“It’s bad luck for the groom to see you before the ceremony,” said Sabad. “Disease, misfortunate, death. You bring this upon yourself and your children.”
“I appreciate the concern,” said Imala. She turned back to Victor. “What’s the emergency?”
Edimar told her.
“Are any of these asteroids close to us?” Imala asked.
“No,” said Edimar. “Not even remotely.”
“Does the IF know?” Imala asked.
“Doubtful,” said Edimar. “This information is being passed around fellow spotters on the nets. They don’t have the kind of access to the IF that we do.”
“Put everything you have on the ship’s public server,” said Imala. “I’ll go to the holotable and forward it to the IF. Victor will forward it to Lem Jukes and Mazer.”
“You can’t do this now,” said Sabad. “Everyone is waiting in the helm. We are ready to begin.”
“They can wait a little longer for the sake of the world,” said Imala. “Edimar, please let Arjuna know what’s happening and that Victor and I will need a minute at the holotable before we begin.”
Edimar nodded and launched in the direction of the helm.
“You’re supposed to be married in front of the holotable,” said Sabad. “What are you going to do? Send e-mails in front of everyone before you wed?”
“Unorthodox but it’s necessary,” said Imala. “We can’t sit on this information.”
“It’s also good luck,” said Victor, smiling. “Sending e-mails to the IF counters any bad luck we’ve earned earlier. So we’d balance the scales.”
Sabad scowled at him. “Why someone so beautiful and smart as Imala would settle for someone like you is a mystery.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Victor.
Sabad huffed and flew off to the helm. Magoosa and the others followed, leaving Victor and Imala alone.
“You don’t want to get on Sabad’s bad side,” said Imala.
“I’ve been there for years,” said Victor. “You look lovely.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself. You’ve combed your hair for once.”
“I’m taking this wedding fairly seriously. Did you know they make deodorant for men?”
“I’m glad you can joke right now. If the asteroids are moving, should the IF destroy them or see where they’re going?”
“If there are thousands of them,” said Victor, “the IF can’t destroy them all anyway. There are too many to reach and target.”
Imala took his hands and looked him in the eye. “Everything is going to change once we reach the outpost, isn’t it?”
“It already has.” He gently squeezed her hands. “And now that we’re getting married, I can let you in on a little secret. I was going to tell you after the ceremony because I didn’t want it to influence your decision. But this is close enough.”
She looked wary. “If you tell me you’re already married, I’ll knee you where it hurts.”
“We’re very wealthy. Mazer sold some of my designs to Juke Limited and Gungsu. I’ve been negotiating through a broker. The deals are finally done.”
Imala raised an eyebrow. “How wealthy are we?”
“When this is over, we’ll get our own ship and have a dozen children.”
“A dozen is a little ambitious, space born.”
“Eleven then,” said Victor, smiling. He offered her his arm. “Shall we go awkwardly send some e-mails in front of our wedding guests and then get married?”
She slid her arm into his. “I thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 24
Training
Ansible transmission between the Hegemon and Polemarch Averbach, Office of the Hegemony Sealed Archives, Imbrium, Luna, 2118
* * *
UKKO: Any leads?
AVERBACH: The LX-40 responded to a distress signal from a mining ship registered to a Brazilian free miner. We don’t think it was the Brazilian, though. We pulled his registration photo. He’s in his fifties and has one arm. Our perp took down a ship of forty-two trained marines. It was someone else.
UKKO: A crewmember?
AVERBACH: Maybe. But we don’t have a manifest. Records are sloppy out there. A lot of harvested minerals are sold under the table. Crew get paid the same way. Could be anybody.
UKKO: This is getting a lot of bad press. It’s hurting us.
AVERBACH: When I can afford to make this a priority I will. For the time being, we have a war to win.
Mazer checked the time on his wrist pad, worried that he was going to miss his shuttle. He had been standing in line for almost two hours to make a holocall to Kim, and there were still five people in front of him. The spaceport had three holobooths, but of course two of them were out of order. Mazer had come early that morning, skipping breakfast, with hours to spare before his shuttle departed, thinking that would give him more than enough time, but every other soldier leaving Luna that day had apparently had the same idea. The line when he had arrived had stretched all the way down the corridor and out the double doors to the loading docks.
He wasn’t going to make it, he told himself. He would have to step out of line right before it was his turn, and Kim would be a nervous wreck for weeks until he could get a message to her.
For a brief moment he considered pulling rank. He was a captain. The men in front of him were all enlisted men. But no, they loved their families as much as he did. He checked his watch again. He needed to step out of line—but just as he prepared to do so, the loudspeaker made the final boarding call for a shuttle that wasn’t his, and everyone in front of him cursed and ran for the loading docks.
The holobooth opened, and Mazer quickly squeezed inside and shut the door. The computer informed him that he had five minutes to make his call. Mazer leaned his face into the holofield and entered the connection data. Kim answered after the first tone. He had hoped to see her face, but it was only her voice—she wasn’t at a holofield.
“It’s me,” said Mazer.
“Where are you?” She sounded half panicked and half relieved.
“Spaceport on Luna outside Imbrium. My shuttle leaves in a few minutes. They’re putting me on a cargo ship to a training facility near Jupiter. They only gave me five minutes for this call.” There was a timer in the upper right corner of the holofield counting down the seconds.
“Jupiter.” She said the word like it was a life sentence.
“It could have been much farther,” said Mazer.
“Is that all you’re allowed to tell me?”
“I can’t say much. But I can say that something big is about to happen. The IF is taking a huge risk. I suspect an announcement will be made soon.”
“We’re going to attack the Formic warships above and below the ecliptic,” said Kim. “That’s it, isn’t it? The media is already speculating.”
“This call is probably monitored,” said Mazer. “Just know that I’m not going with them. I probably have the safest commission in the Fleet.”
She was quiet a moment, and when she spoke again there was emotion in her voice. “Thank God. When you didn’t come home last, and what they’re saying on the news … I thought … I didn’t know what to think. How did you even end up there? One minute we’re making dinner plans, the next minute you’re gone.”
He told her what he could. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I would’ve called sooner if they had let me.”
Her voice sounded composed again. “I don’t blame you, Maze. I blame the soulless idiot bastards who run the IF and who give so little consideration to families and spouses. I hope this call is being monitored and they take note of who said it.”
Mazer smiled. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“What about the asteroids?” she asked. “They’re moving now. What’s being done? Will you be a part of that?”
“I can’t say,” he said. Which was as much of a confirmation. “But I can say that there are nearly one hundred special-ops marines assig
ned to my ship. Kaufman and Rimas, who were part of my breach team at WAMRED, are two of them. Along with a lot of other people from WAMRED I know. Which makes me think that even if the court-martial hadn’t happened, I’d probably be where I am right now anyway.” He checked the time. “This call is going to shut off in two minutes. I wish I could see your face.”
“It’s best you can’t. I was called in to the hospital in the middle of the night. I look terrible.”
“Not possible,” he said.
She was quiet a moment. “Come back to me, Mazer Rackham.”
“I will,” he said. “And we’ll make some chubby little fat-cheeked babies that look like me and look like you. And they’ll cry in the night and spit up on our clothes and pee on everything and it will be exhausting and wonderful.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I want you to know that. I’m going to be fine. I’ll go to New Zealand. Or to the US to stay with my parents. I haven’t decided. But I’ll be fine.”
“We only have forty seconds left,” he said.
“Sing to me,” she said.
She meant a Maori song, one from his childhood, a myth song, or a warrior song, or a hunting song. Mazer knew many. He had learned them all from his mother before cancer took her at a young age. Kim couldn’t understand the words, and Mazer wasn’t a particularly good singer, but he could carry a tune, and the melodies always calmed Kim. He imagined her standing there in the emergency room at Imbrium Memorial with her earbud in and her hand cupped over it to block out the ambient noise. People moved around her: doctors, nurses, patients, children, men, women. All safe for the moment because Kim Rackham would care for them and show them kindness.
He sang to her a song of healing. A song sung over the wounds of an injured warrior. A song that would call upon the mauri—or life force—of all living things around her to gather and join their strength with hers. He sang softly, not because he worried that he would be overheard outside the booth, but because it was a song of respect, honoring the warrior who had sacrificed so much.
The seconds ticked away too quickly. Mazer only got one stanza out before he stopped. “Right now, right in this moment, I love you more than I ever have,” he said.
“Obviously,” she said.
He smiled. That had always been her response when he told her he loved her.
“I love you, too, Mazer. Every moment, every day.”
Then the seconds reached zero, and the holo disconnected.
The cold finality of it angered him. He had given the IF so much, and their gift to him in return was a few minutes of audio with his wife. How generous.
He pushed the thought away. Resentment toward the Fleet wouldn’t accomplish anything.
He left the booth and hurried to his shuttle. The other soldiers had already boarded and were strapped in. Bingwen and the young cadets were seated near the back. Mazer found a seat up front, and the shuttle took off moments later. The flight was a short one. The shuttle docked with a cargo ship waiting just outside Luna’s gravity well. Mazer and the others drifted through the docking tube and retrieved their rucksacks. A soldier scanned Mazer’s wrist pad and gave him his cabin assignment. The room was as small as a closet. Mazer dropped his rucksack and pulled up the schematics of the ship. If he was going to be training the cadets, they would need a large open space to work in and he would need to claim that now.
There were nine cargo bays on the ship, but according to the ship’s computer the bays were already 70 percent full. The rest of the ship was cramped quarters and small offices. There was a small exercise facility, but it was clearly designed for a few people at a time, and the hundred marines on board would occupy it nonstop. How was he supposed to provide any training without any space to do so?
There was a knock at the cabin door. Mazer opened it and was shocked to find Colonel Vaganov smiling back at him.
Except the rank insignia on Colonel Vaganov’s uniform wasn’t that of a colonel. It was a rear admiral’s.
“I told the ship to alert me when you arrived,” said Vaganov. “Walk with me.”
He was wearing magnetic greaves and turned from the door, not giving Mazer the opportunity to object. Mazer switched on his own greaves and followed. When initiated, the greaves pulled your feet to the floor to simulate gravity. Vaganov and Mazer moved down the corridor and stopped at a small alcove nearby with a projected view of space.
“I suppose you’re surprised to see me,” said Vaganov.
Horrified was more like it, but Mazer kept his face a picture of calm. “I assumed you were still director of WAMRED, sir.”
Vaganov waved a dismissive hand. “A dead-end commission. A good place to be during peacetime, perhaps, but a forgotten corner of the world during war. When they started taking my best soldiers away from me and bringing in scrubs, I told the Polemarch and the Strategos that I might better serve the IF as the commander of a warship. No one remembers the clerks, after all. And that’s what I was becoming at WAMRED. A glorified clerk. My battle cruiser is being built in the Belt. It’s quite the ship. They even promoted me. But don’t worry, I’m not in your chain of command. Colonel Li reports to Rear Admiral Zembassi. I’m just here for the ride.”
Mazer said nothing.
“I suspect you despise me for what happened to you,” Vaganov said. “The court-martial, attorneys, accusations. All of that. An ugly affair.”
“It was ugly, yes,” said Mazer.
“You broke chain of command, Mazer. You forwarded sensitive information to an online forum of junior officers who had no business seeing it. But I suppose I should thank you for that. You left me no choice but to forward the information to my superiors, which earned me a few points with CentCom and largely led to my promotion.” He smiled. “I know, I misjudged you. I thought you were trying to ruin me, and you were actually trying to help me.”
“You’re mistaken, sir. I wasn’t trying to help you. I was trying to help the human race.”
Vaganov smiled. “You can’t fault me for being skeptical, though. I’ve been duped and slighted before, you see. It makes a man cautious.”
Mazer said nothing.
“After you left, I did a bit of digging on you, Mazer. Connections with the right people can give a man access to certain classified information. And what did I find? Mazer Rackham served with the Mobile Operations Police and played a critical role in the Formics’ defeat in the last war. You never told me that. Our relationship might have been different had you been more open with me.”
Mazer said nothing.
Vaganov laughed. “Even now, your lips are sealed. I find that admirable. Loose lips sink ships. Or in our case, blow them up in space.”
Mazer only stared at him.
“Your new CO,” said Vaganov, “this Chinese colonel. Li. What do you think of him?”
“I think he is my commanding officer and that I owe him my service and respect,” said Mazer.
Vaganov laughed again. “I can never tell when you’re joking and when you’re serious, Mazer. I find that endearing about you. If you ask me, Colonel Li is a dangerous man. The only reason he’s here and holds his rank is because the Chinese wouldn’t agree to give us any troops unless we agreed to maintain a certain number of senior Chinese officers in the Fleet. Li was on that list from the beginning. If it were up to me the man wouldn’t wear a uniform.”
“If it were up to you, I wouldn’t wear a uniform, either,” said Mazer. “Guess that makes me a dangerous man as well.”
Vaganov chuckled. “You’re hardly dangerous, Mazer. You’re an idealist. When reality finally takes root in your head and your perspective matures, when you’ve seen as much as I have, then you’ll be dangerous. For now, you’re simply a soldier doing his job. Which is why I’m here, to give you fair warning. One officer to another. Li has no future in the IF, not beyond the second war anyway. Careers like his implode sooner or later. Particularly considering this ridiculous tactic he’s pursuing, the training of preteens for space c
ombat.” Vaganov laughed. “He can’t expect anyone to take him seriously.”
“Someone is,” said Mazer. “Or they wouldn’t have given his cadets any room aboard this ship.”
“I know why they’re here,” said Vaganov. “Only small people can fit in the tunnels of these asteroids, and the children of Southeast Asia are as small as they come. Have they been trained in tunnel warfare?”
“Not in zero G,” said Mazer. “That’s my job.”
“I see. Well, you’re one of the best commanders I know. These boys are in good hands. But I must say having you play babysitter is an insult to a man of your capabilities and rank. You were made to lead soldiers, Mazer, not preschoolers. It’s an offense. You must be furious. I won’t stand for it. I’m going to help you.”
“How?” said Mazer.
“I have a good relationship with the Polemarch and Strategos, as well as with a number of the rear admirals of the Fleet. I could put in a good word and maybe even arrange for a transfer for you onto a warship. Not with some lifeless assignment in navigation or logistics, but combat. The work you were made for.”
“And what would you expect in return?” Mazer asked.
“We’re not making a back-alley deal here, Mazer. We’re simply two fellow officers helping one another.”
“Of course. And how would I help you exactly?”
“Information. I want to keep my eye on Colonel Li and his superior, this Rear Admiral Zembassi. You’ll be in their inner circle. Zembassi is not a man to be trusted. He led a coup in Liberia before the first war. Did you know that? It was all in the name of democracy, but he’s nothing more than an opportunist disguised as a man of the people. A power-grabbing bureaucrat. Men like him should not be leading.”
“So you want me to spy on him for you?”
“The IF is littered with bad apples, Mazer. If we don’t watch them closely, they’ll lead us to ruin.”