"Gene," he said in disbelief. "That's insane." He had more than 40,000 people stationed at Triad! He had his entire far space fleet there except for whatever was deployed at Ganymede. "How could they have done something like that?"
"My understanding is that it was a surprise attack by the MPG, forcing entry through the transportation tunnels and cutting their way in with primacord charges. They overwhelmed the security force in less than an hour. General Sega — a fucking jarhead in charge of the Marines on Mars — took command of all the Martian forces and surrendered them." He shook his head. "Surrendered them! To greenies! Can you believe it? That bastard will be court martialed for that little decision, I can tell you that."
Jules paled as a thought occurred to him. "The nuclear torpedoes, Gene, are they still..."
"The security watch crews were able to wipe their programming. It's SOP. I wouldn't think that the greenies would be able to utilize them for anything. But they do still have the physical components."
"Thank God for small favors. But Gene, how could something like this have happened? What the hell are the greenies doing? What could they possibly hope to gain?"
"We don't know but we need to find out," he said, since the transmissions in which Whiting gave her speech to the planet were still on their way across the emptiness of space. "I need you to address the executive council tomorrow morning at 0800 on what has happened and what we're going to do about it."
"The executive council?" he said, fear shooting through the stoned haze of his mind. "I don't know anything about what's happened! How can I brief them? I need someone to brief me! And that will take..."
"You need to get dressed immediately and head for Armstrong. A T-7 will take you down to Colorado Springs. I'll have all of the info we've developed so far on a disk waiting for you. You can get yourself briefed in on the way down. Once you're in Colorado Springs I'll have a room ready for you at VIP quarters. Get on the Internet and start researching from there. You need to have a complete briefing ready for them at 0800 tomorrow even if you have to stay up all night. Include what happened, how it happened, and what the possibilities are that the greenies can get any of those ships operational."
"Operational?" Jules said, puzzled. "How the hell would they do that? They don't have any naval personnel capable of commanding a warship."
"Don't they?" Lucid asked. "They have a hell of a lot of former WestHem navy spacers living on Mars and carrying Martian citizenship. Many of them work on the food and steel transport ships. Is there any possibility that..."
"No," Jules said firmly, wondering why he had to explain something so basic to a man that was allegedly his superior. "No Martian has ever been placed in command of one of our ships since that idiot Belting back in the Jupiter War. And you know what happened there. I'd say that well over ninety percent of the Martians that have served in the navy never made it past enlisted rank. Sure, some of them may have observed command tactics and procedure but it is simply inconceivable that they would be able to operate a single one of those ships. And even if they could, what would they do with them? The most dangerous things they have are the Owls and those are useless without the torpedoes being active."
Lucid seemed somewhat relieved. "That's good to know." He said. "Be sure to come up with hard statistics to back it up when you brief the executive council. I just got the ass chewing of my life from them a few minutes ago. They are extremely worried about the possibilities of the Martians manning those ships. You'll have complete, top secret Internet retrieval access of course."
Jules shook his head again, still unable to believe what he'd just been told, still waiting for Lucid to tell him this was an elaborate joke. But it wasn't.
"Your T-7 pilot has been told to be ready to depart for Colorado Springs in one hour. See to it that you do not make him late."
"Yes sir," Jules said.
The face disappeared from the screen, leaving only the time display. From the speakers the soft music returned. He looked across the room at the young lieutenant. He no longer felt stimulated.
Armstrong Space Force Base — Departure
The T-7, and it's civilian counterpart, the LX-5, were among the smallest Earth-to-orbital vehicles manufactured. They were less than seventy meters in length, ten wide. Their primary purpose was the transportation of the elite, those that did not care to travel with the masses on standard orbital flights. In the civilian world the LX-5s were utilized by corporate heads and upper management. In the military world, they were used by executive committee members and high-ranking command staff. They were obscenely luxurious, equipped with plush seats, carpeting, overlarge Internet screens with full access, drink and marijuana delivery systems in each seat, and inertial dampened comfort to keep the occupants unaware of the stringent pitches, dives, and acceleration/deceleration cycles.
Though Admiral Jules was not important enough to rate his own personal T-7, he was important enough to rate the use of one of the spares that were always in waiting at Armstrong for people such as him. He and his two senior staff members boarded at the prescribed time, each grabbing a seat and plugging the briefing disks they'd been provided into the Internet screens before them. Though the craft was capable of carrying another twenty-two passengers in the same comfort as the Admiral and his staff, the pilot, a senior commander, knew that this was the load for the trip. It seemed an awful waste of the precious fuel that had come all the way from Jupiter to be burned, but that was not his concern. He sealed up the craft and was given immediate departure clearance.
The T-7 broke contact with the docking airlock and fired its starboard maneuvering thruster briefly, causing the orbiter to drift away. As it cleared the docking area, the thrusters were fired again, longer this time, pushing it out into the departure corridor. With further bursts of different maneuvering thrusters the craft spun around so it's main thrusters were facing in the direction of its orbit. This minute maneuvering was the main part of the pilot's job. While he was doing it, the computers calculated all of the factors to bring the craft out of orbit and onto a proper trajectory towards Colorado Springs and a soft landing at the field there.
When the pilot had the craft steady in the corridor he checked with Armstrong control. They gave him the go-ahead and he gave the computer the go-ahead. There was a brief countdown and the main thrusters fired, initiating the de-orbit burn. From the perspective of the T-7, the spacecraft seemed to streak rapidly away from the orbiting city of Departure, leaving it far behind. In actuality it was Departure that was continuing ahead on its normal orbital path while the T-7 was decelerating at three times the force of gravity. It began to drop towards the Earth and it's rendezvous with the atmosphere far below.
Inside the cabin Admiral Jules did not watch the Earth growing in his window and, thanks to the inertial damper, he was not pressed violently backwards into his seat. He was watching in disbelief as the events of the last eight hours were displayed for him on the screen. He watched the news clips of the shoot-out in New Pittsburgh, he watched the initial reports from TNB as the MPG troops attacked it. He replayed several of these over again, as did his staffers.
Just as he got to the cry for reinforcements from Admiral Rosewood to General Sega, the T-7 cut its engines and spun around once more, presenting it's belly to the approaching atmosphere of Earth. It continued to drift downward, pulled by the forces of gravity that were now stronger than its forward momentum. Shortly the craft entered the atmosphere where friction began the job of decelerating it from orbital velocity to atmospheric flight speed. The view out the side windows disappeared, replaced by steaks of fiery red as the tremendous heat of re-entry was bled off.