War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War Page 3

  The fighter pilots hadn’t moved, but a darkness had come over their gaze, the same one Ram had seen in their eyes when they looked at Squidies. Just like Squidies, she was something they wanted to kill. In her months commanding most of the F-151 squadrons, she'd been successful against the Squidies at the cost of her pilots’ lives. Ram didn’t blame them for wanting her dead. She’d killed plenty of them.

  Lt. Commander Dana Sellis couldn't keep quiet when she saw Matilda Witt. "What the hell is she doing here?" Dana’s arms and legs twitched and flexed under her jumpsuit as if she was about to strike. "She’s a bloody traitor!" Witt simply smiled at her in a patronizing manner. Dana implored Cozen. "She helped the Squidies try to kill you. She tortured me! She negotiated with the enemy on her own! Why isn’t she in prison?"

  "I spent six months on Corsica, dear. Is that exile enough for you?"

  Harry Cozen stood. He said, "Matilda Witt is here and working with us because she’s part of our plan to end this war. She has been for some time. This plan can't work without her because she's the only human the enemy trusts. You will set any differences you have had with her aside for the success of this mission."

  The fighter pilots formerly under Matilda Witt's command didn't look happy to see her, but Dana’s face had gone from bright red to deep purple with barely contained rage. Ram had never seen the veins on her forehead throb like wardrums before.

  "Lt. Commander Sellis..." Matilda Witt gave Dana a thin-lipped smile that was all the more eerie for being genuine. "I was so glad to hear you didn’t succumb to your injuries before being rescued." Witt drained the glass and wiped her lips with the back of her hand in a gesture Ram had never imagined her making. "My hat’s off to you for actually escaping under those conditions."

  Dana continued to glare at Witt like her hate was a weapon. It bounced off Witt like arrows bounce off a tank.

  "I’ll apologize more if that's what it takes for this mission to go off, but we’re all here cramped up in Harry’s little paranoia cage, meeting to discuss the cold-blooded extermination of an intelligent, spacefaring species. I think that trumps the personal issues, what say? So... If you don’t mind, I suggest we let pass the little things and get on with the business of killing all the Squidies, hmm? Since my dear, dear colleague, Harry bollixed all real chances of an acceptable peace agreement, that's the only option left."

  Cozen started the scotch moving around the room then. "This mission I am about to brief you on has been in planning since three weeks after the Squidies first attacked on Moriah." Witt rolled her eyes, but Cozen continued. "Development of the required technologies has cost one fifth of the entire war budget to date. This is the most important mission of the entire war. This is the mission that ends it. We will deliver the coup de grace to our enemy using perhaps the most famous deception in human history: The Trojan Horse.

  Chapter Five

  Jordo regarded the 1.15 cubic meters of personal storage space allotted in the design of the Sky Jack with some contempt. The designers had placed it in a section that wouldn’t get ejected with the cockpit. But that wasn’t what made him whisper curses at it under his breath. It was the fact that it was only 1.15 bloody cubic meters and he couldn’t fill it.

  Paladin said, "That everything you own?"

  Jordo straightened up on the top of the maintenance platform and looked down at his wingman three meters below. "That's it. Almost nothing."

  Dirty said, "You packing?"

  "Like an Egyptian king," Paladin said. "You know how they put everything he needs in the tomb so when he gets wherever he’s going he’s got it?"

  "Pharaoh. That’s a Pharaoh," she said.

  "Yeah. We're getting equipped."

  Jordo said, "I got nothing to put in here except two suit liners, two jumpsuits and one pair of griptops. Got a matchbox computer. Got Shafter’s Manual of Exo-Atmospheric Combat Maneuvers. Got the box my lieutenant's’ bars came in. That’s it. That’s the sum of my life right there. All of it."

  "We’ll be goin’ out in Sky Jack 223s," she said. "Don’t forget that. You get sent to kingdom come, then you’re going to show up in the baddest-ass ride they’ve ever seen."

  The muscles on Paladin’s face now appeared to drape over his thick skull. For once he wasn’t frowning or cringing or trying to tie his forehead in a knot. "You know Cleeg," Jordo said, calling him by his family name, "I kind of thought you’d be bitchin’ about this mission."

  "Nah. I like being called Paladin and all, but I can’t keep up this heroic crap forever. I'm glad it’ll be over before I can fuck it up."

  Holdout said. "I gotta run up to our quarters real quick and get something I forgot."

  "What?" Gusher knew when he asked. He was already cracking up making some questionable gestures when Pooch came through the locks.

  They were all laughing at a joke she hadn’t been there for. Pooch smiled at them anyway, and for an incidental second, they smiled back at her as she crossed the bay, but that moment was so clearly a result of her timing and nothing else that Jordo was relieved when it was over and all those awkward smiles faded.

  Pooch said, "Don’t think just ‘cause you’ve got those fancy new fighters now it means we’re dropping our standing bet. My Hellcats are gonna be looking forward to having the Lancers pick up the tab next shore leave at Sagan or Deimos Station." The Hellcats had been sent out to die almost as many times as the Lancers so he was surprised to hear Pooch say that. He never expected her of all people to hide in denial.

  The Lancers didn’t have anything to say about any future shore leave because they probably weren’t going to be there for it.

  Jordo didn’t have to tell Paladin and Dirty and Gusher to piss off. They turned and drifted away to their fighters, and a few seconds later, Jordo lowered his voice. "Is that really what you came here to say, Pooch?"

  She shook her head, and the shaggy hair growing in on the top of her fragile skull waved just a millimeter. "That’s what I told my squadron I came here to say." He nodded like he understood. "Are you packing all your personal shit?"

  "We’re going out like Pharaohs. Paladin’s idea."

  "I guess the Lancers don’t have any illusions about coming back," she said, and Jordo slid the storage compartment shut.

  "Do the Hellcats?"

  "I don’t...I don't know what to tell them. This plan it’s…it’s just like one of Matilda Witt’s plans. It’s suicidal."

  "Your pilots aren’t nuggets. They’ve faced the enemy and seen their friends die nearly every day."

  "It’s different now. You know what I’m talking about. The rumors. What do I tell them now? Half of them signed up to fight the war of alien aggression, Jordo. They signed up to kill Squidies and save Earth and now people are saying we started it. What the hell am I supposed to tell my pilots when they ask me?"

  "They’ll still fly."

  She said, "They’ll fly like shit if they don’t believe in what they’re doing. Aerial Combat Maneuvers, like samurai fen-"

  "‘...like samurai fencing and kung fu are an expression of self and will.’ I remember Shafter’s handbook of exo-atmo combat maneuvers. Don't listen to alien propaganda," he told her. Not that he’d put anything past Harry Cozen, the man that came up with the idea to recruit pilots out of prison. "Your people flew today without any problems."

  "They flew sloppy. No juice. No…." She made a fisting gesture to show what she couldn’t say. "Shafter said a pilot flies by instinct and reflex and what they do depends on who they are inside."

  "Chapter One."

  "My pilots are empty inside, Jordo. They’re fucking empty. They don’t know why they’re flying. What the hell do I tell them?"

  "I’m no speechwriter. The hell you asking me for?"

  "Because."

  "Because what?" he said.

  "Because. Fine, I’ll say it. The Lancers got a shit deal. Even worse than us. The Lancers weren’t even supposed to survive their first mission. And still…still you go out th
ere and fly and I know it’s not because they’ll shoot you if you don’t. You’re lazy, J. 'Jordo' Colt and it’s easier to let them shoot you than it is to go back out there to die, so I know it's not that. But you've got a reason. So that’s why I’m asking you. Because you Lancers got a reason you keep going out there like you do…no hesitation, nothing held back. Even after Staas Company and Harry Cozen shafted you. I need to know what that reason is. That’s why I’m here."

  Jordo inhaled and then, let it out. "They gotta decide who they’re going to be. That’s what the Lancers had to do. Don’t matter what came before. What are you going to be now? That’s all that matters. Lancer 1-2 a.k.a. John Cleeg? Murderer...a bloody home invader. John Cleeg was a real nightmare. But Paladin is different. Lancer 1-2, a.k.a. Paladin is a do-gooding mud-fucking hero that will put his plane between you and the Squidies when you’re down. Paladin won’t ever leave your wing. That’s who he is now. I gave him that name. Deal was, he had to live up to it. Every time he goes out there, that’s who he is. Because that’s who he chose to be."

  "My pilots ain’t convicts like the Lancers, Jordo."

  "No. They’re mostly kids from lunar dust-bowl dome towns like you who saw a couple of Bitzers flying an airshow over their domes and signed up. They’re good people without bright futures, but they have futures, unlike us. That makes ‘em different, yeah, but it doesn’t matter. If we lose this war, then that’s it. The Squidies will kill us all. Especially if we actually did start it. So we gotta kill ‘em all, Pooch. Before they kill us. Even if the Lancers could walk away, that’s why we don’t. Tell your pilots they made their choice already and it’s too bad they don’t like it, but if they don’t go out there and fight with every gram of their beings and fiber of their wills then we might just lose this war. It doesn't matter for them how all this started. It only matters how it ends."

  Chapter Six

  Ram traded his company officers’ blue exosuit for one of the company marines’ new, semi-armored black suits. Lucy Elan had brought it for him. On the way out of his quarters, she’d said it was a loaner, not a gift and he had to return it without any holes. He’d laughed at that like it was a joke, but she hadn’t. That struck him as odd. Lucy hadn’t been at the briefing, but she had some idea what was going on. She knew where Ram was going and his chances of coming back. That new exosuit wasn’t any more likely to come back than he was.

  He strapped on Mickey Well’s sidearm, the Honma & Voss x-ray cannon she’d carried before a Squidy gunned her down on Moriah. Only 200 made. Only 17 left known to exist. Illegal carry on earth. This gun was her pride and joy. Wide-bore, user-modulated rate of discharge and an energy storage capacity like an intercontinental hopper. It was worth a few years of his salary. It had been a gift from Cozen to her, but when she died, it became his.

  She’d helped Cozen. Mickey had aided him in perpetrating the fraud and the lies he’d maintained to start this war. It hadn’t been out of coercion. It hadn’t been for money. She’d believed in this. That woman had raised him after his own parents died in the War of the Americas and she’d said before she died that this was the most important thing she’d ever done in her life. She said it was more important than her life or Cozen’s or his.

  The instant he heard the clank at his hatch, he realized who he wanted it to be. Where water flows once, it will flow again, they say. It wasn’t Dana Sellis offering the condemned man a last meal; it was Asa Biko. The Air Group Commander maneuvered his bulk through the open hatch and stepped into Ram’s quarters.

  Biko was a big man. He far preferred Hardway’s .3 gees of artificial gravity to a whole Earth gee. That fact would keep him out in the black even if the war ended. "Behold the executioner," he said. "I came to give you this."

  It was a thermal mask like the redsuit damage control teams wore sometimes over their helmets. It looked like an executioner’s hood for his helmet.

  Ram tried to laugh at it, but it wasn’t funny. "70 billion."

  "Someone’s got to do it." Biko chuckled then, probably because his last words were the phrase most often used to encourage crewmen tasked with unpleasant jobs.

  Harry Cozen said Ram was the only one to lead this mission because even though he didn’t trust anyone, he trusted that Ram was a good man and a good man would make sure this terrible deed is done, despite his own distaste for it.

  "When the war is over…" Biko said, nodding his head so imperceptibly at Ram’s sidearm that even someone watching from a hidden micro-camera couldn’t discern it. Without any stated context, Ram knew exactly what Biko meant.

  In the war’s nascent days, they’d vowed that when it was over, they would kill Harry Cozen for what he’d done, for the murder of ten miners he’d blamed on the Squidies and for the deception and manipulation that led Earth into an unnecessary war costing millions of human lives and however many Squidies had to be snuffed out before it was finally over. Biko was letting Ram know that no matter what happened to him on this mission, Harry Cozen's crimes wouldn’t go unpunished.

  Chapter Seven

  Tig and Parker put on the new exosuits Chief Horcheese gave them and went where they were told. In the airlock, waiting to cycle through to the already open bay, he shifted his weight from foot to foot trying to get his suit liner to settle right under the new, partially armored suit. At least they got to keep their old helmets. "Redsuits wear red suits," Tig said. "Red. Not black."

  "Makes you wonder," Parker said. She hadn’t hit the button yet to cycle out the pressure so they could open the door. Her gloved hand hovered over it as she turned and looked up at him.

  He switched to a secure, line-of-sight, IR comms channel. "What are you wondering about?"

  "What the hell we’re doing here?" she said.

  "In the Squidies’ home system?"

  "No. Here. You and me. On this mission."

  Through the airlock’s porthole they could see the XO, Commander Devlin, standing in front of the open bay door wearing one of the same tactical suits that the Chief had given them. Chief Horcheese stood next to him in her burnt-crimson suit with her back to the locks. They were both looking at Arbitrage. You couldn’t see much else.

  Parker asked again. "Why us, Tig?"

  "We’re the best?"

  "Right. They need a couple of cherries on the most important mission of the war." The way her eyebrows went up told Tig she was being sarcastic, but it still took him a second to get it. "And these suits. They’re tactical suits." She was right about that. "We’re not here to fix anything, Tig."

  "Then what the hell are we here for?"

  She slammed the button and the atmo bled out of the lock with a burst of frozen fog. He followed her out into the open bay. It bothered Parker not knowing. He wondered what she'd say when she noticed the hidden extras built into their suits. Now wasn't the time to show her.

  As she stepped up and stood beside the Chief and the XO in the mouth of the open bay, he heard the double beep that let him know she’d killed the private channel.

  For a few seconds, they stood there in silence while the glowing rectangle of Arbitrage’s open emergency airlock blinked in the side of her curving hull. Devlin said his next words over local comms. "Whatever happens from here," he said, "Be worthy of survival." And then, he ran forward and jumped into the black. It was just like an officer to say something cryptic and leave like that...like what he'd said didn’t require any explanation.

  Chief Horcheese said, "What are you cherries waiting for? Go! Go!"

  Tig knew his limitations. He knew he’d have been safer crouching on the edge, aiming carefully and pushing, but this wasn’t the time for that. With his eyes fixed on Arbitrage’s airlock, he ran the three steps forward and flew with Parker and the Chief only a step behind him.

  The Chief pushed off the lip of the bay using her artificial legs. She passed them all in flight, of course. She wasn’t afraid to launch herself at terrific speed. Her new limbs and her reinforced spine would take the shock when
she stuck the landing. They’d probably hear it up on Arbitrage's bridge.

  For a little under thirty seconds, the four of them swam the starry black vacuum between the hulls. The lights in the rectangle of the open airlock blinked, shining bright for a second and then, going dark for a second. When the lights were off, the lock looked like a hole in the patch-welded landscape below, like a grave.

  Chief Horcheese hit first and was inside the lock, punching in her codes before Devlin, then Tig and Parker landed to the side of it, on the hull. Before the airlock doors closed behind them all and the pressurization cycle began, Tig turned and glanced back at Hardway. The carrier stretched out for half a K on either side with the fleet behind her, bristling with guns. Fighters and junks buzzed around her and all the carriers, assembling for the final battle Cozen had briefed them on.

  Chapter Eight

  From the bridge at the top of the attack carrier’s command tower, Arbitrage’s armored teardrop of a hull looked like a fat tadpole slipping out from under Hardway’s secondary bays. There were no goodbyes. Nobody called out ‘good hunting’ or ‘tally ho’. That ship maneuvered away from Hardway quiet as a shadow. "Arbitrage is clear," Dana said. Cozen’s eyes didn’t flick once to it as it steamed silently through the great hulls and swarming sorties behind them and made for the rear of the invasion fleet.

  "Message from Admiral Konig. One word: 'Calico'."

  "Our reply is 'Topcoat', Mr. Bergano." Bergano nodded at his console behind Cozen and sent the confirmation.

  Harry Cozen sat in that command chair like it was a throne. His confidence didn’t appear shaken in the slightest, not even during his last communication with the commanders aboard Araby and Point Neuf, when the tortured recording of Chief Jericho Bilt spoke over him like an insolent ghost, whispering on their channel, "The war of alien aggression is a lie."