The Unincorporated Woman (61 page)

Sandra had taken to daily walks in the park before the acceleration and so had insisted on continuing the tradition, stilted as the walks were, given the less-than-natural movement in a noncentrifugal environment. As it had before, it gave the people a chance to see and even talk with her, though her contingent of combat vets tended to discourage most personal contact. What Sandra understood that Sergeant Holke didn’t was that her power was based not on the title she’d been surreptitiously given to placate the political class but on the fact that the people liked her and that she liked them right back. That the thousands of little connections she would make meant far more than the title that had been foisted on her. It was a technique that Sandra had used in every corporation she’d ever worked for, including Robocorp, the last company Justin Cord owned before Sandra built the suspension unit that had launched Justin Cord into the future and changed the course of human history.

What had initially started out as a method by which to build her power in the Outer Alliance soon became a true desire to reassure the people who’d grown to love her and what she’d come to represent. But of all the outings, events, and seemingly minor public dalliances Sandra had taken part in during her over eight months of life, the past two weeks had by far been the most difficult. How could she keep a positive public face, given the destruction visited on her people by Gupta’s recent massacres and the Alliance’s impotent nonresponse? How could she answer the oft-repeated questions as to the whereabouts of the Blessed One, J. D. Black, and J.D.’s apparent abandonment of the very people she’d rescued time and time again? Sandra couldn’t, and even worse, she knew that—plan be damned—if J.D. did not appear soon, there would not be an Alliance to save. It would be destroyed by its own recriminations and accusations.

Six and half million kilometers from Ceres, UHFS
Liddel

“Admiral Trang,” said the sensor officer in a muted but uneasy voice.

Trang immediately picked up on the added urgency. “Yes, Lieutenant.”

“The ice blocks are powering up.”

Trang smiled. The ice blocks had been J.D.’s original decoy, slowly replacing her fleet over the course of weeks. By the time the UHF got wind of what was happening, the Alliance fleet had effectively vanished. “So you never went anywhere at all,” murmured Trang. The next moment brought the call he’d been expecting. He allowed the connection.

“Well, she’s finally coming out to play, Zenobia.”

“Why now, sir?”

“I imagine the political pressure got too great. Gupta has just about finished destroying the outer orbit settlements of Jupiter and is about to destroy the vital industrial asteroids and communication centers. They have to do something, even if it’s to battle us in the empty spaces between the orbits of Mars and Saturn.”

“Her fleet is nearly as big as ours, and as much as I hate to admit it, her spacers are more experienced.”

“Worried about fighting the lioness in front of her lair, Zenobia?”

“Fuck yeah—” She paused. “—sir. Shit, I keep on doing that.”

“I would rather you curse and see clearly, as you are now, than remain pure of speech and blind. And I am overjoyed you’re worried. In fact, I’m worried enough not to fight her.”

“Really?” Zenobia couldn’t hide the shock in her voice. “You could take her, sir. You can end the war right here.”

Trang could tell that although Zenobia had doubts about her own ability, she clearly had none about his. “I’d like to think that I can too, but I’m not going to risk a battle I don’t have to fight. We’ll give space and more space and even more space. I’ll let J.D. push our asses back to the orbats of Mars if that’s what it takes. In the meantime, let’s send Gupta a message that he is to destroy the Jovian Shipyards and whatever other targets of importance. And that he must quickly refuel at that glorious helium sink of a planet and get his fleet over here as fast as possible.”

“He won’t be able to destroy the refugee convoys fleeing to Saturn,” Zenobia said. Though the statement was said as fact, Trang understood the subtext—more lives would not be lost needlessly.

“If he joins us now, we’ll outnumber J.D.’s fleet two to one.
That
is of primary importance.”

“So we wait?”

Trang watched the sensor officer’s array from his holodisplay. More of the blocks of ice were coming online.

“We wait.”

Upper orbit of Jupiter, UHFS
Redemption

Gupta read Trang’s message with a look of unheralded triumph. He now knew how the rest of the war was going to proceed.

“Communications.”

“Sir.”

“Prepare a general fleetwide broadcast.” Gupta then stood and composed his thoughts.

“Sir, every ship in the fleet reports, ‘ready to receive.’”

Gupta acknowledged the comm officer and straightened his shoulders. “Grand Admiral Trang,” he began, “has just sent me a Fleet Intelligence report stating that J. D. Black and the Alliance fleet have been successfully located near Ceres.” Gupta paused, allowing for what he knew would be a palpable fleetwide sigh of relief. “We’ve been ordered to eliminate the last targets of importance, refuel, and rejoin the rest of the fleet, where together we will wipe J. D. Black off the face of the solar system and end this Damsah-forsaken war once and for all!”

The command sphere broke out into an immediate round of applause, which Gupta, with a forgiving yet stern look, quickly tamped.

“We’ve been forced to do”—his face struggled to maintain its soldier-like rigidity—“difficult things … that in the end, every person in the solar system will recognize as having been the only possible and just outcome of this war. We’ve carried that terrible burden so that future generations will not have to, and we’ve done so with honor.” A few more seconds hung on his words as he finished with his triumphant message. “For humanity united!” Gupta’s smile was wide and heartfelt as, with great satisfaction, he heard his words repeated by first his and then every other crew in his fleet.

*   *   *

Over the next few hours, Gupta issued new fleet orders. There were fewer than one hundred targets left in the outer orbits, and they were easy pickings, being spread too far apart to hinder in any way the movement of his fleet, and too poorly defended to offer any real resistance.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the images of personal shuttles being flown against his fleet in kamikaze attacks. He’d prayed that they were on autopilot, but the erratic nature of their flight patterns and the organic residue that was picked up again and again told a different tale—that of a desperate people who’d thrown their lives away by the tens of thousands to protect their homes and loved ones.

But closing his eyes in the command sphere could not block out the recurring vision that had kept him lying awake at night. It was always the same: Gupta was in an asteroid with his family, and they were praying to one of the old cult gods. Praying that they would not be found. Everyone was staying absolutely silent, and power levels were so low that his family was slowly freezing to death. The lights were so few that shadows were everywhere, and every nook was filled with a waiting dread. And always in the end, the hiding did no good. Gupta’s family would be discovered, ripped from each other’s desperate embrace, torn apart by decompression, suffocated by the cold breath of space and then finally buried forever by Jupiter’s unforgiving magnetosphere. Gupta would wake in a cold sweat with the same thought every time—a desperate wish that he’d named his ship anything other than
Redemption
.

The nightmares were so bad, Gupta ended up taking a drug that made it impossible for him to remember any of his dreams—a drug the ship’s chief medical officer was very familiar with and, Gupta learned, had been prescribed often. The warning from the pharmaceutical company said it should not be taken for more than two weeks without seeking proper mental therapy. But the chief medical officer laughed at that. Apparently some of the officer’s spacers and marines had been taking it for years with no serious side effects. Gupta wondered just how deep the damage would be when the war was over and all was said and done. But he took the pills anyway.

*   *   *

Gupta did not have time for a general conference of all his commodores. Instead he looked over the situation and gave his orders. The upper orbits were clear, and the high-value targets were orbiting so close to Jupiter, they were almost touching the outer atmosphere. That made attacking them tricky but not impossible.

The Jovians had massed their highly valuable asteroids in two areas—one before and one after the Jovian Shipyards in the direction of Jupiter’s rotation. Above the whole conglomeration was a vast field of large frozen helium rectangles. The orbats were located all around the Jovian Shipyards. Gupta was now in a hurry to join Trang. So he would mass his fleet in front of the high-value targets going in the direction of the Jupiter rotation and simply follow the planet, using his fleet-tethered firepower to destroy the first cluster of asteroids—he’d long since disregarded them as environments filled with innocent civilians.

He knew he would take damage from the orbat field by attacking directly, but he could take the damage. His fleet’s supply of preformed rail gun projectiles would be critically low by the time he was done, but they were ridiculously easy to manufacture. He took no heed of that, as his auxiliary ships could manufacture more on the way to join Trang. Gupta could do nothing to replace the more sophisticated missiles he’d already lost and was sure to lose in the upcoming action, but again, he wouldn’t need them until he faced a major fleet action, and Trang could arrange a shipment from his fleet or Mars to intercept them before they battled Black near Ceres. With his mind clear, he gave his orders and watched with fascination as Jupiter went from a large sphere in their view to a roiling mass of turbulence that filled their screens from one angry end to the other.

AWS
Warprize II

In the dim glow of the display panel, J. D. Black watched her target with an almost sociopathic curiosity. She would occasionally tilt her head slowly, either to the left or right as the mood suited her, whispering orders to the enemy or apologies to the millions of souls forever lost in Jupiter’s embrace. But always, J.D.’s lifeless eyes remained fixed and unflinching on her unsuspecting prey. Her half-scarred face, motionless and terrible, at last settled itself into a rictus of vengeful anticipation.

J.D.’s voice was quiet but purposeful. “Are all fleet systems restored?”

“Yes, Fleet Admiral,” confirmed Lieutenant Awala in a voice equally as subdued.

“Personnel?”

“Fully functional,” answered Awala, referring to the reanimation of nearly four hundred thousand spacers and assault miners.

“Were they debriefed about…” J.D. choked on her sentence.

“Yes,” glowered the lieutenant, allowing anger to creep into her voice. “They have been told
everything
.”

J.D. looked up from her display panel and turned to face Awala. “Then let’s jam the comm lines and let the enemy know they have company.”

Six and half million kilometers from Ceres, UHFS
Liddel

Though he’d already done it hundreds of times before, Trang was performing a ritual that always seemed to fill him with nervous anticipation—readying and ultimately stepping into his battle suit. Though the readying part was now mostly taken care of by others—an act he’d been loath to give up but by necessity of time was compelled to—he’d always managed to find a few things left to adjust. It was a ritual that afforded him a precious few moments of quiet to steel his mind for what was to come.

All fleet personnel going into actual combat were required to wear the suits, as they were capable of sustaining life in a vacuum and had triage medical functions built in as well. But Trang found the most useful feature to be the contraption’s ability to eliminate all bodily waste in a manner he didn’t like to think too deeply on, but that made it possible for him stay in the command sphere indefinitely.

“Sir.” It was the comm officer’s voice. A rare intrusion into Trang’s personal quarters.

“Yes,” groused Trang, smarting at the interruption of his ritual.

“This is strange, sir. Might be nothing but…” The lieutenant’s voice faded.

“Traditionally, lieutenants don’t leave grand admirals waiting in the middle of a sentence,” Trang scolded with more concern in his voice than anger. Confusion before combat usually meant the enemy had done something clever. He hated clever enemies.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that Jupiter is, from a communications point of view, well … gone, sir.”

Trang called up the input from the communications station to his own board. The lieutenant had not been exaggerating. It was as if the entire planet had been dropped into a sea of static. Even images were being disrupted.

Trang let out one sad long breath and under it murmured, “Good-bye, Abhay.” Then he toggled his communication link to Zenobia.

Inner orbit of Jupiter, UHFS
Redemption

Gupta was relaxing in his quarters with a meal of prime rib, rare, and a bottle of Terran-grown pinot noir. The destruction of the first block of high-value targets was proceeding well. Everything of value was pretty much gone, and the lead elements of his fleet were just beginning to engage the orbats of the Jovian Shipyard. With luck, he’d be done in a day. Then he’d fill his tanks with helium and his auxiliary ships with raw materials to replenish his rail gun munitions.

With a little more luck, the war would be over in a matter of months and his actions would be justified to those still in doubt about the moral necessity of the current campaign. He slid his knife into the succulent meat, and was raising the first bloody morsel to his salivating mouth when a small red light began blinking madly on the table just above where his plate was resting. He’d given specific orders not to be interrupted, which the quiet but persistent light had just succeeded in doing. He sighed heavily and put the fork, meat still attached, back down on the plate. The interruption showed a real lack of gumption by his first officer in
not
taking care of whatever problem Gupta would now have to solve.