Assassin Page 24

  “War! Can you believe it? I’ve been waiting all my life!” It’s an overexcited ensign, who’s hardly been in the worlds long enough to get his ears wet. He’s not alone. Most men at the table are war virgins.

  “Be careful what you wish for, son.” It’s a destroyer captain, looking dourly at the young ensign who just declared news of the coming Great War in Orion to be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

  “I’m just saying…”

  “Remember, we lost the last two Orion Wars. Not by much, but still. We lost them.” He’s wrong. The Third Orion War was drawn out and brutal, but ended in a stalemate. Even if Grünen don’t remember it that way. All they recall and speak of is the ‘Lost Children’ worlds. It’s a rare example of writing loser history even when you didn’t lose. It’s a sure mark of an insecure culture.

  “We’ll win this time!”

  “Why? What’s so different.”

  “This time, the Daurans will be on our side, not fighting for the squids in another alliance of fucking everybody against us. It’ll be a fair fight!”

  “Fairness has nothing to do with war, kid. Dump that idea right now. The way you win at war is to make sure it’s not a fair fight. Jump the other guy, and we call it ‘strategic surprise.’ Beat him to death when you have greater numbers, like in a gang banging, and we call it ‘superior concentration of forces.’”

  “Besides, you can’t be happy to be allied with those vile farfolk. They stain our honor!” The speaker is commander of a marine brigade. He already made two combat jumps into hot Krevan air space, at Genève and then at the third ice moon in Aral. He’s proud, but he’s not stupid. And he’s not looking forward to his third hot jump in less than a year since his unit went active.

  “I’ll say! Popov shits! My great, great grandfather left a vid saying how nasty they are. He fought ‘em in the last war. Said they never took our guys prisoner.” That’s a First Officer on an oversize troopship that’s going to carry the marine colonel into a hot assault on Narym. Both men will be part of the first wave attacks. The one whose dropships usually get hit the hardest, even if they go in with initial surprise. They know it from experience. They landed on Aral, and got murdered.

  “Sure, OK. But professionally speaking, doesn’t it tip the balance in our favor to have them with us and not against us? It has to!” The young ensign again. He’s on his first tour and should just shut up. He blanches when he realizes it. He guesses that everybody is smirking that he’s a combat virgin. He doesn’t know that so are most of the men gathered around a large scotch canister on the collapsible carbyne table. Two more empties are pushed to the table’s end.

  The conversation jumps back to the destroyer captain, the oldest officer in the hard drinking group and the most experienced in the Krevan War. He was Trojan Squadron commander when Beta escaped from Genève system. An incompetent admiral tried to blame the chase fiasco on him, but in the end paid with his life. The gambit didn’t work, but the destroyer captain’s career is badly damaged anyway: the fucker was another royal, a damned Oetkert cousin.

  “It could make the difference, yes. Although we don’t yet know how well Daurans can fight. It has been a very long time since anyone did, until the Krevan War started.”

  They all respectfully defer.

  Alright, not everybody.

  Not a drunk marine major.

  He’s pissed, and pissed off.

  He’s going to make his first hot jump

  Falling like a brick onto Katsina.

  He’s drinking elderberry brandy.

  He’s a marine. You find the exact type in every corps, regardless of color weaves. Shoot first, and never ask any questions or entertain any mission doubt. Fall out of the sky tomorrow and wreak devastation on a peaceful world you’ve never been to before. But get blind, stinking drunk on its famous elderberry brandy first, to pretend you’re paying Katsina due respect before you help destroy it.

  “Those dog eaters? I doubt they can fight at all.”

  “Easy major, they’re our allies now. Let’s give them a chance.”

  “Fuck you! If you think I’m gonna put up with Dauran dog eaters!”

  Every army has them. Can’t make a war without them. Strap up and jump out the skycraft when ordered. Don’t ask any fucking questions! Especially not the right questions. You’re a marine. Jump and fight. But get drunk the night before. Mask all that doubt and guilty fear. Never admit to anything. Stupid fucker.

  “Going down to Katsina, are you? First combat drop? Good man. Don’t worry, I was nervous, too, before the Krevan War started.” Troopship captain. He’s an ‘Old Moustache,’ as prewar veterans are called with affection by the hordes of new men. He saw his first action at Aral, where his ship got shot up pretty badly over top the second ice moon. He still hasn’t told anyone that he panicked, let go all his marine dropships too soon, so that they burned up in the lunar atmosphere while he skedaddled. Real fast, on all out fusion thrusters. No evasives, just white hot bail out speed. Didn’t stop burning for two hours. He wants to confess. Feels an urgency to do it. So instead he has another drink.

  The uncertain ensign feels compelled to recover reputation, incongruously thinking that he ever had one. He gulps a glass of liquid courage to conceal his embarrassment. He blurts an objection to the idea this expanded war might not go well. “We’re whipping Krevo! We’ll whip the squids, too!”

  An inexperienced First Officer at the back agrees, making the ensign’s chest swell. But his own destroyer captain doesn’t. He again cautions the group, but maybe too cryptically. “We Grünen are fire. Daurans and Calmaris are ice.”

  “What the fuck does that mean? No disrespect, sir.” It’s the drunk marine major, showing grave disrespect as he chugs down a fifth tumbler of Katsina elderberry brandy. Tough guy, maybe. Or is he too afraid? It’s looking like all his vile cussing and violent boasting is just as much liquid courage as all the rest.

  “At first, fire melts ice. But in the end, ice crushes more than fire can burn. It brings down mountains and flattens continents. It fills out planet rings and vast oort clouds. Ice is all around us. There’s more ice than fire in Orion.”

  “Well then,” the frigate First Officer rejoinders, “we should be glad Daura fights on our side this time. Fire-and-ice joined together can’t be stopped!”

  Emboldened by flank support, feeling a hot burn from the scotch, the ensign persists. “Yeah! How can we lose?”

  Before the destroyer captain can answer, a kindlier marine jumps in. “Sure kid, we’re gonna win. It’ll be hard, but we should win.” Then he rolls a surprise: “Unless the popov fuckers betray us. Wanna lay down some credits on that?”

  “Screw betrayal. What matters is that they’re all hermits, with outdated war tek to match.” Marine major, again. He really is a bitter cud. And he’s drunk, way ahead of the rest. Can’t handle elderberry brandy, it seems. Get smashed on Baku or just any old scotch, OK we get it. But elderberry brandy?

  “Yes, they’re backward. But they fought us to a standstill in the last Orion War.” Troopship captain won’t let it go. His gloomy persistence, his dwelling on the negative, is really getting on the marine major’s nerves. Good thing he doesn’t know what Onur thinks about the Imperium’s chances in this war!

  “That was 300 years ago! War has changed since then. It’ll be different this time. We don’t need the hermits. When my boys make the jump, we won’t want dog eater Daurans with us!”

  “War never changes, major. It’s timeless in its uncertainty. We don’t know how well...”

  “Pahhh! Your new ships and my men’s body armor change everything. We’re unstoppable!”

  “The enemy also has new style warships and body armor.”

  “I agree with the major! I can’t wait until we get the ‘Go!’ order. Neither can my men! All hail Pyotr!” It’s a Rikugun captain who came into the officer’s mess because he heard there’s serious drinking going on here. He grabs a glass and pour
s a triple scotch, so he can catch up fast.

  “It’s war at last. At long last! Hurrah!” The ensign goes for broke, foregoing argument to come full circle to his original point, just before he takes a drunken misstep from his last-scotch-too-many and bangs his head on the table as he falls. The destroyer and troopship captains look at him in silent and severe disapproval. So does the marine major, who sees two of him. Most of the others raise glasses to toast each other and Emperor Pyotr Shaka. Then they toast their beloved heimat, and certain victory in the war they’re about to start tomorrow..

  ***

  Onur and his fellow conspirators missed the moment. They’re unable to stop Pyotr’s alliance with Jahandar or the twin tyrant’s initiation of the Fourth Orion War. Imperium memexes calls the pact the “Dual Powers.” Alliance broadcasts dub it “a new axis of evil in Orion.” Pyotr’s armies cross deep over the Calmari frontier, disembark into yet more fire and murder. His fleets bombard ground or moon targets, protect the dropships and later, escort convoys to resupply bases and fresh arriving troopships chock with reinforcements. Then the offensive starts to slow, until it’s stopped on Amasia where Rikugun takes huge casualties. The war bots are nearly all gone, burned up in just weeks or months. Flesh cohorts are raised to take their place. A year into the war it still looks like the Imperium is on the march. The halt looks like a pause before a rebuilding storm.

  Alliance counterattacks in Eagle Claws are premature. They’re repulsed in what the Grün memexes and milneb call “The Throwback.” It’s such a catastrophe for the enemy, even Alliance civilian and military nebs call it “The Great Rout.” Rikugun and Kaigun enjoy renewed success nearly everywhere, and where they don’t they lie about it. There’s no chance of wide support for Onur’s coup d’état at the end of Year One, not with farfolk worlds falling to Pyotr’s and Jahandar’s raw aggression once again. Losses are heavy, it’s true. But the war is popular. Onur must wait as conscription and casualties do their ugly work. Amasia is only one of many fronts where black walls burrow deep and frame terrible attrition.

  It’s much harder to recruit members into the Resistance while Onur’s plans and Pyotr’s forces score breakthrough victories deep into Calmari space, while overrunning all Helvetic and Three Kingdoms worlds. Worse, some of the original conspirators start to reconsider their commitment.

  “Am I dreaming, or are we winning this war?”

  “We’ve advanced farther than any of us imagined possible!”

  “I’m loathe to say it, but Pyotr has shown a true genius for war.”

  Onur sinks into darkness. The war he fears will destroy his heimat is here, with his name as author wet on the title page. Most of his generals can only see the nearest conquered world under their feet, not the burning Thousand Worlds to come. After failure of Alliance counteroffensives in Operation Eagle Claws, after Onur designs a brilliant series of counters that cut off and throw the enemy back into rout and crushing defeat, after fresh victories cement pro-war opinion inside the military and across the empire, he knows that the war will go on and on and on. He can’t live with any more success. ‘It must be stopped. Pyotr must be killed. The coup must go ahead, or else what’s our Resistance for?’

  This time he tells Major Oscar Winter: “We have to kill Pyotr at the onset. It’s the only way to rally the military and the nation around our leadership, then somehow find a way back to peace. Contact the Resisters, one-by-one. We must reassemble our plans and try again.”

  “They’re scattered, sir, across fleets and invasion armies all across southeast Orion. It will take time. Security of our associates across so many bohr coms will be much harder than meeting in your study in Main HQ.”

  “The longer we wait, the surer is our doom. Do you remember what the poet wrote, so very long ago? ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’ There is wisdom in that, for us.”

  Major Winter finishes the quotation: “‘On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves.’ You may be right, sir.”

  “How long before we’re ready? Estimate.”

  “A year at least, sir.”

  “Then we best get started. Do it, major. Start spinning the wheel.”

  “Yes sir. The messages will go out.”

  ***

  For a second year, the conspirators are paralyzed by military success, then by slow stalemate on Amasia and a dozen other worlds where fighting is active and heavy. Resisters are dispersed, some into governorships on occupied worlds, or on fighting fronts, or in system patrols, or on convoy escort duty. But it’s more than that. Much more. Early military success is still paralyzing the movement.

  The allure of more victories is too strong.

  The long stalemate doesn’t yet look final.

  Maybe Pyotr can still win this bigger war?

  Maybe the Resistance pessimism is wrong?

  Maybe it just needs one more big push, on Amasia?

  “Gods, think of the huge estates we’ll carve out!”

  They all learned the same fake history of the Third Orion War, about how the Imperium was overmatched by the ‘Auld Alliance of Daura and the Calmar Union and forced to give up the Lost Children worlds. About their forefathers’ defeat and humiliation. They were raised and trained over a lifetime to strike back. They were born into a culture that longs for vengeance. That demands it. Winter and Onur hear it over and over again, from top men who supported the Resistance before the war but now are having second thoughts.

  “Why would we stop, when not a single Alliance boot stands anywhere on Imperium soil?”

  “Why should we stop, when our armies and fleets are everywhere in the enemy’s systems?”

  “What will we do if we have to give up these fine uniforms, commands, and governorships?”

  “Daurans have switched sides from the last war. They fight with us against Calmari and the almost extinct Neutrals whose worlds lie under our combat boots. That must mean something!”

  “Could it mean we can win through to victory, Onur? Instead of falling back into tragedy?” They want to rejoice in the Imperium’s triumphs, but they hesitate, knowing that they’re all Pyotr’s victories, too. They're torn between love of the heimat and contempt for its oily ruler. In the end, victory trumps vice for most. They change sides. They abandon the Resistance.

  “Listen Fidan, our forces are doing well, even if we’re paused. We’ll get the armies moving forward again soon. You’ve been brilliant, just brilliant! They’ll be teaching your superb operations plans in the War Colleges for centuries!”

  “Maybe we were wrong, Fidan. You and Pyotr have led us to victory after victory. We’ve recovered all the Lost Children from the Neutrals, and most of the rest from the Calmar Union. And more, you and Pyotr have added many rich new worlds to the Imperium.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Onur asks them. “The peoples of the Alliance will see the worlds we have taken in this war as their ‘Lost Children,’ leading into the next war. All we have done by winning so much, but not everything, is guarantee endless war, each time worse than the last. We must find another way.”

  “Purity’s boys in SAC won’t stop until Pyotr gives them Amasia. Maybe if we took Amasia, it would be enough, Onur? Then we could negotiate a ceasefire from a position of strength?”

  “It would only whet our appetite for more. You’ve seen how the High Castes and even the Guild Masters salivate over the fazendas they’ll carve out from the worlds we already hold.”

  “You must reconsider your position, Onur. Even if you’re right in the long run, the army will not back a coup. The navy boys are even less eager. They’re all swept up in victory fever.”

  “Then we must wait for their fever to break, until they calm and come to their senses, and can see the disaster that this war will become for us. Dismissed!”

  Unable to do anything to stop the war, the conspirators fiddle whilst half Orion burns. The putschists spend Year Two,
halfway into Year Three, discussing how to restore the Old Order after they win power. They make abstract plans about a perfect society they’ll install once the tide turns against Pyotr and his war.

  Once despair and defeat returns the peoples to sanity.

  Once calamity gives them a realistic chance to act,

  to end Pyotr’s life and regime and recover lost honor.

  Wheel

  Fidan Onur is the hub of a wheel conspiracy, but Oscar Winter is the spokes. Just about all of them. That’s how he and Onur limit potential damage to networks of Resistance, restricting terminal communications to themselves. It means that the whole Resistance network system will fall apart if both men are discovered and arrested. Yet operational security is too important to take a chance, or trust anyone after the failures of Year One and Year Two. Winter’s status as adjutant to the Chief of the Great General Staff is perfect cover for meetings with high level officers. It’s a position so high he’s nearly beyond suspicion, just as Onur’s chieftaincy elevates him past where counterintelligence officers dare to look. All but Takeshi. His mind also works with wheels within wheel conspiracies, and he has long been suspicious of Onur and his aide.

  Onur can’t meet with recruits because he’s too conspicuous. It’s Major Winter who handles communications, in part by cultivating a reputation as a hard drinker. Every night, he goes to the Reserve Officer Club, playing the role Kempeitai spies expect. ROC is a dull, concrete building converted to a shabby hotel drinking hole for wounded officers on medical leave. For thousands of staff, it’s just convenient. Sure, every one is watched entering and leaving, but MI is too sloppy and doesn’t know that it serves as the Resistance hub and meeting place. Officially, recovering officers who go to the club are listed on the Reserve List, awaiting reassignment. Unofficially, nearly a quarter are active in the Resistance.