The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (11 page)

Cruz and DiMarco tried to speak at the same time. Cruz was
louder, and DiMarco actually backed down. The major said, “Captain Castillo,
did you participate in any attacks on civilians during your resistance near
Cottonwood?”

“No, ma’am. Our targets were strictly PLA forces. And the
occasional Second Bureau torturer. Violet has never mentioned anything like
this before.”

Cruz smirked. “Perhaps she was just trying to get our
attention.”

“I’m not sure, ma’am,” Rand said. “She usually means what
she says.”

“Unlike the rest of the NSS.”

DiMarco chose this moment to attempt to regain control. “Attacks
on civilians aren’t part of Colonel Foster’s plan, and that will not change.
I’m going to be meeting with each of you individually in the next few days to
map out a proper separation of responsibilities. Everyone except Castillo,
dismissed.”

Most of the officers filed out, but Cruz and the female
captain remained behind. DiMarco said, “I said dismissed, Major Cruz, Captain
Gant.”

Gant looked at Cruz. Cruz said, “Nope. You may have
technical authority here, but this is my base and most of these people are my
people. You haven’t given me reasons to trust you to employ them in a way that
will maximize their effectiveness and minimize their losses. If you want to run
things, you’re going to really need my support. You’re not going to have it
unless I get some indication that you’re going to listen to me rather than
repeatedly asserting your authority to satisfy your ego.”

DiMarco’s jaw clenched. “So you want to argue now, or can I
have a conversation with Captain Castillo here first?”

“I’m not here to argue further. I’m staying. I’m going to be
in on the conversations you are having with the other officers, offering input
and correcting the mistakes you are going to make.”

“And Captain Gant?” DiMarco said.

“She’s been the closest thing I have had to a chief of
staff, so she’s going to usually be with me.”

DiMarco rubbed his chin. “All right. But you understand me,
I’m senior here. If I give an order, you and your people better follow it, or
I’ll call you out for mutiny in front of everyone, and whatever happens after
that will be on your head, Major. You got me?”

Cruz stared at him, unblinking, and didn’t respond.

DiMarco leaned forward and shook his head before turning his
gaze to Rand. “Now, Castillo, you were surface-to-space artillery, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, you’re our official astronomer. We’ve got a
high-end hobbyist telescope around here, somewhere. I want you to get outside
from time to time and see what’s in our skies.”

Cruz interjected, “Shouldn’t
Vincennes
have that
information?”

DiMarco paused. “The Hans are getting better at jamming our
comms with
Vincennes;
in the last month we’ve only been able to make
contact three times. But we may not have her helping us much longer. The Hans
sent three destroyers toward the wormhole, apparently to drive her back
through, and I’m not sure what she’ll do.
Vincennes
never told us who
else is with her on the other side, but the Hans must think three destroyers
can handle it.”

“It doesn’t matter much, with what you guys are planning,”
Rand said.

Everyone looked at him.

“What does that mean?” DiMarco said.

“You want realtime information about enemy warship
positions, right? Well, the Golf-Juliet-Eleven-Nineteen keyhole is pretty close
right now; make it about point three AU. That’s almost two-and-a-half light
minutes. So it takes data from Kuan Yin orbit that long to get to the
Vincennes,
and then another two-and-a-half minutes for them to transmit information to
you. And that doesn’t count any human-in-the-loop decisions on the ship. So
your data from them is going to be at least five minutes out of date. An
orbiting ship can cover a lot of ground in that time, and not in a predictable
fashion if it’s thrusting. The delay will get worse as the wormhole moves
further away in its orbit. So
Vincennes
might be useful for providing
general warning about ships overhead, as long as we’re not on the wrong side of
the planet, but if you’re after anything close to realtime
information
about who is targeting us, it’s of no use.”

“All the more reason to get you watching the sky. And
Castillo, sorry for the poor welcome. You’re dismissed.”

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Tuesday to send a $68
billion interior security bill to President Delgado, who lauded the measure as
“vital to protecting our shores and mechanisms of commerce from our enemies.”
The bill would fund new armoring for West Coast seawalls and desalinization
plants, expand federal drone surveillance over coastal cities, and allow
information security investigators unprecedented access to international
communications originating in the United States.

San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente

You are born to serve.
When Kao Tai was 13, her older
brother Xun hacked into their profiles at the academy and showed her what he
found. It had been a revelation for young Tai; for the first time she had a
sense that the instruction and feedback they had been receiving was in fact a
performance
on the part of the instructors, not entirely true in some ways. What they
were learning was being carefully constructed to influence how they thought and
acted. She accepted the reality immediately; the performance must be necessary for
their learning.

But it still was so interesting! Her hands shook as she read
what the instructors wrote about her.
Excels in math, logic and strategic
thinking. Mastery of small arms and remote-drone operation. Loyalty is
absolute; she has complete faith in lessons from authorities. Perhaps we should
present some challenges to doctrine to encourage critical thinking skills.

Deeper in the document was an assessment of the way her mind
worked. It was filled with the sort of words doctors used. Tai painstakingly
researched each one, but she hit a wall when looking up the meaning of “at-will
dissociative fugue state;” the computers must have been instructed to prevent
her from learning the meaning of the phrase. Her brother found the same words
in his profile, but he quickly got bored reading it. For him the pleasure was
in beating the computer security systems, not in the content of what he gained
access to.

Over time, she managed to work out the definition, asking
sly questions of her instructors and finding workarounds in the academy
computers. The moment of realization was stunning: not of what she and her
brother could do,
but that other people couldn’t do it.
How did they
live?

It wasn’t hard. When things grew too stressful to bear, or
the pain was too great, she simply … let go. Whatever was essentially
Kao
Tai
could separate herself from her body and wait out the difficulty. She
might have physical injuries on her return, but she could decide ahead of time
whether to fight or endure.

As she and her brother grew, left the academy and entered
service to the state, Kao Tai and Kao Xun employed this ability more than once.
Often it was in providing sexual service to those who desired it; the siblings
had been engineered to be remarkably attractive; they were tall and lithe, with
symmetrical features and an easy charisma. At times, Kao Tai wouldn’t
leave
herself, when she found the man or woman she was with particularly attractive and
attentive, but often the people she serviced were not pleasant to be with. Her
superiors would target her and/or her brother at those with darker tastes,
perhaps to set them up for blackmail, or to simply give her access to their
inner sanctums. But the ability was useful in other forums; they could endure
all manner of torture, for example, as long as it didn’t threaten lasting
damage.

Her assignment on the miserable little island of Tecolote
wasn’t as bad as that. While her brother went to the outback to coordinate
supplies of food and weapons arriving on board submarines from Huashan, she
stayed in San José, where she first had to subvert more than one person to
acquire genetic material from the main target. With that accomplished, she
settled into her primary mission, weakening the government’s ability to defend
itself against the rebels.

You are born to serve,
her instructors had told her,
time and time again. It was a deep, abiding joy for her to do so.

Astana, Kazakhstan, Earth

“This place reminds me of Dallas.”

American accents were uncommon here, so Donovan turned
toward the speaker and saw the confident, patrician visage of Gardiner
Fairchild.

Fairchild said, “Think about it. Big city out on the prairie
built by oil money but sustained by modern commerce, and a sprawling spaceport
that’s too damn far from the center of town.”

Donovan tried to remember his one visit to Dallas that took
him outside the spaceport. “Good Mexican food, too?”

“No. You got me there. But they do some stuff with lamb here
that you wouldn’t believe. Too bad there isn’t time to go into town.”

They walked toward a crowded restaurant in the concourse. A
number of spaceport patrons displayed a fair amount of wealth – such was
current style here; Kazakhstan had done well for itself, particularly relative
to its southern neighbors. The blue-and-gold, eagle-and-sunburst national flag
was also on frequent display; the country was celebrating its sesquicentennial
this year, and the politicians were trying to milk nationalist spirit for all
its worth. In reality, however, Kazakhstan’s independence was somewhat less
than total; the current ruling political party was bankrolled by Russia, the
primary opposition party by China; the country had swung back-and-forth between
them, but never was the upheaval so great during transitions that either major
power intervened violently.

Once Donovan and Fairchild were seated, they relaxed a
little. It would be harder for intelligence officers, whether they were
Russian, Chinese, or Kazakh, to monitor their conversation in the middle of the
bustling restaurant. They fell into a pattern of speaking vaguely about things
anyway – not a formal code, just an exchange that wouldn’t mean much without
the context only they shared.

“This place going to change ownership?” Donovan asked.
Are
the Chinese planning to mount a coup d’etat?

“No. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.”
China and Russia
are desperately trying to avoid antagonizing each other.

“Still, might be some opportunities here.”
If we can
mount a coup to put the Chinese-backed party in power, the Russians may join us
in response.

“We looked into that, but the costs were too high.”
We
already tried and failed.

“That’s a shame,” Donovan said. “Our working together going
to create any issues?”
Is our renewed association going to clue in President
Delgado’s investigators that we were responsible for the big leak?

“It shouldn’t. Our past work together is off the radar.”
No
one knows.

“If you say so. I’ve wanted to know for a long time, though:
When I brought it to you, why did you go along with it?”

Fairchild smiled thinly. “The large white building kept the
entire agency out of the loop about the astronomical findings, even the chief.
Told the four-stars at the five-sided structure down the river, but not us.
Nobody, not even the fucking president, does that to my team. What about you?
You never seemed to want to play political games.”

“Kid died on my watch,” Donovan said. “I thought his parents
deserved to know why.”

Fairchild briefly looked taken aback, but, for all Donovan
knew, it was an act.

“No kidding,” Fairchild said. “Now look at the damn menu,
Jim; we’ve only got an hour before our flight leaves.”

Near Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

Lieutenant Colonel Shen knew he had no legitimate reason
for being here, but the prospect of getting outdoors was enough to draw him
away from the office for a few hours for an unscheduled “operations
observation.”

Benefits of rank,
he thought, watching the technical
crew putter around, double-checking their gear before the launch. The setting
southern sun cast glittery rays through the forest canopy, and in front of them
was a small, lively stream, fed by distant mountain springs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen water so clean,” the technical
crew’s lieutenant commented to Shen. She was from Shanxi province, inland and
polluted.

She’s right. This wouldn’t be bad place to immigrate to,
after the war is over.

“We are ready, sir,” the lieutenant said. “My team would be
honored if you would carry out the launch.”

Shen nodded, and the lieutenant gave him her handheld, pointing
to the correct icon for him to press.

As soon as he did, a line of small boxes alongside the
stream opened and disgorged their contents: a school of fishlike drones, which swam
upstream. They would follow this distributary to its source river, where they
would spread out into its various tributaries.

And they would drink.

For as clear as the water appeared, the stream was not pristine.
Somewhere upriver were humans, eating, defecating and urinating, taking
medicine and discharging hormones, and dropping little bits of processed metal
and plastic. Some of this effluent had made it down to where the river met the
ocean, and the sensors there had alerted Shen of upstream human activity.

You’ve shielded your power source and waste heat among
the hot springs, but you can’t shield everything,
Shen thought at the guerrillas.
The fish would analyze what they tasted and transmit reports to Shen. He was
certain he would find the Americans’ base within a few weeks.

While the techs packed up, Shen watched two squirrels
chasing each other around a tree trunk.

This really is a nice place. Perhaps I could build a
house on this spot
. His wife and daughters would enjoy it, he was sure.

San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente

The day before his twenty-third birthday, a Saturday, Neil
was alone, eating an early breakfast at the restaurant he had found on his
first night in San José, when a thin man in dirty clothes hurried in, looking
over his shoulder.

“Das!” Neil said, and stood up, grinning.

Das turned around, his eyes wide and fearful. He recognized
Neil, and his face instantly relaxed into a congenial smile, and he walked over
and sat down at Neil’s table.

Outside, two paramilitaries strolled past, rifles slung over
their shoulders.

“Um, something I should know?” Neil said.

“No, no, no, G-Man, everything’s fine. Can I buy your
breakfast?”

“Talk to me, Das.”

He sighed and dropped the congenial mask. His face looked
almost ten years older.

“They weren’t after me, in particular,” he said, his voice
quiet but harsh. “But I got caught in that riot, and I think I got sprayed with
the dust. They’re not interested in separating the demonstration’s leaders and
participants from unlucky people like me, G-Man.”

“What were you doing in the riot, Das?” Neil asked, his
voice as even as he could make it.

“Sleeping.”

“What?”

“I was sleeping. I’ve got a big shipping crate I call home a
few blocks from the riot.”

He’s homeless. How did I miss that before? He’s wearing
the same clothes as when I met him. Poor guy …

“You sure you weren’t in the demonstration?”

Das shook his head. “Oh, no. Politics are for people who can
afford them.”

He’s telling the truth.
“All right, let me buy you
breakfast.”

Das’ shoulders slumped a little. “Thank you, Neil.”

They talked. Das told Neil about the
money-for-street-cleaning payouts, which had kept Das fed until the riot. Now,
he was too frightened to allow cops to approach him. What little cash he had
accumulated was running out.

“The power supplies on the grains of nanotransmitter tracking
dust run out in about three weeks, Das, and they can’t push a signal more than
a few meters,” Neil told him. “If you can get in a shower, wash your clothes
and cut your hair that should help some, but the main thing you can do is
wait.”

Das looked relieved. “Two more weeks I can get by before
going back to work. How do you know that?”

“I’m a G-Man, remember?” Neil smiled cryptically.

“I guess so,” Das said, and grinned an honest grin.

A tone rang in Neil’s ear, an alert from his handheld.
“Whups, I’ve got to go. Got to see a man about a fish.”

He left half of his meal uneaten, hoping Das would finish
it.

“I swear they stocked this planet with them,” Tippy Griego
insisted after their third hour of no luck. Only two pieces of bait had
disappeared, and they were uncertain whether it was to lousy casts or nibbles
from actual fish.

Neil and Tippy were still in sight of Tecolote, a rugged
green line on the western horizon. They sat side-by-side off the back of
Tippy’s small cabin cruiser, which bobbed gently in the murky green swells. The
northern breeze ensured the heat from Beta Comae Berenices was not so
oppressive out here.

It was the first time Neil had felt relaxed since he had landed
on Entente. They had drunk three beers each, but Tippy was pulling ahead,
popping his fourth while Neil nursed his own can.

Tippy had called the night before to invite him, and Neil
couldn’t think of a reason not to go. He was an easygoing man, eager to show
Neil the particulars of saltwater fishing, and he had a stockpile of dirty
jokes that kept Neil laughing. Neil had a few of his own, most gleaned from
chiefs during late-night watches on the
Apache
and
San Jacinto.
Apparently, humor on Entente and Earth diverged enough that the two men hadn’t
heard the same ones before.

But mostly Tippy wanted to hear about Earth and the United
States, which he seemed to hold in almost mythical regard since his early
childhood there. For him, it was a place of comfort and convenience, constant technological
interconnectedness, all manner of entertainments, and a great degree of freedom
from interference from the authorities.