The Unincorporated Woman (30 page)

The Alliance fleet was formed into an opposite half sphere that took up nearly as much space, but without as many ships. Also, unlike the UHF fleet, the blue Alliance ships had only one reserve formation, in the middle of which one ship, the
AWS WARPRIZE II,
was labeled.

“Trang is moving forward and trying to get us to engage our forces with his. Other than some intense action with Admiral Hassan’s forces in the beginning of the battle, he hasn’t had much luck getting us to attack.”

Hildegard eyed the holo-diplay intently. “So it’s a standoff, then.”

“Not quite. Trang is inching forward, blowing up everything, and I mean everything, that can be used as a possible ambush or rallying point. It’s taking forever and is about as glamorous as cleaning carbon filters, but he doesn’t care.”

“He can’t possibly blow up every rock he encounters,” sputtered Mosh. “He’d be out of ammo before he gets halfway here.”

“True, but when he moves his fleet forward, he makes sure to send his less experienced crew and ships first.”

Kirk’s lips drew back into a respectful grin. “Trial by fire, I suppose.”

“Not a trial, Kirk. A death sentence. Very few of those recruits make it out alive. And he doesn’t really care. As long as he’s advancing and keeps J.D. in his sights, he’ll push her all the way to Ceres.”

“Where her back will be against the wall,” noted Sandra with blunt honesty.

“Yes, Madam President,” confirmed Sinclair. “And then she’ll be forced to make the first move. If Trang gets a win, a draw, or even a narrow defeat, this war is probably over.”

“Please explain,” asked Sandra.

“It’s like this,” Sinclair pulled up a chart that showed the UHF’s industrial capacity compared to that of the Outer Alliance. “They can replace what they lose a lot faster than we can. Which is pretty impressive, considering how much our economy has grown in the last six years. We may not have started this war as an industrial economy, but we’re sure as Damsah one now.” Sinclair sighed, “Still, it’s nothing compared to what the UHF makes. Mars alone outmanufactures us, and that’s nothing compared to the Earth–Luna orbital industrial zone. That’s why Trang isn’t fighting for a decisive victory—and is happy to settle for a dogged one.”

UHFS
Liddel

Zenobia Jackson’s shuttle landed so smoothly, she didn’t even wake up. Her aide, Lieutenant Alistair Congraves, had to gently nudge her out of her somnolence. As her eyes fluttered open, Zenobia was presented with the vision of the young lieutenant hovering over her. He was holding a kerchief in his outstretched hand. It was only then that she noticed the trail of drool running along the side of her face. Zenobia took the kerchief and wiped off the saliva, frowing uncomfortably.

“Did I snore, too?”

“Not once,” lied Congraves, teeth flashing through a disingenuous smile.

“Well,” griped Zenobia in a tone that was more order than suggestion, “let’s file that under ‘top secret,’ just to be safe.”

“Yes, Admiral Jackson. If I ever remember, I’ll be sure to have myself shot.”

“What a terrible waste of ammunition.”

“Right. Out the air lock, then?”

A bland smile appeared on Zenobia’s face.

They both waited in comfortable silence while their shuttle was thoroughly scanned. Then waited another few minutes as it was physically inspected. Admiral Abhay Gupta had figured that if he were the enemy the best way to take out his own ships would be to land in them with a captured shuttle. The fact that it hadn’t happened yet was nothing short of miraculous, given the Alliance’s infamous bag of tricks. After Trang had been made aware of Gupta’s protocol, he wasted no time in ordering it adopted by the whole fleet.

Once cleared, Zenobia headed straight for Trang’s suite. She was not surprised to see Admiral Abhay Gupta seated alongside her boss when she arrived and was strangely gratified when they both rose at her entrance. She gave a tired salute that was returned and then collapsed into one of the big overstuffed chairs that had, over the months, become hers.

“Now that we’re all here,” Trang said with an impish grin, “we can get to some important business.” He then held up two ration packets. “Beef stew or ginger chicken with rice?”

“You know, sir, we’re not fighting in the 180 anymore,” Zenobia complained. “Everyone in the fleet eats pretty well—when they’re not getting blown to pieces, that is.”

“Everyone in
this
fleet, Zenobia.” Trang was polite but firm. “However, there are marines and other personnel not in this fleet but still under my command—all of whom are eating rations like this for pretty much every meal. So just to be clear,” he said with a grin that belied the sanctimony of his earlier statement, “beef or chicken?”

“Beef, sir.”

Gupta turned to Trang. “Told you,” he cooed triumphantly.

Zenobia’s brow rose as she looked at the two men pathetically. “You gambled on what I was going to have for dinner?”

“
He
gambled,” chided Gupta. “I knew. The longer you’re awake, the less you like sweet.”

Zenobia thought about that for a moment and decided that he might be right. “How’d you figure that out?… No, wait a minute.
Why’d
you figure that out?”

“Seemingly inconsequential patterns,” offered Trang, “can sometimes mean the difference between victory and defeat. And what we need to figure out are Admiral Black’s patterns.”

“Or risk losing to her like so many others have in the past,” added Gupta.

“But what she eats for dinner?” Zenobia’s question was edged with doubt.

“Field rations—same as me.” Trang seemed to be speaking from authority. “But will sometimes tolerate her crew spicing it up and serving it in formal settings. Apparently it makes them happy on the rare occasions she lets ’em get away with it.”

“Damsah, you have been studying her,” laughed Gupta, impressed.

“Every chance I get.”

“All right, then,” wondered Zenobia, “what are you getting now?”

“Worried.”

Gupta smiled thinly. “Me too, old friend. It’s been too easy.”

Zenobia snorted. “Too easy?” Her voice rose sharply. “We’ve lost over a hundred ships in a
single
week. Have thousands, possibly tens of thousands of permanent deaths to add to that butcher’s bill, and we’ve achieved no decisive breakthroughs or engagements … save for almost cornering Hassan.”

“Yeah,” mused Trang, “J.D. pulled the leash hard on her barking admiral. Good thing with the death of Sadma she lost her left arm at Altamont; now if I could only think of another way to take her right.…” He paused. “I do have a theory about effective command.”

“Which is?” prodded Zenobia.

“A commanding officer needs two subordinates who can be trusted completely, and who will deliver results as good as or even better than expected. J.D. had those two in Christina Sadma and Omad Hassan. In retrospect, I’d have to say the most important part of that battle was not so much in the cracking of the Belt, but in removing Sadma from the equation.”

“I still say you made a bad deal when you traded me for her,” prodded Gupta.

“Except for the fact that right now I have two absolutely trustworthy officers and Black has only one.”

Abhay tipped his head.

“Who’s your other—?” Zenobia started, then stopped when she saw Trang’s pointed smile. “Me?” gasped Zenobia with a mixture of pride and denial. “I’m getting better, Admiral Trang, but I’m not in Abhay’s or Hassan’s class.”

“You flustered her, Sam,” Gupta teased. “She called you, ‘Admiral’ and ‘Trang.’”

“Don’t take our word for it, Zenobia,” offered Trang. “The facts speak for you. Let’s see, in effective command of your flotilla for a little over two weeks. In that time, you assumed actual, not simply titular command of a brand-new formation and made it combat ready in little over a week
while
blasting at high speed across the Core. At the end of which, your new formation was thrown into battle against the best-led, best-crewed fleet the Alliance has. Must I remind you that you also almost took out the guy whose class you claim not to be in?”

“I lost a lot of ships on that ‘almost,’ sir,” she declared bitterly.

Gupta laughed again. “Listen to her. We sing her praises and she complains she’s not perfect.”

“You see failures where there really weren’t that many,” Trang asserted. “Trust me, Zenobia, that’s a helluva lot better than what the UHF has had in the past.”

“Oh yes,” added Gupta, “officers who saw success where there really wasn’t any. Only a fool would think this would be easy or cheap.”

“But
you
just said ‘it’s been too easy.’”

Gupta nodded at the truth of her words. “J.D. always has something planned. Some nasty little surprise that she uses to crush her enemies. Floating marines, ice ships, asteroids, and rail gun demagnetizers are just some of the rabbits she’s pulled out of that nasty little hat of hers. Whatever she’s got planned this time has yet to be played, and until it is, we won’t really know if we’re good enough.”

“She didn’t have any technological tricks when she won at the Battle of Jupiter’s Eye,” Zenobia pointed out. “And she pretty much wiped out the entire Martian fleet.”

“Tully was an idiot, and Black had surprise and Jupiter’s gravity well on her side,” Gupta countered. “The fool got what he deserved; I’m only sorry that he took so many fine ships and spacers with him.”

Trang frowned at the memory. “Which still doesn’t negate the fact that J. D. Black is a ruthless, clever warrior who has more large-fleet experience than anyone alive in the system. Tully could never quite admit that and paid the price.”

“How about you, sir?”

“How about me what, Zenobia?”

“Any ideas what she’s got planned?”

Trang considered the question for a moment, then finally shook his head. “Not a damned clue.” His voice resonated with equal parts frustration and amusement. “It’ll probably involve something technical; unfortunately, they have Kenji Isozaki, and we have
our
brilliant Minister of Internal Affairs, who can’t seem to find out the temperature of Ceres, much less give us something useful to work with.”

“Hey,” sneered Abhay, “Pakagopolis did a great job of destroying that unarmed religious settlement.”

“And because of Alhambra, the Belt’s emptying out faster than DeGens at an IQ contest,” joked Zenobia.

“Which means,” added Gupta, “even if we defeat J.D.
and
take Ceres, the war might very well go on.”

“Mark my word, friends,” Trang cautioned, “if we defeat Admiral Black and take Ceres, even if the war continues, the Alliance
still
loses. Because at that point, it truly is just a matter of time and pressure—something our President is quite merciless at applying.”

“So let me get this straight,” teased Zenobia, “we don’t know what Admiral Black has planned, when she plans on doing it, or how it’ll be done, but we have to be prepared for whatever it is and counter it when it happens.”

“That about sums it up,” Trang finished to a chorus of mirthless chuckles. “At some point in this battle, one or all of us will be presented with what seems like a golden opportunity. It will probably be some ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ on their part. If that happens, do not—I repeat:
do not
—follow your instinct. Because that’s what she’ll use to gut you. When that supposedly magic but fleeting opportunity arises, call me
at once
.”

“Then what?” asked Zenobia.

“Got me.” Trang smiled with gallows humor. “Like pretty much everyone else around here, I’m just making it up as I go along.”

Triangle Office

Sandra O’Toole was sitting in her office, back to the door. With a sigh, she activated the
DO NOT DISTURB
message and made sure the room was secure. Not that she’d be able to notice anyone entering once she’d left. That task had already been assigned to others, both human and avatar. She’d even done a few test runs and figured, barring someone blowing the door down, getting back quickly would not be a problem. And yet, all it would take to blow her cover was one clever mediabot. It had been the Brinks 471 that captured the image of Justin’s suspension unit at the Bolder facility all those years ago—despite the high security Mosh had in place. Sandra had a keen image of what the 471’s image might capture: her lying still in a chair, barely breathing, eyes closed but fluttering madly about beneath her pale, freckled lids. What would shock most, and absolutely doom her political career, would be the VR band wrapped around her head and through the thick red mane of her hair. Never mind that it was attached to a portable VR rig resting comfortably on her lap. But the avatars gave her—at least by human standards—an unimaginable advantage, and therefore one she could not turn down. Sandra often wondered if perhaps it was addiction rather than calculation that kept her coming back. That maybe she’d been caught in a web of her own making, a victim of a three-hundred-year-old disease, some of whose code she’d helped to create. She shrugged her shoulders and activated the device sitting in her lap. In seconds, her lids began their errant dance and her resplendent and lively face went slack.

Avatar Educational Core, Cerean Neuro

Sandra was once again in the familiar setting of a children’s classroom. The only thing out of place was the teacher. The “she” was now a “he,” distinguished by age and a pair of bifocals resting neatly at the end of a slightly pinched nose. He peered over his rims at the class’s newest visitor, then with a disarming smile, closed the book he’d been reading to the children. They didn’t mind a bit, as they too had become transfixed by the visitor.

“Class, we have a special—” was all he managed to say before the young avatars bounded up and around Sandra, inundating her with questions. She’d grown used to it and never took a stern approach or tone to the wildly gesturing children. Oddly enough, Sandra realized that she’d never even been kid friendly and had two relationships break apart as a result of her refusal to consider having any.