Cry of War: A Military Space Adventure Series

  CRY OF WAR

  R.L. GIDDINGS

  “When you are weak, practice looking strong. When you are strong, practice looking weak.”

  Sun Tzu

  all rights reserved 2021RLGiddings

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  PROLOGUE

  3037 PRIME STANDARD

  THREE YEARS AFTER THE END OF THE LONG WAR

  Sigrid Ardent grabbed the rail and pulled, propelling herself along the Euclid’s central shaft and towards the main Von Braun wheel. The simulated gravity the wheel provided made it the perfect place to hold the press conference. Today was the culmination of all they’d been working towards, she just wished that she felt a little livelier. She’d been too excited to sleep the previous night and had had to spend far longer in make-up this morning than usual.

  The poles which branched off to the various parts of the wheel were just ahead of her and she had to consciously orient herself to see where the press team were in relation to her. Luckily, they were right below her, though ‘below’ was a somewhat relative term. The stage, conspicuous now with its bright studio lights, was thick with technicians making last minute preparations. She allowed her momentum to carry her forward, snagging the relevant pole with one hand so that she could swing out and down.

  In ten hours’ time they would be broadcasting to millions, perhaps even billions, of people and she was filled with nervous excitement.

  Partly that was to do with the anticipation but largely it was to do with sheer relief. All the years of preparation would soon be at an end.

  She and the other council representatives had spent the last three days prepping for this with the team from Apex firing questions at them. While the council was supposedly fully autonomous, the reality was that Apex, as their main investor, had a power of veto on virtually everything. And that had proved to be a nightmare when it came to the presentations.

  Every question they asked, no matter how straightforward, was designed to elicit two completely different responses: a simple answer aimed at reassuring the public and another more cryptic one aimed at placating the company’s vast legion of shareholders - the paymasters who lurked in the shadows. The trick was to try and satisfy both audiences without seeming to contradict yourself. Even apparently innocuous questions had to be handled in such a way that they avoided revealing the level of political in-fighting a project such as this had necessitated. Ardent was well used to the level of interrogation favored by the main newsfeeds but this kind of increased scrutiny she found particularly arduous.

  After three days of endless cross-examination, she’d begun to feel that she was losing her sense of perspective. It would be good to get back to normal, whatever that was.

  For the majority of journalists who they’d be facing, this would be the biggest story of their careers. Each one of them was looking for that one defining question, that one line of enquiry which would open up the story, immortalising it for generations to come. They’d risked a lot to be here, not least by traveling through an unstable worm hole. Wormholes were, by their very definition, unpredictable. They could stay in place for thirty years or they could disappear overnight. If this one were to collapse now they’d be stuck out here forever.

  Ardent had seen the figures. Traveling back at roughly ten percent of speed of light – a snail’s pace in intergalactic terms - would take slightly less than two hundred and twenty years.

  Everyone here was heavily invested in this thing being a success.

  Which didn’t explain why it had taken so long for the Confederation to officially recognise the project.

  It wasn’t like they wouldn’t benefit hugely from Apex’s investment. But they had remained largely dismissive of the idea that they should invest in the project themselves as costs had continued to soar. And Apex’s investors had been far too wary of upsetting such a powerful potential ally to press their case.

  Private business takes the risk so that governments can profit.

  And it was ever thus.

  Which was probably why she felt so elated about getting through to this stage. And why shouldn’t she be? Hadn’t she spent years preparing for this moment? No one had a better overall grasp of this project than she did. Not the engineers, the executives, the workers, no one. Yes, they might have their own unique area of expertise but she was the one who truly understood the enormity of this whole endeavour. It was something which had consumed her every waking moment for seven years.

  She handled the transition from weightlessness to the 0.8 gravity generated by the Von Braun wheel with practised ease, dropping lightly down onto the walkway. Then, to help her better adjust to the concept of ‘walking on the wall’, she took a couple of experimental steps.

  She was over an hour early and yet seemed to have arrived late. Her team was assembled on the dais dressed in the same jumpsuit and tunic that she was wearing. Parnashikan was standing on his own, off to one side looking out through one of the portals. He turned at her approach only to look away again. He was her co-presenter and had come in for a fair amount of criticism himself the previous day. His sullen response to her now suggesting that, in some way, this had been Ardent’s fault.

  Parnashikan had, she’d discovered over the weeks, an interesting take on teamwork. While he expected her to provide him with whatever information he required, she was under no illusion that he wouldn’t. He’d be the first to trade her away to the execs from Apex if he thought that it might gain him some advantage, however small.

  And Ardent was fine with that. Expecting no loyalty from that particular quarter she wouldn’t be surprised when she received none. Fine.

  The journalists were corralled over in their own section of the main hub and Ardent went over to greet them. She’d got to know most of them in the last few days although some better than others. One or two returned her greeting but the majority were too busy completing last minute pieces to camera. It was unusual to have so many journalists gathered in one place – normally, physical distances made such a thing impossible - but this inauguration was an event decades in the planning. Apex had been adamant from the start that the people entrusted with covering this should experience the full scale of their endeavours first-hand. View screens just couldn’t do it justice.

  And the gamble appeared to be paying off. They seemed genuinely excited about what they’d seen so far, and she’d lost count of the number of journalists she’d seen simply standing at the windows staring into space. Cut off from their news desks, they had proven to be largely compliant, sticking closely to the itinerary of events which had been prepared for them. It hadn’t hurt that the number of genuine ‘exclusives’ had been carefully spread out amongst the various news organisations. Apex had been particularly keen to avoid the accusation that any one group might be receiving preferential treatment.

  The press-packs which Ardent had put together were so detailed that often, all the individual journalist had to do was to think of a snappy headline, add their name and post the story virtually unchanged.

  “Not long now!” a voice behind her called. �
�You sure you’re ready for this?”

  It was Asha Panjar a news anchor for the Indus Broadcasting Company. She and Ardent had shared a couple of cocktails the night she’d arrived. The two of them had got along great but, Ardent had to keep reminding herself that, first and foremost, Panjar was a journalist. For her, the story would always take precedence.

  Luckily, even with a few cocktails inside her, Ardent had been sober enough to debunk Panjar’s finely wrought conspiracy theories.

  Although, in one case, Panjar’s musings had been pretty much spot on. There was a huge hole in the project’s overall security which left it vulnerable to a well-planned terrorist attack. Very few people knew about the implications and, thankfully, those that did had all been subject to water-tight Non-Disclosure Agreements.

  The project was vulnerable long-term and that was a major problem. Because, as the budget had spiralled out of control, corners had needed to be cut. The solution had seemed obvious at the time.

  Security for a project of this size came courtesy of an exclusive battle fleet which answered directly to Apex head office.

  Eighteen ships in all. But such fleets are exorbitantly expensive to maintain and so the obvious solution to these budgeting problems was to agree to down-size the fleet over time. Ardent had been a key player in these negotiations which would see, over a ten-year period, the fleet reduced first to nine ships then to four.

  And now it couldn’t be avoided.

  The deal had already been done. Signed and sealed in digital ink.

  The ships had been sold to the Yakutians for twice what they would have fetched from the Confederation.

  And the new owners would be looking to take possession of the first nine ships in just over five years’ time.

  It had been Ardent who had overseen this particular deal with the devil. The main thing she had to do now was to ensure was that the story never got out. Because if the truth ever did get out, that would put an end to her political aspirations once and for all.

  Her one hope was that, by the time anyone realised what was happening, the media circus would have already moved on. The spotlight would have shifted, and no one would care where the ships ended up.

  She just had to keep everyone distracted long enough for that to happen.

  It was a risk, but Ardent hadn’t got where she was by simply playing by the rules.

  She walked with Panjar up the steady incline and away from the main body of journalists.

  “No one here from the president’s office, then?” Panjar said.

  “That was never part of the plan.”

  “And getting all this set up through private investment. That was always the goal?”

  “Of course. Soon as you start getting government involved that complicates things. They’re going to start putting restrictions in place.”

  “As well as taxes.”

  “As well as taxes.”

  Panjar looked over at the executives. “Well, seems like your people got one thing right.”

  “They’re not my people.”

  “Oh, Sigrid, I think you’ll find that they are. You might have got out from under the shadow of the Confederation, but you can’t build something like this without acquiring a whole new set of playmates. It’s a fact of life.”

  Panjar laughed and poked her in the arm to suggest that she’d been joking but they both knew the truth of the matter.

  Panjar moved across to one of the Euclid’s main observation windows and waited for Ardent to join her. But Ardent hesitated.

  “Come on,” Panjar said. “Promise I won’t bite.”

  Ardent stepped up her breath momentarily blossoming against the glass before the dehumidifiers got to work. For a second, Ardent thought the woman might put an arm around her and was relieved when she didn’t. That would no doubt come later, at the bar.

  They stood next to one other as they viewed the spectacle in front of them. The space station they were looking at was still in active construction and, after twelve long years, far from complete. But it was there. Made up of a frail lattice work of connecting beams silhouetted against the white sun, it brought to mind a vestigial bird’s nest, long since abandoned.

  It was both there and not there all at the same time. The only thing keeping it together was the ceaseless activity of an army of construction workers and their countless service vessels. It would be three years before the main superstructure was complete and another five before they could begin work on the interiors. In a bid to make the place finally habitable, they’d begin with the station’s lower levels where the workers would eventually be housed. From there they would slowly build upwards. The luxury accommodation would come last, the spires rising up through the plumes of venting atmosphere, the vast glass towers soaring high into space.

  The plan was that the station would eventually be put into orbit around Iscaria, with its own space elevator carrying goods and personnel down to the surface. But that was still a long way off.

  They took all this in as the Euclid’s centrifugal wheel carried them away from this station and around to the main marvel of the day. A lot of thought had gone into where they had positioned the Nueva Esparta. Any closer and they wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the sheer scale of what it was they were currently seeing. Any further away and they might well miss it entirely. Because distance, the altered space and the limitations of their own senses, would at first make it difficult for them to fully grasp what it was that they were seeing.

  It made Ardent uncomfortable to stare at the construct for too long. It seemed to exert some kind of latent force on the viewer, threatening to pull them towards it. But it was similarly difficult to look away, the enormity of it all making her brain feel sluggish, her instincts suspect. In comparison to this, everything else she’d ever marvelled at now seemed inconsequential.

  Even the canopy of stars, coming together in their loose constellations, appeared secondary to what it was they were witnessing: a gaping, ink black hole in the middle of space into which anything and everything seemed to be falling.

  It was an illusion, of course, but a powerful and disconcerting one which was hard to reject. It was as if a large section of the sky had vanished to be replaced by a grainy nothingness.

  “Still gives me goosebumps,” Panjar said.

  “A wormhole will do that to you every time.”

  “Do you think there’ll be any difficulty? Establishing the gate, I mean.”

  The wormhole had been open for fifteen years but without the stability provided by an active gate, it could close at any time. Which was why they’d all taken a huge gamble just by coming here.

  “I hope not. But if the scientists have got this wrong…” her voice trailed off.

  “We’ll be stuck here. Cut off from everything. How long would it take? To get back to Lincoln, travelling conventionally?”

  “In our fastest ship? Two hundred and thirty-seven years.”

  “Yikes!” Panjar grabbed her arm. “Let’s hope that this works, then.”

  Their eyes locked together in fright. “Yes, let’s.”

  “So, everything’s still on track, I take it? No big surprises?”

  Ardent eyed Panjar warily. She’d reverted back to her professional stance.

  “Should there be?”

  “I’m not sure. I was just wondering: why the sudden change in itinerary?”

  “There’s been no change. Itinerary’s still the same.”

  Panjar frowned. “You clearly haven’t checked your alerts recently.”

  She handed her tablet across. “Says right there: special guest speaker. Who’s that?”

  Ardent felt her insides turn to liquid.

  “I have no idea.”

  Panjar inclined the screen and began to scroll down.

  “And what about this?” Panjar inclined the screen so that she could see. “Your slot with Parnashikan.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m afraid, now it’s jus
t him. Sorry, Sigrid. Looks like you’ve been bumped.”

  *

  When the press conference began at 19.00 hours, Ardent found herself confined to an ancillary role. Still on the stage but with little to do other than read from the prompter. When she’d confronted one of the executives about the changes they’d simply shrugged and said that there had been concerns about the timings.

  The truth of the matter became obvious as soon as Parnashikan took to the stage for the Q and A session. They wanted a man in charge. Someone with the right level of gravitas. The set-up was identical to the one they’d been rehearsing for the last couple of days, only this time, Parnashikan was the sole person answering questions.

  Ardent managed to maintain her professional demeanour throughout most of this. It was only when Parnashikan started lifting responses to questions which she’d spent months perfecting that she felt her façade start to crack.

  Panjar was on her feet now, readying herself for her time in the spotlight. She looked nervous.

  “You announced earlier that there would be an ongoing toll for those using the gate in the first twenty years. May I ask: what happens after that?”

  Ardent watched Parnashikan on the monitor suppress a smile.

  This had been one of her answers.

  “As has already been pointed out, this is a non-profit making project as far as the Apex Corporation are concerned. Which means that every cent raised during this initial phase will be used to recoup the company’s initial investment.”

  That much was true. But what he failed to point out was that Apex had taken this out as a loan from itself and that they would be enjoying an outlandish interest rate on top of the original loan.

  “You’re right. Our projections suggest that it will take twenty years to pay off the investment but we’re hoping to bring that date forward if possible. And I want to stress again: this is a non-profit concern for us. We’re here for the furtherment of mankind, nothing more.”

  Ardent gritted her teeth. Though no one else seemed to take issue with such a pompous statement.