The Unincorporated Woman Read online

  Gupta nodded.

  Trang shook his head. “It’s a mistake of impudence. Sure, he’s playing havoc with our reserves, but how could he not know we’d pounce?”

  “Maybe he’s starting to believe the stories they write about him.”

  Trang laughed. “I’d love to be a mediabot just to see his face when he gets the news that one hundred ships from our combined fleets will be at the center line in fifteen minutes. Ain’t no way he makes it back in time.”

  “Even if Zenobia gets her butt kicked,” added Gupta, “I just don’t see how they’ll be able to re-form their line—not with us bearing down, that is.”

  They stopped as a loud alert came over the communications system. The image in the holo-tank widened, and Trang and Gupta saw that both flanks of the Alliance fleet were now accelerating directly toward them.

  “Showtime,” said Gupta.

  But Trang didn’t acknowledge the remark. Instead he stared askance at the moving images. “I’m not so sure,” he finally said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “We know why J.D. didn’t rush to the center to help Omad’s reserve—didn’t want her backside exposed to us.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “And she wouldn’t have run after Omad, no matter how important he may be to her. That would’ve left too much exposed. Way I figure it, she’s got two choices.…”

  “Wait it out and see if Omad makes it back, or stop us the hell from helping out Zenobia.”

  “It appears she’s going with plan B,” said Gupta.

  “Not so much. If she were really freaked out that we might take advantage of their supposedly vulnerable line, would she really be descending on us at normal acceleration?”

  Trang watched as Gupta’s face lit up.

  “Holy shit, Sam, you’re right! They’d have gone NWA. The sky should be lit up with nukes, and they should be sitting in our fucking laps right now!”

  “But they’re not, are they?” Trang’s lips parted into a respectful grin as his eyes glowed mischievously. “This is what is supposed to happen. We fight the oncoming flanks as we attempt our push toward Delta Wing. They fight valiantly but somehow we emerge victorious. We go to center. And you know why, Abhay?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest, sir.”

  “Because, my friend, that’s exactly where they want us.” His self-satisfied smile returned.

  UHFS Atlanta

  Zenobia stood upright in front of her command chair, jubilant. Her instincts had been correct. While the forty Alliance ships had put up an admirable fight, her superiority in numbers and decently well-trained crews had clearly taken the enemy by surprise. Her flotilla had driven off the battle-hardened Alliance holding force with a loss of only five ships of her own. Delta Wing now held the high ground in the most important location of the Long Battle—the Alliance’s center line. Even better, Trang had ignored the flank attack and at last report was heading directly for her. There was no way the Alliance could get back in time. There was no going back from this loss.

  Having arranged her ships into a defensive perimeter, Zenobia widened out the holo-tank to get a better view of the battle at large. The electronic countermeasures continued to wreak havoc on her display, but the modeling program still held up, giving her percentage figures of about 55 to 60 percent. It wasn’t ideal, but certainly enough to give her a sense of what was going on: Omad had been driven out of the UHF center toward the right flank of the Alliance line. The AWS Warprize II, and presumably J. D. Black, were stationed with the left. She also saw that the Alliance flanks were already turning around, presumably to knock her off her well-earned perch. A wicked smile crossed her face. You’re too late.

  “Congraves.”

  “Sir.”

  “What’s wrong with the sensor array?”

  “Nothing, sir. Other than the ECM, the array is fully functional.”

  “Then can someone please explain to me why our reinforcements appear to have stopped moving?”

  “Could be a hack in, sir,” offered one officer.

  She looked over to the technical officer. “Goldman?”

  “No detectable breaches, sir.”

  It was then that both she and the crew were forced to stare blankly as the surreal events began unfolding. First, Trang and Gupta’s fleet began reversing direction while simultaneously moving in a larger arc away from the center. Then she saw that although the Alliance flanks had turned around, they weren’t, as she’d supposed, rushing their forces to meet her—they were returning to their starting positions. It would appear, she soon realized, that they were content to let her sit, unmolested, in the most strategically important part of the battlefield. Zenobia’s face went pale as she crumpled into her chair, felled by the weight of what was happening. Her near bloodless hands clenched against the edges of the armrests. There was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go.

  Cabinet Room, Ceres

  Sandra, along with the other Cabinet members in the room, unsealed her envelope. She took solace from the fact that her regular “audits” of their meetings had gone from passé to encouraged. What had once been the realm of an occasional and almost always dull “after the fact” press briefing was now the realm of constant coverage. She’d laughed to herself more than once as she watched an occasional Cabinet member and practically all the associates prep themselves in the mirror and pop breath stabilizers prior to a meeting. Whether it had been by virtue of the war heating up or of Sandra’s purposeful courting of the people and press, the result was unequivocal—the President was good for business. Sure, she was still sitting along the wall with the rest of the assistants and guests, but even her position there was temporary—she was the only one of that group holding an envelope.

  The Cabinet members pulled the documents from their envelopes. Emblazoned across the front page were the words SLINGSHOT and AUTHORIZED VIEWING ONLY. It had been a clandestine project authorized by Justin Cord. The concept was simple: Turn the Via Cereana into the solar system’s largest rail gun, thereby making the Outer Alliance’s capital city virtually impregnable. A while back, a ship had almost crashed in the Via, and the office of security, with Justin’s blessing, had used that mishap as cover to build their weapon. Over the course of the past year, stated the report, magnetic bumper stations had been strategically positioned along the Via’s eight-hundred-kilometer length. The faux bumpers, it turned out, were magnetic accelerators, writ large and spread out over the 3,500 cubic kilometers of microgravity surface. The last few pages of the report, skipped by most but of special interest to Sandra, documented the technical specs. The operation had been overseen by Kirk Olmstead, and the substations had been designed by Kenji Isozaki and Hildegard Rhunsfeld. “Yet another miracle has been achieved by the Alliance,” the report ended triumphantly, “and if Justin Cord is smiling down on us, it will be the last one we need.”

  Admiral Sinclair waited patiently for the last Cabinet member to finish reading the report before activating the holo-tank. The image of Admiral J. D. Black hovered above the table.

  “They’ve all been briefed?” she asked, dispensing with the formalities.

  Sinclair nodded. “What’s the tactical situation for deployment of Project Slingshot?”

  J.D. paused before answering. Her half-scarred face didn’t come close to reflecting the ebullience of the report’s closing statement.

  “Not as well as we could’ve hoped for, Grand Admiral. Omad played his part to perfection, and Admiral Jackson’s Delta Wing bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

  Sinclair nodded.

  “As you can see, Trang and Gupta have not joined her there. In fact, after they drove Omad out of their lines, they began pulling ships out—hanging Jackson out to dry.”

  “Trang must have figured it out!” Olmstead seethed, bringing a clenched hand down on the table.

  J.D.’s snort of contempt was perfectly replicated by the holo-tank. “Not surprising at all. This is Samuel Trang I’m
fighting, not some moron like Tully or Diep. It would’ve been nice if he’d put his neck on the chopping block, but if he and Gupta had any idea what we have in store, they would not have Jackson’s flotilla be where it is.” A few seconds of silence followed on her words as a look of smug satisfaction emanated from her face. “The rest of his fleet is still screwed.”

  That seemed answer enough for the Cabinet but didn’t suffice for Sandra. “I’m sorry, Admiral Black, but would you mind explaining exactly how, for those of us not versed in the art of war?”

  J.D. tipped her head, then spoke as if she had all the time in the world. “Once Slingshot destroys Delta Wing, the center will be clear. And without Delta, Trang cannot reinforce his flanks, but we can. In short, what they were hoping to do to us, we’ll now do to them.”

  “We’ll destroy each section of his fleet,” explained Sinclair, “before they can maneuver around Slingshot’s trajectory.”

  J.D. nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Give my compliments to Admiral Hassan. He played his part well.”

  “Let’s see, now: ‘battle crazed maniac prone to flying off the handle.’” She laughed. “To tell you the truth, Admiral, I’m not sure he actually ‘played’ a part at all.”

  “Good point. You ready to finish this thing?” J.D. looked like she was about to say something, but closed her mouth and simply nodded her affirmation. Sinclair looked toward Hildegard. “Secretary Rhunsfeld, fleet command orders the deployment of Project Slingshot with the directive to wipe out anything in the effective radius and range of the Via Cereana rail gun.”

  Hildegard simply nodded and, without a word, got up and left the Cabinet Room followed by a gaggle of assistants brimming with excitement. J.D. gave a perfunctory salute, and her image disappeared from the holo-tank. After that the meeting was effectively adjourned. As the last of the crowd thinned out, only Sandra remained, strenuously poring over Project Slingshot’s tech specs. She’d already known about the project—Sebastian had informed her as much. What she didn’t know was whether or not it would work. As she reviewed the data, a saying from the twenty-first-century author W. S. Anglin kept playing through her head: “Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost.”

  UHFS Atlanta

  It had been only ten minutes since she’d gotten off the comm link with Trang, but they’d been the longest ten minutes of her life. Worse than any of the fighting at the Battle of Eros or even the brutal engagements that had come to define Trang’s scorched-rock policy in their march on Altamont. She’d been prepared to die but had never anticipated that before death’s door there’d be a waiting room. What made each and every one of those minutes so excruciating was having to look at the faces of all those she’d led to disaster. How clever she’d been to memorize their wives’, husbands’, and children’s names. How very personable of her to know all their anniversaries, lifedays, and other significant markers. How thoroughly she now pictured the familial branches of a tree whose roots were about to be cut.

  “Admiral.”

  Zenobia’s head remained rigid, but her eyes steeled themselves on the sensor officer. “Yes, Congraves.”

  “Unusual readings from Ceres, sir.”

  “Transfer to my module and relay to Admiral Trang.”

  “Transfered and relayed, sir.”

  “Any ideas, Congraves?”

  The sensor officer shook his head. “Whatever’s creating it is huge.”

  “Location.”

  “Ceres, sir.”

  Now she turned her head to face him directly. “Can you be more specific?”

  “The Via Cereana, sir.”

  Zenobia turned to face her weapons officer.

  “It looks like—” A pause followed on his words as he scanned his readings in disbelief. “—like the energy signature for a rail gun, but the size … I don’t see how it’s possible.”

  Zenobia stood up and walked the short distance to the weapons officer’s module. He could’ve ported her the info, but he had more tech toys and could use them to explain his findings more clearly. “Are you telling me,” Zenobia grunted, now hovering over his shoulder and staring into a holo-display of Ceres’s famous throughway, “that the enemy has somehow managed to stuff a huge rail gun in the Via Cereana?”

  “No, sir,” said the weapons officer, fingers flying about the panel. “What I’m saying is—” His fingers came to a sudden stop as the image of the weapon they were now staring down the barrel of came into view. “—the Via Cereana is the rail gun.”

  UHFS Liddel

  Admiral Trang stared at his console and laughed inwardly. He’d been so proud of not having taken J.D.’s bait, it was only now he realized she hadn’t needed him to. He’d foolishly believed that her singular intention had been to destroy his fleet, when all along it had been something far more simple, though equally as deadly—she’d wanted to split it. And now he was trapped. Given the range and arc of the new weapon, he and Gupta had no choice but to run. And the farther they each ran, the farther apart they got. Long before they’d be able to link back up, Black would unify her fleet and fall on each one of them like a pack of hungry wolves. The only option available to him now was hope. Either he or Gupta would somehow have to make it back to Mars with enough of a force to defend the capital against a resurgent J. D. Black.

  His only consolation was the near certainty that he wouldn’t be alive to face the shame. Yet another in a long line of admirals outsmarted by J. D. Black. After Zenobia’s flotilla was obliterated, J.D. would concentrate on killing him above all others. It’s what he would do in her place.

  He activated the control giving him a secure communication link to Abhay Gupta. “Figured it out, Abhay?”

  Gupta laughed grimly. “You may not be familiar with this part, Sam, but I sure as hell am. This is where we run our asses back to Mars.”

  “Not ‘we,’ friend. ‘You.’”

  Gupta nodded without argument.

  “When you get back,” cautioned Trang, “be prepared. Black may have some other surprise that’ll make a Third Battle of the Martian Gates a possibility.”

  “Sam, there may be no need. After this debacle, I don’t even think Sambianco will be able to keep the war going.”

  “Just get home safe, Abhay,” said Trang. “The rest will have to take care of itself.”

  Bump Station TCM-5, Via Cereana

  Hildegard Rhunsfeld’s eyes took in the control room. It was a moderately sized space of ten meters by ten meters. Although it looked exactly like any of the other 499 similarly apportioned rooms, it was different in one respect—this one controlled all the others and so, in effect, became the trigger of the biggest gun in the solar system.

  After the two technicians recovered from the shock of what they’d actually been sitting on, they got down to business.

  “Can each projectile be individually targeted?” asked the first technician.

  “Yes, Corry,” instructed Hildegard, “up to the limiting circumference of the Via Cereana itself. But the enemy fleet is over six million kilometers away.”

  “Meaning?” asked Josh, the second tech as well as Corry’s fiancé.

  “Meaning the center of the battle front belongs to our baby,” purred Hildegard, affectionately rubbing one of the control panels.

  “Why don’t we just wait till they’re all in the center?”

  “We considered that, but the enemy would be so close to our orbiting settlements and rail gun emplacements that they could effectively hide behind them to avoid our fire. Some argued to let them come anyway and destroy our own people to be sure.…”

  “Kirk,” coughed Josh.

  “The Jerk,” coughed his fiancée. They eyed each other playfully.

  “Whoever it was,” finished Hildegard, making no attempt to disabuse the young couple of their suspicions, “it was overruled. Admiral Black said she could gain tactical advantage a
t six and half million kilometers, and that, my friend”—she looked pointedly at Corry—“is why you’re getting ready to fire.”

  “Me?” asked Corry.

  “You,” repeated the Technology Secretary with an assured grin. “I’m going out onto the observation decks to watch.”

  “But you’re the head of this whole secret … project thingie. You can’t just leave,” implored Josh, sensing his fiancée’s worry.

  “You’ll both be fine. There’s a reason you’re here now. I picked you for your competence,” she asserted, brow raised, “lingering coughs not withstanding. Plus, the whole thing’s programmed to run automatically. Fleet personnel in two other locations are taking care of loading and targeting. All we have to do is activate the main power relay and it’s good to go … and in case you were wondering why Corry—”

  “S’all right. I get it. She’s a particle physicist, and I’m just a lowly programmer.”

  “Wrong,” answered Hildegard, “she remembered my lifeday.”

  Corry beamed and slapped Josh’s shoulder. “I told you.”

  Hildegard activated her helmet and stepped through the blast door attached to the station. She then moved out onto the observation deck, which was blessedly empty. There weren’t that many people in the observation decks, because there was quite literally nothing to see. She, along with millions of others, were now viewing something they’d never seen: a Via Cereana devoid of all traffic.

  Hildegard couldn’t hear anything in the vacuum of space, but she did feel the vibrations from her bump station as it, along with the 499 others, powered up to fire. She could sense the excitement from those she could see on other decks, some of whom even waved to her. On impulse, she waved back. In a moment, the Long Battle would be won, and quite possibly the war.

  * * *

  Moments later Hildegard watched as a large number of quick flashes left the Via Cereana. There were too many, traveling too quickly to tell, but in that moment, her heart nearly stopped beating.