

“
Put it up
,” said Reichardt. For a moment, they all listened. It sounded like station chatter anywhere, routine queries about headings, berthing clearances, sequencing. If the entire station had been taken by VR assault, that would mean nothing.

“
Traffic plots look normal
.”

“
No sign from Pantala surface. But we're too far out
.”

“
Light-wave will reach them in three
,” said Reichardt. “
First response in two point four five
.”

Vanessa's channel opened. “
Whatcha' think?
” It sounded like Vanessa was chewing gum, sometimes her habit before ops. Tension relief, Sandy supposed.

“We're in the right spot,” said Sandy. On the background feed, Svetlana had Kiril on her longboard, the two of them paddling down a small wave together. “Two hard brakes and we're in, farside.” Droze was on the other side of the planet, from their current position. The problem with a blind approach, of course, was that they didn't know exactly what they were going to hit yet. Or if the Talee were here at all.

“
Would have been nice to do some recon first
,” Vanessa suggested.

“They'd have spotted it and guessed we were coming. Surprise is better.”

“
Yeah
.” Reluctantly. “
Glad you're commanding this one
.” Sandy knew what she meant. Vanessa was a hell of a combat commander, but Fleet assaults were different. The speeds involved, the distances, the sheer scale of everything, including consequences, were unsettling.

“Just like old times,” she said easily . . . and was distracted by a new alarm on bridge nav comp.

“
You got that?
”

“
Nav reading! One-forty-nine by twenty-nine! Accelerating!
”

“
What is it?
” Reichardt demanded.

“
Can't be sure, it's
. . .”

“
Pulsing! Boosting for jump!
”

“
That signature's off the scale, that's Talee
.”

“
Short-jump
,” said Reichardt. “
He's seen us, he's heading in to warn the others
.”

Sandy guessed what was coming and spoke on her local-only channel once more. “Boys and girls, this is your flight attendant Sandy. Buckle in and swallow hard because we've just been blown. We're gonna short-jump after that scout, he was lying out here silent and we went straight past him.”

“
Isn't short-jump this close to a planet kinda dangerous?
” asked Shen.

“Yep,” said Sandy nonchalantly. “War's hell.”

“
Can you calc it?
” Reichardt was asking Helm.

“
Wait wait . . . running points three and five
. . . .”

“
Scan has the fix
.”

“
Fleet has sync! Fleet has sync, good to go!
”

“
Powered up, systems green
.”

“
Green green, Fleet reports green!
”

“
Helm?
”

“
Wait wait . . . still running . . . got it! Fixed and locked, good to go!
”

“
Fixing the mark
,” said Reichardt, and Sandy saw a new plot appear on their inbound track, like a giant hoop they were about to jump through. “
Mark in five, all hands, short-jump approaching, all hands brace
.” In that bored Texan drawl, like he was ordering pizza. And Sandy's stomach lurched as she recalled that even she didn't like this bit . . .

. . . and it hit, with a force like a ton of water dropped on her head . . . and it should have crushed her, only now she's underwater,
floundering, struggling to breathe as that singular instant stretches . . . and stretches . . .

. . . and
wham!
they were back in, and alarms are sounding, and everything felt upside down and woozy. She pulled up her faceplate, feeling every muscle in her arm tensed and rippling, and gasped a lungful of cold assault ship air. Turned her head hard to grasp the drink tube in her lips and took a long gulp into a protesting stomach as scan showed five ships, all in, then three more behind, and several more on a wide flanking pattern, covering for mid-system runners or inbound support both.

“
Station! Station traffic is responding, they've seen us!
”

“
Situation!
” Reichardt demanded, as tense as Sandy had ever heard him. “
Where is that scout?
”

There were ships at station, they were close enough to see that, but no ID. There were anti-orbital defences on Pantala too, put there by humans, but if the Talee had control on the surface they'd have control of them as well. But those weren't going to stop a hard run-in like this and were mostly to deter anyone lingering and raining orbital artillery on those below.

“
Movement at station! Multiple vessels undocking, they're burning!
”

“
Son of a bitch!
” As one of them cycled his jump engines, a flare of energy so close to station it would have destroyed both, had it been a human vessel. “
They're cycling!
”

“
This is Caribbean, fire pattern locked
.” That was Bursteimer, leading that wide group, having short-jumped to catch up with
Mekong
, his transmissions fifteen seconds delayed. Velocity dump was now crucial; only starships had jump engines, and if the assault shuttles were dropped now, they'd take a week to slow down. Given that Pantala's upper atmosphere was six minutes away at this velocity, that wasn't going to work.
Mekong
had to dump down to manageable velocity, but she made herself a big fat target the minute she did so, thus these other attack ships around her, coming in on variable trajectories, making any defenders at station more worried about dodging their ordnance than shooting at
Mekong
.

“
Is that all of them?
” Reichardt asked. Meaning the ships breaking free of station. They were scattering, spinward and outward of planetary orbit, more defensive than hostile.

“
Scan shows four ships on station! One IDs as Murray!
” Which was a
Federation carrier, out here on the extended negotiations that had started last year. “
They're not moving or talking!
”

“
Those runners are Talee! Look at them boost up, that's . . . that's too fucking fast!
”

“
So they've occupied the station
,” Reichardt surmised. “
Fair bet they've got the surface. Snowcat, this will either be a hot insertion or a cold scouting mission, stand by for dump and release
.”