First Casualty (24 page)

The junior tech explained the message to his senior, who shook his head. “Ain't you heard, kid? There's a war on. If it don't help the party kill Earthie scum, it ain't worth shit.”

The junior didn't argue, but he did take special care to send a copy of the package to the folks at Intelligence Assessment. Some of those people used their brains.

Ten

Rita bounced out of her car and across the lawn. She looked as excited as a puppy .. . and cuter. Ray smiled, in spite of his own day. First he would listen to whatever made her dance; his news could wait. The front door flew open. “Ray, you won't believe it. Dad, are you home?” she called.

“No, hon,” her mother answered from upstairs. “But I expect him home early.”

Rita gave Ray a hug where he sat in his chair, then settled down at his feet. “Hon, the most wonderful thing happened. We intercepted a message from a ship that was lost.”

“Like we wrote your ship off.” Ray leaned forward; a forehead so excited needed a kiss. Rita accepted it demurely, then captured his cheeks with both her hands and kissed him solidly. His wife was excited, and not just about her news.

With her tongue wandering his mouth, Ray could almost forget the letter in his pocket. Rita came up for air. “We will save that for later. First you've got to hear what happened.”

Licking his lips slowly, Ray asked, “What happened?”

“The message got shuffled to Technology. There's only three of them, but they knew what they had after a page. One ran down the hall looking for me. 'Mrs. Longknife, you're a pilot. Will you read this?' It's so nice when they call me Mrs. Longknife.” She smiled, the tip of her tongue escaping her lips.

Bending quickly for a kiss, Ray asked, “And what was this they wanted you to read, Mrs. Longknife?”

“Ray, a ship came back from a bad jump!”

The blank look on his face was not what Rita expected.

“Ray, ships have been going into jumps and never coming out for centuries. If you make a bad jump, you don't come back.”

“And why were we poor passengers never told?” he growled.

“Because we pilots worry about it enough for all of you.”

Ray drew back, aware he'd stomped his bride's professional pride. He kept his mouth shut. Excited, her glower was short-lived. “In the early days, they had a lot of bad jumps. For a century they've become rarer and rarer. We haven't had one in fifty years. You know what causes them?” Ray shook his head, not about to risk another misstep.

“Speed! Speed and spin. The faster you go into a jump, the farther you go.”

Now Ray was puzzled. “You said you took the jump into that hellhole at twice the speed you would have if the admiral hadn't ordered it?”

“Spin and speed,” Rita repeated. “Spin the ship up, hit a hole at high speed, and zoom, you're halfway across the galaxy. Think about it, Ray, a whole new bunch of jump lines to survey. Millions of systems to visit. Enough cheap resources and good land for humanity to stretch out in. Ray, we've got to get this damn war stopped so we can get on with the real stuff of life!”

Which brought Ray back to the letter in his pocket. He pulled it out and handed it to her. “It appears that few share your enthusiasm for peace,” he said dryly.

Rita glanced at the letter. “You're invited to brief the President on the progress of the war?”

“Please glance at the second page.”

It took her a moment to read that letter. Handwritten by an acquaintance of Ray's who was now on the General Staff, it offered him “advice” on how to handle—more like survive—the briefing.
Do not
interrupt the President.
Do
look attentive to everything the President says, no matter how long he speaks.
Do not
correct him. And, most important,
do not
say anything that would cast doubt on the eventual victory of Unity forces.

Rita scowled. “That's not a briefing, that's a ...”

“Deaf-mute leading the blind,” Ray offered.

“I was groping for something truly obscene. But nothing I've heard in my Navy time was bad enough. Ray, people are dying, and the President has his head buried in the sand.”

Ray leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I'm a soldier, Rita, but sitting here, trying to make this body more than a lump of wasted tissue, I've had time to think. Your father is an interesting source of information. As are you. We need a private talk. I imagine violating any of the general's Dos and Don'ts would be a career-ending decision.” Ray glanced down at his legs. “Somehow I suspect I do not have much of a career left. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to go out in a blaze of glory ...” He hadn't intended to pause, but the words came to glaring life behind his eyeballs before he finished. “... telling the President what no one else has the guts to tell him.”

Rita paled; the pause had not gone unnoticed. “Father should be home soon. Let me help you to the garden. I think he would like to talk about this among the flowers. Mother, send Dad to the garden when he gets home,” she shouted.

“Yes, dear. Dinner will be at seven.”

'Thank you, Mother.”

* * * *

Ray managed to make it under his own power to the hidden glade of pleasant memory. Rita was at his elbow, carrying three light lawn chairs under one arm. They were just settling in when Rita whispered, “Father is coming.”

Coat thrown over his shoulders, sleeves rolled up, and whistling, Mr. Nuu sauntered toward them. “Mother told me you had something to tell me.”

“Yes, Father, I've had a very exciting day.” Her voice didn't sound excited. Ray wished he could turn back the hour, let Rita once more bubble of doors opening and the galaxy falling into their hands. Maybe he should not have mentioned his letter. Being a husband was more difficult than he'd expected.

“Can you tell us what time it is, Father? Mother was very specific about dinner.”

“Of course.” He glanced at his watch, then raised an eyebrow at them. Ray nodded.

Ernest frowned and turned around slowly. “Can't read it in the sunlight. Just a moment. Ah, yes.” He took his chair. “We are in the clear. What must we talk about?”

Ray nodded to Rita. “Tell him of your discovery.”

“It's nothing,” she said, but she quickly told her father of the ship that returned from the lost.”

“Sweet Mother of God,” he breathed. “Each jump point leads to a dozen, and we have only made use of one. Oh, my daughter, what this will mean to you and your grandchildren.”

“There may be no children, Father.” She handed him Ray's letter.

He read both pages; finished, his hands collapsed into his lap. He stared at them, mouth agape, no words coming out. “I... have ... been hearing things.” He shook his head as if to free himself of a daze. “I have known powerful fools who like to rewrite history, sometimes events only a week in the past. But the Unity Party is living in fantasy.”

“What can we do, Father, to make them see?” Rita pleaded.

Slowly, Ernest shook his head. “Maybe it's too late. Maybe they've gotten away with changing the past for so long that they no longer fear the future. Major, a friend of mine sits in the Wardhaven legislature. The night we voted to join Unity, they suspended the rule barring nonmembers from the floor of the legislature. Thugs with billy clubs wandered the hall. Thugs!

“But even with clubs, they could not thwart our traditions. The vote of the members was to join Unity after the people approved the issue in a referendum. Do you remember that vote?”

Ray shook his head. “As a soldier, I ignored politics.”

“Father, I have not missed a vote since I turned twenty-one. I don't ever remember hearing of that ballot.”

“You and the rest of the planet. I recently had cause to review the law that brought us into Unity. The official one posted on net has several differences from the one I downloaded the morning after our legislature voted.”

“They can do that.” Ray left the words hanging. Not a question, not quite a statement of fact.

“They did it,” Ernest answered.

Rita rose from her chair and went to stand behind Ray. Gently she rubbed his back. “Ray is thinking of using this invitation into the presence of the President to end his military career in a blaze of glory, telling him what he does not want to hear. Would words mean anything to him?” Rita choked on the question.

For a long time, no one said anything. When someone moved, it was Ernest. Glancing at his watch, humming a patriotic tune, he paced around them. After one circuit, he continued pacing, but talking low, as if to himself. “I have a friend you two may wish to meet. It might shock you, daughter, but I know a spy. He may see in the major's summons opportunities that most people only dream about. Let us talk again tomorrow afternoon.”

He quit studying his watch, looked Ray in the eye with a gently twisted smile. “Let me help you up, Major. You have got a lot of walking ahead of you.”

* * * *

If Mattim didn't care for the greeting they got from the 97th, he liked Pitt's Hope's even less. Ordered to immediately halt, they hung in space while four heavy cruisers came out to meet them. They were scanned by everything Sandy had ever heard of and a few she hadn't. Only after they'd been boarded were they allowed to head for Beta Station. Even then, security teams spread out over the ship while ten very suspicious types under the direct supervision of Captain Horatio Whitebred kept everyone on the bridge under close scrutiny. The
Sheffield
ended up in dock while Mattim was hustled off to report to the admiral.

The new admiral, or the newest admiral, received him without waiting. “Captain Abeeb, you were mentioned very prominently in Captain Pringle's report of the first battle. Highly flexible approach to fighting, but good instincts.”

“I did what I had to do to get us out of that mess. Was the
Significant
badly damaged?”

“No, they patched her up before the next shoot, and lost her with all hands in that one, sorry to say.”

It was a kick in the gut. All the risks Mattim had taken to get them out alive only added a few days to their lives. Damn! If the admiral noticed his reaction, she only hesitated a moment. “The
Sheffield’s
going to be a while in dock, Captain.”

“We made most of her battle damage good,” Mattim interrupted. “The crew needed work to keep their minds off being lost. The ship's in good shape.”

“I don't doubt that, Mattim, but we've learned a lot in the last six weeks, and your ship is about two mods behind in hardware, three or four in software. What was good enough for fifteen or twenty years of peacetime service gets replaced in two or three weeks now.

“I've been wanting to do something since I took command last week, but didn't have anyone. Now, I think I do. While the
Sheffield
is being updated, I'd like to detach you to the Ninety-seventh. Captain Anderson and Commander Umboto are damn good, but they've spent most of their careers on the defense. The squadron keeps getting clobbered in running gun battles. They keep getting clobbered from space when we're not around. We're each fighting our own separate battles. I want us to fight together.”

Mattim liked her point. Still, he hardly saw himself as the man to glue two different Navies together. “You must have someone better at this than me.”

“Captain, I came in with the Forty-ninth Cruiser Squadron. Right now every ship, except the
Sheffield
, is battle ready. I know what kind of battle I want to fight. Until Gamma jump starts hollering that colonials are in-system, I intend to spend every minute training the ships I've got to fight just that battle.

“You fought the
Sheffield
pretty independently. I'm game to give you that freedom next battle, too. But for now, I want you with Andy, coming up with ways we can support each other.”

What could he say? “Yes, ma'am. When do I leave?”

She returned to her desk, tapped it a few times, and glanced up. “A couple of destroyers were due to make a supply run tomorrow. I just moved them up. They leave in two hours. That enough time to get your kit together?”

Mattim saluted. “On my way.”

* * * *

Next afternoon, Ray and Rita were taking the sun in what had come to be their part of the garden, when Mr. Nuu approached, a short, roly-poly man huffing along beside him. Rita offered him her chair, then settled on the grass beside Ray. The two men carried on a running commentary on the trees, flowers, and bushes, while the newcomer produced several gadgets from the pockets of his disheveled suit. He'd glance at each, move it around or hold it up, glance at it again, then make it disappear. Finally satisfied, he leaned forward.

“Ernest tells me you would like the President to see the light, grasp the hopelessness of his policy, and end the war.”

Ray nodded; so did Rita.

“You realize that answer is itself a capital offense.”

“Already?” Ernest failed to sound surprised.

“The Presidential Proclamation came in yesterday. Anyone found defaming either the President or the glorious war against the Earth scum is to be arrested immediately, hurried before a peoples' court, and executed within twenty-four hours.”

“The people of Westhaven won't stand for that,” Rita said.

Ray remembered Santiago's sister. What the people would stand for and could survive were not the same anymore.