The Desert of Stars

By John Lumpkin

At the edge of the desert...

In 2141, humanity has attained the stars, but some nations have found their dreams of interstellar empire thwarted, and they have gone to war to ensure their futures beyond the Solar System.

In this thrilling sequel to Through Struggle, the Stars, U.S. Space Force Lieutenant Neil Mercer is sent to a strategic independent colony on the planet of Entente to curry favor with the repressive ruling government. On Earth, Neil's mentor, NSS operative Jim Donovan, seeks to bring in the powerful neutral states of India, Russia and Europa into the war on the allied side, first through diplomacy, and then through ... other means. Meanwhile, Neil's old friend, space defense artilleryman Rand Castillo, assumes a position of leadership among the guerrillas fighting in the occupied American continent on the planet Kuan Yin.

Initially light-years apart, their three stories will ultimately intertwine in a confrontation that will determine the fate of a planet, and perhaps their own fates, as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Lumpkin
• Release date: Mar 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301397051

John Lumpkin

John J. Lumpkin is a writer and teacher who was born in 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. A former national security reporter for the Associated Press, he covered 9-11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he may be the only person who has had a drink with both Donald Rumsfeld and Steve-O from Jackass (but not, to be clear, at the same time). He lives outside of Boulder, Colorado.

Book preview

The Desert of Stars

A Human Reach Novel

By John J. Lumpkin

The Desert of Stars is copyright 2013 by John J. Lumpkin.

The cover art is copyright 2013 Winchell Chung.

All rights reserved.

The starry background for the cover image is credited to NASA, the ESA, and the Hubble Heritage-ESA Hubble Collaboration.

The right of John J. Lumpkin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as permitted by fair use laws in the United States of America.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, v1

To Charlotte and Theo

Acknowledgments

I again owe thanks for the help and encouragement of Winchell Chung, the cover artist and author of the incomparable Atomic Rockets web site, Claudio Bertinetto, Iyar Binyamin, Laserman 1st Class Luke Campbell, John Christensen, combat editor Mark Graves, Stephen Gustav, Eileen Lumpkin, Brian Mansur, Gregory Muir, Stephen Rubin, Shannon Sindorf, Alice Srinivasan and Christopher Weuve. I am also grateful for the thoughts of Ken Burnside, co-author of the excellent Attack Vector: Tactical game.

Details on the Human Reach setting are available at http://www.thehumanreach.net.

Novels of the Human Reach

Through Struggle, the Stars (2011)

The Desert of Stars (2013)

The Passage of Stars (pending)

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Dramatis Personae

Starmap

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Excerpt from The Passage of Stars

About the Author

About the Illustrator

Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers.

— Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars, 1996

War is death, and a plague of the lack of small things, and toil.

— Stephen Crane, Wounds in the Rain, 1900

Dramatis Personae

WOLF 359

USS Apache

Commander Roman Hernandez, Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Nathan Howell, Executive Officer

Lieutenant Lorna Carruth, Operations Officer

Lieutenant David Ortega, Weapons Officer

Lieutenant (j.g.) Neil Mercer, Intelligence Officer

Lieutenant (j.g.) Jessica Barrett, Directed Energy Officer

Ensign Eve Cohen, Propulsion Officer

Astronaut Dacey Allenby, Sensor Tech

HMS Ajax

Commodore Duncan Metcalf, commander, Convoy 323

JDF Kiyokaze

Commander Genda Hotaru, Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Endo Daisuke, Intelligence Officer

CSS Gan Ying

Captain Qin Bao, Commanding Officer

ENTENTE (BETA COMAE BERENICES IV)

Republic of Tecolote

President Lawson Conrad

General Antonio Vargas, Chairman of General Staff

Major General Katherine Naima, Secretary of the Interior

Colonel Samir Lorenzo Garcia y Abdulaziz, Battalion Commander, District 7

Captain Park Kang-Dae, President Conrad’s bodyguard

U.S. Consulate, Tecolote

Paul Layton, Chargé d’Affaires

Andy Bonaventura, Consular Affairs

Martina Bandi, Foreign Service Officer

Lindsay Trujillo, Foreign Service Officer

Irene Gomez, Station Chief, National Security Service

Others in Tecolote

Akita Tadeshi, a Japanese operative

Misaki, his aide

Xavier Tippy Griego, a catering company owner

Das, a forced immigrant

Kao Xun and Kao Tai, siblings

Colonel Tan Pierce, a rebel

Elsewhere on or around Entente

Commander Marc Raleigh, U.S. Space Force Intelligence, Entente station

Major Amanda Clark, Executive Officer, 2nd Marine Orbital Assault Battalion

2nd Lieutenant Vanessa Salter, Jumper Pilot, 2nd Marine Orbital Assault Battalion

Gunnery Sergeant Ruth Harkins, 2nd Marine Orbital Assault Battalion

KUAN YIN (11 LEONIS MINORIS A III)

Rand’s guerillas

2nd Lieutenant Rand Castillo, formerly Leader, 3rd Platoon, Bravo Battery, Fires Battalion, 34th Brigade

Sergeant Hal Aguirre, formerly Commander, C Gun, 3rd Platoon

Private Rachel Lopez, formerly of the Targeting Section, 3rd Platoon

Combat Supply Cache Falcon

Colonel Regina Foster, formerly J-3, Joint Task Force Sequoia

Lieutenant Commander Kyle DiMarco, formerly Executive Officer of the submarine Bowfin

Major Isabella Cruz, a quartermaster, formerly Deputy G-4 for the 129th Brigade

Captain Catherine Gant, Reconnaissance Forward Support Company Commander, Brigade Support Battalion, 129th Brigade

Staff Sergeant Tim Ruiz, a Green Beret attached to the 129th Brigade

Sergeant Alicia Patterson, formerly an intelligence specialist with the 107th Brigade

Sycamore

Major General Xie Quanyou, commander of the People’s Liberation Army forces on occupied Sequoia

Major Shen Liang, staff intelligence officer

Major Wong Pengfeng, commander of the military police forces at the Sycamore civilian internment camp

Territorial Governor Solomon Rivera, a prisoner

Major General Hyram Chalk, a prisoner

Moira Tobin, a civilian prisoner

Michael Bannerjee, a young civilian prisoner

CSS Weisheng

Rear Admiral Kong Ruchang, fleet commander

USS Valley Forge

Captain Grace Mallett, Commanding Officer

Lieutenant (j.g.) Erin Quintana, Kinetics Warfare Officer

Brigadier General Rev Grogan, U.S. Army Special Forces

1st Lieutenant Gabriela Silva, U.S. Army Special Forces

EARTH (SOL III)

United States

Senator Darren Gregory, senior senator from New Jersey

Trip Bell, Gregory’s chief of staff

James Donovan, Senior Operations Officer, U.S. National Security Service

Gardiner Fairchild, Senior Operations Officer, U.S. National Security Service

Sonya Chang-Hilliard, Assistant Deputy Director for Operations, U.S. National Security Service

Finn Kintsel, Operations Officer, U.S. National Security Service

Blink Riley, Science and Technology Officer, U.S. National Security Service

India

Lieutenant General Tyag Bahadar Singh, Indian Army

Wing Commander Venkata Kurian Ramesh, Indian Space Force

Russia

Counteradmiral Sergei Pavelovich Komarov, Russian Space Defense Forces

Europa

Claude Delvaux, Colonization Minister

China

Shi Xiulian, an astronomer

Combined Joint Task Force 21

Vice Admiral Lesley Cooper, U.S. Space Force

Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Hellastrae, 75th Ranger Regiment (Spaceborne), U.S. Army

Lieutenant (j.g.) Leon Jackson, Deputy Engineering Officer, USS Ramage

ELSEWHERE

Flight Lieutenant Kieran Wu, Intelligence Officer, RAS Republic, Republic of Australia Space Force

Li Xiao, Operative, Second Bureau (China)

Prologue

Shanghai, China, Earth

Xiulian’s brain desperately wanted to interpret the rainy nighttime streetscape as a place of anonymity, where not even automated eyes could see what she was about to do. But she knew it was not so: The omnipresent police drones cared little for the weather or darkness. And although the new sniffers State Security were plastering on every streetlamp faced some difficulty in these conditions, they remained a threat, as they might smell her passage and alert a nearby patrol that they did not detect a corresponding radio transmission from her person. But the risk of being seen and fined for an infraction was preferable to the certainty that her movements would be recorded had she brought her identification caster with her.

Still, she gave the streetlamps a wide berth. This was not a part of the city she knew, but her contact had said it was a good place to meet. Shi Xiulian, astronomer, diplomatic adviser, interstellar traveler, mother of two fine boys, and traitor, would have preferred to pass this material to the Americans at an upcoming academic conference in Hawaii, but her co-conspirators had said it was too urgent to wait that long.

The datachip she carried held two things of note. The first was a report she had contributed to, and, more importantly, she was authorized to have. It detailed China’s knowledge of a great barren region of stars beyond those already colonized by the Americans, Japanese, Russians and Indians. China had reflexively concealed this knowledge, but Second Bureau was certain the Japanese had learned of the phenomenon, as well. The Americans, meanwhile, had yet to grasp their future would be confined to a long decline on their paltry three-and-a-quarter habitable worlds, but they would learn soon enough. How they learn it, and who they learn it from, may greatly influence their response, she believed.

Her second document was far more dangerous to possess: It was a list of senior members of the Chinese government, including her, who favored reaching out to the United States to negotiate the sale of some Chinese stars to them, so the Americans would continue to be able to search for new habitable worlds.

And feel no need to take them by force.

Xiulian and her co-conspirators feared that the prospect of finding no more colony planets would be too much for the Americans to bear, and the Japanese could manipulate them into an alliance in the coming war. A coalition between the technological masters of Japan and the still-dangerous Americans was not one everyone was certain China could overcome, particularly if they could rally other nations jealous of China’s good fortune.

Xiulian’s walk through this unfamiliar part of the city, then, was the first step into opening a backchannel to the Americans, one she hoped would blossom into diplomacy and a bargain that would forestall the coming violence.

And keep my boys from dying. Her elder son was a lieutenant in the submarine forces; her younger, wanting to emulate his brother, had enlisted in the Army and was stationed on Huashan. The thought of war tightened her stomach, even now.

Xiulian reached the appointed intersection and looked around. She saw no traffic. The rain grew harder, angrier. Why did they suddenly insist I meet with them in person? Why not just a dead drop of the datachip? The Americans are running too many risks.

There. A parked car, across the street, with three, no, four people inside. The driver, a woman, looked Chinese; the others, two men and another woman, did not. Why so many?

One of the men, the fair-skinned one, got out and walked over to her.

Miz Shi? he said.

She nodded.

I’m Gardiner Fairchild. I’m sorry about all the rearrangements, but we have word that you may be under threat. Would you consider coming with us?

He expects violence, or wants me to believe that. The other agents are for security.

No, I will not leave my family, she said. Are you certain?

Someone knows what you are doing. We don’t know who. Please, then, pass me the datachip, and we’ll be on our way. Quickly, now.

Xiulian reached into her coat pocket, felt the small plastic chip resting in the fabric.

A red-and-blue police flasher cut through the darkness.

Stay where you are, a female voice said in Mandarin. Xiulian and Fairchild both looked to its source – a small monitor drone rising shakily from a low rooftop. Its spotlight pointed at them.

Fairchild put a hand to his face and hunched over, striding quickly back to his car. Xiulian fled in another direction, running, running, running. She heard the Americans’ car hum away.

The drone did not follow her. But she was sure she had been tagged, and the security net would track her every movement.

She didn’t know what to do, but she thought her sons might be saved if she simply went home to await arrest. She threw the datachip into a gutter on the way.

She waited. She called in sick to work the next day – why create a spectacle at her office?

But State Security never came. She went to back to work a week later, wondering if they were watching her to see who she was working with. And as 2138 became 2139, she reflected on the event, over and over, during the rising tensions with Japan, during the initiation of the war she tried to prevent, and she realized she had never heard a Shanghai police drone broadcasting a female voice before.

Chapter 1

PARIS – Bidding for colonization rights for a suspected terran world orbiting 10 Tauri has reached an unprecedented E200 billion, a record that even exceeds bids on planets that have previously been confirmed to be habitable by humans. The planet, in European space, will not be subject to a close survey until 2147 at the earliest, when a wormhole is expected to open there. European officials have not indicated whether they will accept any bid and have hinted they may opt to colonize the planet themselves, or perhaps allow multiple nations to colonize different regions of the world. Colonization Minister Claude Delvaux has ruled out accepting bids from any belligerents in the war, a move that some experts suggested may prompt Iran to withdraw from the conflict to pursue the planet instead.

USS Apache, Wolf 359

Contact! The astronaut’s voice was shrill with excitement. Two candles lit at Thales keyhole. Drive signatures indicate they are Whiskey-12 and Whiskey-15.

No, no, no! Apache’s executive officer grew louder with each exclamation. They can’t be back in action yet. Intel, didn’t you tell us that those Hans would be out another three weeks?

Aye, sir, said the intelligence officer, desperately searching for a way to mollify his superior. "Analysis had indicated the Gan Ying needed additional repairs."

The analysis was fucking wrong, Lieutenant, said the XO, a lieutenant commander named Nathan Howell. He seemed to believe swearing made him sound serious, but most of the Combat Information Center crew simply regarded him as coarse. Can’t you people get anything right?

The target of his outburst, a recent addition to the Apache’s staff, remained mute. He hadn’t performed the analysis, just relayed it from the technical experts in the fleet who had studied the damage suffered by the Chinese ship in a skirmish several weeks ago.

Someone needs to go wake up the captain and brief him, the XO went on. He looked at the intelligence officer. Since you aren’t doing us much good here, how about you?

Aye, sir.

The officer pushed off from the console, with a little more force than normal, in hopes of getting out of the CIC before the XO could reload and fire again.

But as he departed, the astronaut at the sensor station tapped his elbow. The officer halted his motion on a handhold.

Sir, am I pronouncing Thales right? said the astronaut, her voice hushed. She was a nervous 19-year-old first-cruiser named Dacey Allenby. She pronounced the planet’s name as a single syllable.

The officer smiled gently. No. It’s pronounced ‘Thay-leez,’ he said. The planet is named after a dead Greek philosopher. But don’t worry about it. Everyone knew what you were talking about.

‘Thay-leez.’ I’ll get it right next time, sir, the astronaut said.

The officer nodded and pushed off again, reaching the vessel’s axial tube without the XO launching another barrage. Captain Hernandez’s quarters were three decks below.

The captain didn’t always respond to his handheld when he was asleep, so the officer knocked on the hatch and waited. He heard coughing within, and the hatch opened.

I trust you have a good reason for waking me, Mister Mercer? he said hoarsely.

During his brief, Lieutenant (junior grade) Neil Mercer did his best to ignore his captain’s frail condition. Commander Roman Hernandez was only in his late fifties, but a life in space had taken an extreme toll. He had made too many transitions from gravity to weightlessness, and he had taken too many stray neutrons from the fusion candle and protons from solar flares. Despite all the modern shielding, exercise regimens and drugs, his body was failing.

Neil politely paused the brief each time the captain lapsed into a bout of coughing. Hernandez had good and bad days, and scuttlebutt was the ship’s doctor was, out of loyalty to a friend, not reporting the severity of the captain’s condition to higher command, as that would see Hernandez replaced. A darker rumor held that Hernandez was from a family that refused genetic improvements, and the Space Force had declined to have him removed to avoid appearing it was discriminating against him.

The captain had a stubbled, rotund face topped by short gray-and-white hair. He completed a twenty-second fit of coughs, the last of which launched a small comet of phlegm that darkened a spot on the left sleeve of Neil’s khaki uniform.

It was too much. Sir? We can do this later, if you prefer, Neil said.

No, I’m fine, Mister Mercer. Go ahead.

Neil projected a map of the Wolf 359 system from his handheld. The star, one of the closest to Earth, served as a strategic junction between wormhole arms controlled by several powers. Fleets guarded five of the six exits from the system, but neither side had the strength for a decisive attack upon the other, for fear of abandoning their own wormholes and leaving vital systems beyond at risk. So for months, Wolf 359 had resembled a middle school dance, with everyone sticking close to the walls and exits, avoiding coming into contact on the dance floor. Gan Ying’s recent clash with a hydrogen tanker convoy and her escorts had been an exception.

The system had seven planets of any size, all worlds of rock and ice, their collective composition closer to that of the moon system of Jupiter or Saturn than that of the Solar System as a whole. The wormholes orbited within the fourth and fifth tracks, far enough apart that they didn’t interfere with one another.

USS Apache was part of a three-frigate escort to a convoy of fourteen space trains and five transports, carrying between them a brigade of troops, including the British Army’s Black Watch and the Royal Marines’ Four Five Commando. They were bound for the New Albion, United Kingdom’s enclave on the multinational world of Entente, where nine thousand British soldiers, backed up by a few thousand Australian and Canadian troops from neighboring territories, had mounted a heroic defense against an entire Chinese corps for the last five months. The son of the Duke of York was among the defenders, and the Western press was calling the resistance the Long Night. But Neil knew the defenders were running out of food and ammunition. The new troops were not expected to turn the tide – that force would not be ready for several months – but they would provide some relief to the beleaguered defenses. Substantial portions of the British, Canadian and Australian fleets were waiting several stars downstream to help the reinforcements fight their way to the surface of Entente.

To his captain, Neil said, "Sir, the Hans apparently completed repairs to Gan Ying much earlier than we expected. It looks like our information fell short there. We detected her and a supply tender thrusting to intercept us a little past the halfway mark to the FL Virginis wormhole."

So they can reach us?

I’m afraid so, sir. She is carrying drop tanks, so she will have enough remass left to fight, Neil said.

Three frigates against a cruiser? It would be close, Hernandez said, shaking his head.

Too close. And the Hans launched at the worst possible time. The convoy has built up enough velocity that there’s no point to turning around now. I have prepared simulation data for your review.

That won’t be necessary, Mister Mercer, but thank you.

One question answered, Neil thought. As intel officer – the designated bearer of bad news – he shared responsibility with the ops officer to run various simulations of any prospective battles. But they were required to keep the outcomes secret, lest bad results destroy crew confidence and serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy, or good ones lead to hubris and mistakes. Indeed, one input variable in the simulations was whether the crew would be aware of the output; Neil had, in this case, left it undetermined. Either way, it was up to the captain to order Neil to release the data to the crew, and Hernandez was apparently one of the old-school captains who saw no value in doing so.

Perhaps it was for the best. The probability of defeating Gan Ying with no losses to the troop transports was in the mid-thirties. Victory with all three frigates surviving without major damage was only nine percent.

Hernandez absentmindedly tugged at an earlobe. Any chance we could be reinforced?

Neil tried to punch up some calculations, but he was too impatient to find the precise data, so he released his handheld computer to float in front of him and ballparked an estimate.

Sir, the fleet at the Lalande keyhole is too far away. From the Sol keyhole, I think they would need to run at about eighteen milligees to make the intercept, but …

… but would Admiral Sakuri risk weakening his defense any more than he already has to aid a lesser ally? He didn’t want to give up a fourth frigate to escort this convoy. Japan doesn’t have any immediate stake in the outcome on Entente.

Yes, sir. My thinking as well, Neil said. "The only ship that could conceivably reach us is the frigate Kiyokaze, but she’s heading back to Earth for a candle overhaul. The Brits might be able to release some reinforcements from the other side of the FL Virginis keyhole, but Gan Ying can catch us first. And that’s not a big force the Brits have there, and the Chinese know it."

Hernandez sucked in a long, labored breath. His eyes brightened at the prospect of action, and some of the fatigue seemed to melt away from his frame.

Mister Mercer, this convoy is going through, the captain said, his voice drying into a warm tenor. In the meantime, get to know a Chinese captain for me, if you please.

They had eight days to prepare. Admiral Sakuri declined to release any relief from the Sol wormhole, and the convoy dispersed in an effort to limit the number of ships the raider could take. The escorts would stay with the troop transports, while the space trains would scatter. Neil wondered how the space train captains took being told to break off from their defenders. Not well, he imagined. But Neil could see the logic in the move – it would limit the damage the Gan Ying could do in a single strike. A more daring alternative would have been to keep them together, and he wondered if he should feel slighted the commodore on the Ajax didn’t have more faith in the escort’s ability to defend their charges.

He studied. The enemy ship was a Ban Chao-class cruiser and one of China’s newest warships. She massed nearly fifteen thousand tons, nearly three times that of the Apache. She was armed for all occasions: missiles, three turreted coilguns, and a laser cannon that, when tuned to ultraviolet frequencies, outranged anything the escorts carried. The intel file on her captain, Lu Jiaheng, described him as a solid but unimaginative officer, chosen for his political reliability over any special talent for command. That means he will follow the PLA’s playbook to the letter. He’ll be predictable. We might have a shot at this customer after all.

A few days later, a message arrived from the allied intel cell in the fleet at the Sol wormhole:

PRIORITY MESSAGE

TOP SECRET

1004Z07JAN2141

FR: CPT VILLANUEVA, S-2, CJTF17

TO: LT KERR, HMS AJAX; LTJG MERCER, USS APACHE; LTJG LAVOIE, CFSS EDMONTON

CC: LT ENDO, JDF KIYOKAZE; CPT HASHIMOTO, JDF SHOKAKU

1. SOURCES INDICATE WHISKEY-12 (CSS GAN YING) RECEIVED NEW COMMANDING OFFICER DURING RENDEZVOUZ WITH CHINESE TASK FORCE AT WOLF 359-PROCYON KH EVENT.

2. NEW CO IS IDENTIFIED AS CPT QIN BAO. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ATTACHED.

3. CONFIDENCE IN THIS INFORMATION IS HIGH.

Neil sighed. Four days of work wasted. I wonder what the sources were. He had no need-to-know, but that didn’t stop his brain from attacking the question anyway. Sources suggested they had heard it from two places, and High confidence was one step below the top, Very High, confidence rating, which analysts employed when they wanted to say, We really mean it. The one-off grade made it likely that at least one of the sources belonged to Japanese intelligence, and Captain Villanueva’s analysts on Kitty Hawk didn’t know who or what it was.

Hmm. Probably one or both sources are SIGINT, some tap on Chinese fleet message traffic. And of course, if the Sakis aren’t telling us who their sources are, it’s possible that the sources are the same message, intercepted at different points by American and Japanese taps. Does it matter? This would be pretty silly disinformation. Or extremely nuanced … ah, discipline your thoughts, Mercer, and quit wasting time on questions you can’t answer. The mission is to figure this Captain Qin out.

Qin Bao was born January 14, 2100, on Hainan Island, he learned. Her father was a Han Chinese bureaucrat assigned to the island; her mother was a member of the Li minority there. Qin attended Shanghai Jiao Tong University for one year before being selected for the experimental Achieve Celestial Primacy officer training program, which emphasized independent decision-making, adaptability and crew morale. A reformist general’s brainchild, the curriculum was couched as a modernization of the teachings of Sun Tzu and other strategists, and it was intended to create innovative officers who could break away from the PLA’s rigid doctrine.

Only one class – Qin’s – completed the curriculum before the general’s adversaries shut it down. But the damage to Qin’s prospects was minimal: She was regarded as an effective administrator and even better captain. Neil learned that it was she who had left the battlecruiser Truman a worthless hulk at the Battle of Kennedy Station six months prior.

It was also she who declined to deliver a coup de grace on the ship. Video from the battle clearly showed three missiles, launched by Qin’s ship, self-destructing as they approached the disabled Truman, affording survival to two hundred American personnel.

Mercy. She showed mercy to a defeated enemy, Neil thought, feeling a brief, melancholy sense of kinship. He found a paper, published in a public Chinese military journal, in which Qin chided the authors of another paper, a group of Army colonels, for caojianrenming – regarding life as worthless as a straw. We lead men and women, not machines, Qin wrote. And we will fight women and men, not machines. We cannot regard doctrine as we would a computer program, to be debugged until it is perfect. She’s quite the contrarian to standard Chinese policy. Will she fight like we do? Or some other way we don’t expect?

Neil had joined Apache’s crew eight weeks prior, following several months at U.S. Space Command in geosynchronous orbit over Earth. There, he had undergone formal training to be a shipboard Space Force intelligence officer – an odd experience, given he, unlike his classmates, had served in that capacity in his first assignment on the destroyer San Jacinto, whose original intel officer had been badly wounded in a battle. He had also advised a team of programmers and engineers on ways to counter China’s key technological advantage in the war: beam cruisers that mounted huge ultraviolet lasers able to damage a spacecraft at ten thousand kilometers, well beyond the range at which most vessels could fight back.

Japan and the United States were still working to match that capability, and other efforts had focused on ways to disable the Chinese lasers at such long ranges. The most effective weapon against lasers was a smaller, automated laser turret, called a counterbattery, built to shoot out the fragile optics of an attacking laser, but typical counterbatteries lacked the range to hit the long-range Chinese weapons. His contribution consisted of helping develop doctrine for the team’s best defense: tying a warship’s main offensive lasers into the fast-acting counterbattery system. Although a few physical modifications were required in each ship, the counter primarily consisted of a software package that allowed the counterbattery computer to take over and activate the main lasers. It was an imperfect fix: Counterbattery lasers fired only in response to an enemy laser hit, so the shot required the defending warship to risk serious damage. Moreover, the warship had to have its main lasers – typically mounted on the nose of the ship – facing the beam cruiser when it took that hit.

Neil, who had seen the threat from the Chinese beam cruisers firsthand, had been frustrated at the small size and limited resources provided to the team trying to combat it, but the project was one attempt to adapt among many. The war had taught hard lessons, paid for in ships and blood. Both sides were refitting their ships with extra armor around their antimatter storage rings; too many warships had died to a lucky laser shot or kinetic fragment that had forced some antimatter to crash into regular matter, igniting a fatal explosion.

China, too, had correctly predicted that a widespread space war would destroy ships far faster than they could be replaced. Most shipyards had been above Earth, the war’s deadliest battleground, and had been destroyed during fighting over the high orbits. Only the big neutrals, like Europe, Russia, India and Brazil, still held theirs; for the belligerents, smaller yards around colony planets were the only way to replace lost ships. China had also used particle beams and marines to capture several American and Japanese ships, and the allies were waiting to see one of their own hulls returned to action against them.

China’s preparations had dashed hopes that the war would be quickly concluded after the Space Force smashed a Chinese fleet at the Battle of Kennedy Station last June. China and her Korean allies had been forced to abandon Earth orbit, and the main American and Japanese forces were blockading the Middle Kingdom’s access to space. But the blockade hadn’t ended the war: China still controlled the mining platforms above Saturn and Uranus and the antimatter farms near Mercury, forcing the allies to import vital fusion fuel from other star systems. And Beijing could communicate with its colonies and extrasolar fleets via its Sol-Sirius wormhole.

Nor had China given up the initiative. Her fleets and armies had attacked the alliance across every wormhole link that connected its space to theirs: Earlier in the war, they had captured the American continent on Kuan Yin. They were threatening the Japanese colony on Hoshigawa and the British colony on Entente. All we have to do is grab a single wormhole chain to potentially habitable worlds, and we can sue for peace. But the Chinese have attacked us on every front, tying us up, preventing us from going on the offensive.

Gan Ying captured her first prize four days later.

Chapter 2

NEW YORK CITY – Prices of raw materials cartridges for industrial fabrication units increased by an average of 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter, outpacing inflation and raising fears of broad price increases for manufactured goods. Retail prices for home fab unit cartridges were up 4.8 percent, a spike that could force many families to curtail production of a variety of goods. Analysts blamed the war for the rapid increases, noting that many of the raw materials used in the cartridges are imported from extraction operations in Africa and Asia, and the risk of sea transport to North American ports has sent transit insurance costs skyrocketing.

HMS Ajax, Wolf 359

I am quite open to ideas, Commodore Duncan Metcalf assured his audience.

A gloomy silence met his entreaty. Everyone had hoped his summons meant he would unveil his master plan for victory against the oncoming Gan Ying, but he clearly had no more idea what to do than the rest of the escort officers sharing his cramped briefing room. Even the distant Japanese frigate Kiyokaze, patched in via comms laser, had nothing to offer.

Though still only a bright star in their sky, Gan Ying was coming for them. Captain Qin had already put prize crews on three space trains, costing the allies their cargoes of rations, ammunition and combat skytrucks. But she passed on the others, preserving her remass to fight her way to the main convoy.

Can we go after the tender? Ajax’s first lieutenant asked. Destroying Gan Ying’s support vessel, known only to the convoy as Whiskey-15, would prevent the cruiser from replenishing its propellant before the battle.

No, Metcalf said. "Already considered and discarded. That would provide Gan Ying the option of attacking the convoy without the full escort present to defend it."

The meeting returned to silence. Neil fought with himself. The unspoken option grated on him. It was so obviously there; he had to say it, so they could at least discuss it.

Sir, I’m not necessarily endorsing this, but we could give up one of the troop transports, he said, the words coming in a rush. "Offload as many of the troops as possible, then set it up on a vector that the Gan Ying would have to intercept it. The time it would take to secure the vessel would allow the rest of the convoy to escape. Obviously, it would be a volunteer …"

Unthinkable, Metcalf growled, and Neil knew he had made a mistake. What if the enemy simply destroyed the troopship and continued his pursuit of the rest of us?

Sir, Captain Qin has behaved quite honorably and given quarter in the past. I expect she would do it again.

You seem quite ready to risk the lives of hundreds or more good British soldiers on your expectation, Lieutenant, the commodore snarled. "I would expect that from our Japanese allies, but not