“They’re all we have, Tom,” she told him with a resigned shrug. “Ari thinks they can do it. Anyway, we’ll have support from the orbital weapons emplacements”
“Uh-oh,” Tom whispered, “look busy, here comes the teacher.”
Shannon concealed a grin as she looked over and saw General Kage striding purposefully toward their position, his natural bulk even more imposing in full CG body armor. His helmet was off, carried in his left hand, and he looked more at home than Shannon ever remembered.
“My people will be deployed at the interstate junction within the hour,” he told Shannon, his voice businesslike but a frown darkening his face. “I still do not like this, Maj… Colonel Stark. By allowing the enemy to array against us, we give them time to prepare, to organize. We should have taken them at their staging area, before they had time to mount the vehicles.”
“That would have been ideal, General,” she acknowledged, nodding, “except for the fact that their staging area was on the edges of the Montreal Metropolitan Complex and neither the President nor I wanted to be responsible for starting a major battle in a population center when we could avoid it.” She waved a hand around them. “No one lives out here and the only traffic is large cargo haulers. We take them here, in the open, away from innocent civilians.”
“This doesn’t make any sense to me,” Tom muttered, looking up into the darkening sky. “Sure, he’s got a shitload of those blue-skinned fuckers to throw at us, but what’s the point of driving them cross-country in a fleet of APC’s? He’s just lining them up to be ducks in a shooting gallery.”
“He is a man out of time,” Kage reminded them. “Perhaps he doesn’t realize the potential of orbital kinetic weapons to wreak havoc in an armored column.”
“Maybe
Shannon reached into a pouch on her thigh and pulled out her tablet, calling up the view from the weapons satellites. “The enemy column is on the road,” she told Kage, turning the screen to let him see the video feed. “Let’s hope Antonov is as anachronistic as you believe.” Her eyes narrowed in a frown. “But somehow, I doubt it.”
Xavier Dominguez strode into the Orbital Weapons Control Center like he owned the place-which, as far as the young Fleet Lieutenant JG on duty was concerned, he did.
“Mr. Vice President!” The duty officer shot to his feet as Dominguez and the half dozen men of his security detail walked through the front entrance. Not all VPs in Republic history would have been as instantly recognizable, but the handsome, charismatic politician had been a staple of the gossip reports for years. “Sir, I’m sorry we weren’t prepared for an inspection visit, but we had no notice…”
“That’s quite all right, Lieutenant…” Dominguez peered at the man’s nametag in the dim lighting of the entrance hallway, still not automatically adjusted as the sun set outside its doors.
“Barron, sir,” the young officer stammered, blushing slightly. “Lt. J.G. Louis Barron.”
“It’s no problem, Louis,” Dominguez gave the officer his most sincere smile, patting him on the shoulder. “This is kind of a last minute thing. It’s the President’s idea, actually; I’m sure you’ve been kept abreast about the Protectorate attack this morning-tragedy, all those brave men and women at the Lunar base losing their lives.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Vice President,” Barron said somberly. “We’re ready here, if those bastards try anything like they did five years ago!”
“Well, see, Louis, that’s exactly why I’m here!” Dominguez clasped his hands together demonstratively. “I understand that there have been several changes in security since this base was overrun by the Protectorate during the invasion, and I’ve been sent to inspect things and make sure that nothing like that happens again.”
“Well, um, sir,” Barron stuttered, glancing back and forth between Dominguez and the security door behind him, “I can, I guess, go over the changes with you… if Captain Prementer were here, he could… I mean, he’s the base commander, but he was on leave. I mean, he’s been recalled, obviously, with the attack, but he’s still in flight from Antarctica…”
“That’s all right, son, I know you’ll do fine.”
“Yes, sir, but the thing is,” Barron looked ready to fold into a ball and huddle in a corner, “technically, I need some sort of clearance from Fleet Headquarters to allow anyone not stationed here into the secure area of this base.”
“I’ll do you one better, son,” Dominguez smiled ingratiatingly, pulling a tablet from a pocket of his designer jacket. He handed it to Barron and the younger man’s eyebrows went up. “That’s a Presidential authorization to enter any secure facility in the Republic. You can check it on your base mainframe, it can’t be forged.” And it wasn’t… but it had been given to him three years ago. He’d just made sure through the aid of some talented netdivers that it had never been rescinded.
“Well, yes sir, Mr. Vice President,” Barron said with a relieved nod. “That should do fine then. If you’ll just follow me.” Barron nodded to one of the two armed guards stationed at the base entrance and the man fell in behind them as the officer presented his retina and palm for the biometric ID scanner. Two of the Vice Presidential security unit stayed in the entrance hall, while the others followed their charge into the bowels of the base.
The thick blast doors slid aside, revealing a blank hallway that Dominguez already knew was lined with a half dozen automated weapons systems, lethal and nonlethal. Barron didn’t mention them, however, which Dominguez found interesting-perhaps the young man wasn’t as naive as he seemed. Instead, the officer was droning on about the history of the invasion and how the Protectorate had been able to take control of both the ground-based defense lasers aimed outward and the kinetic kill satellites aimed downward.
“To prevent such a thing happening again,” Barron went on, “changes have been made to the system that won’t allow anyone to shut out remote access to the defense network from here without a combination of three biometric access codes.”
“So, it wouldn’t do the Protectorate any good to simply take this place over,” Dominguez summarized as they moved into the main control room. “That wouldn’t prevent us from using the orbital weapons systems. What if they just attacked this site from orbit, blew it up?”
“There are backup uplinks at a few other locations that can communicate with the defense satellites,” Barron assured him, “and of course the ground-based lasers can be controlled on-site. The advantage of this place is that we centralize everything and provide targeting based on input from multiple sources. We’re also a fail-safe against someone hijacking the system from one of the other sites-every use has to be confirmed here and we can shut out remote use with the biometric access codes: the CO, the XO and a rotating code chosen at random and kept top secret.”
“So, losing this place wouldn’t cripple our defense system,” Dominguez said, looking around, “and they can’t use it to shut out remote access either.” He nodded. “Good to know, good to know.” He pinned Barron with a glance. “And I assume the systems here are safe from outside computer attack as well.”
“Yes, sir!” Barron told him, smiling with enthusiasm and obviously warmed up to his presentation. “The core systems here are totally isolated, not connected to any net. The only way to access them is through these stations, physically.” He waved a hand, indicating the stations against the far wall, where the technicians on duty were monitoring targeting data from sensor feeds out in the asteroid belt and Martian orbit.
“Well, that’s just fine then,” Dominguez said, nodding slowly. He turned to the head of his security team and smiled. “I think we’ve heard enough.”
Louis Barron turned back to the Vice President, ready to thank him for his visit, but the relief on his face turned to shock when he saw the wide-shouldered, hard-faced security agent aiming a suppressed handgun at him.
“What…” was all he had the chance to say or think before the weapon fired. Its hoarse cough was the last thing he ever heard.
The sun was nothing but a faint glow on the western horizon as Shannon and Tom Crossman huddled behind a CeeGee armored vehicle, watching the feed from the combat lander on which they’d arrived as it hovered a few hundred meters above the enemy convoy. The vehicles were state of the art Republic Fleet Marine Corps APC’s, their dull grey coloring blending in nicely with the pavement, their insulated engines showing only a faint red even
