The Swarm (49 page)

“I should have let them drag it out,” he said. “I should've let them stall. We could have had more time.”

She ended the embrace, wiped at her eyes, and took a deep breath, doing her best to smile. “That's not in your nature, Maze. You did what needed to be done. I'm fine. Really. I'm just tired. It's been a rough night.” She paused, studying his face. “When will you report to CentCom?”

Now that the trial was over, he would have to present himself at headquarters, where he would either receive orders to return to WAMRED or accept a new assignment.

“I was supposed to have gone immediately,” he said. “I came here instead.”

They both knew that anything could happen. His fate, the fate of their family, would be determined by the whim of someone else in uniform.

“Maybe you'll get an assignment here,” she said.

“Doubtful.”

“Why not? You could train soldiers. You have experience. You fought the Formics in a lot of different scenarios. Few people can say that. Maybe they'll keep you here at CentCom, teaching new recruits. Isn't that where the best soldiers go, into some teaching position?”

“Decorated officers nearing retirement get teaching positions, Kim. I'm a young, court-martialed officer with a scathing letter of reprimand. The last thing the IF wants is me corrupting young soldiers.”

Kim's mouth became a hard line. “It isn't fair, Mazer. After everything you've done for them, everything you've sacrificed. If not for you, Earth might belong to the Formics right now. And they treat you like a criminal? They scorn you, when all you have ever given them is your full allegiance? Why do you tolerate these people?”

Her voice had risen, and there was a lot of foot traffic in the lobby now. A few people looked in their direction. Mazer gently took Kim's hand and led her to a door to their right. The room was a small, dimly lit chapel, with three rows of pews and an aisle down the middle. A large backlit stained-glass window adorned the front, featuring a religiously ambiguous mosaic of flowers and plant life, the colors of which dappled the walls with spots of green and yellow and red. The pews were empty.

Mazer sat in the back pew to his left, scooted in, and patted the seat next to him.

She hesitated. “People come in here to pray, you know.”

“If they do, we'll pretend we're praying until they leave.”

She sat beside him.

“They're going to send me away, Kim. We both know that. Probably to the Belt. Vaganov won't want me back at WAMRED. I'm a thorn in his side. I suspect he lost a lot of respect there because of how he discarded me. He won't want my face around. That would aggravate the wound.”

Kim didn't look at him. “What does that mean? This asteroid-assault-team idea of yours?”

“Maybe. I don't know. I don't make the decisions.”

She looked at him then. “And if you could make the decisions? What then? Would you choose to stay?”

“Of course I would stay, Kim. Do you have to ask? I can do good here. Administration isn't my strong suit, but I can do it as well as anyone else. And I'll ask for it. I'll put in a request. But it won't matter. It's not going to happen. I'm special forces. They will put me in the field. I don't get a choice in the matter. They own me.”

“Which is why I hate them,” she said.

“The Fleet exists because it has to, Kim. If you want to hate someone, hate the Formics. If not for them, we'd be in New Zealand right now with three kids.”

She laughed. “Three? That's ambitious, considering how long we've been married. I'd be popping them out one right after another. Breastfeeding two at once, changing eighty diapers a day.”

“With the precision of a surgeon,” he said.

“You'd be changing most of those diapers, you know.”

“I wouldn't need to,” said Mazer. “Our children will be potty trained by the time they're three months old.”

“They can't even crawl at three months, Mazer. They can't reach the toilet.”

“I'd build a ramp,” said Mazer. “We'd run drills. I'd put them through a modified basic training, only focused on bathroom duties. And they wouldn't call it peepee and poopoo either. No silliness. We'd have military names. Like Operation Thunder Bladder. They'd rappel down from the crib, do a few combat rolls across the nursery floor, take out an enemy teddy bear or two, and then charge toward the bathroom in full camo paint.”

“A baby's skin is too sensitive for camo paint,” said Kim. “Other than that, it sounds like a plan.”

He smiled. “Our children
will
be brilliant, though. With you as their mother, how could they not be.”

She looked at his face, her expression serious. “Promise to be smart, Mazer. No heroics, okay? No unnecessary risks. Don't volunteer for anything. Don't do anything stupid.”

“I'll be smart,” he said. “But I have to do what I've been trained to do. That's how I'll stay alive. If I abandon that, if I put my safety above that of my unit, I put everyone at risk, including myself.”

He took her hands. “And now I have a request for you. Don't stay on Luna, Kim. If they send me out, get back to Earth. Some place remote. Back to New Zealand maybe. If the Formics break through, the island will be ignored for a while. Maybe forever. Maybe they won't bother the people there at all.”

She considered that and nodded. Then she laid her head on his shoulder and Mazer held her as he watched the colored light on the wall.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked. “How long is a tour?”

“No one knows. But if they send me to the Belt, I suspect I'll be there for a while.”

“I'm not mad at you, Mazer. I don't want you going away thinking that's what I'm feeling right now. What I feel is love.”

He smiled. “I wish there was a better word for love, Mrs. Rackham. What I feel for you, what you feel for me, love feels too small.”

They sat in silence for a while, simply enjoying being together, holding each other, and then Kim's wrist pad began to vibrate. “They're calling me back downstairs.”

“They won't send me out immediately,” said Mazer. “I'll see you tonight.”

They kissed and parted. Kim went downstairs. Mazer left the hospital and took a car across town to CentCom. In typical military fashion, the building was bland, unadorned, and dated. There were two stories here above the surface, but the majority of the building, like so many other agencies, was underground. Mazer wasn't sure how far the tunnels went, but it was said that the IF had been digging and expanding since the war.

Mazer entered and passed through security. The guard who scanned him received an alert on his tablet. “Captain Rackham, I have a message here that says you are to report to LOG 41 when you arrive.”

“Thank you,” said Mazer.

LOG was short for Logistics. They were the team that organized all troop and cargo movements. LOG 41 would be cubicle 41 in the department. Mazer went to the elevators and went down four levels; then he weaved through the labyrinth that was CentCom until he reached the sea of cubicles that was the logistics department. It was a busy, bustling space, with several dozen holo conversations going on at once all around him. A huge starchart on the far wall featured an overheard perspective of the solar system, with blinking dots of lights and icons, tracking the movement of ships.

Mazer proceeded down the aisles, passing soldiers at small desks, hard at work. Some wore visors with direct links to their terminals. Everyone seemed harried and on high alert, and the mood in the room was tense. Something was happening, Mazer realized. Or about to happen.

He stopped and studied the starchart. There was nothing in the ships' positions on the charts that suggested any organized movement; they were scattered dots of light on the display, without any pattern to them. But Mazer could sense from the energy in the room and the brief bits of chatter he was picking up as he moved about that everything was about to change.

We're going after the Formic warships, he realized. We're planning to divide the Fleet into two and send them above and below the ecliptic. We're taking the fight to the Formics.

If he was right it would be a massive undertaking. There were supplies to gather, weapons to modify and prepare, crews to train, assaults and tactics and battle plans to coordinate. Plus there were issues, too. For one, there was the problem of fuel. Most of the ships got their fuel from water harvested from ice off of asteroids. But there were no asteroids outside the ecliptic. Or at least not many. There were some with crazy angled orbits, and there were comets out there as well if you knew where to find them, but recovering those asteroids and comets would be a challenge. Ships would have to follow a zigzag trajectory, moving from one comet to the next to harvest ice. Otherwise, they wouldn't have the fuel necessary to get them out there and back again.

We're not ready, Mazer thought. We can't penetrate the Formic hull, and if we don't take out their ships, how can we possibly win?

He found cubicle 41 in the back corner. It was separated from the others and encased in a soundproof tube. The tube was opaque, but Mazer could see the shape of someone seated at a desk inside. He knocked, and the tube slid open, revealing a young officer at a computer terminal smiling up at him. “Captain Rackham. Won't you have a seat?” He motioned to the empty chair across from him.

Mazer stepped in and sat down. The space was cramped. He and the officer were practically touching knees under the table. The door slid closed, and immediately the noise from outside was eliminated.

“Little loud out there today,” the officer said, still smiling.

“What's happening?” Mazer asked. “It looks like we're planning an offensive.”

“Oh, they've been planning that for quite some time now, sir. Now they're getting the ball rolling. Please state your full name and military ID number.”

“Captain Mazer no-middle-name Rackham. 7811231002.”

The officer kept his eyes on the terminal screen. “Thank you, sir. One moment.”

“Any chance I could request a local assignment?” Mazer asked. “One that would keep me here on Luna?” He knew it was pointless, but he had told Kim he would ask.

“Sorry, sir. Your assignment has already been issued. You're to report to Colonel Li at shuttledock fourteen.”

“Shuttledock? Am I to fly out immediately?”

The officer typed at his holoscreen and then looked apologetic. “I'm sorry, sir. The only information I can access here is that Colonel Li was only recently promoted. The system doesn't tell me any more than that, including your specific assignment or your final destination. My guess is this operation is classified. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Just follow the red line on your wrist pad.”

Mazer's wrist pad chimed, and the floor plan of the building appeared on the viewscreen. A red line indicated the path he should take. The tube door slid open. He was being dismissed. Mazer stepped out, and the door slid closed behind him again. He followed the red path to a subway platform, where a queue of empty subway cars waited off to the side. The front car came to life as he approached, and its door slid open. Mazer stepped to the end of the platform first and looked to his right. The tunnel seemed to go on forever in that direction, and for a moment Mazer debated whether he should get in the car or not. If they were sending him to a dock, they were shipping him out, right now. He wouldn't see Kim before this tour. He wouldn't have a proper good-bye. The subway car stood open and waiting. Mazer had not expected this. He had assumed he would have had at least a day or two before the IF figured out what to do with him and arranged his passage. But here he was, with only the clothes on his back. He turned and regarded the door he had come through. He could go back out, but where would he go from there?

He hesitated a moment longer, then climbed into the first car and buckled the safety strap. The car slowly pulled onto the track and then shot away into the darkness.

Twenty minutes later the car pulled into a busy shuttle terminal. Mazer exited the car and took in his surroundings. IF work crews in safety uniforms were loading freight onto shuttles docked at the gates. Mazer counted ten gates, and all of them were occupied, which likely meant that a steady stream of cargo was moving out of here all day. As soon as one shuttle was full and departed, another empty shuttle took its place.

The work crews shouted orders, drove cargo lifts, honked horns of warning, and moved around each other in a frenzy. Like mechanized worker bees, each doing his part in a fast-paced frenetic system.

A honk behind Mazer caused him to jump and step quickly aside. A worker driving a cargo lift loaded with freight zipped past and nodded his thanks.

“Captain Rackham.”

Mazer turned. A thin Chinese officer approached from the other direction. He had colonel bars on his shoulders, and Mazer came to attention and saluted.

“I am Colonel Li. Welcome to TAGAT, short for Tactical Asteroid Guerilla Assault Team. Or TAG for short. The military has an acronym for everything, and we are no exception.”

“Thank you, sir. It was kind of you to come out and greet me yourself. And I'm glad to hear the IF has a solution to the asteroid problem.”

“Not a solution. An approach. And it's one you've greatly influenced. We will likely be using much of the equipment you sold to Gungsu and Juke.”

So they knew about the deals, Mazer thought. He had only made them a week ago, and the IF had already seen the equipment—or the plans for it—and approved it for the field. A quick turnaround. That was optimistic.

“Whether or not our tactics will work is yet to be determined,” said Li. “We're making this up as we go along, and we'll continue to develop strategies en route as we move out to the Belt. But come, if we stay out here we're likely to get run over.”