Merrick truly mourned for Will Thompson. The enemy commander had proven to be a capable and honorable opponent. The news of his death at the Second Battle of Sander’s Dale had been greeted with laughter and derision at federal headquarters…but not from Isaac Merrick. The federal commander in chief spent the hours after the battle alone, locked in the office of his mobile command center, paying silent tribute to his fallen counterpart.
Merrick had always considered the Cogs inferior…the descendants of the lowest levels of humanity. But William Thompson had been born a Cog in one of the most notorious slums in the Alliance, and he had become a better man than any of Merrick’s peers. The same was true of Kyle Warren and Gregory Sanders…they all had a strength of character that Merrick found to be quite rare among his colleagues.
He wasn’t sure emigrating was even possible. His family would go along; he was sure of that much. He was an embarrassment to them now anyway. But would he be accepted anywhere? It had been barely a year since the end of the rebellions, and less than two since he’d been in the field as federal commander on Arcadia. Could the colonists overlook that fact so soon and allow him in as one of them?
He opened the door to his office and walked to the desk. A glance at his screen confirmed he had no messages. Apparently being a supernumerary figurehead didn’t entail much actual work. He sat down in his chair and turned to face the window. Work…that was another issue. What would he do if he emigrated? He wasn’t enjoying being useless on Earth; he didn’t expect to appreciate it any more as a colonist. But his only trade was soldiering. Was it possible to somehow to be a part of the colonial military establishment so soon after he was their enemy? He couldn’t go to Arcadia; he was sure of that much. It was too soon, and the wounds were too fresh. Maybe another world. But where?
The Marines and navy had selected Armstrong for their new joint headquarters. Both organizations were rebuilding and frantically trying to expand the facilities they needed to become independent of Earth-based supplies and manufacturing. They needed skilled personnel badly, and Merrick liked the idea of being part of something dynamic and growing.
He’d met Erik Cain on Arcadia, when he surrendered to Kyle Warren and the rebel forces. Cain’s troops had turned the tide and saved the rebellion, but the Marine general had remained virtually silent, respectfully leaving the negotiations to Warren and his officers. They had exchanged only a few words, mostly polite pleasantries, but Merrick had a good impression of Cain. Perhaps he could work with him somehow. He knew the Marines would never make him one of their own, but maybe he could be a consultant or planner of some kind.
He looked out at the afternoon sun dancing off the pine trees. It was a beautiful day, early spring and just a little chilly. He sat there staring through the window, and the enormity of what he was considering hit him. Leaving Earth…it was almost inconceivable. Yet that is just what he was planning. He knew it would be a one way trip. Those who emigrated where rarely permitted to return, at least not for permanent residency. As a disgraced member of the Political Class, he almost certainly would not be allowed back. He’d be ostracized even more by his peers for his choice to leave Earth. If he went, he went for good.
He sat there for hours thinking as the dappled sunlight gave way to dusk and then to a clear, crisp, starlit night. Finally, he hoisted himself out of his chair, his joints and muscles stiff and aching from the long day spent sitting. His choice was made. He would go to Armstrong.
Chapter 13
It was a beautiful day, sunny with a gentle breeze. Men had colonized Farpoint because of the six warp gates in the Epsilon Fornacis system – the magnificent climate was just a bonus. Few worlds man had discovered offered the kind of paradise Farpoint did, and that made it easier to coax colonists out to what was then the very edge of the frontier. Several decades of expansion had pushed that line much farther out, to the extent that Farpoint was not really even a Rim world anymore. The changes in the map of occupied space had rendered the name obsolete and a little silly, but the locals wouldn’t give it up.
With the practicality common to Rimworlders, the original settlers had unimaginatively named their first settlement Landing. Built on the site where the first colony ship hit ground, it had grown from a small cluster of huts into a true city, at least by colonial standards. Farpoint, with its half dozen transit points, had become the primary hub for new colonization efforts and commerce with the resource worlds on the frontier. And the navy base was the largest in two sectors, charged with the defense of the entire Rim.
Farpoint Base had once hosted an entire fleet supported by a reinforced brigade of Marines, but the gains made in the Third Frontier War had eliminated most enemy threats to the Rim. The Alliance outer colonies now bordered only unexplored space, and the forces stationed at Farpoint had been steadily reduced until only token contingents remained.
Now, however, the base hummed with activity once again. Admiral West’s Third Fleet had arrived and, if her second line vessels were old and past their prime, they still represented the largest force Farpoint had seen in a generation. Sections of the station that had been long closed were now reopened, and Farpoint’s extensive orbital defenses were fully active. The system’s massive scanning array was operating at full power, searching for any incursion through one of the warp gates.
On the planet itself, the lush valley north of the capital was now an armed camp. Colonel James Teller’s 1 st Brigade had arrived with 3 rd Fleet, and their encampment stretched over 10 square kilometers of rolling grasslands. In the center of this small, bustling city, Erik Cain sat outside his headquarters structure, staring down at a large ‘pad set on a folding table.
Cain had been having difficulty focusing on tasks with his usual intensity. His mind wandered, often to things and people he hadn’t thought about for years. He was troubled, and it was weighing heavily on him. His skills were still there, and his devotion to duty, but something of the motivation that had once driven him was gone. He felt lost.
But now he was getting ready to send his Marines into harm’s way, and his thinking was razor sharp. Nothing was more important to him than the lives of his men and women, and he was grimly determined to do everything in his power to prepare them for this new ordeal. He felt deep in his gut that many of them wouldn’t survive what was coming. Perhaps most. More ghosts to haunt him in the night.
The ‘pad displayed the map of local space on the Rim, with large circles representing solar systems, connected by thin blue lines denoting the warp connections that made transit between them feasible. The whole thing looked like a bizarre glowing spiderweb, but Cain saw it for what it truly was…a battlefield.
“Providence, Taylor’s World, Cornwall, and Lancaster…they’re all along the approaches from enemy-occupied space.” Cain was pointing at the map as he spoke. “They could hit any of them…maybe all of them.” He looked up at his companion. “Conventional tactics say we need to garrison them all.”
James Teller glanced from the map to Cain and back down again. “That means no more than a battalion on each…not if we’re going to leave anything in reserve on Farpoint.” Teller stared intently at the map, as if the situation would change if he looked hard enough. The circles representing solar systems were color-coded. Red for those that had already fallen to the enemy, orange for the four threatened worlds Cain had just discussed, blue for Farpoint, and yellow for everything else.