Vox astra, p.12
Vox Astra, page 12
part #1 of Vox Astra Series
“Gotta start somewhere,” Ambrov said.
“All right,” Camden said. “Odds on peace are a million to 1. Get your bets on the table.”
“Wait,” Nakata said. “What about a false signal? The last war report also warned the Weeds might be catching onto our communications tech. Maybe it’s a trick.”
“Rumors, that’s all, to keep us on our guard,” Wyle said.
“Rumors from almost two years ago,” Nakata said. “Could be the Weeds learn fast. Captain Camden?”
“Fine, 100,000 to 1 it’s a ruse,” Camden offered.
“Better odds than peace or a kill order,” Nakata said.
“You’re making me paranoid. Now, open channels with our sister stations for verification,” Camden said. “Let’s find out if anyone else is activated.”
Each soldier scribbled an amount on a scrap of paper and tossed it into a small depression on the central command table. They’d started the no-limit betting game and kept a running tally in honor of Vegas Strip, and they bet on anything they could. Captain Ambrov was up $653,486 over everyone else, and she insisted she aimed to collect every cent when they were all discharged.
After placing her bet, Lieutenant Nakata arranged the controls to relay between the four nearest stations. The machinery surrounding them produced a steady hum, and tinny beeps came from Captain Ambrov’s monitor as she powered the torch. The directed energy weapon could strike a target as small as a single Weed or as sprawling as a city. The Killer Eye program gave humanity a chance to hurt the Weeds badly enough to end the conflict. Fighting head-to-head, the Weeds seemed unbeatable. They’d become a spacefaring race hundreds of years before humankind, with faster ships, better weapons, and communications at the speed of thought, which enabled thousands of them to act as one when executing battle tactics. Remaining unpredictable and attacking by surprise gave humanity its only chance. Still, the Weeds had forced the Navy almost all the way back to Earth before the latest ceasefire. The next time hostilities reached a fever pitch, the Killer Eyes would certainly go hot.
Lately, it seemed more and more imminent. Observations of the Arbor indicated construction of a new starship type that would dwarf their others, one possibly intended for a final assault against Earth. Expert analysis estimated a decade before it could make an attack. Most of the human population held out hope for a peace agreement before then, but two previous ceasefires had failed, and the current one seemed destined for stalemate as long as the Weeds rejected the concept of humans as beings equal to themselves in sentience and dignity.
Camden wondered if his brother were truly dead. No one taken prisoner by the Weeds had ever returned, so military policy declared those captured as killed in action after thirty days. Maybe Varrow still lived, caged in some silent prison where the Weeds studied him. Or maybe they’d dissected him alive. Or incinerated him. Hundreds of tales about what the Weeds did to prisoners made the rounds without a shred of evidence to prove any of them.
The uncertainty made the loss all the more painful. A military death declaration worked to close the files, but for Camden, it only emphasized how alone he was now with his entire family ushered into oblivion. He had only the military left, a military that had made him more machine than a man, a component in a sophisticated gun. His physical needs were rigidly satiated, his emotional needs neatly cataloged and accounted for, and he and all the KE operatives were told they were special, that as Killer Eyes, they were granted responsibilities and privileges beyond those of common soldiers. The freedom, the self-reliance, the isolation only disguised the fact that KE soldiers were no more than carefully chosen, strictly trained trigger pieces—extensions of the military intelligence machine. With minor variations, the soldiers on all thirty-five Killer Eye stations were the same, as if stamped from clay on a factory line. They ate, they slept, they excreted, they copulated, but mostly they did their assigned duties and spent as much time alone as possible. Like members of a cult. For the first time in his tour of duty, that reality bothered Camden. He hadn’t considered it before Varrow died, before the dreams started, before the scent of Lieutenant Nakata’s sweat lingered in his memory for days after sharing her bed. Now the irony proved inescapable—to fight the Weeds, they’d shed their humanity and become in many ways exactly like their enemy.
Camden’s gaze drifted to Lieutenant Nakata. He wondered if she felt any of this, if she’d found herself drawn to him like he’d been to her, or if she were just going along with him out of duty.
“Comm channel check. Confirm status,” Lieutenant Nakata said, snapping Camden out of his thoughts.
He ran the program and scowled. “No contact with our sister stations.”
“How can that be?” Nakata asked. “Interference?”
“Between us and all four of our sister bases simultaneously? Unlikely,” Camden said. “All readings are clear. We’ve had minimal sunspot activity for three weeks.”
“Maybe technical failure?” she said. “Our comm gear is due for maintenance in two days.”
“Checking now,” Camden said. “All equipment appears fine. Could be failure on one of the other bases but not all five simultaneously. Do we have line of sight with any of the stations?”
Lieutenant Nakata summoned a fresh display on her monitor. “Philip Station will be in position in forty-five seconds. Go to Morse laser for contact confirmation?”
Monitoring the conversation, Major Wyle glanced at Lieutenant Nakata’s screen and said, “We’ve never used the signal laser, Lieutenant Nakata. It’s a last resort. The Weeds could see it. How long will we have line of sight with Philip Station?”
“Approximately nineteen minutes before planet rise puts Vegas Strip between us and them,” Nakata told him.
“Let’s wait and see if our orders come through,” Wyle said.
“Major Wyle, all D-E-W systems active,” Ambrov said. “Targeting systems operational. The torch is primed and ready to light.”
“Thank you, captain.”
The alert siren blared back to life with dizzying urgency. Major Wyle darted to his station while Camden and Captain Nakata managed the incoming signal.
“That was fast,” Nakata said.
“Record time,” Ambrov said. “Anyone else getting a bad feeling about this?”
“Quiet,” Wyle said.
Camden’s fingers clacked over his keyboard, assigning computers to decrypt their orders. A cold draft of tension crept through the room. The signal transmitted for several minutes then ended. Major Wyle’s eyes remained glued to his monitor as the decrypted orders scrolled across his screen. He read them twice and cross-checked them against his mission journal.
“Is that it?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Camden said. “It cut short.”
Major Wyle turned to Lieutenant Nakata. “Status of comm channels, lieutenant?”
“Still off-line, sir.”
“Line of sight with Philip Station?”
“Open for another nine minutes.”
“All right, activate the laser. We need confirmation,” Wyle said.
“Sir?” Nakata asked.
“We have been assigned a target and ordered to fire,” Wyle told them. “I want confirmation.”
“What is our target, sir?” Ambrov asked.
Major Wyle tapped his keyboard and relayed the decrypted portion of their orders to the other stations. On each monitor appeared: “Arbor Spaceport Omega, 09:00,” a prime target in the planet’s southern hemisphere.
“That’s it?” Ambrov asked.
“It came in segmented and heavily coded.” Camden’s fingers crawled over his console. “More was embedded in the transmission, but the signal ended before we received the final close code, so we can’t decrypt the rest.”
“Our orders are incomplete,” Wyle said.
“Incomplete but clear, major,” Nakata said.
“We could be missing something important, like a secondary target or a firing condition,” Wyle said. “I won’t proceed on half-baked information.”
“The rest was probably a war report, an update on negotiations,” Camden said.
“Or lack of them,” Ambrov added.
“Commencing signal to Philip Station,” Nakata announced.
The four soldiers waited, outwardly still, yet each of them running mental drills as their battle training swept them into fight mode. They imagined the strike, the inevitable Weed retaliation, and wondered what had happened to bring about activation of the Killer Eyes. If one base acted alone, the Weeds would almost certainly locate and destroy it and eventually all the others. Only if all of the KE stations fired simultaneously to devastate Arbor world could any of them hope to survive. There always existed the possibility that command needed one heavy attack to make a point to the Weeds, win an advantage in negotiations, or eliminate a critical target. That made any single KE station or all of them expendable.
“No reply from Philip Station,” Nakata said. “Their sensors should’ve sighted our laser by now.”
Wyle stood and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. “Captain Camden, care to give odds on whether or not Philip Station still exists?”
“No, sir,” Camden said. “Bets are already on the table.”
“Consider this a new hand,” Wyle said. “We all know what happens after we light the torch. Unless it’s a prelude to an all-out attack against Arbor, the Weeds will find and destroy us. For all we know, that’s what happened to Philip Station after they acted on earlier orders. Or maybe something went wrong over there, and Philip Station is down by a quirk of fate. They could’ve been gone for weeks. Our last communication with them was—what?”
“Seven months ago,” Nakata said.
“The loss of radio communication with the other stations suggests something more at work,” Wyle said.
“Like maybe the Weeds are jamming our transmissions,” Camden said. “The kill order could be a trick to flush us out. The truncated signal would camouflage the fact that the Weeds don’t have the close codes needed to authenticate the orders. They’re hoping we’ll overlook that and give ourselves away.”
“So, they’re fishing,” Wyle said. “They’ve got an idea we’re here, but they don’t know for sure. It’s possible.”
“That would explain the silence from our sister stations,” Nakata said. “Maybe they figured this out ahead of us and went dark.”
“So, of course, we go blundering in with the damn Morse laser,” Ambrov said.
“Unlikely the Weeds’ll notice our laser with Vegas Strip so close by,” Wyle said. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger problems to worry about.”
“Such as?” Nakata asked.
“Do we fire?” Wyle said.
“We have orders,” Ambrov said.
“Incomplete, unverified orders,” Wyle said. “The absence of a close code aborts authorization. For all we know, this could be a drill or a targeting test—something that would’ve been disclosed in the portion we lost.”
“Or KE command could’ve been destroyed before completing transmission,” said Camden. “When have we ever gotten orders so fast after a pre-signal? They were rushing for a reason.”
“You think the ceasefire broke?” Nakata asked.
Camden shrugged.
“How long would it take to replace KE command?” Ambrov said.
“Eighteen months at least before another ship can be moved into position,” Wyle said. “If that’s the case, then we’re now under the direct command of General Cuidera.”
“Which leaves us with a three-year turnaround if we request confirmation.” Camden grimaced. “Our orders are to fire in just under two hours.”
“Reassess the transmission, Captain Camden. Maybe we missed something,” Wyle said.
“I’ve checked it six times, sir. We’ve gotten everything we’re going to out of it.”
Major Wyle settled into his seat and peered at his monitor while he replayed the transmission, watching the progress bar track across the width of his screen only to halt and freeze just before the end, leaving him with nothing more than a jarringly succinct time and target.
“All right,” he said, turning back to the others. “We’re cut off, and it’s up to us to decide. Anyone have a problem with that?”
“We have our orders right here.” Camden tapped his screen. “What’s there to decide? At 09:00, we fire.”
“You’re not worried it might be a Weed trick?”
“Does it matter? We take out one of their key spaceports,” Camden said.
“And give ourselves away,” Wyle said. “Maybe blow cover for the whole KE program.”
“It won’t matter if all stations fire.”
“We don’t know that will happen,” Wyle said.
“If the orders are legit, then all stations probably received a target. Maybe some of them even received the full transmission. If it’s a trick, if the Weeds are out there fishing, if they’ve gotten their hands on radio tech, and they’re jamming our communications and transmitting blind, that means everyone’s getting the same orders. They’ll fire.”
“Not without verification,” Wyle said. “Absence of verification negates an order. Effectively we have no kill order. That’s protocol. We’re out here on our own, connected by the slenderest of threads to the rest of the military. We are not a bunch of cowboys. Procedure is the only thing that has held us together since day one, and that’s how it has to be now. Captain Ambrov, power down the D-E-W.”
“Wait,” Camden said. “Have you forgotten what we all enlisted to do? We’re here to defend Earth.”
“We won’t do that by launching an unauthorized attack that could jeopardize our entire mission,” Wyle said.
“What if they’re counting on us?” Camden asked. “Waiting for us to soften up the Weeds before bringing the fleet into position?”
“We’d have received a war report and orders,” Wyle said.
“We just did,” Camden said.
“No, what we’ve got is an unverified signal from an unidentified source. Less than an hour ago, you—yourself—called better odds on it being a deception than a kill order,” Wyle said.
“Yeah, and Captain Ambrov really thinks she’s going to collect her winnings from us after our tour ends,” Camden said. “You can’t take that seriously.”
“What I take seriously is not gambling with our mission,” Wyle said. “Captain Camden, report to your quarters until further notice. I will not have you brewing dissent.”
Camden stiffened as though he’d been struck. He clamped his mouth shut, saluted stiffly, and then exited the command room with a glance at Lieutenant Nakata. Her worried expression burned like a bonfire in contrast to the pale passiveness on Captain Ambrov’s face, and though he wasn’t sure why, Camden took comfort from it. Then he entered the well and climbed to the upper level.
He bypassed his room in favor of the observation chamber. Vegas Strip filled the sky with saccharine ribbons of color, the sight of which Camden never wearied. He knew if he ever returned to Earth, this of all the things he’d done and seen since his enlistment would remain brightest in his memory. The mesmerizing whorls of color swirling in bands that seemed to spin like the cutting edge of a power saw. The light and dark flashes of storm activity. The contradictory sensation of serenity that such wonderful chaos fostered in him. This proof of the sheer wonder of the universe. This reminder of the magnitude of humanity’s accomplishments in challenging cold, harsh space and conquering it. He wondered if the Weeds saw Vegas Strip the way he did, if any single living creature among them could look upon the planet and experience the awe it inspired in him.
On a whim, he went to the door control panel. He punched in his access code, called up the past six months’ entry records, and scrolled through the list. His own code appeared over and over again, sometimes two or three times a day, and here and there, he saw Lieutenant Nakata’s, and less frequently but still regularly Captain Ambrov’s. Major Wyle’s appeared only once, logged in eight weeks ago barely a minute after Lieutenant Nakata’s, suggesting a mood-setting rendezvous, something done out of facility rather than desire. Camden wondered why Major Wyle rarely came here, if the sight held no majesty or fascination for him, or if he truly preferred passing time sequestered in his quarters. None of the KE soldiers socialized much, but a thing as raw and powerful as Vegas Strip possessed a gravity that tugged at primal human nature, something, perhaps, Major Wyle had lost or forgotten or, worse, feared, something he might prefer not to rediscover.
Camden spared a last glance at Vegas Strip’s stunning luminosity. Then he left the observation chamber for the armory, where he selected a shotgun and a pulse rifle to complement his uniform sidearm and prayed he wouldn’t need any of them. He steeled himself and returned to the command deck.
It surprised Camden how calmly he stepped through the entryway and leveled the shotgun in Major Wyle’s direction. No one spoke for several seconds. In that time, the color leached from the major’s face, and his bearing turned quite brittle. Captain Ambrov rested her hand on her sidearm. Captain Nakata gasped at Camden with pure shock.
“Ell,” she said.
The way his name rose from her lips, the way she breathed it as though it were part of the elements that sustained her life sent shivers down Camden’s spine, and in that moment, any flagging doubt remaining within him evaporated.
“Captain Ambrov,” Camden said. “Power up the D-E-W and prepare targeting coordinates for Spaceport Omega at 09:00.”
“I’m sorry, captain, but no, I already have my orders,” she said.
“Yes, you do, and Major Wyle won’t object now if you follow them. He’s gotten a little confused today, but we’re going to help him through it,” Camden said.
“This is mutiny,” Ambrov said. “Put the weapons down before someone gets hurt.”
“Sorry, Marnie,” Camden said, watching Ambrov’s face crinkle at the sound of her first name. “Mutiny is when you don’t follow orders. Now you can do as I told you, or I will fire on Major Wyle.”
Moving with fluid speed, Ambrov drew her sidearm and aimed it at Camden. “Then I’ll have to kill you where you stand.”
