“Not before they take down that dreadnaught.”
“The dreadnaught?”
“The key to the enemy forces now is that dreadnaught. Without it, they can’t shoot down Earth’s ship-killer missiles. Without the dreadnaught, we’ll be able to destroy their fleet. If they lose their fleet, they won’t commit their big invasion machines against us, and Fort Pierre will not fall.”
Barrera shook his head in bafflement. I ignored him and relayed the order to the hovertank commander myself. I watched as they slid slowly over the sea to chase the enemy dreadnaught. I knew they didn’t have much of a chance to survive against more than forty cruisers, but if they could just take down the enemy’s big ship, the rest of the ships would be exposed to our side’s missiles.
Sandra came into the room then. She had a predatory tension to her. My eyes flashed to Jasmine, who had seen her as well. Jasmine reached for her sidearm and drew it.
Sandra scanned the room once, her eyes sliding past Jasmine and I. She spotted Barrera, and leaped over the battle computer with a single bound. Her knife was in her hand, gleaming.
I was surprised, and barely had time to take a step forward before she grabbed Barrera by the neck and pushed a knife into his breastplate. Barrera was wearing a battle suit. He clamped her wrist with an armored glove and struggled with her. The knife made a horrible scratching sound, the screeching of metal cutting metal. Blood, nanites and sparks flew everywhere.
I reached the struggling pair and tried to pull Sandra off him—her strength was shocking. Even with an exoskeleton to help me, I had a hard time pulling her off Barrera. A beam went off, burning a hole in the ceiling. Barrera had fired one of his arm-mounted weapons.
“It was him, Kyle!” Sandra said, her voice rasping in her throat. “It was him all along.”
-39-
Kwon and I managed to get Sandra and Barrera separated before anyone died. Of the two, Sandra was the harder to control. She was like a shark with a mouthful of blood—she wanted more. And there was blood everywhere, all of it Barrera’s as far as I could tell. One of her knives had managed to get through his armor and score an inch-deep puncture wound.
“Tell me what the hell is going on, but do it fast,” I said.
“He’s the one,” Sandra said. “He’s the assassin, the mole, the traitor. I checked the armory. He went in there and did an inspection on the grenades before we left to hunt the big machines. He was especially interested in our team’s weapons.”
While Sandra explained herself, I continually glanced over my shoulder toward the big screens that hung above us. The missiles from England were about a third of the way across the Atlantic. Our hovertanks were gliding out over the waves now, positioning themselves to hit the enemy fleet, which had not yet taken notice of them. Once they started firing of course, they would get plenty of attention. I had to wonder if it would have killed anyone if Sandra had waited until this battle was over before making her accusations. She had never been good at waiting.
I looked at Barrera. His eyes were slits and his mouth was a straight line. That could have meant he was pissed off or just needed to cough. It all looked the same on Barrera.
“Lieutenant Colonel, are these accusations true?” I asked him.
He nodded once, slowly. This surprised me. I’d expected a list of denials and counter accusations. Instead, he admitted it right up front. I didn’t quite know what to do next.
As I thought about it, my heart sank. We’d really found the traitor, and the answer was the worst possible one on the list. I didn’t want it to be Barrera. I didn’t want to lose him—to execute him. But I had no choice now.
“Why the hell did you do it?” I asked with feeling.
“Permission to speak plainly, Colonel,” he said.
I snorted. The man had tried to kill me on at least three occasions, but still wanted to follow protocol. A disciplined marine to the last.
“By all means,” I said. “I can see why you might want to get me out of the way to gain command. But do you realize I lost fourteen marines out there due solely to your sabotage?”
Barrera shook Kwon’s heavy hands off. I nodded to Kwon, who let him go but watched him with intensity. Barrera walked to the computer table and tapped the map. Florida zoomed in and we saw the southern coast was still glowing with fires and plumes of white smoke. The upper atmosphere was filling slowly with fallout. The numbers there had updated to a new total.
“Two point seven million now, sir,” Barrera said. “You’ve managed to lose millions more lives than I did with my sabotage attempt. Who do you think should be court-martialed?”
I felt a heavy pang of guilt. I’d managed not to think about Miami much up until now. In the middle of battle, a veteran didn’t dwell on the dead. If you did, you were much more likely to join them.
“As I recall, the Macros killed those people, not me.”
“No feelings about it at all, sir?”
“Of course I’m sick about it. But there will be time for grief later.”
“I put to you Colonel, that you are undisciplined and unprofessional. You have been placed in a position beyond your capacities. You have overseen the deaths of many millions of humans, and possibly billions of other living creatures. South America is a wasteland. China will not recover for the better part of the next century. Every continent has lost major cities. Abroad, the Centaurs, Worms, Microbes and who knows what others have all lost countless members of their species. We haven’t formed a coherent coalition with any of them. We proceed from month to month, day to day in a random haphazard series of events, driven by your spur of the moment decisions.”
I felt pain as his words rained down on me. “Sure, there have been losses,” I said. “We are fighting a war unlike any in the history of our species. This isn’t some organized parade-ground exercise. Losses are high, but we are still standing. We are not on our knees.”
“But we are not winning, Colonel. We are losing ground. The last straw for me was when you restarted this war with an enemy we can’t beat. I thought of the millions you’d consigned to death, and decided to take action—to take command.”
I nodded, understanding perfectly. It was not entirely out of character. He’d never spoken about his feelings, he’d just taken action when he’d quietly decided to do so. It was so hard to tell what this man was thinking. Even now, he was as grim-faced and calm as ever.
“Millions have died,” I said, “and I can’t promise millions more will not follow them. I don’t think freedom comes cheaply. Have you ever heard the expression ‘when one man dies it is a tragedy, when millions die it is a statistic’?”
Barrera snorted at me. “Yes sir, but do you realize you are quoting Joseph Stalin?”
“Uh,” I said, squinting. “Yes, right. But the point I’m trying to make is that the individual counts. I’d rather fight and die free than live as a slave. The Macros do not intend to allow us to survive. They intend to kill us all in time.”
“But why do not have to make that decision today?”
“You shouldn’t listen to this bullshit, Colonel,” Kwon said suddenly.
I turned to Kwon. “I understand how you feel, First Sergeant. But if one of my senior staff turns on me, I at least have to know why.”
“Let us evacuate to the mainland, sue for peace and work on our defenses,” Barrera said.
I shook my head. “I’ve seen what peace with the Macros looks like. They will not allow us to build up, nor even to survive in the long term. They would demand the destruction of all threatening technology on Earth.”