With Our Dying Breath Read online

  With Our Dying Breath

  By Aaron Kavli

  With Our Dying Breath

  Copyright © Aaron R. Kavli 2016

  Cover Art by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Saphira

  With Our Dying Breath is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to provide a sense of verisimilitude. If the events in this book do begin to happen, please gather your loved ones and say your prayers. All other characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination. All that to say that this is indeed a novel of speculative science fiction.

  Chapter 1 Pierce Oswald paced slowly as he inspected the pictures hanging in the lobby of Xichang's Earth Force Command Center. The pictures were the standard chain-of-command portraits and those of space flight heroes before and after the start of the war. Oswald had been waiting for some time, which was something even a Lieutenant Colonel had to endure from time to time. The young corporal manning the duty console looked up at him occasionally to flash an apologetic smile; Oswald reciprocated each time with a kindly nod.

  He didn’t really mind waiting. He liked the historical information displays that materialized below each picture when he approached. The antebellum histories were especially interesting. Each command center was allowed a certain taste of local flavor. Otherwise Earth Force offices all around Sol were a testament to the designers' dedication to bland, inoffensive modernity.

  On a small table, framed to look like a shrine, were two golden space vehicles with holographic candles flickering behind them. Each was a memorial to fatal accidents that had happened at Xichang. In 1996 an unmanned orbital rocket crashed into a nearby village and in 2098 a Mars resupply mission failed during lift-off, killing all aboard along with several ground crew. For a space facility that was nearly two-hundred years old, Oswald considered that a very good record.

  Next to that was the obligatory list of Earth Force spacecraft lost since the start of the war. After thirty years of on and off fighting, that list had grown quite long. Oswald always made a point of rubbing his fingers over the names etched into the titanium plates that listed the lost vessels which he had served on during his career. The CTR-13 Longwell, CBR-54 Miami, NBR-61 Sol Hammer, and the most recently lost, though the first spacecraft he had served on as a cadet, CSS-8. Earth Force didn’t give name designations to sensor stations but the crew had always just called it Ol’ Nosy. As a cadet, Oswald had thought the name humorous and full of panache. He was sorely disappointed when he learned that all sensor stations were called that by their crew.

  “I’m very sorry, sir.” The corporal looked so young. Everyone looked young to Oswald lately.

  “No worries, Corporal. Majors wait on Lieutenant Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels wait on Generals. It is the way of things." Oswald flashed a grin. "Hurry up and wait.”

  The young corporal gave a perfunctory laugh before smoothing his uniform and turning back to looking busy. That was his part of the game. Given the lack of any notable ribbons or a golden Combat Comet, Oswald knew the man was not in the Space Service. He saw the mix of respect and resentment in the corporal's eyes as they paused on Oswald's own expansive mosaic of honors earned over two decades. The man stared on, held by the golden Rocket of Valor that flew boldly above the wheel of ribbons, arranged to look like satellites orbiting Earth.

  Oswald liked the Earth Force uniforms. The royal blue trimmed with stylized golden flames representing Earth and Sol. The cut of the uniforms were a vast improvement over the moribund uniforms of national militaries.

  He realized that tradition was important for morale. But Oswald also knew that some of those traditions had been born in superstition and rationalized into ceremony by later generations. His great uncle had told him about some disgusting hazing traditions in the U.S. Navy that traced back to ancient sailors trying to appease ancient gods. These traditions were more brutal the farther back they went. Oswald was happy to make new traditions.

  Oswald turned to face the flat gold-ringed granite Earth that dominated the center of the largest wall, the Earth Force emblem. It was oval in shape and one meter across at its longest with geographically correct reliefs of the terrain. The continents looked a bit out of position as they always did on modified azimuth projection maps. It was centered over the Atlantic Ocean—every nation represented but no nation shown preference. Oswald always thought an interrupted sinusoidal map would have looked better but he had never been asked.

  The gold ring around the carved Earth on the wall had the Earth Force motto deeply engraved in it.

  A People United. A Species United. A World United. It was, as Pierce Oswald’s sagely father was wont to say, unmitigated horsecrap.

  They were good words for political campaigns and recruitment brochures. The unscarred part of Oswald's spirit still believed those words.

  And the discovery of the jump tunnel did unite the world for a short time. But the promise of an open galaxy, the dream of exploring the stars, was enough to lure farm boys away from home but not enough to unify man.

  It was the destruction of NASA's Alpha Centauri research station that brought Earth's fractious peoples together by a thread. The fires of a war from the distant black was all that held them together still. The vision of Earth expanding to the stars was burned away by alien lasers and the largest casualty of the interstellar war was hope.

  “I am very sorry to have kept you, Pierce.” General Anahita Khadem strode into the lobby and waved the corporal to return to his seat as he started to rise at her entrance. She returned Oswald’s salute and shook his hand. Her bright smile contrasted her dark Persian features beautifully.

  “Anahita.” Pierce smiled warmly back at her. If the corporal hadn’t been there, he might have given the general a big hug. “It has been a while. You know, the whole war thing and all.”

  “Well, we’ve both been busy.” She gently tapped the Rocket on his uniform and invited him back towards her office with a nod of her head. “Let’s talk.”

  The halls were stark and unobtrusive, designed by military health and welfare experts to not cause any extra stress to those officers tasked with making the hard decisions every day. The passageways of many rockets had been similarly designed but the effect never seemed to work out in the cramped confines of zero-gravity. Maybe it was the grime or the effervescent body odor of a combat crew. Or perhaps things would feel worse out in the night if the attempt hadn’t been made. Oswald was generally distrustful of the efficacy of such touchyfeely efforts.

  Anahita’s office was slightly less Spartan than the hall, but not much. A holo-caster projected small pictures above the corner of her desk. Most were Earth Force memories but there were pictures of her home town and family. A beautiful mosque could be seen in the background of several pictures. Oswald knew that her greatgrandfather had been an influential imam who died in the Muslim Reformation Wars and had helped build that very building. The man’s picture was hanging on a wall inside when Oswald visited it those years ago. He also knew that the man would definitely disapprove of his granddaughter’s staunch atheism.

  “Some scotch? Brandy?” Anahita spun a small counter around to reveal a small selection of spirits. She had never been a heavy drinker but the woman appreciated a fine drink. “I’ve even got a bottle of Delamain.” She let the offer of his old favorite hang in the air with a smile.

  Oswald looked long at the richly colored spirit in the bottle before waving his hand at it. “Thanks. But I’ve got to give a speech in a little bit. And nothing gets the confidence of a crew up like a flight commander with slurred speech.” He grinned as she put away the bottle and the two glasses.

  “Good point. Have a seat then.”

&nbs
p; “Thanks. So, how are things? I here you've been killing Centauri dead from MCC.” Oswald’s eyes flashed to a picture of two very young cadets floating in the Mediterranean Sea. If he’d had chance to study it very long it would have made him feel very old. He was saved by Anahita shutting off the holo. “I’d love to get a tour of your mission control center. It’s always interesting to see how ops look from the other side.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “I bet you've got pictures of Captain Yasmina of Star Command on the wall. Maybe some fuzzy dice." Oswald chuckled at Anahita's dour look. "Seriously though. I saw your mission took out some heavy hitters last month. I’ve read the reports… very impressive.”

  “Not as impressive as those,” she motioned toward the Rocket and Comet pins on Oswald’s uniform. Her uniform had more ribbons than his own by a half an orbit, but there were no other special service pins. “You’re a hot-shot-rocket-jock now.” The smile on her face faded and her eyes locked in on his. “You’ve done awesome things, Lieutenant Colonel Oswald. The Earth owes you a lot.”

  “They just mean I’m not as important as you,” Oswald waved dismissively. “If I was, they’d keep me safe in a mission control center instead of sending me out over and over again to get vacc’d. I just watch the blinking lights and dramatically say ‘fire!’… when mission control tells me to. I’d rather have stars than comets.”

  Oswald hoped that they were not going to get into another argument about allowing mission control teams to be eligible for Combat Comets. He understood her position, knew that it wasn't just about getting more points in her record. But to Oswald, the people who faced being burned alive in space were the only ones deserving of the claim of being a combat veteran.

  Anahita touched her collar and smiled, rolling her eyes.

  “I’ve read the after mission reports, Anahita. Some of the things you’ve pulled off are simply amazing. I’d have bought it long ago if not for some of my mission controllers.”

  “You do well enough on your own. How many times did you fight in Alpha Centauri? Three? No controllers out there.”

  “Not after they figured out where we hid the MCC stations.” Oswald shook his head. “After we lost three in AC, EF didn’t even try to set up another. We just set up a squadron commander, but we never controlled each other’s rockets.” He shrugged and leaned back. “It would have been nice to have an MCC in Tau Ceti and Bernard’s Star— especially at Berny. I like my MCCs.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have been able to pull off what you did at Bernard’s Star if you’d had an MCC. Despite what you rocket-jocks think,” she raised her dark brows, “I hope you know we try to take care of our squadrons.”

  “Speaking of which,” Oswald continued, suddenly suspicious. “I’m still waiting for my flight package. I haven’t even gotten a wait n’ see order. Do you, uh, happen to know anything about that?”

  “Actually, I do. I will be your mission controller this time out.”

  Oswald reconsidered the drink. Anahita’s successes had put her in the realm of priority missions only. She didn’t do simple war patrols— she did suicide missions. Sometimes the rockets even made it back.

  “Don’t look at me so dreadfully, Pierce.” Anahita had seen through his stony mask and they both laughed. “I know you’ve read the debriefings. The missions I get are high risk, but I never, ever, throw an asset away.”

  “Asset?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I'm afraid that I might.” The levity in his voice faded suddenly.

  Her eyes were naturally sultry, even with the small wrinkles that now bordered them. Oswald looked back into them steadily. Anahita took a deep breath and sat back in her chair to consider him a moment, flipping her black hair as she did. Oswald was not used to seeing women in uniform with long hair. In the space service female crew had the same hair restrictions as men. In a combat vacc-suit there was no way to push hair out of one's eyes that had come loose in zero gravity. It was a regulation Oswald gladly enforced, even if it had led to countless crass jokes about the difference, or the lack thereof, between men and women in the Space Service.

  “Pierce,” Anahita finally broke the heavy silence, “I know we always had different ideas about joining. But surely you don’t think I’m such a monster. It is the jargon, the lingo. That is all. I make tough decisions in control and it sometimes..."

  “Makes it easier?” Oswald finished. He was being hypocritical by busting her chops, he knew. How many had died at his command so far for the honor of his Rocket pin?

  “Yes.” Anahita’s eyes narrowed momentarily. “Yes, Pierce it makes it easier. Especially when the next mission involves a beloved friend.” She leaned forward to tap a long nail loudly on the table and furrowed her dark brow. “But I can assure you, Mr. Oswald, that for this next mission the primary objective will be for everyone else to keep you,” she pointed her finger at his face, “alive.”

  “I’m sorry, Ana,” he said, looking away.

  “You know my father didn’t name me Ana.” She grinned at the groan that told her Oswald remembered the mantra. “My father named his baby Anahita, my man. Not Ana, not Ann—of those names he was no fan.” They laughed together again, clearing the tension in the room like a fresh breeze.

  “I know, I know.”

  “In any case, Pierce. I meant what I said. You and Roland are the most important assets Earth Force has right now. Your—our—orders come straight from the top. And,” her face tightened noticeably, “you are going to hate them.”

  He let the last comment go. He didn’t hate orders, didn’t see them as good or bad. He had even stopped thinking of them in terms of whether they made sense or not. He was just tired of them all—even the ones he understood.

  “Given how short our planetside stay was this time, and how little time I got to spend with Misty and the girls,” Oswald thrust his own accusatory finger at Anahita, “I should hope it is from the top. Of course for you, General Khadem,” he added with a boyish grin, hiking a thumb over his shoulder towards the hallway, “the top is just next door to your office, right?”

  “Pah!” she laughed and stood up. “We’ll get your flight package and I’ll introduce you to my bosses. My office isn’t secure enough to tell you anything else.” They walked to the central elevator, returned the salutes of the guards, and sped down into the bowels of the base. “Time to give you that tour of the mission control center. And there's no fuzzy dice.”

  Chapter 2 Lieutenant Colonel Oswald and General Khadem maintained their military bearing as they rode the elevator down in silence. She had been right about their different views on Earth Force; he had only wanted to explore beyond the boundaries of his family farm. The war had denied him that dream while realizing Anahita's—she was in command of fighting spacecraft.

  Oswald thought of them as cadets in the early years of their careers when they still spoke often. Anahita repeated how her childhood heroine had been Star-Captain Yasmina Pouran from an old, Iranian scifi show. When she spoke about the adventures of Yasmina, she had always dismissed it as little more than a childhood fancy. But Pierce knew better. Then he could see the fire—hope, maybe?—in her eyes as she spoke of battles with pirates and aliens. Being in a mission control center wasn’t quite as dramatic as bellowing orders on a starship bridge (entertainment companies’ insistence on archaic naval terminology always baffled and amused him) but there was no doubt that she was calling the shots.

  As for himself, Oswald was glad that high space piracy and running laser battles with half-alien criminals were things of fantasy—one didn’t just get in a space craft and go a’viking. Spacecraft were too expensive, too easy to track, and too easy to poke holes in. The idea of boarding an uncooperative space craft was even more fantastical. There were very few surviving civilian spacecraft left to rob these days in any case.

  Two more armed guards snapped to attention as they stepped from the elevator. The MCC before them was large
r than the small one's Oswald had been to. Those mostly covered local maintenance evolutions or acted as back up centers. But this place was big.

  “Welcome to my MCC,” Anahita smiled and led him to the railing of the platform that overlooked the large, frenetic room. She spread her arms and gave Oswald a wry smile. “Welcome to battle central. Let’s not keep everyone else waiting.”

  The MCC was divided into large, semi-transparent cubicles with five to ten mission operators in each. A large monitor stood in front of them and a larger holographic display of their battle space above them all. The lead mission controllers stood on raised platforms that allowed them to easily see over the shoulders of the other operators.

  Oswald noted that he could see into the controller cubicles through the top and back walls, but not into the adjacent spaces. The opaque walls between teams reduced distraction and provided a layer of security. The MCC crews carried on calmly, some even looking disinterested. Those few that looked energized gesticulated silently in the sound-proofed cubes.

  “Can they see out these walls?” Oswald asked as they walked down the rows between the cubicles.

  “No,” Anahita smiled over her shoulder. “We never know when we’re being watched.”

  “A regular panopticon, eh? Big Brother really is watching.”

  “He's been watching for a while. But around here only people with nothing better to do spend time skulking around the halls.”

  “I have always found,” he scanned about suspiciously, “that those people are the most dangerous. And the most likely to go skulking around.”

  “True enough,” Anahita agreed. “Here we are.”

  The door opened into a windowless conference room dominated by a large table equipped with a holo-projector. A motley crew was sitting silently around the table sipping their drinks and watched the two enter. Oswald recognized some of these people and knew Anahita had been right. This was big.

  “Let me introduce you all to Lieutenant Colonel Pierce Oswald, flight commander of Roland.” Anahita swept her arm around the table, stopping her arm in the direction of a fit, middle aged Chinese man Oswald recognized immediately.