Star Soldier (23 page)

Hawthorne: Most definitely.

Enkov: Japanese troops do well?

Hawthorne: Very.

Enkov: Then perhaps the Highborn actions become clear.

Hawthorne: You detect a pattern, Director?

Enkov: The Highborn do not hew to your strategies, General, because they do not think like you. Land is not paramount. Men are. Consider. Why strike at Japan? Might it be because the Japanese make better soldiers than the neighboring peoples do?

Hawthorne: Perhaps. Yet a conquered Japan also aims a strategic arrow at Beijing. While I don’t see how invading Japan at this time fits into their overall strategy, it is by itself not an unbalanced move.

Enkov: I believe they’re more concerned with taking out our best recruiting grounds, then taking those captive peoples and retraining them as Highborn surrogates.

Kitamura: The Japanese will never serve the hated Highborn. We are dedicated Social Unitarians.

Enkov: So did the Australian generals assure the Directorate, as did those holding New Zealand, Tasmania and Antarctica before them. Yet now these nationalities flock to the Highborn standards. You’re so fond of history, General Hawthorne. Didn’t the Japanese lick the American’s boots easily enough after World War Two?

Hawthorne: As the Field Marshal indicated, Director, Social Unity cures many ills.

Enkov: How refreshingly bold of you, General. Are you actually assuring me the Japanese won’t join the Highborn?

Hawthorne: I don’t intend on letting Japan fall to find out.

Kitamura: We will never fall! On this, I stake my life and reputation.

Enkov: I accept your pledge, Field Marshal.

Kitamura: Thank you, Honored Director. You will see that Japan loves you and honors your socially approved leadership. Even now new armies of volunteers train in the cities’ depths. We will boil out and overwhelm them!

Enkov: That, gentlemen, is the kind of zeal we need. Now, General Hawthorne, how soon until this grand assault of yours occurs, this Operation Togo?

Hawthorne: Your timetable, Colonel-General?

Green: Nine weeks at the earliest.

Enkov: Too long, much too long! The Highborn run circles around us because they
move
. By the time we’re ready for them, our men are marching into their holding pens or being buried in the field. We have to match their speed, their ability to shift from one spot to the next. You have four weeks, and then you will commence Operation Togo with whatever’s ready.

O’Connor: I need those four weeks to slip my submarine squadrons into position. On the fifth week, we might be ready.

Enkov: Fight your way into position!

O’Connor: Without surprise—

Enkov: To insure success we will immediately submarine-launch nuclear strikes against their sea-lines.

Hawthorne: Director—

Enkov: My mind is made up on this. I have not struck first with nuclear weapons. But I refuse to sit idly by and allow them to bombard us with impunity.

Hawthorne: Very well, Director. But I cannot guarantee Operation Togo with only a four-week lead-time.

Enkov: Four weeks and I demand that you guarantee it for me, General.

Hawthorne: Perhaps if the Directorate rescinds its policy on the habitats.

Enkov: Negative. They must remain open habitats. Frankly, I find the Highborn agreement to this unbelievable. If they stopped all food shipments earthward, we would face half rations for everyone on the planet.

Hawthorne: They want Earth intact, Director. So unless we change policy I don’t believe they will change their open space-farm habitat policy. At least they won’t change it as long as they’re conquering— As long as they’re making advances.

Enkov: Then why ask for Directorate policy to be rescinded?

Hawthorne: Because I’m beginning to wonder if that isn’t the place to break them. If we can’t break their battle fleet maybe we can destroy one or two Doom Stars.

Enkov: You think that’s possible?

Hawthorne: With surprise… maybe. If our new proton beams prove—

Enkov: No! Maybe is not good enough. We will stick to saving Japan. Four weeks, gentlemen, to gather what forces you can and then strike against their invasion. And you must immediately disrupt their four thousand kilometer long supply-line, Admiral. Your submarines are to move now! They are to launch nuclear sea-strikes as close to the enemy as possible. If they own space, we can still use the oceans. I want you especially to target their transports. Until then, Field Marshal Kitamura, you most hold Tokyo. You must defend the Merculite missile battery, no matter what the cost. If that means frontal assaults with your newly trained levies then you must do it.

Kitamura: Agreed, Honored Director. But we will take massive casualties.

Enkov: That doesn’t matter. Engage the enemy. Make him bleed until we’re ready to drive him off Japan. Then everyone will see that the Highborn are not invincible.

Hawthorne: Shouldn’t our objectives be studied in greater detail, Director?

Enkov: You have just been given your objectives, General. Now I want them carried out. If, that is, you can guarantee me success.

Hawthorne: Director, I—

Enkov: Give me victory, General Hawthorne, or we will fall back onto Carthaginian strategies.

Green: Director?

Enkov: Take it up later with General Hawthorne, and consider yourself under the same terms, all of you. Gentleman, the emergency meeting is adjourned. Now, to your tasks!

2.

Convoy A22 left Sydney Harbor at three o’clock in the afternoon Sunday. The first day it sped over the waters at fifty kilometers an hour. Thirty hover transports carried the 20th FEC Division and the 101st Jump-Jet Battalion, which was composed of veteran Hawk Teams. They skimmed over the choppy waves in a diamond formation. Playing shepherd to the transports were four Gladius Class Hovers, small and deadly destroyer sized vessels. They bristled with guns and missiles launchers, and dropped probes as they hunted for enemy submarines. In and out of the diamond formation, they roamed on the prowl. On picket duty twenty to forty kilometers out roved ten V-Boats, hydrofoil ships badly tossed among the waves. Ocean duty left the crews exhausted. A journey all the way to Japan hammered them. In the middle of the transports hovered the VTOL Carrier. Sleek HK-Leopards—reconnaissance planes—and sleek attack choppers lifted from its flat top as they scoured the sea for enemy.

A quarter of the way through the journey, storm warnings forced the convoy off course to the west. The sea grew rougher, until the hovers shut down turbines, settled unto the gray waters and moved like ordinary sea vessels. Overhead, dark clouds threatened rain. On the former cushion of air, the trip had been relatively smooth. Now the men found themselves pitched to-and-fro. Many grew seasick, crawling to the head and spewing or limping into their bunks and trying to endure the endless motion. A few stubbornly continued their crap and card games.

Lieutenant Marten Kluge, his Top Sergeant Omi and Sergeants Stick and Turbo had squeezed themselves around a bolted down table in a little cubby in the rec-room. There they played five-card stud. Each wore the dusty brown uniform of FEC volunteers. Turbo and Stick wore their slouch hats. With a stylus and plex-pad, Omi kept track of the won or lost fortunes. The worn cards rested in a table holder specially made for sea duty. The discards they held with their elbows propped on the table. The room, as did everything aboard the sea-borne hover, pitched back and forth with exaggerated motion.

“Card,” said Turbo.

Omi slipped him one.

Turbo frowned as he settled the card into his hand.

“I heard we’re gonna be fed into the Tokyo maw,” said Stick. “For once Social Unity refuses to be overrun. It’s a meat-grinder from what I hear.”

Marten shrugged. He hadn’t heard anything like that.

“They said High Command wants… some kind of missile battery taken out.”

“Merculite missile battery,” Turbo said, still mulling over his cards. He’d become the Second Platoon’s newsmonger, finding it wherever he found his illegal drugs.

“What’s a merculite missile?” asked Stick.

Turbo tugged the peak of his hat lower over his eyes. “It’s fast, is what it is. Zooms out in seconds and drops orbital fighters so they plop into the ocean. High Command’s gone crazy over it.”

“Precious Highborn losses,” grumbled Stick.

“Yeah,” breathed Turbo. “Twenty credits!”

Omi scratched that onto the pad and quietly set his hand down. “Out,” he said.

Stick flicked a gaze over his cards.

Omi’s stylus hovered over the plex-pad in anticipation.

“They say it’s a blood-bath in Tokyo,” said Stick. “The Japanese have lost their minds, is what I hear. They run screaming at you with bombs strapped to their chests, and they blow both you and them to death. Behind them, follow honor-mad Samurai Divisions, one after another in an endless procession. And don’t let them capture you alive, either. They got these knives, sharper than my vibroblade. They use them to cut off your balls and—”

“You in or out?” asked Turbo

Stick nodded for a card.

Omi’s stylus glided over the pad.

“Two cards,” said Marten.

“It’s called the Siege of Tokyo,” said Turbo matter-of-factly. “And yeah, it’s a blood-bath all right, but with FEC Divisions and a scattering of Jump-Jet battalions.”

“No panzers?” asked Marten.

“Nope,” Turbo said. “They’re up north sweeping the home islands, as the Japanese buggers call them.”

“What about Highborn?” asked Omi.

Turbo shrugged as he adjusted his hat. He squinted at Marten to make up his mind.

“So we’re all killing each other for some worthless missiles?” asked Stick.

“Earth is on the run, don’t you know,” said Turbo. “But it’s gotten too easy for the High Command, so this time they’re not using as many Highborn. It’s an all-volunteer show.”

“The Earth on the run part is right,” Stick said. “An old-timer told me the Highborn move all their units like lightning, theirs and the volunteers. He said their staff work is amazing. If they’d ever tried this in the Old Army, said the old-timer, it would have been a balls-up from the get go.”

“In and call,” said Marten.

With a grin, Turbo spread his cards: three queens, ace high.

Stick threw down his hand with disgust. Marten quietly folded his and handed the cards to Omi. He slid out from the booth and stretched, staggering as the ship rolled. He bumped against the table as the ship swayed in the other direction.

“I’m going topside,” said Marten.

Omi grunted and slid out too. “Mind if I join you?”

Marten nodded.

As they left the rec-room Turbo yelled, “We need two more players.”

Marten and Omi slid along the corridor and crawled up the stairs. They donned rain gear, slick hats and staggered to the front deck railing, where they hung on. Huge gray waves rose and fell, while darkening clouds loomed threateningly in the sky. Only sailors moved here and there above deck, attaching lines or running to perform some unknown chore. Behind the lead hover followed the other twenty-nine transports. Overhead a chopper thumped somewhere, barely audible over the blistering wind.

Cold salt spray lashed the two men. They wiped their faces constantly.

“I’ve never been on the ocean before,” Marten shouted.

“Just one time for me when my mom and I visited Korea,” Omi said.

“You’ve been out of Sydney before?”

“A year before she was divorced and escorted into the slums. Thanks to my dear old dad.”

Marten rubbed salt out of his eyes, glancing at the grim-faced gunman.

Omi’s mouth twitched. “A drunk fell overboard that journey.”

“Yeah?”

“They stopped the ship and picked him up, but he’d broken his neck, probably from the fall.”

“Probably?”

Omi shrugged.

Marten was struck by Omi’s moodiness. Normally the man was the Rock, as some of the men had taken to calling him. “What really happened?” Marten asked.

“A thief pinched the drunk’s wallet. But the drunk wasn’t so drunk and whirled around, starting to holler for help. So the thief, he was a little guy, hardly even a teenager. He used a martial arts move. He snapped the drunk’s neck, and was pretty surprised it worked liked it was supposed to.”

“So the thief pitched the drunk overboard?”

“Yeah.”

Marten thought about that, finally asking, “So what’d he find in the wallet?”

Omi frowned sourly, taking his time answering. “Some plastic, a sheaf of porno pics, nothing much for all the work he’d gone to.”

Overhead a bomber zoomed low over the water. It seemed to be in a hurry somewhere. Marten and Omi watched. Thirty seconds later what seemed like small packages tumbled out of the bomber’s bottom.

“Depth charges?” asked Marten.

“Seems like.”

The packages plopped into the wild sea and disappeared.

They watched the spot. Suddenly, water sprayed upward, twin geysers. They kept watching, but nothing like oil or mangled bodies or anything else surfaced to show that an enemy sub had been hit.

“Turbo tells too many stories,” Omi said.

“You mean the ones about convoys that get hit before they ever reach Japan?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re right. He shouldn’t tell those.”

“I think they’re BS.

“Why is that?”

“The Highborn have the game sewn up,” Omi said. “Social Unity is on the run. No way is Social Unity going to train soldiers fast enough to face the Highborn before it’s all over.”

“Social Unity might get desperate.”

“So?”

“Desperate men do dangerous things.”

“I suppose…”

3.

One of those desperate men wiped sweat off his face. He was a little over thirty kilometers away, deep under the tossing waves. The captain of the
Riga
stepped behind the tracking officer. The officer tapped a chart, and whispered, “As clear as it’s going to get, sir.”

The captain closed his eyes. He was queasy. The enemy’s hunter/killers were too efficient. Too many fellow captains had already paid the ultimate price for this wild strategy. Yet he nodded. One must obey Enkov.