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For a couple of reasons, I didn't do it. Now that it's too late-the only trips on Athene are ALSC ones-I wish I had. Because it's not as simple as "I accept this because it's the way they were brought up," with the implied condescension that my pedestal of normality entitles me.
Normality. I'm going to be locked up in a can with 130 other people for whom my most personal, private life is something as exotic as ca
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Table of Organization
Strike Force Beta
Aleph-10 Campaign
1ECHN MAJ Garcia COMM Sidorenko
2ECHN 1LT Nguyen
3ECHN 1LT Zhulpa
4ECHN CPT Potter XO
2LT Darnyi TO
2LT Taylor, MD MO
1 2 3 4
5ECHN 2LT Sadovyl 2LT Okayawa 2LT Mathes 2LT Morales
6ECHN SSgt Baron SSgt Troy SSgt Tsuruta SSgt Hencken
7ECHN Sgt Nabor Sgt Kitamura Sgt Yorzyk Sgt Verdeur
8ECHN Cpl Roth Cpl Gross Cpl Bruner Cpl Graaf
Cpl Sieben Cpl Simeony Cpl Ritter Cpl Henkel
Cpl Korir Cpl Sadovyi Cpl Loader Cpl Catherwood
Cpl Montgomery Cpl Popov Cpl Hajos Cpl Hamay
Cpl Daniels Cpl Kahanamoku Cpl Myzaki Cpl Csik
Cpl Son Cpl Daniels Cpl Taylor Cpl Hopkins
Cpl Devitt Cpl Schollander Cpl Winden Cpl Spitz
Cpl Gammoudi Cpl Akii-Bua Cpl Beiwat Cpl Keino
Cpl Armstrong Cpl Kariuki Cpl Brir Cpl Keter
Cpl Kostadinova Cpl Ajunwa Cpl Roba Cpl Keimo
Cpl McDonald Cpl Balas Cpl Reskova Cpl Mayfair
Cpl Zubero Cpl Furniss Cpl Kopilakov Cpl Gross
Cpl Myazaki Cpl Roth Cpl Pakratov Cpl Lopez
Cpl Ris Cpl Scholes Cpl Ris Cpl Henricks
Cpl Russell Cpl Rozsa Cpl Moorhouse Cpl Lundquist
Cpl Shiley Cpl Csak Cpl Coachman Cpl Brand
Cpl Ackerman Cpl Pankritov Cpl Nesty Cpl O'Brien
Pvt Darryl Pvt Gyenji Pvt Crapp Pvt Hong
Pvt Biondi Pvt Stewart, M Pvt Bauma
Pvt Engel-Kramer Pvt Min Pvt Mingxia
Supporting: 1LT Otto (NAV), 2LTs We
FOR THE COMMANDER: Olga Torischeva BGEN
APPROVED STFCOM STARGATE 12 Mar 2458
STFCOM
The lounge was a so-called "plastic room"; it could reform itself into various modes, according to function. One of the Athene staff had handed over the control box to me-my first executive function as executive officer.
When the troop carriers lined up outside for docking, I pushed the button marked "auditorium," and the comfortable wood grain faded to a neutral ivory color as the furniture sank into the floor, and then rose up again, extruding three rows of seats on ascending tiers. The control box asked me how many seats to put on the stage in front. I said six and then corrected myself, to seven. The Commodore would be here, for ceremony's sake.
As I watched the Strike Force file into the auditorium, I tried to separate the combat veterans from the Angels. There weren't too many of the latter; only fourteen out of the 130 were born on Heaven. For a good and unsettling reason.
Major Garcia waited until all the seats were filled, and then she waited a couple of minutes longer, studying the faces, maybe doing the same kind of sorting. Then she stood up and introduced the Commodore and the other officers, down to my echelon, and got down to business.
"I'm certain that you have heard rumors. One of them is true." She took a single note card from her tunic pocket and set it on the lectern. "One hundred sixteen of us have been in combat before. All wounded and brought here to Heaven. For repairs and then rest.
"You may know that this concentration of veterans is unusual. The army values experience and spreads it around. A group this size would normally have about twenty combat veterans. Of course this implies that we face a difficult assignment.
"We are attacking the oldest known enemy base." She paused. "The Taurans established a presence on the portal planet of the collapsar Aleph-10 more than two hundred years ago. We've attacked them twice, to no effect."
She didn't say how many survivors there had been from those two attacks. I knew there had been none.
"If, as we hope, the Taurans have been out of contact with their home planet for the past two centuries, we have a huge technological advantage. The details of this advantage will not be discussed until we are under way." An absurd but standard security procedure. A spying Tauran could no more disguise itself and come aboard than a moose could. No one here could be in the pay of the Taurans. The two species had never exchanged anything but projectiles.
"We are three collapsar jumps away from Aleph-10, so we will have eleven months to train with the new weapon systems . . . with which we will defeat them." She allowed herself a bleak smile. "By the time we reach them, we may be coming from four hundred years in their future. That's the length of time that elapsed between the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the first nuclear war."
Of course relativity does not favor one species over the other. The Taurans on Aleph-10 might have had visitors from their own future, bearing gifts.
The troops were quiet and respectful, absorbing the fraction of information that Major Garcia portioned out. I suppose most of them knew that things were not so rosy, even the inexperienced Angels. She gave them a few more encouraging generalities and dismissed them to their temporary billets. We officers were to meet with her in two hours, for lunch.
I spent the intervening time visiting the platoon billets, talking with the sergeants who would actually be ru
The officers' lounge was also a plastic room, which I hadn't known. It had been a utilitarian meeting place before, with machines that dispensed simple food and drink. Now it was dark wood and intricate tile; linen napkins and crystal. Of course the wood felt like plastic and the linen, like paper, but you couldn't have everything.
Nine of us showed up on the hour, and the major came in two minutes later. She greeted everyone and pushed a button, and the cooks Jengyi and Senff appeared with real food and two carafes of wine. Aromatic stir-fried vegetables and zoni, which resembled large shrimp.
"Let's enjoy this while we can," she said. "We'll be back on recycled Class A's soon enough." Athene had room enough for the luxury of hydroponics and, apparently, fish tanks.
She asked us to introduce ourselves, going around the table's circle. I knew a little bit about everyone, since my XO file had basic information on the whole Strike Force, and extensive dossiers of the officers and noncoms. But there were surprises. I knew that the major had survived five battles, but didn't know she'd been to Heaven four times, which was a record. I knew her second-in-command, Chance Nguyen, came from Mars, but didn't know he was from the first generation born there, and was the first person drafted from his planet-there had been a huge argument over it, with separatists saying the Forever War was Earth's war. But at that time, Earth could still threaten to pull the plug on Mars. The red planet was self-sufficient now, Chance said, but he'd been away for a century, and didn't know what the situation was.