Issue In Doubt (3 page)

“Then good riddance! We just got word of something much more important than the feelings of an overly sensitive Euro. Take a look.” He angled his comp’s display toward her and activated the image of the vid showing the assault on the defense battalion.

“What?” the Secretary of State gasped when the vid had run its course. “Where?” She looked distinctly green.

“Troy,” Hobson said softly. “This came in. . .” He looked at de Castro.

“About forty-five minutes ago, ma’am,” the J2 director said.

“Is it
them
?” she asked. “The ruins?”

The President looked at the other men for an answer to the question he’d wondered himself.

Welborn replied, “We have no way of knowing. But, yeah, I imagine so. Or if not whoever it was that destroyed those other civilizations, then somebody maybe just as bad.” In its spread through space, humanity had discovered ruins left by seventeen non-human civilizations. One of them was on the level of the pyramid builders of ancient Earth, while most of them had technologically developed far enough to be on the threshold of interstellar travel—one actually seemed to have achieved it.

“They had no word? No ultimatum? No warning?” Walker asked.

“Not that we know of, ma’am,” de Castro said when the President looked at him. “We have a text message saying they were under attack by an unknown enemy, and a few images. You just saw one of them; it isn’t necessarily the worst.”

“We need to alert everybody,” Walker said. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll notify Minister Neahr right now.” She turned away, reaching for her comm.

“You’ll do no such thing!” Mills snapped.

“Sir?” She spun back to him, shocked by both his tone and the words.

“Until we know exactly what’s happening on Troy, this is strictly need-to-know—and Zachariah C. Neahr doesn’t need to know.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Mills cut her off. “I’d rather present all the worlds that humanity is on with a
fait accompli
than unnecessarily cause a panic. Your job in this, Madam Secretary, is to keep the rest of the world in the dark about NAU’s upcoming offworld troop movements.”

“You’re going to send our soldiers into, into
that
?” she asked, appalled.

Mills curled his lip at her. “As you would know if you hadn’t been so tardy getting here, we’re sending Force Recon to gather intelligence. Then we’ll send a counter-invasion force in to clear out those. . .those
creatures
.” He turned to Hobson and Welborn. “I want you to stand up a counter-invasion force, and ready Navy shipping to get them there once we know what we’re up against.”

“Right away, sir,” Hobson said.

“Aye aye, sir.” Welborn grinned. What was the point of having a Navy that traveled the stars, and command of one of the largest and most powerful militaries in all of human history if he never got to give the orders to attack an entire world?

“I’ll notify Congress once the counter-invasion force is on its way,” Mills said. “Now get everything moving.”

De Castro didn’t say anything, but he wondered how the President was going to justify taking military action without an Act of Congress authorizing it, or without even consulting with the Congressional leadership.

Chapter Two

Launch Bay, NAUS Monticello, in Semi-Autonomous World Troy space

First Lieutenant Mitchell Paige gave the twenty Marines of his section a final look over—he’d already inspected them—before saying a few words prior to them entering their landing craft. His Marines weren’t exactly invisible, but he’d have had a hard time picking them out in the dim light if they hadn’t had their helmets and gloves off. The patterning of the utilities worn by Force Recon tricked the eye into looking
beyond
them instead of registering
on
them.

“Marines, we don’t know what you’re going to find on Troy.” Paige ignored the quiet chuckles that statement brought from the Marines. “That’s why Force Recon is going in, to find out.”

Some of the Marines exchanged glances:
No shit Sherlock. That’s what Force Recon does; we go in to find out when nobody knows dick
.

“The
Monticello
been listening on all frequencies since exiting the wormhole, but as of—” Paige checked his watch. “—three minutes ago, no transmissions have been picked up, nor has anything registered on any of the ship’s sensors. So we know no more than we did when we left Earth.” He gave a wolfish grin. “That’s why the Union called on us. We’re going to find out, and then some alien ass is going to get kicked!”

“OOH-RAH!” the twenty Marines roared. None of them said, or even thought, anything about the fact that their commander wasn’t going planetside with them. Everyone understood an officer going along with a Force Recon squad on a mission would only be in the way.

“Mount up!” Paige bellowed over the cheers. The Force Recon Marines pulled on their helmets and gloves as they filed into the landing craft and the waiting Squad Pods. One Marine in each squad carried a rifle. The other Marines were armed only with sidearms and knives—purely defensive weapons.

Paige watched until the landing craft’s ramp closed, then gruffly said, “Let’s go,” and ducked through the hatch from the launch bay. Gunnery Sergeant Robert H. McCard, the first section chief, followed. The two Marines headed for the Command and Communications Center, where Captain Jefferson J. DeBlanc, 2nd Force Recon Company’s executive officer, and the company’s First Sergeant John H. Leims waited for them. Along the way, they had to press against the side of the narrow passageway to let the platoon’s second section pass on its way to the launch bay.

It wasn’t long before the officers, senior non-commissioned officers, and communications men of 2nd Force Recon Company (B) were gathered in C&C, and eight Force Recon squads were on their way to the surface of Troy.

The
Cayuga
Class frigate
Monticello
was a stealth vessel, specially configured to support Marine Force Recon and small raiding parties. To that end, she had a compartment equipped with comm gear to allow a command element to communicate with its planetside elements via burst microwaves, and give it directions as needed. Her external shape had odd, unexpected angles designed to reflect radar signals in directions other than back at a radar receiver. A coating over the entire hull except for the exhausts was designed to absorb and/or deflect other detection methods. Strategically placed vanes and trailing stringers dispersed heat from the exhausts, giving the starship a faint, easily overlooked heat signature. She was not designed for offensive fighting; her weapons and counter-weapon systems were strictly defensive.

Two hours earlier, the
Monticello
had exited a wormhole two light minutes northeast of Troy and slowly drifted planetward while using all of her passive sensors to search for spacecraft loitering in the area of her destination world. The warship also constantly scanned the planet’s surface for signs of life, human or alien. When no signs of any presence, human or alien, were detected either in space or on the surface, the order was given for the landing party to prepare to head planetside.

The
Monticello’s
equally stealthed landing craft were each capable of landing up to fifty fully armed infantrymen on the surface of a planet, or launching four “Squad Pods” into the upper atmosphere for scattered planetfall. They were called “Spirits,” both because they were as visible to standard detection methods as ethereal spirits and because they could spirit troops to or away from a planet’s surface. The Squad Pods were intended to be mistaken for meteorites during their transit through an atmosphere: an ablative coating was designed to stop burning as soon as the antigrav drive kicked in when the pod was close to the ground, giving the impression that the meteorite had burned up. The Squad Pods normally landed away from populated areas, and flew nape-of-the-earth to their final destinations.

The eight Force Recon squads landed on Troy at widely separated locations so they could cover as much territory as possible. Upon completion of their missions, the Marines would return to their Squad Pods and rendezvous with the landing craft for return to the
Monticello
, where she maintained station near the collapsed entrance to the wormhole.

The
Monticello
stood ready to reopen the wormhole on fifteen minutes notice, either to return to Earth with the Marines, or to flee from an approaching enemy starship.

Planetfall, Semi-Autonomous World Troy

Squad Pod Alfa-1, with first squad aboard, plunged to the ground near the McKinzie Elevator Base. Its meteorite-mimicking track blinked out two and a half kilometers above the surface when its antigrav engine cut in to bring the small craft down twenty-seven kilometers distant, gently enough to avoid injuring its passengers, then scooted along, barely above the ground, to its final destination. Squad Pod Alfa-4, carrying fourth squad, made planetfall on the opposite side of Millerton from the elevator base. Pods Alfa-2 and 3, and Bravo-1, 2, and 3 made planetfall in other locations on East Shapland, the primary settled continent on Troy. Squad Pod Bravo-4 was the only one to visit the continent called West Shapland, which only had one settlement; some twelve thousand souls resided in and around the coastal fishing town of Pikestown. There was less than two minutes from the time the first pod reached its landing zone until the final one touched down on its.

Foot of the McKinzie Elevator Base, Millerton, Semi-Autonomous World Troy

Staff Sergeant Jack Lummus, leader of the first squad, didn’t give any orders when his Marines dashed off Alfa-1; touchdown was a well-rehearsed maneuver, and everyone knew what to do. The five Marines darted off in five different directions and went to ground fifty meters away from the pod, facing away from it. Each Marine had his motion detector, air sniffer, and infrared receiver operating before he took cover in one of the many craters that pocked the tarmac. Lummus didn’t even say anything when his four men all reported they were in position and searching. Not that he was concerned about being overheard by whatever possible enemy that might be lurking nearby. Force Recon helmets were well enough muffled that any sounds that escaped them were unintelligible up close, and totally inaudible beyond a meter or two. Anyway, communication was via radio burst-transmissions that faded out within two hundred meters—it simply wasn’t necessary for him to say anything.

The Marines lay waiting, and watching their surroundings and various detectors for sign of anybody in the vicinity.

After half an hour, Lummus transmitted, “Report.”

The four reports came in. Corporal Tony Stein had seen a skinny dog that seemed to be scrounging for something to eat, but none of the Marines had seen, heard, or detected anything human, or even remotely resembling the aliens they’d seen in the images they’d studied on Earth and on the ship. Nobody had seen a body, or anything that looked like part of a body, human or otherwise.

“One and two,” Lummus ordered, the command for his Marines to check their first and second objectives. “Record.”

“Recording,” Sergeant Elbert L. Kinser said as he and and Stein headed for the elevator station’s control building.

“Recording.” Corporal Anthony P. Damato and Lance Corporal Frank P. Witek headed to the elevator.

After the two teams searched their first objectives, the squad would reassemble and move on.

Lummus remained where he was so he could coordinate the two pairs. One Marine in each pair had a vidcam on his helmet, keyed to his eye movements; the vidcams would record everything the Marine looked at. As a just-in-case, the vidcams had a “deadman switch” arrangement that would automatically transmit their contents to the starship loitering above if the Marine was killed or incapacitated.

The Elevator

Damato and Witek were closer to their objective and reached it first. An executive elevator cab was in its docking cradle. Scorching around the open hatch gave evidence of fighting. The two Marines checked their surroundings and didn’t detect anybody nearby except for the other Marines.

“Go,” Damato sent. He and Witek went around the cab-dock in opposite directions to meet at its rear. Neither saw or otherwise detected anybody either along the way or once they rejoined. The elevator cab was an oblate spheroid, with three observation ports equally spaced around its circumference, and the airlock in the position of a fourth port.

“Cover.” Damato climbed an access ladder to the top of the docking cradle as he gave the order, while Witek remained on the ground watching their surroundings. Another ladder looked to Damato like it went up the elevator’s pylon at least as far as the anchoring stays. But he was only going up it far enough to look into the port on that side of the cab.

The cab’s interior lights were off, and little ambient light reached inside, so Damato used his infrared scope. All he could make out was the passenger seating and the refreshment console next to the attendant’s station, or rather their remains. The interior of the cab was wrecked. He removed his feet from the ladder rung they were on and slid down the ladder the same way he would going from level to level in a starship. That saved his life.

The Control Building

Sergeant Kinser and Corporal Stein reached the control building a minute after Damato and Witek reached the elevator’s foot. The building was small. They knew from mission prep that it had two rooms, an administration room and a control room. The former had front and rear entrances, as well as a window on each exterior wall and another into the control room. The latter was windowless, climate controlled, and had no direct access to the outside. The main door, off center on the front wall, was off its hinges, blown into the building. The front window was broken.

“With me,” Kinser said. He led Stein in a circuit of the building. They trod on shattered glass going past the administration room; the windows on the side and rear were broken out from the inside. The broken back door was on the ground, also knocked out from the inside. On the way around, Kinser looked in through the windows while Stein checked the area with his eyes, ears, and all of his detectors.