“That would be me.” She picks up her rifle and gestures for me to follow her.
“You might as well tag along, sirs,” she says to the two light colonels in the room, and they do.
“Put it on speaker, please,” Sergeant Fallon instructs the comms tech when we walk out of the conference room and into the operations center.
“This is Master Sergeant Fallon, New Svalbard Territorial Army,” she says. “Go ahead.”
“This is Indianapolis Actual, Colonel Campbell,” a familiar voice says. “I also have the skipper of the Gordon in the circuit with us.”
Sergeant Fallon looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
“The Indy is the orbital combat ship,” I tell her. “Little escort tin can. The Gary I. Gordon is the auxiliary freighter.” Then I address Indy Actual directly. “Colonel Campbell, this is Staff Sergeant Andrew Grayson. I was your Neural Networks admin on Versailles.”
There’s a surprised laugh at the other end of the tight-beam connection. “Well, I’ll be damned. How are you doing these days, Mr. Grayson?”
“Doing fine, sir, all things considered. Glad to see they gave you a command after Willoughby.”
“Yeah, they did,” he says. “They gave me an OCS that’s a fifth the size of the Versailles. Some promotion.” He pauses for a moment. “But she’s a fine little ship, with a crack crew.”
“We were expecting to hear from the Midway first, sir,” I say. “Did they bump the Indy to task force flagship, or is this a private call?”
“We have, ah, parted ways with TF 230.7. My XO and the skipper of the Gordon agreed with your sergeant’s interpretation of Commonwealth law. We left the task force two hours ago, and I’ve escorted the Gordon into a different orbit.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence in the room as we all process this new development.
“I guess we’re now the space component of the New Svalbard Territorial Army. But please go ahead and pick an official acronym, because that’s a mouthful to transmit.”
“Understood, sir,” I chuckle.
Across the room, Sergeant Fallon gives the tech the signal to mute the line. Then she looks at me. “Is he for real, or is this a setup?”
“He was my XO when my first ship got shot down by the Lankies,” I say. “He’s a good guy. I don’t know what they’d gain from playing tricks with us at this point. They’re holding all the cards up there.”
“Well, let’s play ours close, just in case.”
“Understood,” I say. Sergeant Fallon nods at the comms tech.
“Be advised that the Midway is dropping a bunch of boats right now,” the colonel continues. “As far as I can see, they’re all drop ships, not attack birds. Can’t tell you for sure, though. They locked my ship out of the task force TacLink when we announced our intentions.”
“Sir, I’m a combat controller, and I have a data suite in my armor. Would you let me get an uplink to Indy’s TacLink? That way, I could get a better picture of the situation.”
“I don’t see why not,” Colonel Campbell replies. “I’ll let the tech do the voodoo. Who’s in charge down there?”
“The ranking officers on the ground are Lieutenant Colonels Kemp and Decker, but Sergeant Fallon’s running ops right now, sir. I guess that makes you the highest-ranking officer in this outfit.”
“Super. I’ll have the supply group make me a uniform with lots of stars.”
Lieutenant Colonel Decker and his sergeant major laugh at this, and even Sergeant Fallon cracks a smile.
“Well, don’t expect any sage advice,” Colonel Campbell continues. “I don’t know shit about ground combat. I’m just a tin can skipper. If Sergeant Fallon and Colonel Decker want to take point on this, they’re welcome to the job. Not that the chain of command is still relevant at this point.”
“The way things are going right now, they’ll need to reserve an entire wing for us at Leavenworth,” Lieutenant Colonel Decker says.