The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (21 page)

They drove to the workers’ barracks where Tippy lived.
Outside were three San José police cars and a lot of men standing around.

Neil strode up to one of the cops, putting on his
officer-in-authority voice. “What happened?”

“Knife fight between a couple of imports over a bottle of
tequila,” the cop said. “Imports” was street lingo for the involuntary
transportees. “One of ‘em didn’t come out so well.”

“What’s the victim’s name?” Neil asked.
Das wouldn’t
fight anyone.

“Who the fuck are you to ask?”

Tippy intervened and slipped the police officer a cash card.
The cop pressed some buttons on his handheld, and showed the screen to Neil and
Tippy.

It held two images. The first was an image of Das that must
have been taken shortly after he arrived on Entente; it showed him thin and
haggard. The second was the same man, with lifeless eyes, lying atop a pool of
blood. Neil sucked in a breath, and Tippy balled a fist.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Neil heard himself say. He
swallowed his anger.
Save it for later. Now isn’t the time.

Lindsay put her hand on Neil’s back. “I’m so sorry, Neil,” she
said. “It’s just this place. This awful place.”

Lindsay tried to stay with him at his last night at the
apartment. She didn’t attempt physical intimacy, but she asked him about Das,
trying to get him to express grief, trying to get him to mourn.

She failed, and, after midnight, left.

A part of Neil felt bad for not being nicer to her, but most
of his mind was occupied, analyzing
. I must admit the possibility, however
unlikely, that this really was a random killing. But Das was also the target he
feared he was, if someone betrayed his role in uncovering the plot to keep
President Conrad drugged and docile. The Hans might want him dead in revenge,
or as a message to me. Perhaps Naima had him killed to ensure Conrad’s weakness
isn’t known to anyone else. But who knew he was the connection? Me and Tippy.
And maybe some of Tippy’s other employees. But they didn’t know about the drugs
being withdrawn. Someone else must have learned.

Because of me. I made a mistake somewhere. It’s my –
where was the mistake? Someone would have had to have known about my meeting
with Tippy and Das and followed me there, and then overheard my conversation
with Naima.

It went on, around and around in his head, until after the
sun came up, when he had to leave to catch the launch to orbit.
I can’t
solve it, not in one night. But somehow, Das, I’ll figure out who did this to
you, and why. I owe you that much.

At the spaceport, he recognized one of Naima’s undercover lackeys,
watching him and Harkins board. Neil knuckled his forehead in a sarcastic
salute at the man.

USS Javier Benavidez y Diaz, Wolf 359

The arrival of the joint Russian-American fleet through
the keyhole from Earth elicited no obvious reaction from the Chinese forces
arrayed around Wolf 359. This was to be expected; no doubt word of the combined
fleet had preceded its transit.

The situation in the system was largely unchanged since
Apache
’s
battle with the
Gan Ying
several months prior, with various fleets
guarding the wormhole junctions to their territories. Donovan, in one of the
briefings, had learned that the British had withdrawn all of their ships from
the FL Virginis wormhole, sending them to Entente to assist in the defense of
the colony there. Only six fighting vessels remained – four Australian, two
Canadian – a dangerously small force, but the Chinese had made no move to
attack it. A Chinese victory would cut off the quick path from Earth to Entente
and the rest of the International Ring.

Perhaps they believe six ships on the other side of the
keyhole would inflict too many losses
, Donovan thought.

“Mister Calvin, could you please assist me for a moment?”
said Counteradmiral Komarov, his usual easy smile on his lean, angular face. He
waved his handheld. “I would like to access some information from your ship’s
computer, but this damnable device is apparently quite prejudiced against
Slavic peoples.”

Donovan chuckled. He had found he couldn’t help but like
Sergei Pavelovich Komarov, the chief of the delegation of Russians riding
aboard the American flagship. Despite his stone-faced demeanor at the briefing
on Kitsinger, Komarov was a gregarious soul, just one who had a distaste for
briefing a room full of people he didn’t know.

Komarov’s superior, Vice Admiral Fyodor Ivanovich Volodin,
was aboard
Kirov
, and Komarov’s job was to ensure the Americans and
Russians worked well together. Donovan was posing as a Colonial Affairs
bureaucrat named Ted Calvin, who was riding out with the fleet. Without much to
do – in either his fake job or his real one – he had befriended Komarov as a
fellow fish-out-of-water on the Space Force battlecruiser.

Donovan pulled himself over to Komarov on some handholds.
They were in the vessel’s spacious, many-tiered CIC
.
Donovan was aware
there had been some grumbling among the ship’s officers about a foreign officer
being allowed in the room, as he would be able to learn much about American
operations and capabilities. But the overall fleet commander, Vice Admiral
Cooper, had made sure Komarov was welcome.
We want to take good care of our
new friends, show them they are full and welcome partners in the alliance,
Donovan
thought
. The alliance I helped trick them into joining.

“What do you want to do, Sergei Pavelovich?”

“Oh, nothing important, my friend, just access your weapons
and propulsion systems,” he said. “You may wonder why, so I shall tell you. I
greatly dislike the captain on the frigate
Stoykiy,
for he once flirted with
my future wife while we were at the academy together. I have plotted my revenge
for an age, and it is at hand, Mister Calvin, if only I could access your blasted
coilgun controls! Bah, what kind of allies are you, to make this so difficult?”

He said this completely deadpan, and Donovan looked him in
the eyes, and they both broke down in belly laughs at the same moment.

After a moment, Komarov said, “In truth, I was trying to see
if I could access some telescope imagery of the Recons Two wormhole. The
Leviticans have a frigate they bought from us about ten years ago patrolling
there. When I was a junior lieutenant, I served on that ship as weapons
officer, and I have some fond memories of my time on board. We called it the
Rastoropnyy,
but they renamed it something righteous, like the
Apostate
or the
Whore
of Babylon
or somesuch.”

Donovan laughed again, and he made a snap decision to dig
out an image for Komarov. Even if he was lying, it was hard to imagine what damage
a snapshot of a little point of light millions of klicks distant could do.

As he tried to summon the image on his own handheld, an
all-hands message took over the screen, and the officers in
Diaz
’s CIC
began barking orders to their subordinates.

“Course change! All ships in Combined Joint Task Force Twenty-One,
reorient toward the Lalande 21185 keyhole, and set your thrust to ten
milligees!”

Lalande? That’s back to American space. That means we aren’t
going to Entente. Are we doubling back to the Solar System? We’d come out at
Kennedy Station, a full month’s journey from Earth. Otherwise we could go to
any of the American colonies, but why take this fleet so deep behind friendly
lines …

… unless we’re going to Kuan Yin. That would mean Wolf
359 was a feint to throw off the Chinese about our final destination. We’re
going to liberate Sequoia. Hell, with this many troops, we could push the
Chinese off the entire planet.

Only when the ship crossed the keyhole into the relative
safety of the Lalande system did Admirals Cooper and Volodin make the
announcement: The fleet was indeed headed to Kuan Yin.

A three-month trip. If we win, and it’s not a long
campaign, and I don’t die, and I’m not ordered to stay there, maybe I’ll be
home before the cherry blossoms.

USS Apache, orbiting Entente

The repair crew did a good job,
Neil thought as
Apache
’s
jumper pulled into its bay. The frigate’s new coilgun gleamed in Beta Comae
Berenices’ light. The entire ship looked good. While he had only served aboard
her slightly longer than he had been in Tecolote, it still felt like a
homecoming.

He arrived on the overnight watch; his faint hope that
Jessica would be there to greet him was dashed. The officer of the deck apologetically
said everyone was exhausted from getting the ship ready to break orbit, and
that he was to meet with the captain at 0500, three hours hence. Neil stumbled into
his room and managed to doze off.

He dreamed of someone very much like Das until his alarm
woke him.

These are getting wordier
, Neil thought, as he read
the orders during his meeting with Howell.
Space Command must be worried
about losing access to comm buoys yet again, so they have to deal with
everything up front.
He had so much to digest, including the new alliance
with the Russians and the Indians, and now this:

PRIORITY MESSAGE

TOP SECRET

0942Z15JUN2141

FR: VADM SALAZAR, USSPACECOM

TO: COMMAND/OPS USS APACHE, USS ERIE, USS PONTCHARTRAIN, USS
AQUILA

CC: VADM COOPER, TF21

1. USS APACHE, USS ERIE, USS PONTCHARTRAIN, USS AQUILA HEREBY
DESIGNATED TASK UNIT 21.4.1.

2. APACHE WILL ESCORT ERIE AND PONCHARTRAIN FROM BETA COMAE
BERENICES VIA SZ URSAE MAJORIS TO GJ 1119 WITH ALL AVAILABLE VELOCITY,
REFUELING FROM AQUILA AS NEEDED.

3. PRIMARY MISSION IS TO ENSURE SAFE AND TIMELY ARRIVAL OF
USMC AND USN BATTALIONS TO 11 LEONIS MINORIS III (SEQUOIA); ALL OTHER
CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY.

4. IF TASK UNIT ARRIVES
BEFORE MAIN BODY CJTF21, MAKE CONTACT WITH ANY ALLIED FORCES IN GJ 1119 AND
AWAIT NEW ORDERS. IF MAIN BODY CJTF21 HAS ENTERED 11 LEONIS MINORIS SYSTEM,
JOIN THEM.

That’s every American ship in the system: us, the two
transports, and the tanker, the entire token force here to show the Brits,
Aussies and Canadians we’re committed to defending their colonies on Entente.
And we’re leaving to go to try again to retake Kuan Yin. But liberating Kuan
Yin would be huge. I just hope we do better than last time, and I might just
see Rand again, if he’s still alive.
His old roommate, the guerrilla.
Somehow, Neil was sure he was still fighting.

“Why us, sir?” Neil asked Captain Howell.

“The Marines, first and foremost,” Captain Howell said. “That
battalion is equipped for space boarding operations, and most of those special
units are already tied up going after Saturn. The Seabees will help the colony
get back on its feet, and get a navy back out in the oceans on Kuan Yin.”

“Is anyone replacing us here?”

“Negative, Lieutenant,” Howell said. “The Brits and the
others will have to make do. Now, I must say, Mercer, that you look like shit. Rest
up and start your day after lunch. Forty-eight hours and I’m going to want a
briefing for the officers on every system we’re going to pass through, with a
particular focus on Commonwealth. I recall you’ve been this way before.”

“Aye, sir,” Neil said. “They started calling it the Alley
after we made the run.”

He left the captain’s office and
entered the main shaft through the
Apache
, pushing off to head down to
his room. He looked ahead to avoid any collisions, and he saw Jessica, floating
toward him, heading up the ship for her shift in the CIC. And suddenly, Neil
worried.
She looks great. I’ve missed her. Maybe more than I knew. But it’s
been nearly four months. We’ve talked, but not about what’s going on with us.
She never seems to want to define anything. And she might have … are we still –

Her face broke into a broad,
unofficerlike smile, and as she passed him in the shaft, she reached out and
ran a hand along him, from his head down to his calf, and, despite his
exhaustion and sadness over Das, he felt a deep heat inside him.

We are, still.

HAGATNA, GUAM – Citing fears that her home would become
a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the Chinese, a delegation led by
Guam’s governor Lynn Tarkanian took off for Washington with a petition to
become the nation’s fifty-third state. The proposed state, Pacifica, would also
encompass the Northern Marianas and American Samoa, and Micronesia, the
Marshall Islands and Palau would also be given an opportunity to hold a popular
referendum on whether to join. The long-neglected Pacific territories have
become vital strategic points in the war with China, because they host heavy
laser sites that can hit targets in swaths of Earth orbital space that would
otherwise be unreachable by American surface weaponry. Rumors have flared on
the islands that China has secretly demanded the U.S. abandon these territories
as part of any peace settlement, but both Chinese and American officials have
denied any negotiations are taking place.

USS Apache, DG Canum Venaticorum

Apache
shook off the doldrums and, for the first
time in a while, was in a happy mood. The ship had missed out on taking part in
any action on Entente’s surface, so the last several months had been one
uneventful orbit after another.
Now, at last, we can do something useful
,
even if it is babysitting some transports.

Neil fell back into the rhythms of shipboard life, the
steady flow of briefings and reports, the hum of the reactor, and the
claustrophobic constancy of one’s accessible world reduced to a 22-meter-wide
cylinder. He reacquainted himself with the ten people on his team, most of them
in the collection division, the petty officers and astronauts who operated the
ship’s sensor suite around the clock. His senior petty officer, who had run the
intelligence shop in his absence, kept the team in good order. Wilkins was
still having trouble with his ship recognition charts, he reported, but young
Allenby had shown herself to be a whiz with the interferometer.

Until they reached their destination of 11 Leonis Minoris,
the most dangerous part of the journey was the next system downstream, Beta
Canum Venaticorum, which contained a wormhole link to Chinese territory.

The intelligence on the system, however, was weeks out of date;
comm buoys rarely held accurate data on ship traffic any more. The Israelis,
who managed another wormhole link out of the system, had passed along reports
of four Chinese warships orbiting the anarchy that was the habitable world of
Commonwealth, but a Brazilian freighter captain passing through a month later
said she hadn’t seen any military vessels from any country.

Apache
and her charges were at the leading Trojan point
of the red dwarf DG Canum Venaticorum and its third planet, Nama, a rock that
massed a little more than Mars but had none of its rustic charm. The U.N.
keyhole to the Beta Canum Venaticorum system orbited here, ready to whisk them
7.6 light-years away.

At least we won’t be going to Commonwealth
, Neil
thought.
They would emerge in the orbit of one of the planet’s moons,
but they had no business near the surface.

Still, a threat existed. The last two years of war between
Earth powers had, if anything, made the situation on Commonwealth even more
desperate and chaotic, and it was possible that one of the piratical states on
the surface might try to go after the remass tanker
Aquila
. A few
Commonwealth states had purchased some small armed corvettes, but none had gone
after anything as powerful as an American frigate. The real danger would be if
the American ships had to drop to a lower orbit around the planet, which would
put them in range of a combined attack from surface weaponry and spacecraft,
but Neil emphasized to Captain Howell that the primary concern was Chinese and
Korean warships marauding through the system.

So
Apache
gingerly approached the keyhole, fearful an
enemy would attempt to attack them through the forty-meter opening. The sensor
techs could see the space immediately beyond the throat, and the collection of
stars that were visible suggested someone had rotated it away from its normal
view of the planet Commonwealth. Their awareness of what was to either side of
the wormhole throat was also limited; the ring that held it open reduced the
ship’s peripheral vision through it. And ships could also hide behind the
keyhole structure, striking as soon as the
Apache
crossed over.

But sensor drones that went ahead of the frigate saw nothing
in the immediate vicinity; they sniffed above, below and behind the keyhole and
located no imminent ambush.

“Take us through,” Captain Howell ordered, his voice
resounding through
Apache
’s CIC. “Tell the rest of the convoy to follow
us.”

Neil knew better than to protest publicly, so he launched
from his seat and planted himself in front of Howell’s console.

“Sir, I want to caution that there’s still a lot we don’t
know about what’s in the system,” he said quietly, so only Howell and the
acting XO, Carruth, could hear. “Our view is obscured in a number of places,
particularly behind Commonwealth and its big moon.”

“How long would we have to wait?” Carruth asked.

“A full Commonwealth day should give us time to see if any
threats are present, sir,” Neil said.

“Twenty-nine hours?” Howell said. “We can’t sit here that
long. The orders say all possible speed.”

“Aye, sir.”

Wormholes were not designed to accommodate rapid transit;
they expected ships to stop and have their mass measured before passing
through. Moreover, the margin for error was slim; a big tanker like
Aquila
could
scrape through with only a few meters of vacuum between it and the edge of the
wormhole mouth. And striking the edge would be fatal to the ship.

Nevertheless, the passage of the
Apache
through a
keyhole never failed to elicit obscene jokes among the enlisted personnel in
the CIC; the visual metaphor of the conical
Apache
penetrating the
wormhole ring was not lost on anyone with an elementary understanding of human
sexual practices. Having gone through more than a score of wormholes already in
his military career, what Neil wished for, more than anything, was someone to
make an
original
joke in this regard. Something with a punchline about
the Big Bang or birth of the universe, maybe …

But the astronauts in
Apache
’s CIC were not up to the
task, and the little convoy reformed at the moon Rodrigo’s L-5 point with
Commonwealth and thrust toward the next wormhole, more than three weeks travel
away.

Near Combat Supply Cache Condor, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

Rand and Aguirre had found the caches at Diver, Eagle,
Goshawk and Harrier all destroyed from orbit. Chinese troops had picked over
each site, leaving nothing for them to scavenge.

Now they approached Condor, the last one Rand was sure he
knew the location of. If it was empty, he would have to talk to Aguirre about
surrendering, because they were almost out of food.

The trees are intact. No evidence of fires and no blast
debris from kinetic warheads. Maybe they didn’t find this one. It might have
food, weapons, power …

“Sir!” Aguirre said in a harsh whisper. “Gunmen in the
trees!”

They kneeled down, rifles ready.
I can’t see anyone,
Rand
thought.

“I saw you first, Aguirre!” someone called.

“Bullshit! I had you dead to rights, Ruiz,” Aguirre shouted
back.

“Aguirre, if you shoot as badly as you lie, I had nothing to
worry about!”

Ruiz and some other soldiers walked into the open. Rand and
Aguirre stood up, and the Green Beret embraced them in turn.

“Glad to see you two made it, sir,” Ruiz said. “I’d heard
you were topside when it came down, so I thought maybe you’d gotten away.
Where’s Lopez?”

“POW. They caught her near CSC Eagle.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir,” Ruiz said, looking closely at
Aguirre. “At least she’s alive.”

“Yeah. How did you make it out, Sergeant?” Rand said.

“Out on one of Cruz’s busywork patrols,” he said. “Just
lucky, I guess. Do you know what happened to the major, sir?”

“Dead. Laser strike from orbit.”

“Oh.” He looked grim. “DiMarco’s dead, too. A few of the
guys who have shown up here are certain he was in Falcon when it went up. We
think the Hans captured about four hundred of our people, but I don’t know
about Gant, or any other officer, really.”

“No officers? How many made it here?”

“You two put us at one hundred and four effectives, plus
six wounded. We’ve been putting together an org chart for a light infantry
company, sir. All we needed was a CO, and I’m happy to offer you the keys to
the car, Captain Castillo.”

USS Apache, Beta Canum Venaticorum

“New contact, rising over the planet!
Range is about half a million klicks,” the sensor tech announced. “Designate
Tango-9. She’s close to geosynchronous orbit.”

Neil called up the sensor data on his console. The ship was
pushed by a military-grade drive, a Daewoo Ppaleun Ibiseu Mark III. “Captain,
that’s a Korean frigate, breaking to intercept us.”

They had been thrusting away from the wormhole for about
twelve hours.
We should have waited before making the transit.

The countermeasures tech announced that the ship was being
hit with lidar and radar.

“Intel, Weaps, Propes, do join me,” Howell said. Neil and
the other two officers propelled themselves to Howell’s console for a private
conversation. Neil wondered if he would get some kind of acknowledgement for
warning Howell that this might occur, but the captain didn’t mention it.

“All right, Intel, tell me about this joker.”

“Sir, that’s a
Seoul
-class frigate,” Neil said.
“They’re built around the kind of ray gun we’d put on a destroyer, with a
single gun turret to corral targets. They’re small and fast. Against us, it
would be a fair fight.”

“I don’t like fair fights,” Howell said. “Any weaknesses?”

“Most of their armor is in the nose. On three sides, their
lateral armor is about as tough as aluminum foil, but they packed a few extra
layers on what the computer calls its “ventral” side. I guess when they turn,
they try to show that side to the enemy.”

“Noted. Anything else?”

“The Koreans aren’t thrilled with the war,” Neil said. “They
were too tight with China to not jump in, but they’ve had a lot of people
killed and don’t really see what they can gain.”

The weapons officer, Lieutenant David Ortega, looked
annoyed. “Do we really need political intelligence right now, Mercer?”

Neil met his eyes. “If you’d let me finish, sir, I’d tell
you that they may not have the commitment to seeing a fight to the finish that
a Chinese ship might.” Neil knew he was shading closer to an insubordinate
tone, but he didn’t like Ortega, largely because of Jessica’s private
complaints about his management style.
Don’t push it too far, or he might
take it out on her – just don’t let him brush you off and have the captain
ignore it.

Howell looked thoughtful. “Propes, how long until
intercept?”

Ensign Eve Cohen,
Apache’s
propulsion officer, said,
“Thirty-six, thirty-seven hours.”

“All right, let’s carry on, then, and see if this guy
really wants to stretch his legs and catch up with us.”

The ship was still following them nine hours later. It
hadn’t gained much ground on
Apache
, but that would change soon. The CIC
fell into a mild torpor; the enemy was out there, but
Apache
’s crew
couldn’t do much about it, not for a while.

A crewman brought in dinner for the CIC staff. Neil,
starving, grabbed a chicken burrito.

“New activity near the Donatello keyhole,” announced the
piccolo voice of Astronaut Allenby.

Neil did an involuntary doubletake, and his cheek collided
with the approaching burrito, smearing mashed beans on his face.
Donatello!
That’s the keyhole to Chinese space, orbiting the innermost planet in the
system.
At the moment, the planet was on the same side of Beta Canum
Venaticorum as Commonwealth.

“What do you have, Astronaut?” Howell demanded.

“Um, the keyhole was obscured behind the planet until now,
sir,” she said. “But it looks like two more
Seoul
-class frigates, sir,
with their candles lit.”

“So it’s a wolfpack,” Ortega said.

Neil nodded. “If they head our way, they should try to
envelop us from three different vectors, so we won’t be able to bring our gun
or primary lasers to bear on at least one of them.”

“Sounds like the way the Sakis operate,” Howell said. He ran
his hand over his head.

“Sir, would you like me to provide you simulation data?”
Neil asked.

“No, I think I'd best continue Captain Hernandez's practices
on that point. Propes, can we outrun them?” Howell said.

“Probably not, sir,” Cohen said. “They’ve got the angle to
reach our destination keyhole before we do. The rest of the convoy is just too
slow, and we have to save enough juice to get through the Alley systems.”

“All right, let’s make it a chase anyway. Maybe they aren’t
so serious about sticking it to us,” Howell said.

The Koreans were serious.

The two frigates from the keyhole punched their
acceleration, burning remass to catch
Apache
’s
little convoy.
The
first frigate was still hundreds of thousands of kilometers distant, well
beyond weapons range, and it had reduced its burn to prevent closing the gap
any further. Howell had the
Aquila
repropellant the
Apache,
a
tricky operation while both ships were under thrust, but it would allow
Aquila
to move faster and let
Apache
be ready for the remass-intensive
maneuvers of close combat.