John Ringo - The Road to Damascus

Brief smiles flickered around the conference room table.

“Thank you,” Abe Lendan said in a low voice. “But I won’t pretend that we,” he gestured to include the rest of his fellow Jeffersonians, “are ready, let alone able, to conduct a defense anywhere close to that level. We’ve kept up the military bases, made sure the home guard trains at least a couple of times a year. But things have been quiet for long enough, people have gotten used to putting all their effort into their homesteads, if they’re Granger-bred, or their jobs, if they live in a city or town. We’ve done so well, we’ve even spawned a growing eco-movement, calling for sensible decisions from the Terraforming Engineers’ Corps. Jefferson has some mighty pretty wild country and we can afford to protect the best of it.”

Simon nodded, although he was aware of subtle shifts in body language and expression that told him not everyone at the table agreed with that assessment. It was something worth paying attention to, certainly, once they got past the immediate crisis. Jefferson might not be quite as “solidly united” as President Lendan had said and there’d been no mention of an eco-movement in his mission briefing, suggesting rapidly changing social dynamics. Which was another good reason to pay attention.

But only after the business at hand was properly settled.

Abe Lendan, too, caught that slight ripple of disagreement, but said only, “So that’s where we stand, Major. If you would be good enough to oblige us with your recommendations?”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” He took a moment to look at each man and woman in turn, matching faces and names, gauging the strength of each face, each set of eyes. These were good people. You could feel it, as well as see it. He would need good people.

“I’ve been assigned to Jefferson on permanent loan to the planetary government,” he began quietly, “along with Unit SOL-0045. As a chartered colony world, Jefferson’s entitled to military defense, but the Concordiat can’t afford to divert ground troops and equipment to provide it, just now. Not even to honor our treaty obligations. But nobody understands better than I do that folks on a frontier get jittery when there’s a war on, particularly one as nasty as this Deng-Melconian mess is turning out to be.”

His listeners shifted uneasily. He wondered just how much of the news from the Melconian front had filtered through to this world, isolated by its position in a pocket of the Silurian Void. “The Melconians are part of the reason I’ve been assigned to you on permanent loan status. There’ve been some ugly things happening along the frontier.” He slipped a data chit into the holo-vid built into the conference room table and touched controls. A 3-D projection sprang to life above the table, showing Jefferson’s primary tucked into its pocket of the Void, beyond which stretched a scattering of other suns, color coded to show ownership. “Human stars are represented in yellow. Deng worlds are coded orange and Melconian star systems are red.” A particularly lurid shade, at that, Simon thought, calculated to achieve maximum emotional impact on anyone looking at this starmap.

General Hightower leaned forward abruptly, shaggy white brows drawn down, eyes hooded. “That can’t be right, Major. This whole section,” he gestured to a deep red bite in what should have been an orange starfield, “was held by the Deng only six months ago.”

Simon nodded, voice grim. “Yes, it was. Six months ago, that was a stable border. Six months ago, we didn’t even realize that most of this,” he pointed to the orange/red demarcation zone, “ was a border. The Melconians are pushing the Deng off their own worlds, at an alarming rate. The last time the Deng crossed our border, to hit these star systems,” Simon indicated a thin yellow necklace dotted here and there with malevolent orange and pulsing crimson beads, “they were after raw materials, manufacturing plants, staging zones from which to launch interstellar raids and war-fleets. Now they’re after habitat, pure and simple. A place to deposit their own refugees while a very nasty fight for the main Deng worlds,” he pointed to a thick cluster of orange, “heats up. That’s why your refugees have been hit so hard. Deng are slaughtering whole human populations, trying to gain a toehold they can hang onto long enough to halt the Melconian advance, which is coming in all the way from Damikuus to Varri.” His hand described a long arc across the upper reaches of the sphere floating above the table, moving from the Deng star system closest to Melconian space to distant Varri, an arc that encompassed a huge chunk of Deng territory.

“We’ve also had stories filtering in from human rim worlds,” he sketched out a line of intermingled yellow, orange, and red star systems, “tales of unexplained atrocities on our mining operations, ships mysteriously lost. We’re finally realizing that much of what we thought was the border between human and Deng space, is actually the boundary between human and Melconian space. Fortunately for us, Jefferson’s on the back side of the Void, as viewed from the Deng frontier.” He touched star clusters on both sides of the immense black stretch of starless space. “Even more fortunately, the Melconians are on the far side of the Deng, but that could shift fast, given the reports we’ve received about heavy fighting between them, all along here.” He traced a line along the very edge of the human frontier, from Yarilo past Charmak, ending with the Erdei system, which was spatially the closest Deng star to Jefferson’s primary.

Dwight Hightower sucked in his breath, seeing the danger at once. “My God! If they pushed the Deng back to Erdei, they could come at us from behind, by way of Ngara!” He was pointing at the Ngara binary, which had two habitable worlds, Mali and Vishnu, which were Jefferson’s only neighbors in the tiny peninsula of space stuck like a small boy’s thumb into a very dark plum pie. “If the Melconians pulled that off,” the white-haired general said in a hushed, horrified voice, “we couldn’t possibly get the civilian populations of these two star systems out. Not with the Deng and the Void blocking retreat. Lose Ngara and there’s nowhere else to go.”

“Precisely, sir,” Simon said grimly. He hated the frightened stares everyone in the room had leveled at that holo-vid. Hated them, because there was so little he could do to reassure them. “That is the biggest long-term danger to this whole region of space. Of course, at this stage in the war, a pincer movement by Melconians to cut off the entire Dezelan Promontory,” he pointed to that thumblike projection of inhabited space sticking into the Void, “is not the most likely threat to Jefferson. Certainly not during the next few months. But the Melconians can move fast and it will probably occur to the Deng, as well, so kindly don’t put it out of your minds as we develop and implement defensive strategies.”

“How likely is it,” President Lendan asked, expression thoughtful, “that the Deng might try it? Cutting us off, I mean, with that pincer movement you mentioned?”

“It depends on how disorganized and rushed they are, by what’s happening back here, though this sector.” He spread his hand out across the sizeable chunk of Deng territory between Erdei and Varri, much of it abruptly up for grabs in a brutal three-way war. “This is a lot of space in which to produce angry, disgruntled, and vengeful Deng, out to recoup losses any way they can. And that’s the biggest danger Jefferson faces, just now. So,” Simon met Abe Lendan’s gaze once more, “that’s what we’re up against and I’m pretty much all Sector Command can afford to send out here.”

The universal looks of dismay caused Simon to hurry on. “The good news is this.” He pointed to the vast darkness between all that chaos and Jefferson’s faint little yellow sun. “The gas and debris in the Silurian Nebula have made crossing the Void a navigational hazard worse than just about anything else in human space, with the possible exception of Thule, where we first got wind of the Melconians’ existence.” He pointed to a small yellow sun on the far side of the Void. “The Void will make it harder for the Deng or the Melconians to mount a large-scale assault. They probably won’t want to risk an entire armada or even a major battle group, which evens the odds, a bit. We can’t rule out a sneak attack, of course, given conditions on the Deng side of the Void. Desperate commanders take desperate measures.”