“Yes, I know, you’re both probably not fond of the DSI, but trust me, neither am I. That’s a story for another time, but she and I went through the shit and she didn’t ask for anything in return for this information, which makes me more likely to trust her.”
“What’s the intel, ma’am?” I prompted, reserving judgment on its quality until I got details.
“I don’t know how well you remember the early days of the war,” McIntire said, “but things were… up in the air for a couple years.”
“I think we both remember it pretty fucking well,” Vicky growled, a flare behind her eyes. I felt the same way, but I said nothing.
“Then you know. The outcome was in doubt, and if the Tahni had won, that would have meant the end of humanity as an interstellar power. We were desperate, which was the source of weapons and tactics like the missile cutters in the Attack Command, the drop-ships, and various other, more top secret and esoteric ideas.” The corner of her mouth quirked upward. “Ask Major Conner about something called Omega Group if you want to see the veins pop out in his forehead. But that was the Fleet, the Marines, Fleet Intelligence, people who had to answer to the Commonwealth Senate. You can only imagine what an agency like the DSI was up to during that period.”
“I’m afraid to,” I told her. “But I have a feeling you’re going to tell us.”
She nodded.
“I suppose I don’t have to tell you why autonomous weapons systems were banned by the Commonwealth a couple hundred years ago.”
A prickle went up my neck at the words. It wasn’t something I’d thought about a great deal before we’d encountered the different alien societies outside the Cluster, but the AI, the Skrela, and the Ghosts had all driven the point home.
“It was because of what happened during the Crisis,” Vicky said slowly, as if trying to figure out where this was going. “The refugees.”
“It’s a complicated story how it came to it politically, but what happened was fairly simple. The European nations didn’t have enough young people to field armies anymore, so they guarded their eastern borders with armed, autonomous drones. After the nuclear exchange between the Russians and the Chinese, tens of millions of refugees were driven out of the eastern European regions by radioactivity, fallout, fires… and starvation. There were huge hordes of them on every road out of the affected zones, all trying to get to perceived safety in the western nations. But those nations could barely feed their own after the war, and they shut down the borders.” She shrugged. “There were warnings… signs, loudspeakers from the air on drones, fences. None of it was enough to turn back people whose children were starving. The automated weapons platforms mowed them down by the tens of thousands.”
I nodded, not caring to imagine the tragedy. I’d seen enough I’d never be able to get out of my head without adding to it on purpose. Even back in the isolated hovels of Tijuana, abandoned by the postwar civilization, we knew about the refugee massacres, and the strictures against autonomous weapons were nearly as deeply ingrained as the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.
“Right up until the Changed brought down the last megacity on Earth,” McIntire went on, “arming AI drones was one of the few crimes with an automatic death penalty. No exile to a colony, no punitive hibernation, just a march to the incinerator chamber of a fusion reactor and a bath in plasma. We only had to use that penalty twice in the history of the Commonwealth, you know? And not once after the first war with the Tahni.”
“Because people learned their lesson?” I asked hopefully. She barked a laugh.
“Hardly. Because the DSI started tracking down everyone who tried to build automated weapons systems and hiding them away in secret labs, making sure that if any useful technology were developed, it would be used by us.”
“Oh, fuck,” Vicky muttered.
“Exactly, Colonel Sandoval. You must understand, even when the Corporate Council under their Executive Director Andre Damiani tried to subvert the election, discredit the military, and take over the Commonwealth government—that happened while you were gone, by the way—he didn’t attempt to use this technology, simply because there was too great a risk that someone would turn him in. And not even his position would have kept him out of the incinerator. But somewhere out there, those labs, those factories, those test ranges still toiled, right up until the Psi War when they were abandoned and the scientists and workers evacuated back to somewhere they perceived as safer.”
“But the lab is still out there,” I guessed. “And you know where it is?”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. “One of the ways it was kept from being discovered was that the entire setup was constantly on the move. People heard rumors—it’s easier to measure the soul than it is to stop rumors. But no one could ever report anything even if they were so inclined, because they could never say this is where the lab is. And without that information, it’s nothing but a wild rumor that could end your career if you get caught passing it around.”
“But…” I prompted.
“But this source… let’s call her by her old code-name, Scorpion… told me someone has found it. Normally, I’d just send out one of my operatives undercover to investigate, but the systems are weeks away and not under our control. And if this place is found… it has to be destroyed. Completely. A cutter or a cargo bird couldn’t carry enough ordnance to do that.”
“But the Ellen can do it,” Vicky finished for her.
“Bingo, Colonel Sandoval. And for the cherry on top, you can do it with enough Drop Troopers on board to handle anything you might run across, and you can get to the rendezvous with our source in a few days, rather than the months it would take from here.”
“Months, huh?” I repeated, eyebrows shooting up. “Just where the hell is this place?”
“Well,” McIntire said, smiling just like Top used to when some ignorant private asked her if he’d finished his work detail, “that’s the other benefit. You both know the territory. The source is on your old stomping grounds. You’re both going back to Hausos.”
“Twenty people,” I said, looking at the roster on my ‘link screen. “That’s all we’re going with for the Fleet complement on this mission?”
“It’s all we need,” Rafael Nance said dismissively, as if I’d complained about the weather.
His eyes were on the Ellen Campbell, on the platoon of Vigilantes marching up the cargo ramp into her. Vicky and I had already stowed our suits, but the fastest way for Springfield and her platoon of enhanced battlesuits to get on board was to walk. Vicky had stayed in the hold to oversee the process while I’d ventured back out into the morning sun to talk to Captain Nance.
“Don’t need an engineering crew,” he ticked off on his fingers, “because we have no fucking clue how to repair or modify or maintain the drives or the reactor on this boat. Don’t need maintenance or repair techs for the hull, life support, or weapons because we have no fucking clue how to maintain or repair those either. Don’t need flight ops because we’re only taking the one cutter with us, because this thing can—obviously—land on a planet. All we need is the bridge crew and, just between you and me…” he glanced around as if worried someone might overhear and leaned closer to me, “… we could probably get away without that too. One person could fly and fight this boat, I reckon.”
“Why bring twenty, then?” I wondered.
“Four crews of five,” Nance explained. “Three active to work eight-hour shifts, one spare so every shift can get a day off.”
“Damn,” I murmured. “I know we’d be better off if we had a fleet of these things, but it kind of feels like it would be better if we didn’t. That’d be the end of an era.”
“You’re telling me,” Nance agreed, nodding fervently. “If we didn’t have the Unity to worry about, I might have insisted we blow this boat up once it had got us here.”
“Is the crew already aboard?” I asked him.
“Just the XO. Everyone else’ll report when we’re an hour from launch.” Nance laughed. “It’s not as if they need to get her warmed up or anything.”
I nodded, didn’t give voice to the impatience roiling inside my gut. We’d been prepping for days already and still weren’t supposed to leave until nightfall, and I couldn’t help but feel we were wasting time. The Unity was coming, sooner than later, and no matter what Munroe said about us not being able to do anything against them, we still should have been doing the best we could to get ready.
What that would mean, I wasn’t sure. They had one cruiser and the Ellen, and that was about it for anything that could touch the Unity ships I’d seen. I couldn’t figure it out and I was desperately hoping someone here could, but that would mean planning. That would mean not pushing off the preparation until they had no choice. But we were the new kids on the block, and we had to give them reason to trust us.
“I see they finally gave you a rank consummate with your opinion of yourself,” Nance remarked, smirking at the birds on my shoulder epaulets. I returned the expression and mimed dusting the eagles off.
“You mean they finally formalized my status,” I reminded him. “The one you gave me, if I recall right. You could always have been in charge of this fiasco… Rafe.”