Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) (14 page)

“Me too. Maybe the worst is over.”

“I hope so. And in answer to your question, I was mostly concerned about leaving Kirosha when there is so much left to do.”

“Ah. Well, we’re doing the best we can.”

“I’d wish we could help them deal with hunger and disease. They already know about the germ theory of disease, about proper sanitation, antibiotics, crop rotations. But the lower castes still live and labor under primitive conditions. Only the elites benefit from the new knowledge. It’s not just unfair, it’s stupid. Viruses and bacteria don’t care about caste distinctions.”

“They don’t want to alter the Ka’at.”

“Yes. The Way of All Things. A great excuse to let children die.”

Jonah smiled sadly as they headed towards the showers. They’d had similar conversations before. “Change also brings disruption, Tim. This rebellion is a symptom of that disruption. And children have died because of it.”

They continued the old argument over breakfast. “I just want to help them. Even if that means disrupting their precious Way.”

“Back in Pre-Contact days, you would have been denounced as a cultural imperator, no, imperialist,” Jonah said.

Timothy shrugged. History wasn’t his forte. He knew that old America had been a land mired in decadence; that much had sunk in during school. Many viewed First Contact as the Lord’s judgment over a lazy and unruly people who had turned their backs on Him. By contrast, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, long persecuted, hated and misunderstood even in the country of its birth, had prospered during the trials and tribulations America had endured.
We did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness
, as the Book of Nephi said. Much affliction, yes, but the faithful had survived, prospered and multiplied, so that they numbered one in six of the one and a half billion Americans in the universe, where once they’d comprised less than five percent. If that wasn’t a sign that they were truly the elect, and that their ways deserved to spread across the galaxy, what was?

“I just want to help,” he said.

“As do I, Tim. I just know it’s not going to be easy. Many Kirosha dislike us merely because we don’t look like them. Others are afraid we’ll destroy their way of life, and rightfully so. It’s no accident most of our converts are the Jersh, the people at the bottom, who have the most to gain with change. It’s going to take time. Lifetimes, even now that we can all expect to live for centuries with proper medical care.”

“Maybe I will stay, then, and spend two hundred years here, bringing the Gospel to this world.”

The words surprised Timothy even as he uttered them. Maybe he had made a decision after all.

“Do you mean that?”

“I think so,” Timothy said. “Something to think about. I already speak the language, with a little help from my portable device.”

Like many Mormons, Timothy had chosen not to receive an implant, making do instead with a neck band that provided most of its functions, but could be removed when not needed, thus forgoing the temptation to use the device for more than writing letters home, checking the news and do the mission’s work, which was all that was allowed while performing his two years’ mission. It was hard, and yet another reason to look forward to its end, even if only to enter a different, more committed kind of service.

“Well, I hope you are happy wherever you end up,” Jonah said. “For me, it’s the Navy for at least twenty years, and then maybe the merchies after that, assuming I haven’t gotten tired of doing the warp dance.”

Timothy shuddered at the thought. His warp rating was Two, which meant he didn’t need to have most of his brain turned off before going into warp, but he did not enjoy the experience one bit, not that anyone did. The thought of traveling between the stars on a regular basis had no appeal to him. Jonah was a WR-3 which meant he could be trusted to pilot a vessel in and out of that terrifying level of reality. He would do great in the Navy.

If Timothy chose to stay on Jasper-Five, he might never have to face warp space again. That alone made the idea worth considering.

* * *

About half of the bars in the Enclave were closed. That struck Russell as a very bad sign. In his experience, not being able to get booze meant the system was breaking down, or about to.

The watering hole he’d chosen for his meeting with Crow was still open, thankfully. All’s Jake was owned and operated by an American, a miner who’d gotten hurt bad enough even nano-meds couldn’t put him back together a hundred percent; the guy had taken his disability settlement and used it to open a bar catering to his former co-workers. He was doing better now than when he was operating a laser drill.

Come to think about it, Russell mused as he and Gonzo walked into the place, every bar that had shut down had been owned by Ruddies. And he couldn’t see any of the regular ETs on staff, either. It was like the locals had decided that dealing with Americans was bad for your health, which might be nothing but the literal truth.

They made their way through the dark, crowded establishment and ordered at the bar rather than rely on the single waiter, another human, working the room. Jake was tending bar his own self, his mechanical arm making a slight whirring noise that indicated it was overdue for a tune-up. Gonzo dropped twenty bucks for a shot of Earth whisky; Russell got himself a tall glass of fermented Jusha juice, just as much kick per ounce for one fifth the price.

Jake leaned over as he handed them their drinks. “Your friend is in the private room upstairs,” he said.

“Thanks, dabrah.” Russell had his imp add an extra fifty to the tab. It hurt his bottom line, but you had to tip the house to ensure nobody remembered who Russell and Gonzo had been meeting with.

They made their way up a rickety flight of stairs and entered the office.

“Two jarheads walk into a bar. There’s got to be a punchline there,” said the man sitting by the table.

Russell had been there once before, for a high-stakes poker game that had wiped out his savings. Back then there’d been seven people and the room had been full of smoke: tobacco, weed and Looka, a fragrant leaf the locals rolled into cigars and which got humans drunk and wired up at the same time. This time, the room was empty except for the ‘trader’ and a bodyguard, a Samoan so massive you could hang starship-grade force fields from his chest.

“Mister Crow,” Russell said. Gonzo just nodded and grunted. “Sorry it took so long to set this up. We couldn’t get leave until tonight.”

“Understandable,” Crow said. The trader/smuggler was a tough-looking, grizzled fellow, with an impressive collection of tattoos and scars showing wherever his skin wasn’t covered up by a colorful Hawaiian-style shirt under a leather overcoat. His gray hair was cropped short, longer than a medium-reg, but not much. Russell didn’t spot any motto tats on him, the kind of Marine symbols most boots got on their skins and soon lived to regret, and one of the easier ways to spot a former member of the Corps. If he had to guess, though, he figured Crow had spent some time in the gun club, and on the sharp end of things. He had too much of a hard case look to him to be a measly bubblehead, or a Person Other than a Grunt.

“But here we are now,” Gonzo said, as unimpressed by Crow and his pet man-mountain as he was by anything else. Gonzo had maybe given two fucks, total, in his entire adult life, and he wasn’t about to give a third.

“And you’re wondering if I have the payment for the item,” Crow said. “The answer, unfortunately, is no.”

“And why is that?” Russell asked before Gonzo could open his mouth and turn the meeting into a bloodbath. He sent a quick STFU text to his partner in crime at the same time.

“We missed our window. The fucking uprising, you see. My ship couldn’t wait for the natives to stop being revolting, and it had to leave before I could load the item. That means I won’t be able to meet with the buyer in time, which means no sale, at least for a few weeks.”

“That’s disappointing,” Russell said mildly. He’d figured on scoring fifty grand, personally, even after covering expenses and spreading the boodle among the four Marines responsible for liberating the damaged warp catapult. They were all out over a grand apiece already: bribing assorted bubbleheads to stow the catapult sections with the rest of Third Platoon’s gear and shipping it along on three separate trips hadn’t come cheap.

Nobody was going to be happy about this. Russell was especially not looking forward to breaking the news to Da Costa, who might be female but had undergone full muscle and bone replacement. She could bench-press Crow’s Samoan bodyguard and had no sense of humor whatsoever.

Gonzo looked about ready to blow up, but he had enough sense to check with Russell first.

We kill him, right?
Gonzo sent through his imp.

Belay that. Let’s hear him out
.

Out loud: “So what’s the plan now?”

“Like I said, I can find a buyer and get your money within a few weeks. Or I can give you back the item. Maybe you can find a new buyer elsewhere.”

Russell didn’t like it one bit, but they had no choice. They’d counted on being deployed somewhere with actual space trade, where a buyer could be easily found, or back to New Parris, where worst case they could have sold the components piecemeal and still come out ahead. Instead, the Rats in charge had broken up the entire regiment and scattered it into platoon- or even squad-sized bits all over the fucking galaxy. Nobody in Jasper-Five was going to buy a warp catapult. The local primmies didn’t even know how graviton-tech worked, let alone have any use for it.

“There’s a Gack freighter that just came in from Grenada,” Gonzaga said, trying to play it coy. “Mebbe they’re in the market for a catapult.”

Crow shrugged. “Yes, the
GACSS 1138
. The Pan-Asians would definitely be interested in the item. But they aren’t exactly flush with hard currency, unless you don’t mind getting paid with Sphere Credits.”

“Fuck that,” Gonzaga said. Russell agreed; the Gacks’ money was constantly dropping in value versus both the US dollar and the Galactic Currency Unit.

“Besides, I’d be careful about doing business with the
1138
. They have a bad rep, even among the more flexible people in the trade. They’ll deal with anybody.”

Russell sighed. The Pan-Asians might be human, but they liked Americans about as much as the Lampreys did, and would be just as happy to butt-fuck anybody. Props to Gonzo for trying, but it’d been a weak hand. Besides, getting two tons of high-tech materials shipped back to their barracks under their current high-alert status wasn’t difficult; it was plain impossible.

“We’ll wait,” he told Crow. “We’ll wait for your ship to come back.”

“I appreciate your patience.”

They might as well be patient. Crow wouldn’t just take the catapult and leave without paying; the man’s word was good. The fuckers in the Asian ship didn’t sound dependable at all; he didn’t trust anybody who didn’t even bother to name their ships.

He had a bad feeling about it, though.

Risshah-Two, Year 35 AFC

King-Captain Grace-Under-Pressure missed holding court on the bridge of her ship, but she wouldn’t have given up her current posting for anything, even a King-Admiralty. She was in the presence of history in the making, a moment that would be remembered until all Starfarer polities involved had achieved Transcendence or extinction.

“It is official, Mister President,” Admiral Carruthers said. “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

The holotank at the center of the bridge of Second Fleet’s flagship told the story. The last Risshah orbital fortress was slowly breaking apart as flames erupted from multiple breaches in its armored core. No more missiles or graviton beams emerged from the planet’s surface, either; the Snakes’ planetary defense modules had fallen silent or been destroyed.

The battle was over.

The mood in the command center of the battleship
USS Great Vengeance
was surprisingly sober. Perhaps it was due to the presence of the Americans’ supreme leader, President Albert Hewer, who had chosen to accompany Second Fleet on its final campaign against the Risshah. It was unusual, to have a ruler be present during a battle, even one where the outcome was not in doubt. It made sense in this case, however, given the circumstances. A decision would soon have to be made regarding the fate of Risshah-Two, the Snake homeworld, and it should be made by the leader of the nation.

Grace had spent some time with the American President, since neither of them had any duties and little to do during the trek to Risshah. She had met him before, in the aftermath of First Contact. The man had changed a great deal during the intervening three and a half decades. The relentless quality Grace had noticed even during their first meeting had grown and become the man’s defining characteristic. If it had been Hewer down on Risshah’s surface, he would have fought to the end. There would have been no offers of surrender as long as he was alive.

“Thank you, Admiral,” Hewer told Carruthers. “Are there any strategic military facilities remaining on Risshah-Two?”

“There are seven planetary defense modules that still have energy signatures, sir. They are all damaged to some extent, and they have stopped firing.”

“Destroy them all.”

“Yes, sir.”

Orders were given. Second Fleet had surrounded the Risshah homeworld; battlecruiser squadrons orbited every quadrant of the planet. Missiles and heavy beam weapons stabbed into the green planet below. Dots of fire appeared on the planetary display on the bridge, each marking the demise of one of the massive fortresses the Snakes’ favored for ground defense. One by one, their energy signatures faded away.

Grace glanced around the bridge, once again grateful to have been selected to act as an observer during this phase of the war. One thing she noted was how young the crew was. Aboard most Starfarer vessels, the bridge complement of a flagship would be evenly divided between relatively young up-and-comers and career officers who had spent decades doing the same job and would remain at their posts for decades to come. Here, everyone belonged to the first category, except for Admiral Carruthers and a handful of senior officers.

Rejuvenation treatments had been made available by the Hrauwah as soon as they made contact with the US, but there had been complications, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of aging humans seeking rejuvenation. The worst mortality rates had afflicted the political, financial and social leadership of the nation, with some very few exceptions, President Hewer among them. That might have been because the powerful and influential had been the first to get the treatments, and thus been exposed to the early, faulty process, but the Hrauwah King-Captain suspected politics rather than medical science had played a part in the demise of America’s elites.

Whatever the causes, the USA was a nation of young people, and would remain so for a number of decades. The young were receptive to all manner of new things. Most people already seemed to accept President Hewer’s reign as a matter of course. In Grace’s opinion, that was a good thing. Her own King of Kings had ruled the Hrauwah wisely and well for several centuries. Continuity was a source of stability. She wished the President many years on his throne.

“All defense modules have been destroyed, sir.”

“Are there any other military installations left?”

“Nothing capable of interfering with our operations, sir. But there are thirteen remaining army bases, three spaceports with potential military uses, and eight naval bases that…”

“Blast them. All of them. If it’s got Snakes under arms, take it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Death by a thousand cuts, Al?”

The President turned towards Tyson Keller, his Chief of Staff. Grace didn’t care much for the man, which was unusual. Hrauwah and humans felt an almost instinctual level of affection for each other, in most cases. There was a darkness within the advisor that triggered her fight-or-flight reflexes, however. The things the man had done to ensure the country stayed together might have had something to do with her feelings.

“See something you don’t like, Ty?” Hewer said.

“I never get tired of watching Snakes die, Al. Like the great Mr. Jackson once said, ‘I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.’ What I don’t get is this drib-and-drab business. Are you going to give them a full dose of fire and brimstone or not? Nits make lice.”

The President turned his gaze to the holotank, watching multiple planetary strikes show up on Risshah-Two’s surface. Many of those bases were near population centers. Millions were dying. Millions more had died when the other defense modules had been taken out, and during the course of the battle. Space combat in orbit led to a great deal of collateral damage. At one point, a Risshah battlecruiser had crash-landed on top of a large city, immolating its entire population.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Hewer said.

“The polls were pretty near unanimous.”

“I know. If I pull this trigger, I do it in the name of every American left in the universe.” Hewer looked around. “I know what I want to do. I just want to make sure it’s the right thing to do.”

The crew was clearly not comfortable with being within earshot of that conversation, but there were more than a few nods among them, and several mutters.

“Kill them all.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

“Silence in the bridge,” Carruthers ordered.

“We could make sure they could never leave orbit,” Hewer said. “Set up space fortresses all around the planet, blast anything that looks like a space installation.”

“And who’s going to pay for that, Al? You aren’t a liberal; you understand there is such a thing as opportunity costs. A space fortress here is a space fortress that isn’t guarding one of our own planets. For what? So you can salve your conscience? We’ve already wiped out seven planets. Why hesitate at the eighth?”

The President of the United Stars of America hung his head. “You are right, Ty. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“I thought it was to make you look like a nice guy by comparison.”

“That too.” Hewer turned towards Admiral Carruthers. “I hereby authorize the destruction of every Risshah population center on this planet. For what we are about to do, may God forgive us.”

For once, Carruthers didn’t have any quotes handy. The admiral spoke a series of curt orders, authorizing the release of field-encasement thermal weapons and their use on Risshah-Two’s fourteen billion inhabitants.

And thus did America join the community of Starfarers.