“Maybe we’ve found the Lanky homeworld,” Sergeant Simer offers. “Maybe we’re headed downtown into Lanky Central.”
“You better hope we’re not,” I say, and shudder at the thought of transitioning into a system crawling with Lanky ships. I remember the sight of the solitary seed ship, taking on our entire carrier task force without getting its hull scratched. Just one of their ships wiped out 5 percent of our entire fleet in less than forty-five minutes, including three of our biggest and newest warships. A dozen of them could probably go through our whole fleet like a fléchette through a block of soy chicken.
We’re about to run our heads against the same unyielding barrier, and once again, the brass seem to have concluded that our approach isn’t working because we’re not running at the wall fast enough.
As big as the Midway is, the fleet manages to fill it up with people and gear quickly. Two days after my arrival, the supply crews have filled every storage room on the ship to the ceiling, and navigating the fore-and-aft gangways and corridors becomes an exercise in weaving between pallets and gear pods stacked along the walls. Even the carrier’s flight deck, the only open space on the ship big enough for running, resembles an overstuffed storage shed at a maintenance depot.
“They’ll turn this boat into a supercarrier by weight if they don’t stop stacking shit on every flat surface,” Captain Michaelson says as we observe the hustle and bustle on the flight deck on the third morning of the Midway’s hurried deployment preparation. We came down to the flight deck to get in a few miles before breakfast, but I doubt that even the most efficient ballistics computer in the fleet could plot a clean course through the mess in front of us. There’s a flight of drop ships parked over to one side of the deck, like a quartet of barely tolerated guests, and the rest of the flight deck is a sea of cargo containers, munitions pallets, and fuel bladders.
“Those drop ships are ancient,” I say, and point at the cluster of olive-green spacecraft. “Wasp-A. You don’t even see those in the fleet anymore. I thought they had all been upgraded or junked by now.”
“I’ll bet you anything all this gear is from the strategic-reserve stockpile. Looks like it’s all or nothing.”
At the far end of the flight deck, some supply crews are erecting what look like SI field tents. Several neat rows of them are already standing, and from the number of tents laid out on the deck beyond, it looks like the supply guys are putting together a tent village big enough to quarter an entire regiment of Spaceborne Infantry in full kit.
When I see Sergeant Simer walking nearby, a data pad in his hand and a harried look on his face, I wave at him to flag him down.
“Hey, Simer,” I say. “What’s up with Tent City back there? Are we picking up refugees?”
“Fucked if I know,” Simer shrugs. “They said to get ’em up before we deploy. Rumor has it we’ll get a bunch more passengers along for the ride. As if we don’t have this thing loaded up to the gunwales already.”
“Any guess on where?” the captain asks me when Simer walks off again.
“Nukes in the tubes, enough tents for a regiment on the deck, and everyone’s in a rush,” I say. “I hope the brass have their priorities straight, and we’re going back to Sirius Ad to kick some Lanky ass.”
“That would be good and proper,” Captain Michaelson agrees.
And that’s how I know we’re going somewhere else, I think.
If we launch in the next few days and haul ass back to the Sirius A chute at maximum acceleration, we can make it back just in time to get our people out before the Lanky terraforming turns the place into a toxic pressure cooker. If we would only join forces with the SRA for once instead of fighting over the leftovers, we could even kick the Lankies off that rock and save what’s left of the civvie population.
I remember the faces of the podheads that dropped with me on that mission. I wonder if Macfee, my fellow combat controller, survived the initial Lanky onslaught, and if he’s hiding out with an SI squad somewhere on Sirius Ad, waiting for the rescue ships he already knows won’t come in time.
“If that’s not where we’re going, I’m going to look at alternative employment,” I say.
Captain Michaelson looks out over the mess that is the hangar deck, his expression unreadable. “If that’s not where we’re going, we should start loading flag officers into those missile tubes,” he replies.
He looks at me and smiles curtly, as if he had just realized that he shouldn’t have voiced that thought in the presence of a noncom.
“God knows they’re dense enough. Shoot a pod full of generals into a Lanky ship, you might actually do some decent damage. Sure as shit won’t be a loss to us either way.”