The Star Carrier Series Books 1-3: Earth Strike, Centre of Gravity, Singularity

He was about to tell George to shut up and get out of his face, then realized she was trying to provoke him, trying to prod an emotional reaction out of him. “Don’t tell me what I’m supposed to feel,” he said quietly. “My mind is still my own. So are my feelings.”

“Up to a point, Lieutenant. Up to a certain, and limited, point. What I’m trying to establish is that you boost down those launch tubes almost every day with more firepower at your fingertips than has been expended in all of the wars fought by Humankind since World War I. The jihadist nukes that took out the city centers of Paris, Chicago, and Washington were in the ten- to twelve-kiloton range. The one that got Tel Aviv was a little more, twenty kilotons or so. Your commanding officers—and the Confederation government—need to know that you are stable, competent, and reliable. Naval space aviation requires cool reasoning, a clean organic-cyber network connection, and emotions that are under control. No hotshots. No show-offs. And no one who’s going to go off half-cocked when someone calls him a name, like Prim or monogie.”

Fresh anger flared for an instant. His fists clenched. “Okay!” He forced his fists to relax, then said, more quietly, “Okay. Look, if I’m a risk, a threat to the Navy, kick me out! Send me back to the Periphery!”

“Is that what you really want?”

The reply stopped him cold.

The Authority might have been swinging its mass around when it brought him in, but the truth was that Trevor Gray had really started growing when he joined the Navy. Hell, you could romanticize the free life of the Periphery … but what “free life” really meant was constant raids by other clans and families, near-starvation in the winter if you didn’t have a big enough stock of nano for food, clothing, and clean water, and a short, brutish life span that generally ended with a gang fight, with an accident, or with disease and exposure, all without the healthcare to see you through.

He missed his friends, the others in his TriBeCa Tower family. But in exchange, he’d received an education, social standing, implants, and a purpose … not bad for a filthy gutter kid from the Manhattan Ruins.

“It’s not about what I want,” he insisted, though the words sounded uncertain even to him. “Why even bring me in in the first place? I wasn’t bothering anyone out in the Ruins.”

“The Confederation is dedicated to bringing the benefits of technic civilization to all of its citizens,” she told him.

“Bull. They wanted someone who could fly Starhawks. If they don’t want me to fly, they can send me back to where they found me.”

“It’s not that easy, Lieutenant, and you know it. You—” She broke off in mid-sentence, listening.

“What is it?” Gray asked. She appeared to be receiving a base announcement of some sort. Gray’s in-head circuitry was attuned to the naval Net on board the America, not the Marine version in use here.

“It’s time for us to evacuate, Lieutenant,” she told him. “They’re ordering us topside, right now, to the transports.”

“So where does that leave me?”

“I’m recommending continued therapy, Lieutenant. With me, or with therapy teams on the America, or back at Mars, it doesn’t matter. But you’re going to need to break that PTED cycle before you launch in a Starhawk again.”

And he was dismissed. A Marine escort led him to the shuttle, and he never saw Anna George again.

He did know, however, that he was going to spend a lot of time thinking about just what it was he wanted out of the Navy, and about what the Navy wanted back from him.

Chapter Eleven

26 September 2404

MEF HQ

Landing Pad

Eta Boötis IV

1807 hours, TFT

“This way, Lieutenant,” said the escort, a young Marine corporal. The name showing high on the right chest of his combat armor was Anderson. “This Choctaw is slated for the America. You’ll be able to rejoin your squadron there.”

Gray looked out past a sea of thronging people, civilians, most of them. The large majority were women, most of them veiled inside their clear helmets, many completely anonymous beneath the traditional burqas draped over lightweight e-suits. There were lots of children as well, the youngest in survival bubbles, older ones clinging to mothers or older siblings, the oldest trying to look stolid and brave.

“All of these people are going to the America too?”

“These are, yes, sir. They’ve been sending them up by the shuttle-full for hours now. I hear they’re packing them into every ship in the battlegroup.”

Gray looked at a nearby child of perhaps three, squalling inside her e-suit’s bubble helmet as her mother held her, bouncing her up and down. The inside of the bubble was nearly opaque with moisture from the screaming, though Gray could still make out the child’s red and contorted face. “It’s going to be an interesting trip home.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal agreed with considerable feeling.

Not all of the people boarding the shuttle were women and children, however. There were a few men sprinkled in among them. One, a couple of meters away, wore a black e-suit with a green-and-yellow patch of the Mufrid Defense Militia, a local group that worked as military auxiliaries in support of the Marines.

Gray found the fact that so many women were wearing burqas over their e-suits interesting. Only the most conservative and traditional of Islamic women still wore the things, which were supposed to conceal the woman’s shape and keep her from offending—or tempting—male believers. Individual cultures tended to determine for themselves what was properly modest and what was not, and the women of those Islamic states on Earth that had accepted the White Covenant tended not to wear veils or similar heavily concealing garb. The Haris colonists, though, appeared to have reverted to form-hiding drapery, even when the woman was wearing a head-to-toe environmental skinsuit and bubble helmet that could not in any way be described as sexy.

“How many are there?”

“God knows, sir. Six or seven thousand, I heard. They’re even bringing them in from the other Mufrid colonies out there.”

Gray had heard that there were five other outposts on Haris besides the main colony-research station called Jauhar, or Jewel, and that two of those outposts had been incinerated by the Turusch during the past few weeks. Three, however, had not been attacked, and the Navy was trying to get as many women and children out of those surviving bases as possible.

As Gray and his escort started across the field, falling in with the women and children, he heard a low and menacing rumble from the civilians on the perimeter. They’d completely ringed in the landing field, and were blocked from approaching the grounded Choctaw shuttle by a painfully thin line of armored Marines. This crowd, most of them men, had been silent at first, but they were becoming more agitated now. One man was standing on a balcony overlooking the landing field and the mob, shouting something incomprehensible.

“What’s he saying?” Gray asked.

“Beats the hell out of me, sir,” the corporal replied. He looked nervous, staring across the crowd and fingering the stock of his laser rifle.

“He is saying,” said the male civilian with the MDM patch on his shoulder, “that this is blasphemy in the eyes of God and the Prophet, may his name be forever blessed … and that those who return to Earth and to Earth’s oppression …” The man broke off the translation, listening, then shook his head inside his bubble helmet. “I don’t think you really want to hear this, sir.”

“Maybe we should hear,” Gray said. He was measuring the distance they still had to cross to reach the waiting Choctaw, wondering what the chances were that he would make it on board with this pass, or if he would have to wait for the next ride out.

“He is saying that it is God’s will that we all stay and face the aliens, that … that Shaitan waits to devour us all on Earth. …”

“God help us,” the corporal muttered.

The civilian looked at Gray, and extended a gloved hand. “I am Sergeant Muhammad Baqr,” he said. “Militia, attached to the Marine 4

SAR/Recon.”

“A pleasure. I’m—”

“Lieutenant Gray, I know. I was part of the hopper team that pulled you out of that tangle of shadow swarmers last night.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Abruptly, four Marines appeared on the shuttle ramp ahead. One was holding up his hand, his helmet moving slowly back and forth. There was no more room on that Choctaw, and he was stopping the queue.

Screams and cries arose from the waiting civilians, and the men outside the perimeter began shouting and shaking their fists. The Marines began backing the civilians away from the ramp, gesturing for them to get back.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Gray said.