John Ringo - Cally's War

The completed profiles had finally come in this morning, but his scheduled work with Makepeace had meant he couldn’t go over them during the day. They were arriving in Titan orbit tomorrow afternoon, and he wanted the list done before they landed. Five more of their people had arrived on Titan while he was on Earth, and he wanted to know what he was looking at before he met them.

It was a frustrating task because of their near total lack of information about the goals and motives of the enemy, beyond knowing that those goals included espionage against Federation military and civil government organizations, which in itself was enough to suggest unfriendly and likely hostile intentions. Their best guess so far was that someone in the humanist fringe had finally gotten organized, a thought that was frightening, given the number of feral Posleen that were still on Earth and other planets, and the extent to which Earth’s defenses against a resurgence still depended heavily on purchase of Galtech technology and equipment.

Constant vigilance against reorganization of the Posleen, including retaking previously conquered Galactic Federation real estate, was Fleet and Fleet Strike’s highest priority. Each and every feral Posleen was a potential danger because each was born with the fundamental knowledge of the species. While most feral Posleen were the moronic and barely sentient normals, all Posleen were hermaphrodites who could self-fertilize in a pinch. A single smart God King could potentially rebuild the entire ravening hoard.

Consequently, the first part of his task was to list all the humanist connections of the various personnel, and the second to list anything that stood out in the personnel or their friends and relatives as having any discontent with the Federation.

It made for a long list, and a late night. Anders, for example, had a brother and a second cousin who were humanists, the brother more active, but she and her brother were allegedly estranged and hadn’t spoken in years. Could be true. Could be a cover. Baker’s family were Indianapolis Urbies and apparently apolitical. Carlucci had no family, and no close friends outside Fleet Strike. Sergeant Franks had a humanist wife who was profiled in the report as also believing the aliens were in league with the Masons, the Illuminati, and Satan — your typical, garden-variety humanist nut. It certainly made him a security risk. The rest was more of the same. Even Makepeace had a neighbor the next farm over with a humanist daughter. Out of fifteen people in the office, twelve had some sort of documented humanist connection. The other three, well, you never could tell, could you?

Titan Base had the worst case of smog in the inhabited universe. Approaching from the black of space, the glowing blue edge of the nitrogen atmosphere looked almost Earth-like, but the orange-brown layer of hydrocarbon smog, so thick as to be visually impenetrable, would have made prewar Los Angeles or Mexico City, or present day Chicago, look like sparkling bastions of atmospheric cleanliness.

The shuttle didn’t bother with artificial gravity, so the first part of their descent into Titan’s atmosphere felt like riding up a steep hill, “down” being in the direction of the backs of their seats. Pryce had let her have the window seat, and Cally stared out the window in what she hoped was not complete tourist goggling. In fifty-one years of a life that in many ways had made ordinary cosmopolitan sophistication look positively cloistered, this was her first time off-planet. Fortunately, it was also Sinda’s first time off-planet, so she didn’t really need to restrain natural curiosity and excitement too much.

The lieutenant reached over her shoulder, pointing at a fluffy white mass. “Look, a cloud. We don’t see too many of those.”

“It’s methane, isn’t it?” She stared out the window.

“Yes, ma’am.”

As they moved into the heavy brown haze, they also curved around into the nighttime side of the moon. The outside blackened. Unfortunately, they were at the wrong angle for her window to have a view of Saturn. They crested the “hill” of freefall and then started “down,” pressing lightly forward against their five-point seatbelts as the shuttle began braking.

“Will we be able to see Saturn from the base?” She craned her neck to see if there was anything interesting still visible through the darkened window.

“Only as an occasional hazy bright spot in the dark, ma’am.” He smiled regretfully. “Other than that and the Sun for a couple of days when we’re close to noon, it’s pretty much like living in an underwater birdcage with a blanket thrown over it. Well, if the bird had electric lighting,” he added, grinning.

Landing was a couple of muffled thumps, and, at one-seventh her accustomed weight, did feel extraordinarily like being at the bottom of a swimming pool.

“And now is when we’re glad for the warmth of our silks,” he said.

“How cold is it?”

“Outside? About minus one-forty C. In the tube to the dome, a handful of degrees below zero.” He unbuckled his seat belt and stood.

“Brrrr.” She shuddered. “They can’t get it warmer?”

“Won’t.” He shrugged. “It’s a safety issue. The whole base is built on various ices. One of our biggest engineering challenges, besides the overpressure, is minimizing heat leakages that could destabilize the ground underneath us.”

“Couldn’t they insulate? Or float?” As she stood, she had to reach back and rub the achey place at the base of her spine.

“Oh, they do insulate, ma’am. Believe me they do. This platform and the base itself are actually about fifty feet off the ground, to let air circulate underneath. Short term, you can build on the ground, and it’s not as much of a problem with ground research vehicles because they move. But you just don’t want to put a big hot spot on top of ice for a few centuries. Flotation was one of the designs considered, but ultimately discarded. Something about gravitational effects and stability issues.”

“It’s all ice? There isn’t, well, rock underneath it?” She looked as if she couldn’t quite grasp the concept.

“Some. Not enough,” he said.

“And can’t the Crabs do gravity?”

“Sure, and they did, for the base itself. I think cost considerations counted a lot in the choice of the final design.” He motioned her out into the aisle in front of him.

The chill bit at her cheeks and nose and she could see her breath as they made the short walk, with the other passengers, through the tube into the main dome of Titan Base. The air smelled vaguely like a gas station.

“What’s the smell?” She wrinkled her nose and waved a hand at the air.

“Leakage. With this much overpressure, there’s bound to be some. It’s a trade-off. They could have made the place more leak proof, but it would have cost a lot more. Or so I’m told.” He gripped her elbow as they crossed a red line on the floor and full gravity returned abruptly.

She’d been expecting it and hadn’t expected to fall at all, but suddenly she stumbled against him as her elbow tingled where he’d touched it as though she’d just touched a live wire. She was suddenly short of breath and she actually blushed as he steadied her back on her feet. What the hell? He’s not that attractive. Okay, he smells pretty nice. Check that. Real good. But so what. My God, what is wrong with me? Must be the excitement of my first trip off-planet. Who’da thunk?

As they moved from the tube through the doors into the shuttle port, and then through the double-glass doors out of the arrival area, the temperature warmed quite a bit, but she could still see her breath. The air felt heavy, cold and heavy.