B. Larson - Rebellion

My eyes snapped open again at that. Prior agreements? At first, I thought they meant the agreements they had with us. What deal had they made that indicated they could not provide covering fire? Were they worried they would hit some of my men as we launched our assault?

“Explain the nature of your prior agreements pertinent to this decision.”

There was a hesitation. I knew I had whatever served these robots for a central brain churning with that one.

“Request denied. Arrangements with other states are not to be shared with Kyle Riggs.”

I froze as I suddenly, completely, got it. They weren’t talking about a deal they had with us, they were talking about a deal they had with them. Whoever was in those satellites had negotiated a peace of some kind-a truce. Probably, the Macros had promised not to attack the satellites. Maybe at the point they had agreed, the Macros had been losing, or didn’t have the full power of their fleet here yet to finish the job.

I looked down at the big screen, which shifted now to give us a visual on each of the planets. The two closest to the star looked desertous, like Mars, but there were still icecaps, feathery clouds and some visible, muddy oceans. The three in the center, including the twin worlds, were verdant and gorgeous. I saw my first blue alien oceans, with thick clouds and green continents.

The one we were streaking toward was mostly white, being a colder world. I imagined that arctic sheets of ice spanned most of the planet. It was a big world covered with dark, craggy mountains. A dozen narrow seas glinted between the peaks at the center of the world, like a belt of jewels. It appeared habitable, but mostly around the equator.

The Macros planned to use us to finish off the people who lived here, whoever they were. I could see it all in my mind now. The desperate leaders of these lovely worlds had negotiated at some point in the past. They had made a grim deal with the Macros, just as I had when we faced extinction. They had forged a peace treaty to save their own skins. They’d given up the surface of all six of their worlds, which were now overrun with Macros, and agreed to keep only their satellite habitats. They’d made the deal in good faith, probably years ago.

And the Macros were going use us to break the peace. We were not Macros, and so we were not included as part of the deal.

The assault ships returned from the rescue mission less than an hour before the Macros had indicated we were expected to launch. We quickly loaded each of the ships with a complement of twenty marines. Less than a hundred and fifty men, and everything depended on them. I ordered the rest to follow in their wakes. Two hundred more marines would fly in their tiny capsules behind each of the assault ships.

Warrant Officer Sloan was among the survivors the ships brought in. I had to smile at that. He had jumped out of his hovertank and survived when it had flipped over right in front of me, back in the Helios campaign. Here, he had survived again, against all odds. He wasn’t even in bad shape, considering he’d spent three days in emergency survival mode, floating in space.

I met with him as they unloaded the ships. I clasped his right hand in both of mine.

“Really good to see you, Sloan,” I said, and I meant it.

“Colonel!” he said, looking tired but joyous at having survived. “Your happiness is nothing compared to mine, let me assure you.”

I chuckled. “I believe you. Tell me, what happened to the thousand-odd Worms you took into the void with you?”

His face clouded for a moment. “I almost felt sorry for them. They weren’t wearing vacc-suits-we were. Mostly, we just kept out of their reach until they died. It took a long time for some of them to stop twitching out there.”

I nodded, visualizing the scene. It was not pretty.

“We calculated you had enough power to run the rebreathers for a week, but what about heat, water, food?”

“Mostly, we starved and dehydrated. A few tried to synthesize Worm meat into distilled water. It just ran their suit power down, as the meat was frozen. We waited out there floating in chains, linking our arms together. We never really thought there would be a rescue, but only a few opened their suits and committed suicide. We told stories and watched the ring. When your ships came through, we started taking turns increasing the power on our suit transmissions, taking the chance someone would hear.”

“If we survive and see Earth again,” I said, “I’m going to see every one of your men get a commendation.”

“At least there are no sharks in space, sir,” Sloan said with a weak grin.

Oh, but there are, I thought, but I laughed at his joke and guided them to the infirmary. Some actually tried to volunteer for assault ship duty, but I refused them. They had to rest up for the next battle. They were my reserve force. They didn’t argue.

I headed back to the command brick with a heavy heart. We had less than half an hour to go before the assault began. In all my recent years of hard decisions, this one topped my list. I realized I would have to decide if the Star Force marines would be a tool in the cold, heartless, metal claws of the Macros once again. I had never created this army for this purpose. I had never meant for things to go this way. I imagined many historical commanders had felt the same dismay I felt right now when they realized their beloved armies had been misused by others. I recalled the German general, Choltitz, who had disobeyed his orders to blow up Paris when forced to retreat.

My decision involved even bigger stakes, however. If I played this badly, I could cause millions back home to die. I hardened my heart. The aliens who were so clearly on their knees here had to suffer, so my own people didn’t suffer. Extinction is a hard thing to be a part of, but I decided I would be the one responsible for the extinction of another species, rather than my own. I cajoled myself with promises. I would try an attack and see how it went. We didn’t have to kill everyone. With luck, they would surrender. Perhaps there would only be one attack required to end this. Such pretty lies we tell ourselves, sometimes.

“How are things shaping up, Gorski?” I asked as I stepped onto the command brick. The big screen showed all twenty-one planets clearly now, all various shapes and sizes. Both the enemy target and the Macro cruisers in the system were centered around the six worlds in the habitable warm-water zone. There was just one cruiser in orbit here, and it was parked on the far side of the planet.

“A lot of things the Macros have hinted at make sense now, sir,” he said. “We are going to sail right by the target. At the exact minute they’ve indicated, we will fire our invasion forces laterally toward the target. The assault ships can glide in over half the distance, more or less invisible in space as small, cold objects. We’ll look like a storm of ice particles. But when they get in close, they’ll have to fire our engines up to slow down, or risk being smashed into the target hull. We’ll see if they sense us and shoot us down then.”

I nodded. “What about the eighth assault ship?” I asked.

“It won’t make it back in time,” Gorski said. “We’ll have to do this op with seven.”

“We don’t have any choice, do we sir?” Major Sarin asked.

“What’s that?” I asked. “We always have a choice, Major.”

Sarin and I locked gazes for a second, then she dropped her eyes back to her screen.

“We’re slave troops, aren’t we, Colonel?” Gorski asked me suddenly.

I turned to him. “What?”

“I used to think we were mercenaries-that was bad enough. But we are worse than that. We have no choices. We get no pay. We must fight or our families die back home. I wonder what kind of deal those people made to stay alive.”