The Unincorporated Future (32 page)

—
from the introduction to
Four Images of the War, for Them and for Us
,
by Michael and Litha Veritas

J. D. Black found it hard to believe there were still humans living beneath the roiling mass of angry dark clouds occasionally flecked by the lambent glow of the lightning strikes below. The surface was rife with all manner of massive storms, including hurricanes, tornadoes, seismic shifts, floods, and acid rain.

“The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny,” she said to no one in particular.

“Did you say something, Admiral?” asked Fatima.

“Yes, child,” answered J.D., turning around, unaware that she was within listening distance of her assistant. “An old German quote by a very wise man.”

Fatima sidled up to J.D. and looked out the viewport. “The will of Allah is terrible to behold.”

“Don’t blame this on Allah. We made these choices; we must bear the weight of them. Presumably, you’re not here to instruct me on Allah’s will.”

“No, Admiral. The leaders of the fleet wait at your convenience in the conference room.”

J.D. nodded and bade Fatima to lead the way.

They arrived in short order, and Suchitra, noticing J.D. at the entrance, called the rest of the commodores to order. J.D. took much satisfaction with the even greater reverence the other commodores now seemed to have accorded the new admiral.
Finally,
thought J.D. with macabre delight,
I’m expendable. Which means the trap can be set for Trang and the fleet can survive without me.

“Have a seat,” J.D. began. “Admiral, how did the hunt go?”

“We destroyed one hundred ninety-nine enemy ships of all classes, Fleet Admiral. Captured escape pods, had thrusters disabled and Alliance transponders attached. They aren’t going anywhere, and we know where they are.”

“Useful,” mused J.D. “Anything else?”

“We almost had two hundred,” beamed the normally laconic Park, “but there wasn’t enough time.”

“Never is,” answered J.D. “Okay, here’s the update from my end. The destruction of Mars as a viable human habitat is effectively complete. They can breathe on the planet for the next couple of months at least, but it’s not recommended. The mean temperature should be right about the freezing point of water and possibly lower in the next month. Frankly, that—we are just guessing on. No one’s ever purposely destabilized an entire planet’s ecosystem before. We’ve left the t.o.p. system relatively intact and have not destroyed any major centers of civilization, though the environmental damage has made living near the coasts chancy.”

“Many of the Martian cities
are
on coastlines,” observed Commodore Paladin.

“Not for much longer,” said J.D. “I don’t think they’ll be flooded, but they will be empty very soon, one way or another—too much instability.”

The commodores nodded solemnly. While there’d been a certain amount of pride in their recent victories over the orbats and the successful hunting down of the fleeing UHF fleet, those had been purely professional wins—whether their opponents were green or not. But there was no real joy in what had transpired while most of them were away. They all knew it had to be done but were mostly glad they hadn’t been called upon to do it. Sensing the turn in mood, J.D. decided spring the good news. “We found where the UHF was keeping our prisoners—at least the ones on Mars. I’m quite pleased to report that we’ll soon be bringing 197,463 of our comrades home.”

A round of cheers poured forth from the small group, and when they finally settled down, J.D. continued.

“The UHF has been kind enough to put all the Alliance prisoners into suspension capsules that are easily transportable. We’ve let the authorities at the storage facility know, in no uncertain terms, what the results of not delivering those prisoners to us in fully functioning units would be.” Her lips turned upward into a knowing grin. “They’re proving most cooperative.”

Commodore Cortez’s face betrayed her feelings before the words even left her mouth. “Still can’t trust the bastards.”

“And we won’t,” answered J.D. “Our intelligence service is checking the storage site and the Martian Neuro for any threats, but no unit will be allowed onto a ship until it’s first inspected and opened. We must assume a gray bomb threat at the very least. But with fleet personnel working at full capacity, we should have our comrades transported off the surface, examined, and in our holds within the next two days. We’ll then leave the orbit of Mars one week after we entered it.”

“Next objective?” asked Park.

“That, Commodore,” answered J.D., folding her arms together, “is up to Grand Admiral Trang.”

UHFS
Liddel
En route to Saturn

Trang reviewed the footage coming from Mars and felt lost in helpless rage. He should have been there. The magnetized asteroids would have given J.D. an advantage, but he would have had one as well: a two-to-one advantage in ships. He could have won, or at the very least gotten a draw. But the government’s insistence on destroying Saturn at all costs had ended up costing them all.

Trang was left with no choice. As he was closer to Saturn than to Mars—and even farther from Earth/Luna—all he could do was proceed to the sixth planet from the sun and, per the mission parameters, destroy the Saturnian subsystem. It was now a war of total brutality and one he wasn’t sure he could win—one, in fact, he wasn’t sure he’d want to win. The Outer Alliance was based as far out as Eris. If they were willing to lose
all
the gas giants just to get to Earth/Luna, they’d still be left with plenty to work with. And as Trang knew so very well, they were resilient sons of bitches. They’d turn wherever it was they were living or whatever it was they were living in into a viable economy in the span of a few short years. And with a viable economy comes a treasury, and with a treasury comes a navy. And then it starts all over again. Not so with the UHF. Admiral Black had nailed that one in her speech to the Martians before deciding to summarily wipe them off the face of the map. The flag Trang was sworn to protect was planted on three locatable, very exposed, and clearly vulnerable planets. Really, only one now, given that Mars had been taken out and the Moon, while a force to be reckoned with, was not a planet and had nowhere near the industrial capacity of Earth. Trang was no longer sure who would collapse first. All his vaunted “numbers” advantage had proved was that he could send more greenhorns into the maw of death than his adversaries. But the thing he saw most, as his fleet sped toward another rendezvous with death, was that the war he feared most—the war that could destroy humanity—was coming to fruition.

The mood of his command sphere—indeed, his whole fleet—was funerary, and he’d done nothing to ameliorate that. He’d sat for hours in stoic silence, offering neither words of consolation nor encouragement for the upcoming battle.
What battle?
he thought dourly.
The Saturnians are defenseless, and so we bravely charge in.

“Admiral.”

Trang looked up slowly. His comm officer was staring at him.

“Admiral.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve, um … intercepted Alliance fleet communications to Ceres.” Confusion had managed to perfuse every part of his voice.

“I didn’t think we were in position to intercept LCPs,” said Trang, using the nickname for laser communication pulses.

“We’re not.”

Trang nodded, intrigued. “Well, far be it from me to audit a gift dividend. Send whatever it is you managed to intercept on to intelligence and see if they can crack it.”

“That’s just it, Admiral. It’s not
in
code. Not
in
laser pulse.”

“Then what are they in?”

“Radio, sir.”

“Radio?”

“And they’re not encrypted either.”

The comm officer had his full attention now. Trang motioned for the messages to be sent to his display, where he read them at once. His left eyebrow lifted slightly. The command crew knew that usually meant a change of plans. The buzzing commenced immediately.

“Connect me with Admiral Jackson,” Trang ordered. “No, belay that. Inform Admiral Jackson that I’m on my way to the
Scarlet.
”

UHFS
Scarlet
En route to Saturn

Zenobia Jackson first read and then reread, and then
reread
the two Alliance communications while her boss casually sipped coffee from his mug.

“And you say they were sent in the clear,” asked Zenobia, “by radio—no code at all?”

Trang smiled gamely.

“Sorry, Sam, but this is damn strange.”

“Which part?”

“Well,” she answered, glad to see her boss more engaged than he had been in days, “we have two apparently official Alliance fleet communications. One of them states that the Alliance fleet has completed operations around Mars and is heading for Earth/Luna to complete their mission. The other communication states that the Alliance fleet has completed operations around Mars and is returning to Saturn. They’re both signed by Admiral Black and both seem authentic as far as we can tell—other than the obvious and rather curious fact that they were both sent in the open. But why would she send messages like this to her government?”

“Because,” answered Trang, eyes bright with understanding, “those messages aren’t meant for her government. They’re meant for us—or to be more precise, me.”

Zenobia thought hard for a moment and then her face suddenly lit up. “A choice!”

“Indeed, a choice.”

“By Damsah’s left nut, she’s willing to go home—”

“If we do the same,” finished Trang.

Silence pervaded the room for a few seconds as Trang allowed his underling to work through the implications on her own.

“She must not have a new trick for the Earth/Luna orbat system,” Zenobia finally said. “Why else offer to call off the attack?”

“Maybe,” countered Trang, “she doesn’t want to destroy the Earth’s ecosystem—her home planet, by the way—murdering tens of billions of human beings while losing billions more of her own.”

Zenobia seemed to consider the suggestion, but her face betrayed her suspicion. “I just don’t see it, sir. This is J. D. Black we’re talking about, ‘the Merciless.’ Why offer mercy now?”

“Staring at the brink, I suspect. I’ve often gone there myself.”

“The brink?” Zenobia said, voice thick with rage. “What was Mars? The warm-up?”

“Zenobia, her destruction of Mars was very selective. She could easily have bombarded every city to dust and wiped out every vestige of civilization. She did not.” Trang activated the holo-display over Zenobia’s small breakfast table and then called up detailed holos of Mars shot at close range. “Look,” he said, pointing to various hot spots on the hologram. “She destroyed the ecosystem, yes, but clearly left the population and the orports intact. Why?”

“To increase their suffering.”

“If that were true, why leave the orports intact with all the t.o.p.s functional? Why suggest, as she did in her speech, an exodus and promise not to shoot down any civilian craft—and she
will
keep her word. Of that, I have not one doubt,” he said, remembering the long-ago exchange of Admiral Gupta for Commodore Sadma. “Not only that, but she allowed us to get clear pictures of the areas under attack so we could see which infrastructure she left intact. No, she’s offering us a chance to evacuate them. But only if we turn around and leave Saturn and Ceres alone. If we continue on and destroy their new center as we can do with nothing to stop us, we can be sure that Earth/Luna is her next stop and the possible near extermination of the human race.”

“But if we put our tails between our legs and retreat—”

“We potentially spare the lives of tens of billions on Earth/Luna and save billions from the disaster of Mars.” Trang took a few more moments with his thoughts. “And since we’ll also need every single ship we have in the asteroid belt to help us, they’ll also have to be transferred to Mars.”

“Which means the murder of all those Belters has to stop,” Zenobia said, realizing the full implications of J.D.’s offer. “I really hate this 8645 shit, Sam.”

“As do I,” he agreed. “Besides which, I think it’s obvious the Alliance is better at it than we are.”

“You’re going to take her offer?”

Trang allowed a wry smile. “As we cannot make contact with the proper authorities on Mars—”

“The Alliance has that place shut down pretty good,” added Zenobia, “which might not be a bad thing. I can pretty much guess what President ‘Kill Anything That Breathes’ Sambianco would order.”

“Why, Zenobia,” said Trang, feigning disbelief, “I’m sure our President and his Cabinet would order us to the immediate relief of the capital. In fact, I’m going to issue a fleet order for the immediate deployment of
all
our forces to the humanitarian aid of Mars as soon as it is safe to do so.”