plasma beam turrets and turning it into a planetary defense base.
The intent had been to protect the European Union from a Sh’daar attack, a scenario that had become all too possible when the Turusch had penetrated Earth’s outer system defenses in 2404, slamming a high-velocity kinetic-kill impactor into the Atlantic Ocean. Nobody, Koenig thought, had ever imagined that the ancient fortress at Douaumont would become the last-ditch refuge of the followers of General Janos Matonyi Korosi, the Butcher of Columbus and the leader of the Earth Confederation.
Events had proceeded in a chaotic tumble since the civil war between Confederation and the United States of North America had begun. Korosi, the USNA intelligence services believed, had been responsible for the nano-D strike against Columbus, D.C., formerly the USNA capital, an attack that constituted an almost unthinkably vicious war crime. Roettgen, the Confederation’s president, had vanished not long after—either a prisoner or murdered by Korosi’s thugs. A new president of the Confederation had been appointed from the Confederation Senate, Christian Denoix de Saint Marc, but smart money said he was either an innocent dupe or a corrupt front man for Korosi.
Then the USNA computer net facility at Cheyenne Mountain had launched Operation Luther, using the science of recombinant memetics to introduce a new religion into the Confederation’s electronic networks and social infrastructure. The new religion, called Starlight, had caught hold with astonishing speed, bringing with it a popular revulsion against a government that could condone the nano-disassembly of a city center, including hundreds of thousands of its civilians. A grassroots revolution had swept the ruling Globalist Party from power, and almost brought the civil war to an end.
Almost …
Geneva, the Confederation capital, had fallen to Starlightist rebel forces just two weeks ago. Working through electronic back doors put in place during Operation Luther, USNA Intelligence had been searching for the fallen regime’s leaders, and for Ilse Roettgen. They now believed that both Denoix and Korosi were in Douaumont, and the chances were good that Roettgen, if she was still alive, was there as well.
Catch Korosi and his stooges, and the war might be over for good.
And so, Koenig had authorized Fallen Star, a high-risk assault with the sole purpose of killing or capturing Korosi and Denoix, rescuing Ilse Roettgen, and bringing the nasty little war to a close.
Once that was done, Koenig reflected, all that was needful was to end the Sh’daar War, figure out what the Rosette Aliens wanted, and bring half of Earth back under a legitimate, reasonable, democratic, and above all peaceful government, one that would both recognize USNA independence and work with the United States to strengthen Humankind’s interests, both on Earth and throughout North America’s far-flung interstellar colonies.
Nothing to it.
“Concentrate on twelve o’clock! Hit ’em! Hit ’em!”
“Marine down! Marine down! Corpsman front!”
“Move, move, move …”
“First Section!” That was Widner’s voice, both on audio and transmitted in-head over the tactical channel. “With me!”
A passageway yawned ahead, with gray stone slabs underfoot and to either side. There was something up ahead, at the end of the corridor, but Widner’s helmet AI was having trouble parsing it out. What the hell was that?
Armored shapes rose from behind the object, which revealed itself now as an impromptu barricade: a jumble of furniture, concrete blocks, and steel drums blocking the stone corridor.
And behind it …
“Watch it! Damn it, watch it!”
Something slammed into Koenig’s chest, staggering him. It took him a dazed moment to recognize that he’d not been hit, but that a white-hot plasma bolt had slammed into Widner’s combat armor. Widner’s heart and respiration readouts went ragged, then dropped toward flatline. Koenig felt trapped, staring at the stone slabs of the corridor’s ceiling, unable to move, unable to do anything but lie there.
Widner died, and his armor began shutting him down for medevac and resuss …
VFA-96, Black Demons
LEO
0014 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Megan Connor rolled her fresh-grown Starblade until Earth’s vast sweep hung suspended in sun-kissed splendor above her head. The sunrise terminator stretched across the sky ahead of her now, out over central Europe, a razor-thin crescent of light across the black. It was just past midnight on the east coast of the USNA, a few minutes past six in the morning over France and most of the European Union. The Black Demons were in low Earth orbit, drifting southeast two hundred kilometers above the west coast of Europe. Below, city lights illumined the broken clouds over England. Sunrise at Verdun had occurred less than thirty minutes ago … but at this altitude she could see considerably farther into the new day than the Marines on the ground.
She adjusted her in-head view, connecting more closely with her fighter’s long-range senses.
Gods this new fighter is a dream!
Theoretically, with nanufacturing processes that could grow a new fighter from raw materials provided by asteroids in a matter of hours, there should have been no problem with constantly updating the USNA fighter fleet, discarding older designs like the SG-92 Starhawks and SG-101 Velociraptors and replacing them with the latest technology—in this case the SG-420 Starblade. The problem was not in the materials nanufacturing, but in retraining human pilots whose wetware—the organic tissue beneath the cerebral electronic implants and software—had already been shaped to control older designs.
The SG-420s, though, incorporated uprated AI components that could embrace Starhawk or Velociraptor training and experience as iterations within the larger pilot program. Still, what the star carrier America lacked was people to sit inside these new fighters: the campaigns of the past eight months—Arianrhod and Osiris and Vulcan—had killed too many good pilots. Replacements were coming on board from the training center at Oceana, but too few and too slowly, to bring the carrier up to full strength.
And yet, as Connor felt the sensuous flow of data streaming in through her fighter’s sensors and AI, she suppressed an exultant urge to shout for pure joy. Beauty exploded around her as the sun rose beyond the horizon ahead; blue water, the green patchwork of agricultural land, and the sweep of dazzlingly white cloud drifted beneath her. With the new system, it was easy to forget that you were flesh-and-blood wired into a cockpit barely large enough to receive you. Quite literally, she was the fighter; she stretched out an arm, and performed a graceful roll, the crescent of Earth rotating in front of her.
“Careful there, Demon Five,” the voice of Commander Mackey said inside her mind. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Hard not to, Skipper,” she told the squadron’s CO. “This is incredible!”
“Maybe so, but stay focused on the mission. We’re coming up on Verdun and we don’t want to miss anything, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Not that they were likely to miss anything. VFA-96, the Black Demons, was actually at full squadron strength—twelve fighters—though only Connor, Mackey, and two others were in this flight.
