Greenies

wanted them to get lost in space again in case a WestHem Owl was moving in.

It was two hours after the detonation of the torpedo when the dead Seattle was finally in range of the rescue ships. They watched on the display as the rescue ships moved in and burned their engines to match velocities and dock.

'Well, that's that,' Brett said, smoking another cigarette and sipping from his sixth cup of coffee. 'If there are any survivors, they'll get them out.' He looked over at Sugi. 'How are we looking out there otherwise?'

'Nothing showing,' he said. 'If there's an Owl after us it must be way back in the rear not to have caught up with us yet.'

He nodded. 'I agree,' he said. 'My thought is that the entire armada has now passed us by. Good job, folks. Now let's secure from general quarters and start setting up a sleep schedule to get everyone rested up. Our job is done out here. Now we can start heading home. Hopefully the other ships in the operation and the MPG on the surface will make sure that we still have a home to go to.'

'Sir,' said Rear Admiral Brannigan, 'I have word from the rescue crews.'

'What is it?' Jules said. It had been nearly three hours since the torpedo had hit the anti-stealth ship Billings. The rescue crews launched from the Topeka had been aboard her for nearly an hour.

'No survivors found,' Brannigan told him solemnly. 'There are five serious hull ruptures and more than thirty smaller ones. Well over half of the crew is just plain missing, probably blown out into space or vaporized by the pulse. About half of the bodies that were found onboard appeared to have died instantly. They have severe burns to their skin and clothing. The other half... well... they were in the rear of the ship, the part that was shielded from the worst of the blast. They appear to have died from suffocation when their emergency suits ran out of air.'

'There were no air pockets, no sealed areas where survivors might be?'

'None, sir,' he told him. 'That ship was fractured in hundreds, maybe thousands of places. The airtight integrity of all of the compartments was compromised. The rescue crews are trying to collect the bodies and get them aboard their own vessels now.'

'I see,' Jules said, his hands clenched in rage. 'Have them get as many as they can and then place some scuttling charges on that ship to fragment it. It shouldn't be that hard to do with that cloud of unburned propellant and oxygen floating around it.' He didn't mention that that same cloud also made rescue operations extremely dangerous.

'Yes sir,' Brannigan said. 'It should be done within the next few hours.'

'What about that Owl the greenies are using?' he asked next. 'Any further sign of it?'

'No sir. Once they cut their engine power after the engagement, we lost them. I imagine they've altered course by now and are well clear of the last known position. In any case, we're well beyond them now.'

Jules shook his head in anger and frustration. 'They'll pay for this,' he vowed. 'When we retake that planet we'll open an investigation into this incident. We'll get the names of every person that was aboard that ship and they'll all be tried for terrorist acts and murder.'

'Yes sir,' Brannigan said, with real emotion this time. He couldn't wait for that day, the day he could stare at the greenies who had destroyed three of his ships and killed more than fifty thousand men and had somehow — against all odds — managed to elude capture or destruction.

'I've sent a report off to Earth on this latest incident,' Jules said with a grimace. 'I can assure you that the executive council is not going to be happy about it. But they will at least be thrilled to hear that the immediate danger has passed. They blindsided us somehow but there's no way that they can catch up to us now.'

'What are we going to say happened to the Billings?' Brannigan asked. 'To the public that is?'

'I suggested that we tell the public a crew error with one of the torpedoes caused an accidental detonation. Since the relay of signals to Jupiter is now in effect it'll be another hour or two before I get approval of that. But my guess is that is what we'll go with. It's neutral. Blames it on a human error instead of saying that something malfunctioned in the engine or the fueling system. The shipbuilders are sponsors of two of the executive council after all. We can't go saying their products are defective.'

'I see,' Brannigan said. 'And... well...'

'What is it?'

'Well sir, are you sure that we can keep the real reason for the losses under wraps? There were a lot of men involved in hunting down that Owl. The pilots and the gunners on the A-22s, the CIC crews on all of the rear guard ships. They all know that we were tracking a WestHem Owl and that torpedoes were launched.'

'It'll leak to a certain extent,' Jules said. 'I'll agree that there's no way to prevent that. And I'm sure that the reporters on board have already gotten wind of what really happened. You know how those people are. But the people who control what actually gets reported won't allow any of those rumors to be broadcast on the Internet in any form. They'll keep their reporters under control. That's how the system works.'

'And what happens if there are more losses?'

'More losses?' Jules scoffed. 'How would that happen? We're well beyond that ship now. We've already been over this.'

'What if there are more of them out there?'

Jules actually laughed at this notion. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he told his underling. 'It was a stretch beyond imagination for those greenies to get even one ship operational and deployed. There's no way in hell that they could possibly have another one out there.'

'You're probably right, sir,' Brannigan said. 'But all the same, I'd like to initiate a full combat space patrol and have all active sensors on all ships constantly on for the rest of the voyage. With your permission of course.'

Jules thought this over for a second, his instinct telling him to deny the request as alarmist and as a certain waste of precious fuel. But it really didn't hurt to be prudent, did it? 'Why not?' he finally said. 'Go ahead and initiate that. Just be sure that those crews are briefed to keep their damn mouths shut about what they're doing.'

'Yes sir,' Brannigan said. 'I'll make sure.'

Onboard the Mammoth that night, Lieutenant Callahan and his platoon were all in their bunks, most dressed in nothing but their underwear. It was fifteen minutes before the official lights out period and all of the men were staring intently at the Internet screen, watching as Admiral Jules, the commander of the naval portion of Red Hammer, delivered a briefing on the events that had occurred that day. Although the news reports of the deaths and the explosions of the ships had been going on almost non-stop for the past three hours, this was the first official word on just what had happened.

'Our preliminary findings,' Jules was telling the solar system, 'based on interviews with the combat information center staff and review of the computer records of the events, seem to indicate that the collision between the Camel and the Mule, the two Panama class transports, was caused by a maneuvering error aboard Camel. It appears that the helm operator on that ship, for whatever reason, burned the engines for far too long during a routine position shift and then was unable to correct his course before the impact happened.'

'That is a bunch of fucking bullshit!' yelled Sergeant Mallory. 'Can you fuckin believe that they're feeding us that shit?'

'Easy, Mallory,' Callahan said soothingly. 'All we've been hearing are rumors. Just because someone told you that the greenies torpedoed those ships doesn't mean its true. That's why Jules is giving the briefing now, to clear up those rumors.'

'You don't actually believe that shit do you, LT?' Mallory asked. 'Jesus Christ, you know as well as I do that Mule and Camel weren't anywhere near each other in the formation!'

Callahan sighed. Yes, he did know that. Until about three hours before, the exact configuration of the ships in the armada had been available on the open Internet by doing an active search. It was part of the briefing material that the public relations department of the Navy had uploaded to their official site. But now — now that two transports and an anti-stealth ship were mysteriously erased from existence — those configurations were gone. And as hard as Callahan wanted to believe that a simple accident had killed nearly 40,000 of his comrades in deep