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  Conference Room 2

  TFR Beijing

  Orbit of Earth

  One month later

  THE TRIP BACK TO EARTH was uneventful insofar as Saara continued to learn, Rowe continued to make a pest of herself, and Liao relieved herself from the stress of the day with Grégoire’s help whenever she could… which was as often as they both could manage.

  Soon, however—too soon for Liao’s liking—they were back at work.

  Saara, Liao, Iraj, Grégoire, Rowe, and the senior staff for both the Tehran and the Beijing sat in the conference room, the large projector screen illuminated with a generic welcome message. Liao waited until everyone was seated and there was a lull in the conversation and then called for quiet.

  “Thank you, everyone. Firstly, as most of you probably know, we have a very special guest aboard the TFR Beijing. I’d like to formally introduce the senior staff of both our vessels to Saara, who is one of the Toralii we encountered at the Battle of Jupiter.

  “For some of you, this will be the first time that you’ve seen a Toralii, and I want to make sure that I’m clear about one thing: Saara has proven herself very willing to assist us in our endeavours and, accordingly, she is being granted limited access to the Beijing’s non-classified systems. She will have an armed guard wherever she goes”—Liao nodded to the marines who stood by the heavy metal door of the room—“but this is at her discretion and only for her protection. She’s free to dismiss them if she wants, so don’t become alarmed if you see her wandering around by herself.”

  Liao paused as though lending weight to her next statement. She wanted the crews of both ships to understand her position clearly and completely.

  “She has my trust, the same trust I extend to all of you. Please bear this in mind.”

  Liao hoped they got the message. She desperately did not want to shoot any more crew members.

  “Also, please remember that while Saara can understand what you say, as long as it’s in English as per Task Force Resolution guidelines, she can’t physically vocalize any of our languages. As only Lieutenant Yu and I can currently understand her Telvan dialect, her communication with you all—and the rest of the crew—will unfortunately be one-way. We’re looking at changing that in the future as we move towards rapidly teaching everyone, fleetwide, enough Toralii to permit basic communication.”

  There were a few low groans. Many of the crew had struggled to learn English to serve on the ship; the idea that they were going to have to learn a third language was probably not a popular decision. Liao kept herself composed, however, waiting for the murmurs to die down.

  “Which I’m sure you’re all looking forward to. Now, to business.”

  Liao shone her laser pointer on the floor-to-ceiling monitor embedded in the wall of the conference room. Displayed upon it, sketched by Rowe, was a computer-generated map of the solar system. At her insistence, the words NOT TO SCALE were displayed in one of the corners as though the fact weren’t obvious. She seemed mortified by the idea that someone on the crew might genuinely assume the Sun and the Earth were approximately the same size.

  At times Liao wondered if Rowe sometimes forgot that she lived on a spaceship with a crew that had trained for years for a mission in space and therefore might, presumably, know more about the solar system than the so-called “average person,” whom she clearly despised.

  Liao ran her pointer in small circles around the sun. “We now know that the Toralii have been conducting reconnaissance throughout the Sol system for decades. According to Saara, they generally do this via autonomous, unarmed probes called Forerunners. Much, much smaller than the ship that attacked Earth, a Forerunner is a device about five meters cubed, packed with sensors, which jumps into the outskirts of a system the Toralii wishes to map. They're unarmed.”

  Lieutenant Jiang raised her hand. “Why the outskirts? Why don’t they just jump the Forerunner into the system itself?”

  Rowe spoke up, her tone condescending. “Because they can’t map the Lagrangian points across the huge gulf between solar systems. The distance between stars is just so unimaginably vast that even with the best radio telescopes or whatever, there’s just no way you could accurately predict the location of the points. I mean, heh, when you look at the sky, you’re observing the stars using light that could be dozens of years old—they’ve moved millions of kilometers since then. Even when you’re looking directly at them, the stars aren’t where you see they are!”

  Rowe, her rant complete, flopped back in her chair very disrespectfully. Still, Liao gave her a curt nod.

  “Thank you, Summer.” Then, coughing politely, Liao addressed the rest of the briefing.

  “So, yes. The Forerunners are designed to perform a fly-through of all the planets in the system, including a close-up pass of the central star, calculating the jump points for all gravity wells in the system and collecting a whole host of other data: mineral composition of the planets, their moons, atmospheric information and climate, radiation levels—more than we can get with our best spectrometers. Once it’s done, it finds the nearest Lagrangian point and jumps back to report its findings. The process takes about a year.

  “If intelligent life is detected, the probe is generally sent right back to the new system to become a permanent observer. Based on Saara’s information, we know that there is a Forerunner somewhere in this system. Given that our Earth-based astronomers haven’t discovered it yet, it’s probably out by Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto… or hiding out in the asteroid belt.”

  Rowe looked ready to raise her hand, but Liao cut her off.

  “But that’s unlikely since it can’t jump from there. We know it’s operational; Saara has confirmed that the Toralii strike fleets were communicating with a Forerunner, so wherever it is, it’s talking to the Toralii when they visit the system. Unfortunately, its location was unknown to her, so it falls to us to find it.”

  Liao pointed her laser at the screen, tracing the bright-green dot between all the planets in the solar system. “Accordingly, our primary objective is to find and capture our system’s Forerunner if we’re able, destroy it if we are not, or drive it away in the worst case. This is not as simple as it sounds; the Forerunners are programmed to jump to another in-system Lagrangian point if a hostile ship comes within fifty thousand kilometres. For obvious reasons, this makes them pretty hard to get close to. Fortunately, Captain Grégoire and Miss Rowe have come up with a plan. Captain?”

  James stood, and Liao handed him her laser pointer, moving to one side to give him room to speak. She folded her hands behind her back, watching silently as James took over the presentation.

  The laser pointer’s fine, green dot moved from one Lagrangian point to another as James spoke.

  “This will be a joint operation between the Tehran, the Beijing and—at long last—the TFR Sydney, who is finally out of dry dock. I have it on very good authority that the youngest member of the fleet is going to show her face at this party, fashionably late, but she’s bringing a consolation prize.” Grégoire beckoned to the crowd of people. “And it’s a prize we all get to share. I’d like to introduce you all to Major Alex Aharoni, from the Israeli Air and Space Arm.”

  A short but handsome Arabic man stood, grinning widely. The man wore the uniform of an Israeli pilot rather than the TFR’s standard uniform, which immediately drew some disapproving looks.

  “Please”—the man held up his bronzed hands—“call me Jazz.”

  Liao cocked an eyebrow, regarding the newcomer, “Jazz? Is that your”—she made little finger quotes—“‘call sign’ or something?”

  “Yep. Had it since flight school. Got it because I can play jazz piano, and back in Tel Aviv, there was this smoking hot bar skank who would totally leap straight onto your cock if you played an instrument, so one night I—”

  Liao cut him off. “Thank you, Alex… Jazz. Whatever.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Whatever. You’ll fit in just fine. It’s not li
ke we don’t already have one immature but talented person aboard.” Liao cast a look towards Rowe, who was sitting behind Aharoni and appeared to be actively—and over-eagerly, in Liao’s opinion—checking out the pilot’s tight backside. When Rowe caught Liao’s glance, she put on a “What, me?” look.

  Aharoni took a mock bow, much to Rowe's viewing pleasure, and then sat down. He had a proud grin on his face that caused Liao’s blood pressure to spike.

  Grégoire continued, shaking his head at the pilot’s display.

  “Anyway, based on technology recovered from the Toralii wreck from the Battle of Jupiter, the Task Force’s top scientists—along with some brought in from the EU—have supplied us with our own strike craft based on modified prototypes the Iranians were building. They call it the SSF-01 Wasp, and they’re supplying the fleet of twenty-four during our next resupply run. That’s eight for each ship.”

  Aharoni chimed in. “The eight strike craft assigned to the Beijing are piloted by the best sticks in the Israeli Air Force. Of course, that’s only for the Beijing and the Sydney—for obvious reasons, the Islamic Republic of Iran felt that stationing Israeli pilots aboard the ship named after their capitol would be… unwise, so they’re providing their own—ahem, inferior—pilots.”

  Liao felt mildly annoyed that the Iranians were being so stubborn about this and equally annoyed at Aharoni’s quip regarding their skill.

  Saara, obviously confused about the situation, spoke up. All eyes fell on her—for most of them, this was the first time they had heard the Toralii language, and none but Liao and Yu understood it.

  “Awesome,” whispered Rowe, enthralled.

  Liao translated. “Saara was just asking why the animosity exists between those two nations.” She turned to the Toralii. “Well, it’s a conflict going back almost a hundred years without a real resolution in sight. The two nations have been to war several times—”

  “Which started with Israel responding to Arabic aggression—” Aharoni opined, drawing a dark frown from Doctor Saeed.

  “Who themselves were responding to the forced seizure and colonization of their lands,” countered Saeed, leaning forward in his chair, “and the creation of an artificial state in already settled territory backed by the combined might of the world’s superpowers… superpowers who simply displaced those already living there—”

  “Living in territory promised to the Jewish people, as their sovereign territory, by God himself! Israel is a sovereign nation, and it has a right to exist!”

  Saeed’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Well, when God’s handing out the real estate contracts, who are we mortals to quarrel with His dictions?”

  Aharoni looked ready to continue, but Liao held up her hands for calm.

  “Enough.”

  She gave each of the two men a long, determined stare. “I know there’s a lot of animosity between your two peoples, but right now, we are all human beings in this crisis”—a nod to Saara—“more or less, so I want you two to put aside your differences and behave yourselves while you serve on this ship. I know it’s not enough to say that you’ll simply abandon nigh on a century of anger, but for the moment, I need you two working together against a common enemy, not squabbling amongst yourselves.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Good.”

  Liao stepped back again, giving Grégoire a nod and letting him speak once more.

  “Now… to the other part of the Sydney’s treat. At 0500 tomorrow, we’re equipping all three Pillars of the Earth with close-range autocannons for point defence. The Sydney had her chassis modifications this morning, and she’s looking sexy in her new skirt. Task Force Command was concerned that, during the Battle of Jupiter, if the Toralii strike craft had gotten close to the ship, we wouldn’t have had any means of hitting them aside from nuking ourselves. The autocannons are designed to counteract this deficiency. Originally, we weren’t anticipating strike craft, but now that we know the Toralii use them, we’ll adjust our tactics accordingly.”

  “Yeah, we were totally ‘point defenceless’ before, huh?” offered Rowe, laughing at her own joke. Nobody else except Aharoni laughed.

  When the two-person mirth died down, Liao gestured again to the screen.

  “So, we have new weapons, new tactics, new crew members, and we have a goal. The Forerunner in our system could be hiding anywhere, but there are only so many Lagrangian points in the system, so we’ll find it eventually. But, of course, it’s not just a matter of finding the ship. We know that the Forerunners will simply jump to another point if threatened. Obviously, our ships can only be in one place at a time, so the plan is this.”

  She pointed to the Martian L1 Lagrangian point, the one between Mars and the Sun. “Tomorrow the Tehran, the Beijing, and the Sydney will take up position here. All three ships will be within weapons range of the Lagrangian point, but none so close that its mass would interfere with a potential jump-in… a few thousand kilometres or so. All the crews will be sitting at general quarters for some time, so make sure you all get a good night’s rest beforehand.”

  Grégoire motioned with the laser pointer, drawing green trails out from Mars to each of the planets in the solar system.

  “All three ships will use their rail guns to fire nukes at each of the Lagrangian points in the solar system. Given the distances between those points, some nukes will be travelling faster than others; the idea is to time their arrivals so that all nukes arrive roughly together—within a minute or two, give or take. The whole process will take about three days for the first nukes, travelling at one-tenth the speed of light, to reach the Neptunian Lagrange points.”

  Grégoire paused a moment to let the information sink in and then continued. “For the empty jump points, the shock wave, heat, radiation, and EM disturbance should prevent a jump-in at that location for a few hours; if the Forerunner is there, we anticipate it’ll jump away long before the nuke hits.”

  Aharoni spoke up. “So I’m guessing the plan is to force the Forerunner to jump to another point, right as that point—no matter what point that is—is about to be nuked. So that no matter where it goes, we kill it after it jumps.”

  Rowe raised her hand, looking to Grégoire. “Sorry, Captain, but that sounds pretty risky. The mathematics of hitting every Lagrangian point in the whole solar system is fairly simple, and we can be precise about that, but what’s to say that the Forerunner can’t detect that there’s no safe point in the system and jump away to another system? I’m guessing you want to force the Forerunner into the sole un-nuked jump point so we can capture it, but what’s to stop it simply jumping away to another system and returning with a whole Toralii fleet?”

  Liao gave a wide, savage grin that surprised even herself. “Actually, that’s plan B, and in a strange way, we’re counting on it.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  “Hang on, just a few months ago, you were fucking spazzing out because one of their scout ships nearly got away—and now you want to deliberately lure their whole fleet to you?”

  Liao folded her arms in front of her, nodding firmly.

  “That’s correct. If it comes to that, we’ll make our stand at Mars. Because of the nuke strike, we’ll have disabled all the jump points in the system for a time… enough to effectively make a choke point to get into the system. This choke point will be our kill zone. We’ll have all three ships, along with our strike fighters, to blast anything that comes through that point straight to hell. There’s even talk of establishing terrestrial missile batteries on the surface of Mars and its moons to help out.”

  Rowe tilted her head to one side. “The report Saara wrote says that the Toralii have ‘huge fleets.’ That sounds… well, bad for us. What if they keep coming?”

  “Then we keep shooting,” offered Grégoire. “Although if we get overwhelmed, we nuke the points to temporarily prevent reinforcements from coming in. Fleet Command doesn’t anticipate more than one sh
ip coming through at once, so our control over the flow of battle will be very good. Additionally, the ships that jump through have no way of warning the ships that have yet to come through. So if we start to get overwhelmed, we nuke the point and finish off what’s left.”

  “Okay, okay… um.”

  Summer held up her hand, taking a moment to compose her thoughts, and then continued.

  “So we’re going to nuke the hell out of the points. That’s fine… fairly sure it’ll work, but that seems like a temporary solution; what happens when the radiation dissipates, mmm? How long’s that going to take? A couple of days, tops? Then the Toralii will have any number of jump points to come in through, and we’ll be utterly fucked. Seems as though we’re just delaying the inevitable.”

  Saara spoke again, and Liao translated.

  “Saara reminds us that the Toralii will be expecting a no-contest victory. A pronounced defeat will send them reeling, and they will be far more cautious in the future. Their navies are powerful, but they as a society are still quite fractured despite their proclaimed unity.”

  Liao gave a low chuckle. “That, and they haven’t been beaten in a while. If we bloody their noses, there’s a good chance that they’ll want to send in another Forerunner before committing more warships to the fight. Once they see that we’re kicking back, there’s a good chance they might back off entirely. Still, even if they don’t, we have an ace up our sleeves.”

  Rowe tossed her hair. “Right, right.” She gestured down at her handout. “I’m guessing that is this part here, which says something about gravity mines?”

  Liao pointed directly to Rowe. “That’s right. One more thing I’m going to throw on your plate. In order to secure a long-term lockdown of this whole system, we’re going to lay mines in each and every point we think they can use. The mines will take the form of modified Reactionless Drives, designed to mess up the jump points by emitting a randomly fluctuating gravimetric pulse. Then we’ll have full control over this whole system. If someone wants to jump in, they’d have to do it through a point we control or spend decades cruising in from deep space. If they do that, we’ll have plenty of warning due to our long-range optical telescopes.”

  Rowe nodded her head thoughtfully and didn’t have an answer right away.

  Grégoire clicked off the laser pointer and handed it back to Liao, who tucked it into her pocket, took a breath, and addressed the assembled staff.

  “Now, tasks. We have a lot to do before we move on the Forerunner, so we all need to be putting in long days until we’re good to go. Major Aharoni, I want you to coordinate with Lieutenant Jiang to work out how best to integrate our strike craft into our tactical environment. Organize drills and training; I want the whole strike wing functioning at top efficiency when this party picks up.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Very good. Summer, I want you continuing to work with the engineering teams and seeing what useful intelligence or, in particular, hardware we can get out of the wreckage we have on board. I want you to work with Saara on this; have Lieutenant Yu work with you and translate.”

  “Sure.”

  Saara gave her acknowledgement.

  Liao gave a nod to Lieutenant Dao and the rest of the operations room crews for the Tehran and the Sydney. “Have the navigation teams plot out courses for the nukes and for all three ships. Double- and triple-check everything; we have to get this right the first time. The ship’s computer cores should be able to provide sufficient processing power for any simulation you need. Work with Summer to make sure you’ve got it right, but don’t take away from her work on the Toralii wreckage.”

  Rowe snorted with laughter. “A Commodore 64 was enough to put man on the moon, Captain. The hundreds of gigahertz of processing power we have here will be more than enough.”

  Liao let the slightest grin play on her lips. “Good. Then I expect no mistakes.”

  She gestured to Warrant Officer Cheung, whom she had appointed to be head of the ship’s marines after the incident with Sheng and the mutiny.

  “Warrant Officer, I want you to run daily drills: counter-insurgency and boarding actions. According to Saara, the Toralii quite favour boarding enemy ships and destroying them from the inside out—I want double guards on our power plants and missile tubes. On the day, if there are any intruders, I want you to be quick and brutal; trap them behind bulkheads if they’re deep in the ship’s belly or activate the fire-suppression protocols and vent them straight into space if they’re near the outer hull. Fire fights are a last resort.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  More tasks were given out, and every section of the crew had something to do. There was a moment of silence as Liao let everyone digest their orders.

  “If there are no more questions, then we’re dismissed.”

  Liao watched as the combined senior staff of the Beijing and the Tehran got up and filed out of the room, leaving her alone. She spent some time in the empty room, mentally revising the plan over and over in her head, trying to work out any complications or problems with it.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was better than doing nothing. It was better than cowering forever, living as a nail constantly waiting for a hammer. The Toralii had wisdom of a sort, but the very nature of humankind required them to investigate everything—every opportunity, every threat—and to confront it. It was just a fundamental urge, a base, primal drive found in all humans.

  Liao’s mind turned back to the very first humans in Africa and how those primitive people had fought their way out of the continent and then tamed the land, encountered, fought, and overcame innumerable dangers, including a devastating ice age. Humans survived as they always seemed to do despite their fragile bodies, going on to further harness their environment, to produce crops and food to sustain themselves, to develop agriculture.

  Agriculture changed humans more than almost any other invention; it allowed some to cater to the many so that the remainder could devote their time to specialization and develop skills, such as tailoring and blacksmithing, that improved the group’s overall chance of survival, their comfort, and their technology. From there grew other more cerebral pursuits serving to sharpen the society’s intellect: philosophy, science, art, and music. Armed with their intelligence, humans had taken control of their entire planet, Earth, and were now her uncontested leaders.

  Earth. The cradle of humanity, the birthplace of the entire species. Without it, they were nothing. Liao pulled out a notepad and scribbled a small message in the corner.

  We must succeed.

  She slashed three lines underneath the sentence for emphasis.

  Chapter IX

  Old Wars with Young Soldiers