Ghost fleet constellatio.., p.5
Ghost Fleet (Constellation Book 3), page 5
“Except it is,” Yang said. “Constellation can expand her jump field to include the ARK, but it will burn more jump fuel.”
“We’ll need a lot of nanite boosters,” Baker said. Her breath was hot on his ear, and he shivered. “It’s not pleasant the first time, and it’ll be harder on kids.”
“Then we tell Minerva to start cranking them out,” Yang said. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Now all we gotta do is find somewhere for you to communicate.”
“There’s a RETRANS site not too far from here,” Oliver said. “Let me signal to Stan so he can pull over and we can talk.” The big man cracked a red chemlight and tossed it out of the side of the trailer. Sure enough, the cattle car transitioned from road to dirt and thudded to a stop.
Gregor rose and opened the trailer, and the rest of them got out to stretch their legs while Oliver and Miles Davis conferred with Stan.
“You really shouldn’t have gone off alone,” Baker said as she leaned against side of the trailer.
Jim groaned and turned to face her.
“What, are you going to hit me too?”
Baker smirked.
“Slap you maybe, but I think Oliver rattled your brain enough as it is.” She sighed and slouched. “Jim, be honest with me. Do you want to die?” Her whisper cut through him like a blade, and Jim shuddered.
“No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.” He folded his arms and looked down. “I’ve lived through some tough shit. A lot of good guys never came back from that. Maybe sometimes I think I’d be better off if I hadn’t.” Those last words Lynn had spoken to him hummed like a tumor, a cancerous growth he just couldn’t excise. I don’t need you. The first and last thing she’d said to him in their final conversation, irreverent of the fact he was still grieving his father.
“Jim, I—” Baker swallowed and looked away, speechless.
Lieutenant Greenfield. Shepard, Adair, Fitz, Barnett. It was all a lot for him to deal with, and the revelations he’d come home to left him feeling like he was standing on air. Sure, he appreciated everyone pulling together for him, but he hated feeling needy.
He glanced over at Oliver and Stan. The young man was still lanky, but he was tall like both of his parents, and Jim could see the boy starting to fill out the bulky flannel he wore. He tried to hide it, but Jim could still see a twinkle of admiration in the young man’s eyes when his father spoke.
Spotting Elodie and AJ leaning over the bed of the truck, Jim glanced back at Baker and inclined his head.
“Elodie volunteered?” he asked.
Baker nodded.
“Yeah, yeah, she wanted to help, but she didn’t want to shoot anyone,” Baker said. “Right before Oliver was ready to leave, Theresa said we had plenty of leftover fireworks, and Elodie got the idea she could sow some chaos without killing anyone herself.” She shrugged. “And then people just started showing up at Minerva’s discretion. Next thing we knew, we had way too many people, so I figured I might as well go, and we needed the cattle car, and—” Oliver’s whistle broke the night air.
“Alright, let’s mount up,” the big man said. “We got a long drive, and we’re burning nightlight.” He hugged his son before heading back to the trailer, with the rest following.
They reached the RETRANS site in good order and, with Minerva’s assistance in orbit, scrambled the signal enough that it couldn’t be traced to AJ’s phone.
“Damn, I think the old man’s right,” Rami said. “My timeline’s blowin’ up over these travel restrictions.”
“Then let’s hope we’re not out of time,” Miles Davis said as he faced the camera. “People of Earth, I’ve made it my life’s mission to make us a multi-planet species, to finally step out of the cradle and into our civilization’s adulthood.” He swallowed. “I thought I had more time, wish I had more time, but it seems like the same forces that have conspired to strip generations of wealth and freedom are attempting to stop our lifeboat from leaving. If you desire freedom, if you desire a fresh start, head to space. Go to the nearest spaceport and head to Mars. Before it’s too late.” They cut the transmission.
“Well, now we have another problem,” Jim said. “A lot of us have families, lives we just reconnected with. Now we gotta uproot all that and head into space?”
“I think it’s easier than you think,” Rami said as he stared at his phone. “Ship commanders are announcing that they’re not going to enforce the travel restrictions in space. It’s spreading all over the space force.”
“Not just the Americans,” George Teller said. “Eurocorps, KDV, even some PLSSF ships are refusing their government’s orders to enforce similar restrictions.”
“Okay, that’s great,” Jim said. “How the hell are we getting into space?”
NINE
The chaos of getting back to Yeager SFB passed Jim like a whirlwind. He tried to sleep as much as he could on the drive back. So when Oliver woke him with a start, he wasn’t happy.
“You’re not going to believe this,” his old friend said. Considering all they’d recently been through—boarding a ship from the future, zipping across the milky way, and fighting aliens alongside former enemies—Jim wasn’t sure what else could surprise him.
It turned out to be a military bureaucracy doing anything swiftly. In this case, several somethings. Dependents were loaded into buses while moving trucks were stuffed with suitcases and bags. Anything with wheels had been mobilized to help move what seemed to be everyone on post off to the nearest spaceport. In this case, Sally Ride Heavy Lift Spaceport, all the way down I-90 and 25 and terminating along I-35. Highways most of the way, assuming no one organized fast enough to stop them.
Jim blinked as Security Forces JLTVs with machine guns mounted moved to the edges of the convoy. Civilian cars were packed to the gills, and he spotted more than a few Espatiers and Space Force personnel just sitting in the beds of trucks with weapons and kit.
“Ollie,” he asked, stirring. “What am I looking at?”
“Well, the base commander and the 3rd Espatier Regiment’s commander got on the horn with Constellation and decided to beat feet into orbit,” Oliver said. “Damn near the entire base made the same choice after hearing that broadcast.”
Jim looked over the ragtag convoy ahead of him and shook his head.
“There you are,” Prince called over the truck. He tossed Jim an issue chest rig stuffed with a combat load of six-eight as well as his issue M7. “Just in case.”
Jim looked over the weapon and grunted in approval that Prince hadn’t dropped it.
“Where are my plates?” he asked as he hefted the chest rig.
“We got some in the truck,” Oliver said. “Hop in. We’ll talk on the ride.”
Jim’s eyebrows crooked up, but he didn’t say much else. He shuffled into the passenger seat of Oliver’s truck and took his place in the convoy.
“Stan not driving?” he asked as he grabbed the STF plates off the floor and began stuffing them into the chest rig.
“He’s helping Theresa with the other kids,” Oliver said. “That SUV is packed. Besides, we gotta have a grown-up conversation.” As he spoke, Miles Davis and Amelia Yang scooted into the back seats.
“Minerva’s been keeping us updated on the situation in space,” Yang explained. “So far, the spacelanes are clear. The fleet in orbit is already directing traffic to Mars.”
“I’d like to get as many people on the ARK as possible,” Miles Davis said. “I don’t know the exact limits of the Renaudin drive, but I don’t want to risk damaging it on the way to Alpha Centauri.”
“We have a better destination in mind,” Yang said. “We can take everyone to New Amsterdam.”
Miles Davis grunted and leaned back.
“I’m not as up to speed with your odyssey across our arm of the milky way as I’d like to be,” he said. “What is New Amsterdam?”
“It’s a habitable world over thirty light years from Sol,” Jim said. “Ideal parameters for water, atmosphere, flora, and fauna compatible with our biology.” He glanced back at the older man in the back seat. “In the other future, the one Constellation’s from, it was colonized by humanity and became the capital of the society that built her.”
“It’s a fresh start,” Yang said. “And as clean a break as anyone can get from this mess.”
“It’s a big enough ask to leave everything behind to go to another planet, let alone one in another system or thirty light years away,” Miles Davis said. “We’re going to get a lot of people leaving the planet with the clothes on their backs.”
A fresh start. Jim watched the ground passing beneath the truck as the convoy moved out.
His parents were buried on this world. It sang to him, in a sense, its songs soothing the anxieties brought on by extended space travel. It was a song he’d never heard with his ears, but he felt its absence when he was in space. Stars still stretched across the sky as the false light of predawn began to break out across the horizon. Those stars . . . part of him liked to imagine them as the souls of his deceased friends. Calling him home.
Even with the insanity of the odds piled against them, his career playing out like the musings of a hack writer, the choice was enormous. No matter how many times he’d ascended into the heavens, how many times he’d clashed with vile forces beyond the sky, he knew his boots would return to solid ground. Though, with this last trip, he’d felt like he’d stepped into a sand pit on his return. Almost everything he’d thought he’d known had been pulled away from him, save the bonds he’d forged and strengthened in deep space.
“I didn’t have much going on anyway,” he finally said. “I have no issue with a clean break.”
“It’ll be more taxing on the Renaudin drive,” Miles Davis said. “And if something goes wrong near Proxima Centauri, it would be easier to come back to the Sol system for something. That isn’t a lifeline we could have with a farther planet.”
“I doubt the Leviathan Group’s shot-callers will let us come back for things anyway,” Jim said. “Besides, these people are only being ballsy now because they think they’re guaranteed to win. They aren’t risk-takers. So when they get their own version of the Renaudin drive, they’ll test it by going to the closest possible system, in this case Proxima Centauri.”
“Also pro to New Amsterdam, the Quads don’t know where it is,” Yang said. “We definitely fought them to a standstill there, and the LG can expect a war if they ever try to get beyond that system.”
“It also buys us time,” Oliver said. “Time to build, to prepare. There’s a lot of threats out there, and we’ll need answers to all of them.”
Miles Davis sighed. “It won’t be easy,” he chuckled. “Though I suppose nothing worth doing is. You’re sure the Renaudin drive can reach New Amsterdam?”
“It reached once before,” Jim said. “Past it, actually, and according to Minerva, she did it on fumes.” McAllister popped into his head, and he turned back towards Oliver.
“Hey, do you remember Dave McAllister? From the old third platoon?” he asked.
“That chotch?” Oliver said. “Yeah, I remember him alright. The fair-haired child who went off to selection.”
“He was part of the hit on Miles Davis,” Jim said. “He said he got messed up doing some shady stuff, but he wasn’t right when I fought him.”
“Well, that’s what a decade of doing shady shit will do to you,” Oliver said.
Jim shook his head.
“Not right as in I shot him twice with my forty-four and he stood up seconds later unfazed.”
“Huh, yeah, that ain’t right.”
They rode down the interstate, with more vehicles joining them at every exit. Sedans loaded with luggage, big rigs carrying supplies, school buses loaded with children and parents. More and more people, with far more attachments than him, all making the choice to leave the planet.
We’re really going through with this. It dawned on him that they could be looking at the single largest movement of humanity in human history in terms of both numbers and distance. He nodded off again to the thought of the historical significance of it all, the enormity soothing his tired mind to sleep.
Until the screech and wine of brakes on pavement and the taut grip of the seatbelt jerked him back to wakefulness.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked.
“There’s something up ahead stopping the convoy,” Oliver answered as he got out.
Jim unbuckled his seatbelt and followed him, grabbing his rifle as he did. Somewhere ahead of him, an M240 chattered away before going silent. Screams rose, and people began to bound past them.
Jim ran against the direction of fleeing mobs as more gunfire erupted. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the cause of all the chaos.
A single mountain of a man strode out of the wreckage of an up-armored Humvee. Jim had seen the man’s face in old photos and debriefing slides, but the last time Jim had seen him in real life, he’d been tumbling out of the Constellation’s airlock with a damaged spacesuit.
“No way,” Oliver growled next to him. “It’s Mamonov.”
TEN
The man in the middle of the road moved with the implacable certainty of a glacier. His heavily scarred face looked as if it was carved from granite, and he wore an after-market plate carrier over old Russian-style airborne fatigues. Menace radiated off him with every step, and he carried a rifle far too big for a normal person to wield.
“Impossible,” Jim mouthed. There was no way Mamonov could have survived long enough to be recoverable in any state more than a vegetable. The man had been deprived of air and directly exposed to the background radiation of space. Oh my God, does he have superpowers? Nothing else in his life seemed to make sense, so why not?
The towering man sneered, a crack in his craggy facade that Jim didn’t care for.
“Well, it seems my American hosts found their way home,” he growled. “I regret that I had to leave your ship as I did. Next time, I’ll consider asking permission.”
“You should be dead!” Jim barked.
“As should you,” Mamonov replied. “But that doesn’t stop you, James Black.”
So he’s been doing his homework. Depending on how much information had gotten out about the Constellation incident, any network or studio could have conducted some public “investigation” into their disappearance, airing their identities and histories to the greater public. Of course, Mamonov could have just had other sources.
Bullets whipped past him and struck the Russian in the head and chest. The impacts barely fazed him, despite the ridiculous muzzle velocity of a six-eight Creedmoor. Mamonov merely scowled and drew his massive rifle on Oliver.
A crack filled the air, and a neat hole blasted out the side of Mamonov’s weapon at an angle. Mamonov sneered and tossed the bulky rifle aside, then cracked his knuckles. As far as I can tell, he’s about to take on a Space Force base worth of people with his bare hands!
More people fled the area, clearing the way for others to bring weapons online. Gunfire from Base Security personnel, Espatiers, and random armed people filled the gap in vehicles. None of it seemed to affect Mamonov in the slightest.
Mamonov moved with blinding speed, seizing a wheel rolling in the road and heaving it as if he was an Olympic athlete. It whipped through the air and decapitated two men who had just responded to the scene.
Jim blinked. Reality seemed to slow, though he knew better. The deaths of those men had snapped him back into action, and his body defaulted to his training, his conscious just along for the ride, trying to make sense of his decisions.
As useless as it seemed, his rifle snapped up to his target. Rounds to his torso and face seemed to do little if anything, so he aimed at the guy’s joints. At least, that’s how his mind constructed it after the fact. He couldn’t tell if it had any effect until Mamonov staggered while breaking a man’s neck and taking his rifle.
He heard Zhou’s rifle crack somewhere behind him. Mamonov’s head jerked to the side, a shower of sparks erupting from the side. Wait, sparks?
Mamonov turned his head. Heavy-duty metallic plates sat beneath his skin, and a sinister red triple-node sensor. My God, he isn’t human anymore. No wonder bullets barely faze him.
Jim lowered his weapon. “Mamonov, what the hell did they do to you?”
“They gave me new life, Jim Black,” the Russian cyborg said. “One free of the weakness my former form possessed.” Another bullet pinged off his chest, and he laughed. “There’s no airlock to save you and Oliver Knight, though even if there was, I don’t need to breathe like I used to.”
Jim grit his teeth and steeled himself. Bullets were clearly not going to do the job against the cyborg super-soldier. So what would? He blinked and Mamonov was on him. In less than a second, the hulking man tackled him to the ground.
Jim managed to get off a few rounds before Mamonov knocked his weapon to the ground. The man’s grip was like a vice, and he easily hoisted Jim to his feet and tossed him against a nearby car. The windshield spiderwebbed from the impact, and Jim gasped for breath.
He rolled and slid off the hood, just in time for Mamonov’s fist to cave it in. Standing to face the robotic monster, he pulled his tomahawk from his webbing and readied himself.
“Tch, you’re trying to stand against the inevitable,” Mamonov purred. “How human.”
“You don’t learn fast, do you?” another voice asked. Jim turned to see McAllister emerging from another vehicle. “Then again, if you did, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Sellout,” Jim grunted. I need to get them talking. If they stop to gloat, the others can come up with a plan.
“What is there to betray?” McAllister growled. “This country, this world, is a shell of its former self. Everything we could have had has been sold off and strip-mined to nothing. Our future was mortgaged away before we were even born. What are you loyal to? The flag? Because you’ve been treated so well by our government and our institutions?”
