Soldiers

Like hideous trumpets, alarm horns blared through the Meadowlands, jerking everyone awake. A single, eight-second, ruff-raising discord that cut sharply to a voice, strident but concise: "Battle stations! Battle stations! Battle stations!"

Quanshuk was on his feet and into the executive corridor more quickly than he'd moved for months. The ship was already fighting, its everpresent fine vibration amplified by the demands of heavy beamguns and the generation of her force shield. She jarred as a salvo of torpedos exploded against her newly generated shield, throwing the admiral against a bulkhead. The corridor lights flickered, then held.

On the bridge, the only sound was quiet words spoken to closed-cha

Quanshuk's mind elaborated what his eyes could not: glowing red hull-metal puddling where a beam was locked, flowing and spattering away from the contact. Breached hulls, exploding, imploding. Torpedo salvos bursting on shields, disrupting some, blowing their generators. Where this happened, beams might find the hull for a coup de grace. Then he was at his command station, jabbing keys, eyes snatching data from the thirty-inch station monitor. A diagram popped on, summarizing the firefight as it proceeded. Seemingly the attackers had not been picked up at once, for even as the sequence began, they'd reached substantial speeds from the standstill of warpspace emergence, and already had shields up.

The Grand Fleet's shipsminds were entirely in charge, coordinated so far as possible by the command shipsmind aboard Meadowlands. Once alerted, its response had been instantaneous, a reflex. The bridge watch could only try to catch up. Quanshuk's fingers stabbed keys, slid magnification tabs, his mind clearer and sharper than it had been for years, free of fear, anxiety and blame, watching patterns unfold in the action. Enemy fire control and coordination was superb. Almost solely they targeted fighting ships, the beams from several converging not only on one, but on the same part of its shield. Each battle group moved and fought as a vee through and out of its own sector of armada space, leaving a corridor of destruction.

A few of the ships destroyed or left derelict were attackers, but his battle formations were too incomplete for successful fire coordination. At twenty-eight seconds a few enemy shields thi

Quanshuk's brief battle high dissolved into shock. With an almost insolent dispassion, shipsmind informed him that the encounter had lasted thirty-four seconds, and presented him with a fleet losses report. Four battleships and eleven cruisers… Enemy losses, one battleship and three cruisers… The admiral stared blankly.

Then the next wave hit, as unexpectedly as the first. Alarm horns squalled. The Meadowlands was jarred by another salvo of torpedos. Again the lights flickered, and for a moment the bridge was lit only by the monitors, before the lights came back at half strength. This new wave accelerated impossibly, in randomized zigzags despite their momentum, while their bright war beams reached far forward. The admiral and bridge crew could do little but watch the monitors. Again the attackers' fire coordination was excellent. And far ahead, what seemed to be the first wave had emerged again from warpspace, sweeping through the still-mustering Fourth Battle Wing.

The second wave disappeared more quickly than the first. Then the reemerged first wave winked out again. Quanshuk sat dazed but upright, waiting for shipsmind to report losses. Even as the numbers appeared, shipsvoice reported new incursions, elsewhere within the armada. The admiral hardly reacted, leaving the battle to shipsmind.

Ophelia Ke

In the corridor, Charley couldn't restrain himself. "Oh, Admiral," he said, "it was… marvelous! I am absolutely wired! Wired!" He paused just a second. "You do know the term, sir? It dates from the first drug era, before the Troubles, and means intensely exhilarated. I have never felt like this before!" He laughed. "Did you hear that, Admiral? Laughter from a bottle! I'm like Ebenezer Scrooge, after awakening on Christmas morning! Like a drunken man! Isn't that remarkable? Even though I was just instrumental in destroying the biological housings of thousands of souls, sending them back to central casting, so to speak. And feel no guilt! No guilt at all! Isn't that remarkable? Oh! I'm even repeating myself! I don't usually do that. Do I, dear Ophelia? I don't think I do.

"And, Admiral, do you know why I feel no guilt? Because it is part of the great dance. Part of the great learning. And because… We may have just saved the human species! The vectors are distinctly encouraging now!" His voice lowered conspiratorially. "They are. We have not won yet, but we have crossed a watershed, believe me."

Charley fell silent then, and it seemed to Soong he should reply, at least acknowledge Charley's words. "I believe you, Charley," he found himself saying. "You did marvelously well."

They were at Charley's door before the savant spoke again. He was no longer wired. "How many enemy ships did we destroy, Admiral?" he asked.

"I don't recall. A lot more than we lost." Soong opened the door for Ke

"Admiral, I am suddenly very tired," Charley said. "I'm not sure I can cha

"That's fine, Charley. Take a nap. As long as you'd like. War House knows in general how the fighting went. I'll have one of the point ships let them know that you were the battle master, and that you need to rest now. I'll debrief to them later."

"Thank you, sir." Charley almost slurred the words. "Ophelia, dear, I think two hours will do. Two hours."

"Fine, Charley. Two hours."

Charley's sensor lights dimmed out.

"He's asleep now, Admiral," she said quietly. "I'll call you. Or if there is a need, you call me."

She paused, tipping her head to one side, then added: "I would not worry, Admiral, about Charley's stamina. I have never seen him unable to continue cha

Soong nodded. "Thank you, Ke

Afterward, Alvaro Soong himself felt emotionally drained, and lay down intending to nap. But found himself reviewing, instead, sorting material for his debrief. His Provos' losses had been heaviest during the brief moments of shield decay, before strange-space could be generated. All told he'd lost five battleships out of twenty-five, twelve cruisers out of seventy-five, nine corvettes out of fifty. And only eleven maces out of sixty, despite high-risk assignments; they were hard to hit, and those with layered shields, hard to kill. War House would make something of that.