OGHAM
Senecan Federation Colony
“Sir, the Ogham orbital defense array is tracking us. It appears to be hostile.”
Liam considered the view from the raised overlook just past midway down the bridge of the Akagi. Ogham was an ugly world, a tiny, rocky planet orbiting an average orange star. There was no good reason for its existence, much less its settlement.
“So they now realize we are again the enemy. No matter. I expected the trick was only likely to work once.”
The New Orient assault had been ludicrously easy in its execution. With no threat from the array and no noticeable military presence on the colony, they waltzed in and had their way. His force had burnt the settled continent to a crisp in the space of a few hours.
In some ways it had been anticlimactic…he couldn’t sense the blood in the air or see the panic on the faces from the bridge of a ship. On the other hand, he could create widespread destruction far more efficiently. By the end of the offensive the flames devouring New Orient had been visible from space with the unaided eye. He’d used his optical implant to record the scene so he was able to replay it in his mind whenever he wished.
He beckoned over the Flight Deck Chief, a Commander Dohman. The man was inappropriately skinny for military service; Liam would have disqualified him from supervisory rank on this flaw alone, but demoting the man so soon after assuming command would cause more problems than it solved. As he had to keep reminding himself, he needed to be careful with the crew.
“Transfer two tactical fusion anti-ship mines to the reconnaissance craft. Instruct the pilot to proceed under full stealth and place the mines in the orbital paths of two consecutive nodes of the array. When the nodes reach the mines they will detonate, destroying the nodes and possibly even the array frame at those locations. The gap created will be sufficient for us to slip through.”
Dohman grimaced; his face was so thin the expression took up the entire bottom half of it. “Sir, perhaps a better option is to whittle down two of the nodes from afar? Since we’re facing a single array we should have minimal losses.”
He did have his eye on two officers who displayed more favorable characteristics and a better attitude, however. Maybe the time had come to shake up the ranks after all, and there were stronger, properly loyal soldiers deserving of promotion. “Did I stutter, Commander? Plinking away at nodes takes too long, and we would have losses. We can’t spare the ships. Carry out my order.”
The man’s head bobbed unevenly, and he backed away several steps before heading for the flight deck.
Liam was turning to consider the view outside anew when Captain Harper cleared her throat behind him. “General, the array is in low orbit. Detonating two tactical nukes at that altitude risks poisoning the planet’s atmosphere.”
The young special forces officer somehow always seemed to be on the bridge at critical junctures and somehow always seemed to have a legitimate reason for being there. Her very presence rankled him. Her understated arrogance revealed itself in the proud carriage of her shoulders and piercing glint in her stare. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was constantly analyzing him, probing for weaknesses and flaws she might use against him. But she would never find any.
Liam sneered at her. “Yes, it will.”
A twitch of the muscles beneath her left eye was the only outward reaction she displayed. “I’ll make sure the mine transfer is handled correctly, then, sir.”
Brooklyn Harper hurried through the tight hallways of the Akagi. Her options raced through her mind in time to the rhythm of her boots hitting the deck.
A tactical analysis led to the inescapable conclusion that for the moment those options were few. The Flight Deck Chief was in full-on sycophant mode, his solitary, weak protest having been crushed by O’Connell’s glare alone. If Dohman was on the flight deck she’d never be able to sabotage or otherwise interfere with the deployment of the mines. She couldn’t in good conscience ask the recon craft pilot to mis-position them because under this general such an error would likely result in the pilot’s summary execution.
She’d disliked O’Connell instantly upon meeting him, but in the initial days of this alleged ‘covert mission’ she’d had no reason to doubt the veracity of his orders. Given the number of dirty tactics the Federation engaged in during the brief war, she wouldn’t blame the Alliance for engaging in a few of its own.
But New Cairo had been a straight-up massacre of civilians, plain and simple. The array saw their ships as friendly—which meant the Second Crux War was in fact officially over—and they had barged in with zero resistance. New Cairo didn’t have a real military installation, only a reserve outpost for a couple of cargo and transport ships. The Akagi and its companion vessels dropped through the atmosphere and fucking carpet-bombed the entire colony, down to the tiniest outposts deep in the jungle.
All was fair in war…but they weren’t at war. Not any longer. And even in war deliberate attacks on purely noncombatant targets were frowned upon. This was the 24th century; they were supposed to be civilized now.
The communications blackout had put everyone on edge, and that was before they started blowing up peaceful settlements. The crew wanted to know what was happening with the aliens. They wanted to know if friends and family were safe, and if they lived to the east where they’d evacuated to. They wanted to know their government had a plan to fight the aliens—was fighting the aliens. But all this knowledge and the accompanying comfort it might provide continued to be denied them.
At least her parents and younger brother lived on Demeter. It lay to the west of Earth; if the aliens attacked Demeter, the game was already lost. Those other concerns gnawed at her as well, but until she was able to do something about them she needed to concentrate on what she could do.
She reached the flight deck far sooner than she reached any conclusions, yet far too late to do any good. Six crewmen transported the first mine up from armament storage under the watchful eye of Commander Dohman.
Her stomach curdled at the sight, sending the rank aftertaste of the pickled slaw from lunch up into her throat. Using tactical nukes in space was one thing, where the damage stayed contained to a few ships at most—ships which qualified as enemy combatants—and the radiation swiftly dispersed into the vastness of space. Using them inside an atmosphere constituted another matter entirely. The wind currents of the upper layers would sweep the radiation into its ecosystem and spread it across the planet, seeding it in the rain clouds and permeating it into the air below.
O’Connell was a madman or a sociopath, and in all likelihood both. Her instincts had told her this within an hour of sharing a ship with him, but she’d allowed for other possibilities or even an error on her part until New Cairo. And if there had been a scintilla of doubt remaining after that bloodbath, his cavalier use of nukes on a defenseless colony eradicated it.
As the crewmen finished loading the mine into the small cargo bay of the stealth recon craft, she silently made the decision. She would have to stop him.
To do so, however, she needed allies, and she didn’t know this crew. She and the other three members of her squad were strangers to them—and two of the three members of her squad were essentially strangers to her, having been transferred in several weeks earlier at the height of the conflict with the Federation. She couldn’t be sure who to trust, and given O’Connell’s clear paranoia and hair-trigger temper she needed to tread cautiously.
Her pace slackened to a stop several meters away from the recon vessel as she lingered in the shadows. She didn’t have the capability to stop this attack. She was out of options for now. But in order to be ready when O’Connell made his next move, it was time to begin.