Qualea Drop (The Spiral Wars #7), page 6
That conciliation, however, left things unsaid. Kaspowitz heard them. He took a deep breath. “The course looks good. It’s been compiled with data from Croma Fleet Intel, the first part of which at least they’re entirely sure of because that was croma space within recorded memory. The second part is a bit more sketchy, but we can go over that in more detail later when I get some of the new plotting marks back from astrophysics simulation.
“The problem is that to hit these jump points, as some of you have heard me complaining about for a while now…” with a pointed glance above his long nose at the gathering, “…we’re going to have to integrate with our friendly comrades-in-arms. Because, heh…” and he shook his head with a faint whistle of disbelief and forced humour, “…these jump points, oh boy. I’m aware of what our girl’s new technology can do now, and Rooke’s engine specs have all checked out so far, but we’re trying to hit things we can’t even measure with the old sensor arrays, they’re that far out on the grav slope, it’s basically a deep space jump. And if you all remember your nav basics from the Academy, and I’m sure you do… deep space jumps are basically impossible.”
“Is the problem mainly with processing power?” asked Sasalaka as she leaned in the doorway, in her thick Togiri accent. “Or engine power?”
“Oh I’d never doubt the engines,” said Kaspowitz, shaking his head. “They’re beasts, we’ve got engine power up the wazoo. We just can’t calculate positional space on that weak a grav slope, and frankly, given that we’ve got pretty much the same nav tech that the drysines do, I don’t think they can either. Not individually. Which is where we get to interlinking our ships through jump, which is the latest of many, many wonderful technical requirements our mechanical friends have sent to me…” with the greatest of sarcasm, “…which basically means surrendering piloting autonomy to the drysine hive mind at the most vulnerable point of the mission. And you can all guess how I’m feeling about that.”
“It’s the interlocked sensor spread, isn’t it?” Draper asked. “How does that even work with some ships still in hyperspace as others are coming out?”
“Oh…” and Kaspowitz waggled a finger at him, “…never you mind that, my boy. Our machine overlords keep their secrets well, our trust in them is total.” Smothered smiles on the faces of several, amidst the concern. Kaspowitz looked sideways at Erik, and found him just looking, with reprimand. Kaspowitz sighed and held up a hand in apology. “Sure, too far. Look, I’m not claiming they’re going to kill us all and eat us.”
“Big concession from you,” said Lassa.
“I’m just saying, as a matter of strategic concern, that we won’t have control over our own damn ship going through jump. Which I’d have thought was an issue.”
“It is an issue,” Erik agreed, to placate more of them than just Kaspowitz. “And your concern is warranted."
They discussed the shape of the coming war for a while longer. It was sobering, to see so many forces mobilising right across the Croma Wall, and apparently on both sides. Styx’s best estimation, which was surely more accurate than what Croma’Dokran were telling even their own people, was somewhere in the vicinity of one and a half thousand capital warships on the croma side alone, and many more support and minor vessels. The initial reeh response was somewhat below that, but would be building fast, once they brought ships from beyond their ready reserve.
The croma were mobilising at least five invasion strike forces — an important part of any large effort, Erik knew well from experience in the Triumvirate War. Invasion strike forces landed on planets and destroyed enemy ground forces and facilities without requiring orbital bombardment and the levelling of civilian populations. They were controversial, as many Admirals dismissed their usefulness, stating correctly that if Fleet could not hold the spacelanes open, such forces were doomed to fail from the beginning. All the true fighting happened in space, such Admirals proclaimed, and thus ground armies were no more than psychological posturing, capturing ground that could not be truly considered captured until the real war had been won far above their heads.
But many times in the Triumvirate War, that had been proven untrue, as stubborn defences by tavalai ground armies had tied up human Fleet forces for long enough in support operations that tavalai Fleet had been granted an opportunity to pick off many human support vessels occupied while their backs were turned.
Here the croma strategy would be similar — to tie down Reeh Fleet in supporting their ground forces, thus presenting Croma Fleet with many opportunities to kill a lot of them. Unfortunately, such calculations ran both ways, and Erik suspected the croma would be more concerned about the fate of their ground forces than the reeh, thus requiring more support ships to assist them, and thus more juicy targets for the reeh. The main utility of ground invasions, both human and tavalai strategists had concluded, was to localise fighting by forcing fleets to concentrate forces, and thus to soak up ship numbers in those high-intensity fights. That in turn dramatically reduced the risk of forces being left free to perform flanking manoeuvres, and created a degree of predictability across a broad battlefront.
Something similar was about to happen at Reba System, on the corbi homeworld of Rando. It would draw reeh vessels like flies to shit and thus leave neighbouring systems relatively clear for Phoenix and her small drysine fleet to sneak through undetected… if Kaspowitz’s course plots turned out to be navigable after all. Or that, at least, was the plan.
Even with access to what Styx claimed were near-complete croma battleplans, Erik was not prepared to guess at likely croma casualties in the first phase of the operation. Styx suggested a figure between six and eight hundred thousand croma dead, most of them in the ground invasion forces, then to escalate by orders of magnitude if the second and third phases also escalated, as seemed likely when the main reeh forces arrived. Of course, those numbers could change radically if a sneak attack took out a croma station, as had happened many times in the past, whatever the croma’s intense system-defence deployments. Like the big human stations, croma stations held millions. To Erik, it felt surreal and depressingly grim. He’d thought his time in big wars was ended when the tavalai had surrendered. Worse, he’d played a direct and personal role in getting this new war started, however willingly this new generation of croma warriors rushed into it.
The briefing concluded, and Erik asked for Trace to remain behind as the others filed out. “Shilu,” he said to her once they were alone, as she remained seated on the small table, knees pulled up to her familiar meditation posture.
“What about him?” Trace’s expression gave nothing away. He’d been coming to read her so well. But since she’d returned, it was like a new wall had gone up. From discussion with the rest of the crew, he knew he wasn’t the only one who’d seen it. Her injuries were mostly healed, just a faint scar on her cheek where shrapnel had gone right through. Her limp from the leg injuries had gone within two weeks, with Doc Suelo’s care. At the gym, her previously fractured arm was no longer preventing her from pounding a bag as hard as she ever had. But Erik was not concerned with physical injuries.
“I think he’s got the wobbles.” It was spacer-speak, euphemism for something none of them liked to discuss directly. Marines called it ‘the rattles’, because of the vibration that involuntary muscle contractions could cause in an armour suit.
“Spacer matter,” Trace said shortly.
“I want you to talk to him.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Yes. He lost his arm, Trace. We’ve been going at this nearly two years now, longer if you count the last deployment of the war. Pantillo always said that nerves and bravery were finite resources, that everyone had their limit. I think Wei might be getting to the end of his.”
It hurt to talk about it. Wei Shilu was one of Erik’s favourite people in the world — really far too elegant and sophisticated to be a Fleet combat officer, but he’d put aside his more refined tastes to serve as Coms Officer on various warships for the most recent years of his life. Four years ago his long-term boyfriend had left him, tired of the endless waiting for a promised retirement that never came. And at Defiance he’d suffered a disfiguring injury that would have traumatised the toughest warrior, and had adapted to the replacement limb with all possible serenity. It didn’t seem right to be ratting on him like this. But Erik needed all his bridge crew operating at optimum, and if one of them had a problem doing that, he needed to get it fixed, preferably before the shooting started.
“Erik,” said Trace, “if I start talking to bridge crew in your stead, you’ll lose authority, and I’ll be putting marine standards onto spacer crew, which never goes down well.”
“You’re not that much tougher than us,” Erik said lightly.
“Maybe not,” Trace said calmly, “but it comes across that way, and spacers resent it. You also spend far more time with him than I do…”
“You saw him just now. I saw you looking.”
Trace sighed, reluctantly. She had. She gazed at the wall for a moment. Her own hands, on her crosslegged knees were balled tight. “Corpsman Joshi’s handling psych right now?” Erik nodded. “What’s he say?”
“Says it’s borderline. Says the scans indicate it’s not PTSD, the post-trauma patch held well. But there are things beyond experiential trauma the patch can’t treat.”
Trace’s eyes never left the wall. No doubt she’d sensed where this was going by now. Probably she’d sensed it since the moment he’d asked her to remain behind.
“Will you talk to him?” Erik pressed. “You know much more about this than I do. Marines have it harder, and you’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have.”
“Sure,” Trace said finally. “I’ll talk to him. Is that all?”
“Corpsman Joshi says he doesn’t like your psych-scans either.”
Trace gave him a hard sideways look. “You pulled my files?”
“I’m the Captain,” Erik retorted. “I don’t pull anything. It’s my command prerogative.” Trace’s eyes slid back to the wall. Her hands clenched tighter. “Trace, you have to talk to me. You haven’t talked to me since you got back, not really. You haven’t talked to anyone. It’s been 58 days, and…”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been in pain.” He said it hard, without that soft empathy that he knew Trace hated so much in command matters. “You’ve been wound up tight like a drum, and I’m concerned that…”
“Concerned that what?” Trace replied, her eyes still on the wall. Her posture held perfectly upon the table. “That we haven’t had friendly conversations? I’m a marine commander. Rando taught me to reprioritise. I’ve been reprioritising.”
“I’m concerned that we’re not communicating,” Erik retorted. “The first thing you told me when I assumed command of this ship was that Captain and Marine Commander need to communicate.”
“We communicate fine.”
“It takes two people to make that judgement, Trace. When one of those people is the Captain, and he says otherwise, then no, we’re not communicating fine.”
“Name an area of command where our communication has been lacking?” said Trace, fixing him with another cold stare. “Where has it affected our performance?”
“We’re not in combat right now, Trace. My job is to prepare for it.”
“Right,” she said, “and instead of doing that, you’re upset that you don’t get enough alone time with your buddies.” It hurt. She wanted it to hurt. Erik knew her all too well — she wanted him to stand to attention and address her by rank, and thus compel her to do the same. She wanted this formal and hard. She wanted him to shout at her, to hand out disciplines. This time, he refused to let her win. “You want me to say that Rando hurt? Fine, Rando hurt. I’m dealing with it. I’m good at dealing with it. I’ve been dealing with it my whole life. I think I’m a lot better at it than you are, so your critiques of my methods, while noted, don’t impress me.”
Erik leaned forward, elbows on knees on his bunk, and gazed at her. “You’re not hurt, Trace. You’re bleeding. You fancy yourself the best self-taught psychologist on this ship, but you only know the nature of the human heart when you’ve pinned it to the ground and stuck a knife through it.” Trace stared at him, with an intensity that might once have frightened him. It frightened him now, but for entirely different reasons.
“You’ve lived your life within an emotional cage,” he pressed. “You think you know the human mind better than I do, but in reality you only know your cage. I’ve lived my life outside that cage, and I know that landscape so much better than you. And now you’ve had the walls of that cage torn down, and you find yourself out in the open, surrounded by unfamiliar emotions that will no longer simply obey your instructions like they used to, and you’re lost and you’re scared. You suck at this, Trace. You’re out of your depth. And with absolute unprofessionalism, when confronted with something you don’t know how to do, you refuse to ask for help from those that do.”
Trace’s jaw clenched and unclenched. That scared Erik more than anything. There was no cool retort, no calm grinding of his argument into the deck beneath her heel, as she’d once done so effortlessly. She just sat, in that crosslegged pose that pretended poise and control, shoulders noticeably moving as she struggled to control her breathing.
“Will that be all, Captain?” she asked, and her voice betrayed little of her struggle. So much control, and even now it would not abandon her.
“Yes Trace.” Even now, he would not let her hide behind formality. Not here. “And talk to Shilu. I won’t make it an order, but spacer or not he’s your shipmate too, and we’re all family here. Don’t forget it.” He jerked his head at the door.
Trace unfolded herself from the table, went to the door and left. Erik stared at the door for a moment after it had closed behind her, feeling hollow. He’d beaten Trace in arguments before, but this was the first time he’d hated the winning.
3
Rika hung off the armour rack supports, and frowned as Leo explained the suit’s targeting calibration to him. The translator was good with technical terms, which was just as well, because Rika’s comprehension of even simple English was still poor. But as Leo moved the suit’s arms, and explained how that made the armscomp’s perception of dead-zero shift while the mode was in ‘recalibrate’, Rika felt his eyes glazing over.
Leo saw, and grinned, slapping his shoulder. “Don’t worry man,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll get it.”
“No I won’t,” Rika said gloomily. “The most technology I grew up with was irrigation pumps. And that was off an old electric battery we couldn’t keep charged, and only worked half the time.”
Keeping it charged had been dangerous, too. The only methods were wind, solar or water turbines in the river, and too many could invite a reeh strike against too much visible technology. So the batteries were given to old Lugi, who liked to wander the forest trails alone despite the dangers, and cultivated not only forest medicines, but water turbines further upstream. Every few days Lugi would return with several charged batteries for those who needed them, keeping the incriminating recharge facilities far enough from the village to placate the reeh.
The suit had come from Corbi Resistance Fleet — a genuine marine armour suit, made to fit corbi only, and one hell of a gift given how few the Resistance had left. But the Phoenix marines had come to suspect that the suit was actually an original from the war against the reeh, the shell nearly a thousand years old and made by a high-tech corbi civilisation that no longer existed, all its electronics, servos and actuators replaced many, many times, and it was not the relatively new machine the Resistance had claimed. It worked still, but it rattled and whined, and the fabrication wing of Phoenix’s Engineering crew were running through a long list of new parts required to get it back to something approaching operational status.
Antique or not, Rika felt overwhelmed at the scale of the gift. On Rando he’d carried a rifle, and thought himself a pretty good soldier, but truthfully he’d had little real training, nor seen serious action, until those crazy days leading to the Splicer assault. He’d somehow survived that while most of his comrades hadn’t, and had arrived on Phoenix mostly dead, only to be revived by the humans’ miracle-working medical tech. And now Resistance Command themselves had authorised the gift of one of their precious armour suits to him, the farming kid from Talo who hadn’t realised just how out of his depth he’d been until he’d run into the strange alien marine commander with a death wish.
But Major Thakur had assured him that the gift made perfect sense. While all the surviving corbi from the Splicer assault had chosen to join the Resistance to help with what they’d been promised would be the mass-evacuation of Rando, Rika alone had chosen to remain aboard Phoenix. At first he hadn’t had a choice, being too badly hurt to move. But as the injuries had healed with miraculous speed, he’d begun to realise that his choice brought with it new responsibilities, and that the Major expected him to learn from the Phoenix marines, and become as much like them as he could manage.
It suited Rika enormously, awestruck as he was of these big, physically augmented and lethally skilled aliens with their high-tech suits and crazy weaponry. These were warriors unlike any he’d served with before — who had no special fear of the reeh, and had met more formidable foes than reeh in combat and left them devastated. To become like them to any serious degree was more than he’d ever wanted or expected from life. But now he had that dream within his grasp, the prospect seemed like some dreadful weight of fear and expectation.
The Major believed in him, though. The Major said that the corbi were going to be rescued from Rando, and that whereever they ended up, they’d need well-trained, modern warriors who could in turn instruct their next generation of recruits, and transform them into a force that could genuinely defend themselves against the many evils of the galaxy. That that person should be him, Rika was finding difficult to get his head around. But if the Major thought he could do it, then he was prepared to countenance anything.
