Orphan's Triumph

gaining.”

When the altimeter read fifteen thousand feet, the pilot flipped back the hinged, red-striped shroud that covered the weapons console as he drifted the Scorpion south along the railroad.

I pointed at the console. “You can’t fight this ship.”

He nodded. “Correct, sir. Engagement within the airspace of Tressel’s strictly forbidden. We weren’t even permitted to load defensive armament for this pickup.”

“Then what…?”

“Admiral Duffy determined that the Tehran was carrying deteriorating stores.”

“Huh?”

“We can always jettison deteriorating stores that endanger the ship into nonorbital space or into deserted country.” He pointed below us. “Sir, could you have a look to assure that area below us is just deserted country?”

Below, a column of black specks stretched a hundred yards wide for a mile on either side of the railroad, as Forty-fifth Division gave chase to my godson, Celline, and their tiny band of innocents.

My jaw hung slack. “Eddie’ll get relieved without pension for this.”

“The admiral said that, too, sir, to me and the four red jackets that volunteered to load the pod. He said to tell you the dental plan’s lousy, anyway.”

“Son, this is no joke.” However, as I said it I mentally retracted every curse I had placed on the head of Eddie Duffy.

“The admiral’s log will say deteriorating stores were jettisoned above the Arctic Circle of Tressel. Only me, the admiral, and the four red jackets can say different.”

“And me. Why am I here?”

“The admiral wanted somebody spotting who knows where the friendlies are, where the bad guys are, and the target characteristics.”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, toward the stinger pod. “What are you packing?”

“Radar-guided Area Denial Explosive. Basically bundled cluster bombs that arrange themselves as they fall. The radar identifies moving targets and shifts the cluster units for maximum efficiency.”

I pointed below as we hovered unheard and unseen high above Forty-fifth Division’s quick-marching GIs. “There are no friendlies down there.”

He nodded as he laid his hand on a selector dial. “They got any hard-shell vehicles or body armor? RADE burst fragments behave like razor blades.”

I shook my head. “Dismounted light infantry. Cloth coats, steel helmets.”

“Then they’re toast.”

They weren’t toast. They were human beings, as cocky, imperfect, and mortal as he was.

The targeting screen winked on, the pilot tipped the Scorpion up, and the fuselage shuddered as the cluster bombs released and began their tumble, three miles above the unsuspecting marchers.

Onscreen, a wavering green rectangle materialized as the munition sized up its target. Then dozens of red lights swarmed like gnats within the rectangle as cluster-bomb units rearranged themselves in free fall, so their bursting bomblets would perforate every square foot of the target.

I peered down at the undulating smudge on the snow that was thousands of infantrymen shuffling north while cursing their blisters.

Ting.

The only sound we heard, as the munition detonated three miles under us, was a chime from the Scorpion’s targeting ’Puter.

A silent, rectangular snow cloud snapped into sight below. Prevailing wind at the point of impact, which the targeting ’Puter read at sixteen miles per hour, blew away the snow. The smudge that remained on both sides of the railroad track didn’t undulate anymore. Among the bodies, at most a few dozen moved. They would freeze solid by the next morning.

On a perpetually snow-covered graveyard isolated at the top of this world, the bodies would soon be snow- covered thousands among already-dead thousands. The magnitude of the carnage, perhaps even the fact of it, much less its cause, wouldn’t be apparent for years.

I turned my eyes north and let them rest on the tiny line of rebels that snaked its way east.

The pilot pointed below, as the targeting ’Puter retracted. “Stick a fork in ’em. They’re done.”

I suppose I should have congratulated him.

Then the Scorpion shot upward toward the Tehran .

SIXTY-SIX

BY THE TIME THE TEHRAN CAME IN SIGHT of Mousetrap, so many cruisers, Scorpions, transports, and tenders drifted dispersed in space around the moonlet that Mousetrap seemed enveloped in light fog, the way Bren’s Red Moon had looked when the Slugs cordoned it off.

Howard had returned with me on the Tehran , to shepherd the stones, and we split up when we off-shipped. The first thing I did when I off-shipped was check the port registry. The Emerald River was here, but her skipper was listed as a name I didn’t know. Mimi’s name appeared nowhere among the personnel of the vast fleet. Whatever had become of Mimi’s request for transfer back to a vessel command, it hadn’t landed her at Mousetrap. My next stop was Off-Station Communications, otherwise known as the post office. I had checked Jeeb’s doghouse there and reclaimed it.

The clerk scrolled his screens. “Nothing, sir. Not under ‘General’ or ‘Mr.’ If you’ve got outgoing, I can take it in, but Mousetrap’s been on lockdown since the push started last month. Nothing in or out.”

I toted Jeeb’s container with me to the Spook Penthouse on level forty-eight, to see Howard Hibble. The MP at the tube was the same one who had been on duty my last visit. He blocked my path.

“What’s up, Corporal?”

“Restricted area, sir.”

“I’m cleared.”

He shrugged, hand on his holstered sidearm. “Not in my ’Puter. Sir.”

Howard eventually came out and vouched for me, which shouldn’t have worked, but did. Even a retired general has a certain avoirdupois.

We sat in Howard’s office.

I scowled at him. “From the armada around this place, I gather the final push is cranking up. You could have told me.”

“You don’t have a clearance since this retirement business.”

I rolled my eyes. “That was just a paper game to shock the Duck. I’m going up to AOPD and unretire as soon as we’re done here. When do we jump off?”

Howard crossed his arms.

“Howard. This is me.”

He sighed. “Weaponization of the stones we brought back should take a month. The Tehran will refit in the meantime. The rest of the fleet’s been on alert for two months.”

I nodded. “Good. I can use the rest.”

Howard shrugged.

I pointed at the deck beneath us, beyond which, out in the space of the Mousetrap, the great human fleet drifted. “Howard, when that fleet leaves, I leave with it. I will see the end of this war.”

My next stop was on level twenty-nine, where the adjutant general’s office operated a branch of the Army Officer Personnel Directorate. The branch consisted of a compartment the size of a gang shower, occupied by one