The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (25 page)

Sophia sat up and looked down. She had bled on the towel, but not as much as she had feared. She checked to make sure it hadn’t soaked through. Assured that they hadn’t left any incriminating evidence behind, she rolled over next to her lover. He wrapped his arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder, playing with the sparse hair on his chest.

Sophia tried to savor the last seconds of the fleeting moment. Tomorrow, or maybe a day shortly thereafter, things would change again. Jonas would be leaving soon for flight school, and she would be left alone in the dreary palace. “When am I going to see you again?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. I leave the day after the funeral. It looks like they’ve got me with the First Corinthian Guards. I suspect that’s because their training center is on an orbital around Athena. I’m sure the palace wants me close by, and they will probably have me home often. I’ll be here.”

“It will be lonely without you.”

“I know. The war shouldn’t last that long. There’s already talk of a counteroffensive. I may not even get a chance to fight. Even though I was in an accelerated program at St. Almo’s, I’ve got six months left of flight school. If things go right, it ought to be a mop-up operation by then.”

“Commander on deck!”

Captain Jonas Athena and the other forty Marine pilots snapped out of their seats and stood smartly.

Colonel Marquette walked to the front of the room, accompanied by an officer whom Jonas didn’t recognize. The epaulets and stars said he was higher up the food chain than Marquette.

Lean and square-jawed, Marquette took the podium. “You may be seated.”

Noise scattered through the room as the soldiers took their seats. Surprisingly, Jonas noticed little chatter. In general, pilots were a high-energy lot, and in Jonas’ first-hand opinion, needed a pretty short leash or discipline evaporated in short order. Some units dealt with that by giving the pilots a bit of leeway, looking the other way more than they would for your average grunt. Not Marquette. He went the opposite direction, demanding good order and discipline. He earned the respect of his pilots, and he maintained it.

In the three days Jonas had been aboard
HMS Constant
, he had already decided he was going to enjoy Marquette’s leadership. For one thing, Jonas could expect no special treatment. His relative freedom from distinction remained Jonas’ favorite part of his military career.

“I want to start by formally welcoming our new pilots.” Here Colonel Marquette nodded to the front of the room where Jonas and six of his friends from flight school sat. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the war. You picked one hell of a day to join us.”

A small chuckle escaped from some of the veterans.

“Without any further fuss, I would like to introduce Lieutenant General Bradford of the joint intelligence command to present our mission briefing.”

Daxton Rynson, Jonas’ copilot from flight school, leaned in. “Seems a little below his pay grade, don’t you think?”

Jonas glanced around the room. Daxton didn’t seem to be the only person who had noticed Bradford’s rank. Jonas whispered back, “By the look of things, I don’t think that’s normal. Some of the old-timers look as surprised as we are.” Jonas liked Daxton. He knew the short brunette to be a no-nonsense straight shooter and tough as nails.

She also didn’t pay him any respect for his name. The first thing she told him on meeting him at flight school was that he couldn’t expect any favors from her because she and her parents always voted for the Divestment Bloc in parliament. For half a beat, he hadn’t known what to do with the young, scowling woman with her hands on her hips. Then he had started to laugh, and from that moment forward, they had been friends.

General Bradford stepped up and put both hands on either side of the podium, huddling over it as if he were about to do pushups. The balding general didn’t smile. His blue eyes looked dulled. He exuded a feeling of grim determination, like a parkball coach whose team is down by four going into the fifth set. “I’m not going to sugarcoat things for you today. The fighting men and women of the Allied fleet deserve better than that. In the last six months, we’ve lied to you, and you’ve known it. Things aren’t going our way in this war. They haven’t been since the first day, when we lost three of the four systems attacked. The fourth only held on for another five days.”

That’s a different tone
, thought Jonas. He smiled to himself. In their last conversation, Dmitri had said that Stephen finally gave Admiral Hansen a thorough dressing down, insisting that he get him honest information about the status of the war. Stephen had demanded on-the-spot resignations from three of the worst offenders. Six more had lost their jobs in the following days. Jonas made a mental note to let Stephen know that his efforts had started to filter down the chain of command.

“To be quite honest, things don’t look so good here in Apollos, either. Allied Central Command expects to lose this system within thirty days.” The general shook his head, frowning.

Jonas felt the air in the room charge with electricity. He waited for someone to shout the general down. Among the troops, Central Command’s refusal to directly confront the Unity during the first six months of the war had led to a growing belief that the admirals and generals were cowards. Jonas wasn’t sure he didn’t agree. The idea of cutting and running again, especially with the galactic capital at stake, would be devastating to troop morale. More than that, Jonas had no doubt that if the Allies didn’t at least make a showing here, Stephen would have his hands full trying to keep the smaller members from seeking terms with the Unity on their own. He wondered if the two-star was here just to put a fig leaf on that situation, or if he honestly had something to mollify their concerns.

He noticed a slight sparkle in Bradford as he started to talk again. Nope, he’s got something up his sleeve. Let’s see what cards he’s holding back.

Bradford’s voice started at a low murmur and rose as he spoke. “Now, I know that to many of you, this doesn’t sound like good news. It sounds like another cut and run, a strategy of mitigating our losses and avoiding a real fight, just like we’ve done for nearly six months. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of that strategy, and I think it’s time for a change.” Bradford reached his crescendo on the last few words, inviting the room to erupt with him.

The soldiers followed, cheering the general.

Riding the support in the room, Jonas noticed the general delivered another piece of bad news.

“It isn’t any secret that the Korpis have been messing with our ships. Their aggressive cyber-warfare plan has taken away our long-standing advantages and rendered our fleet vulnerable. Frankly, our ships have proven to be soft targets, and with half their systems offline or malfunctioning, they don’t stand much of a chance in close-quarters combat with the enemy. We have newer ships on the way—ships which don’t depend on intraspace. We’re building them as fast as we can, but it will take time.” The general sounded angry. His cheeks reddened. He rallied his team, waving his arms in frustration. “In the meantime, we’ve tucked our tail between our legs and run. We’ve lost over a third of our territory without ever really contesting the enemy’s control. Well, no more. Today we take a stand!”

Another cheer erupted from the room, this time more spontaneous. As one who had participated in political theater all his life, Jonas was impressed.

“Today, we have an unprecedented opportunity that we cannot ignore, no matter what the cost. As some of you may be aware, in the early days of the campaign for this system, we got lucky. One of our missiles got through, despite the Unity interference, and scored a direct hit on the engineering section of the battle cruiser
Indiana
. When that happened, their power plant went up like a stellar flare. By rights, the ship should have broken apart, but she didn’t. Miraculously, most of the hull was left intact. As soon as their power plant went down… at the very same moment,” here the animated general pounded on the podium, emphasizing each word, “cyber attacks on Allied vessels dropped off thirty percent. Now, we still didn’t fare as well as we ought, but we did a lot better than we had done previously. After that, Admiral Carter committed as many forces as she could to keeping the gate, and while we weren’t ultimately successful, we made the Korpis pay dearly. Fifty-eight battle cruisers damaged or destroyed, fifteen battleships, and three dreadnoughts. For the first time in the war, we pounded the hell out of them.”

The general continued to pound the podium. “We cannot afford to give up our advantage!”

Here his voiced dropped again. He leaned in to the podium, drawing them forward. “And that is where we’ve had a lucky break. Ever since that time, the
Indiana
has been drifting on a ballistic course. Right now, she’s sitting in no man’s land, between the two fleets. I’m sure the Korpis would really like to have her back, but they can’t. They can’t risk mounting a rescue mission without thinning out their forces and getting pounded again, and we can’t mount a mission to capture her without imperiling our ability to protect Apollos. It looks like a standoff.”

Here the general grinned like he knew a secret. Jonas smiled to himself, enjoying how the general played the room. “But the Korpis are wrong—it isn’t a standoff. The truth is, we would do anything to get our hands on that ship, including giving up the capital.”

Jonas raised an eyebrow at that thought. He wondered how far up the food chain that decision had been made.

The general continued. “A system can be retaken. We can’t replace the secrets aboard that vessel. We need them. We have to break the Korpi advantage.” Here he punched the lectern to emphasize each word. “We must have that ship!”

He paused and caught his breath. Silence reigned in the room. “Intelligence indicates that many of the crew remain alive on board the stricken vessel. Best estimates indicate there are at least twenty-five hundred souls still living on that wreck.”

Bradford raised an eyebrow. “You are about to go pay them a little visit.”

“Sigma Squadron, we have four minutes until launch. Be advised, we have hostiles inbound! It’s about to get bumpy.”

No sooner had the flight controller finished his message than Jonas felt the first impacts begin. The
Constant
twisted suddenly to the right. Jonas could see alarm lights in the hangar start to flash. He had been mainlining adrenaline since the mission briefing eighteen hours ago. Now, the alertness and fear kicked up, further than he thought possible.

Without saying anything to Daxton, Jonas reached overhead and flipped on the overhead signal, telling his cargo of thirty marines to buckle up.

Daxton just glanced up at what he had done and didn’t say a word. Silence wasn’t a quality that Jonas associated with Daxton. On training flights, she kept up a non-stop stream of conversation.

Jonas thought she looked pale, almost grim behind the yellow tinge of her HeFar. If he were honest with himself, Jonas hadn’t always appreciated her gift of gab, especially at the start of working with her. Now, when he needed a distraction the most, he missed it.

He tried to find something to do. He glanced at the countdown clock which still showed three minutes and thirty-eight seconds left to launch.

He was just about to punch up the navigation computer once again to quadruple check his course, when the front screen of their Grendel class troop carrier polarized with the first incoming high-energy particles from the nearby nuke. Even so, the flash was intense coming through the open end of the
Constant’s
hangar deck. Jonas instinctively ducked. He felt the ship lurch strongly to the side as the superheated hydrogen and helium atoms pushed against the ship, trying in vain to twist it apart. Jonas looked up and watched with dread fascination as a bright tendril of superheated plasma curled around the edge of the hangar door and drifted like a candle flame into the open bay. The ceramics on the side of the bay glowed where they had been kissed by the plasma.

At a distance, fusion bombs weren’t a terribly effective weapon in the vacuum of space. They didn’t carry with them the shockwave of superheated atmosphere that made them so deadly in a city. On the other hand, if they went off close enough to the hull of a vessel, they still had plenty of energy to rip apart a ship’s hull or, more importantly, heat it, making it easier to damage by follow-up terajoule lasers, flak, or worst of all, gravity missiles.

A second flash followed hard on the first. Jonas gave up trying to look at the flight plan. Instead, he looked at his copilot.

Tight-lipped and turning white, Daxton issued a clipped “Shit!” as the floor of the hangar rippled with the continued shockwaves from the nukes.

Jonas felt his guts tighten uncomfortably as he watched the other troop ships sitting in orderly rows around him sway as if they were riding an ocean swell. Jonas wasn’t sure that was supposed to happen in the reinforced bunker of a troop carrier.

“Where are the AIs that are supposed to take care of those fuckers before they hit us?”

“Yeah, well, they aren’t as smart as they used to be,” answered Jonas.

Somewhere his mind felt overwhelmed by the fear. Jonas worked to put it aside. He tried to breathe. It’s going to be all right, Jonas. Remember all the atmosphere you need is right here in this suit. You don’t need to worry about anything but keeping the suit intact. Everything else can fall apart, and you’ll be all right. He took a breath from his HeFar. The recycled air tasted acrid, like sweat and terror.

At this point, Jonas noticed a laser beginning to cut its way through the hull, just outside the docking bay, and then a second, in front of the first. The bright cutting torches sliced the hull until robotic AI charged into position, using their huge reflective mirrors to send the deadly beams back into space. Soon after, the hull itself increased its reflectivity.

It was only a few seconds later that the ship started to vibrate again. This time, it wasn’t in big waves, as with the nuke. Instead, the motion came as sharp taps and lurches as if someone were pounding on the side of the ship. What started as a tap here or there quickly increased to a steady rain, and then a torrent. Jonas felt like he were inside a drum kit.