Grass Eaters 2 | 16 | The Real War I

Armstrong Translunar Railcar Station, Luna

POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Admiral)

There was a candlelight memorial at the railcar station near her apartment. To avoid drawing attention, Amelia attended in civilian dress.

An electronic board at the front of the somber crowd scrolled, showing the names and faces of those confirmed killed in Tharsis. It was unlikely anyone here knew the people who died at the movie theater, the Marines or the civilians, but it affected everyone.

The shooting… it was not an attack on a movie theater. Nor a simple Marine recruiting booth.

It was an attack on the Republic.

And the attackers wore a flag. The infamous light red and brown flag of the Saturnian Resistance Navy.

Amelia said a short prayer in her heart for the fallen and looked back up, noticing in the corner of her eye one of the mourners staring unblinkingly at her.

Uh oh.

Amelia was from Ganymede.

Before humanity ventured out into the stars, there were worries about how space would affect the human body. Some speculated that those born in zero gravity would be thinner, taller, or have fragile bones. But thankfully because of inertial compensators and gravity devices, most of the concerns didn’t materialize. People like her who had been born in offworld colonies were biologically virtually indistinguishable from those who were not. Except maybe she was paler from a lifetime in radiation-shielded ship hulls.

But people could still tell.

Her posture. One of the habits acquired from years growing up in the outer colonies. The way she walked. Or maybe it was her accent when she spoke. People could still tell she was not from Terra or Luna or Mars. There was just something in the human brain that could recognize the subtle signs.

Despite not orbiting Saturn, Ganymede was a hotbed of Resistance activity back in the last Red Zone sanitation campaign. A historical legacy of the Republic presence there back when the outer planet crackdowns began. Her own husband had been kidnapped by one of their cells, before they were married. That was how they met, on a rescue mission. But the dangerous cells were stamped out on Ganymede twenty years ago, or so she thought until this week anyway.

Amelia gave a short, polite nod back at the mourner still staring unflinchingly at her, flashing him a quick neutral smile and turned back toward the front. She could still see his eyes boring into her in her peripheral vision. A middle-aged man, one of the fusion plant workers judging from the uniform he was wearing.

A few tense heartbeats later, he moved towards her, pushing through the crowd.

Not this again.

It had been a while since this had happened to her.

That was the advantage of the uniform she normally wore. There might be a few occasional stares, but no drunken bigot dared to publicly confront her for being one of them when she wore the respected uniform. Not in Atlas. Not in a crowd like this.

She contemplated just turning around and leaving. But why should she? Luna was her home now. Navy or not, she had as much a right to be here as anyone else, but perhaps there was nothing to gain with a confrontation—

“Hey, you,” he stopped his advance to call out to her.

She looked him in the eye, feeling her body tensing up, ready to defend herself — physically, if necessary.

“You got a candle?” he asked.

“Huh?”

He pulled out a fresh candle and held it out to her, wick-first. “Candle?”

“Oh,” she said in relief, grabbed ahold of the offered candle, and allowed him to light it with his own. “Thanks.”

“You lose someone?” he asked her in a softer voice.

“No… Not this time.”

He looked her up and down, as if re-assessing how old she was, and nodded in agreement. “Me neither. This time.”

“It’s been… so many years since the last one,” she said, sighing.

“Yeah. Twenty years.” He snorted. “The damn terrorist scum… they’ll pay for this. We’ll get them back. Finish the job this time.”

She gave him a noncommittal shrug. She’d heard this before.

He continued, “We’ll show them what the Republic is made of…”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The attack in Tharsis sent shockwaves throughout the Republic. The Saturnian Resistance Navy — a name the public had mostly forgotten after decades of low-level activity best characterized as petty crime — once again dominated dinner table and workplace conversations, and its presence reverberated through its media and halls of power.

Photos and videos of the murdered young moviegoers were carried by every news outlet. Details of their lives were dissected and spread online. Their funerals were attended by millions. Over a billion people watched President Havel give a moving eulogy that sharply condemned the attackers and urged calm restraint.

Most Terrans nodded solemnly at the former and agreed to disagree with the latter.

The people demanded action. They wanted a response. The Republic would not live in fear: the terrorists that did this would pay.

The outcome of the Sol-wide Senate elections a week later sent that message loud and clear.

A new Senate commission was formed in Atlas to investigate the attack and recommend a response. Protests broke out all over Terra, Luna, and Mars. Marchers carried signs that advocated for glassing every settlement and colony past Ceres. Angry activists shut down a spaceport to stop it from launching an unrelated supply shuttle to Mimas. More than one prominent news anchor wondered aloud if the Basic Terran Rights should apply in the Red Zone at all.

In public, the Navy was apolitically muted. In private, entire departments were shuffled around, re-arranged for its anticipated new mission, and the service geared itself up for another brutal Red Zone campaign. Officers experienced in counterinsurgency who had been relegated to the back burner when the alien threat became prominent were now coming back to work. Batches of old equipment were brought out of storage, frantically tested to ensure that they could still pass rigorous inspection. Marines close to end of their service date found themselves stop-lossed.

Officers fighting the distant alien war were suddenly told that their priorities now competed against Real Terran Problems. Their operations were cut further. Their analysts and resources were drawn away to the coming Red Zone exercises and campaign. The aliens could wait.

Task Force Frontier was no exception. Admiral Amelia Waters was back to desk duty. Again.

She wrote up op plan after op plan… demanding, asking, and pleading for more resources for a joint Terran-Malgeir counter-offensive at Stoers based on the previous success of the Gruccud one.

She was ignored.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Amelia packed away her tablet as she finished her weekly status report, ready to leave the Senate briefing chamber.

“Mister Chairman. Excuse me, mister chairman,” one of the Senators, a young-ish, tall man in his forties at the end of the dais she didn’t fully recognize — he did seem familiar, spoke into his microphone.

At the head of the Navy Oversight Committee, Senator Blake Wald looked sharply at him. “For what purpose does the gentleman from District 240 seek recognition?”

“I seek unanimous consent to question the witness.”

The older Senator shook his head in annoyance. “This is a top-secret hearing, and there are no cameras here, Senator Eisson. If you want to rant against the Navy establishment again, we can do this another time—”

“Is that an objection?” the younger Senator asked dramatically.

Blake sighed. “Without objection. You have ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Eisson said. He turned to look at the witness table, his expression like one of a shark. “Hello, Admiral Waters. As you may have heard, I am Senator Seimur Eisson. I’m from District 240, Marineris. I was elected earlier this month to represent my district because my people are sick and tired of business as usual in Atlas. I’ve been sitting here for one classified hearing on the Navy Oversight board and so far, it has confirmed everything that I’ve been afraid of.”

Amelia finally recalled who he was: he was one of those Martian “New Hawks” who opposed the war against the Znosians because it was supposedly taking money away from the Navy’s original anti-piracy, anti-terrorism mission. But she kept her face calm and professional.

Not seeing the reaction he sought, Seimur continued. He jerked his thumb over to the center of the dais, clearly aiming at the other Senators. “Our supposed representatives in Atlas who are supposed to be looking out for the interests of the Republic have clearly fallen in bed with the Navy establishment, which has forgotten its original purpose: to protect citizens of the Republic. This is the Navy Oversight Committee… so where is the oversight? My people demand accountability! We are as much tax-paying citizens of the Republic as everyone else is. I am here, at the behest of my district and many others like mine, to impose real accountability. Real justice! Real oversight on the Navy so that it serves us, the citizens of the Republic.”

Amelia smiled at him thinly as he paused for a breath. “Is there a question for me there, Senator?”

He shot daggers at her, snarling. “I’m getting to that, Admiral. Since your little screw up at that alien mining colony went public last year, Admiral, the Navy has turned this committee into a farce, a rubberstamp for approving illegal military adventures outside of Sol. And I for one am not fooled. My people are not fooled. The alien war is a distraction, a diversion, allowing the Navy to funnel trillions of credits out of the pockets of my people into the pockets of corrupt alien officials and well-connected Senators here on Luna!”

Amelia looked quietly and patiently at him as he continued his rant.

“For the past two years, the Navy has used our hard-earned credits on this shadow war with a far-away enemy we don’t know, with no coherent strategy or endgame. We still have no idea what these Znosians want because we’ve made zero attempts at diplomacy with them. How does your war end? Why are we provoking an alien power that has done nothing to us? On top of that, we’ve been funding these corrupt so-called allies who have done absolutely nothing for us. The gravy train stops here, Admiral. You wanted questions? I’ve prepared some questions for you right here. Answer me this: where were you on October 28 last year?”

She flicked on her tablet, browsed to the date on her calendar, and replied simply, “McMurdo System.”

“McMurdo,” he repeated. “Like I’ve always said, our provocative presence there would get us in trouble one day. And what did you go ahead and do? That little waste of time and credits against the Znosian Navy got you a Distinguished Service Medal, did it not?”

“Not how I would characterize that battle, Senator, but you appear to have an accurate copy of my schedule and medal citations,” she replied neutrally.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to be unclear. How would you characterize it, Admiral?” Seimur asked sarcastically.

“The Republic Navy sustained no losses and destroyed an enemy task force of six capital ships, including five Forager-class missile destroyers and a Thumper. With all due respect, Senator, I would characterize it as an overwhelming victory thanks to the fine spacers of the—”

“A victory? Almost a hundred million credits in spending for missiles, bullets, and spaceship fuel, and what did we get for it? Three thousand Malgeir refugees we can’t repatriate, and this was after they lost eight of their own damn ships. Surely there was a good cause for this expenditure. Was Outpost McMurdo under threat at the time, Admiral?”

“Negative, Senator, but—”

He cut her off. “No. It was not. Did the skirmish gain us any intelligence on the Znosian threat?”

“Not much,” Amelia admitted. “But we did get more operational data—”

“Not much,” Seimur interrupted again. “Not much. Certainly nothing worth a hundred million of our taxpayers’ hard-earned credits! Then surely this must have been for strategic reasons I can’t understand because I’m not privy to the inner workings and the reality of space combat in the Terran Republic Navy.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm and hostility. “Here, let me read something, I seek unanimous consent to enter an exhibit into the record.”

Senator Wald rolled his eyes and sighed. “Without objection. Come on, let’s get this moving, Seimur. Don’t you have a lunch to go to—”

“This is from an after-action report of the skirmish at McMurdo: initially, it was not my recommendation that we engage the bandits — that’s Navy jargon for the Znosians — at this time or location. I repeatedly and strongly recommended High Fleet Commander Grionc relay to her commanders that their ships stand down. It was not in our best interests, nor theirs, to get engaged in an open fleet action without preparation, especially in a system with permanent Republic assets. Such a haphazard engagement could create additional long-term risk of detection of McMurdo and of the lives of their spacers and ours blah blah blah. Admiral, who wrote this?”

“I did, Senator. But you’ll note that I amended my assessment after—”

Seimur shouted triumphantly into the microphone. “You wrote this, Admiral! You wrote this! You! The very commander in charge of the task force on the scene admitted that quote, it was not in our best interests to get engaged in this fleet action without preparation, unquote! So, we are—”

Amelia leaned into her microphone, speaking out of turn. “I would like to add that this assessment was no longer true after seven ships full of Malgeir spacers aware of our existence ejected in front of the Znosians, which under Protocol Two of the Prime Directive means—”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Seimur cut her off again loudly. “Neither of us are legal experts, so let’s not get too bogged down in the sophistry. But that’s alright. Here is another question for you: where were you in May earlier this year?”

Amelia sighed, then checked her tablet. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Senator. That was a rather busy month for me. When in May?”

“May 20th. Where were you on May 20th?”

Amelia glanced down to verify, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. “In deep space about 2.3 light years from the Preirsput System.”

“You also engaged the Znosian fleet there, did you not?”

“Correct.”

“Let’s clear one thing up first. How many ships are in your little task force? How many ships were officially in Task Force Frontier Security at the time?”

“Three: the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Amazon.”

“Three ships,” Seimur repeated. “You were in charge of three ships. And how many ships did you have with you on May 20th?”

“Have with me?” she clarified.

“Have with you. As in, Republic-flagged ships within let’s say a light year of your position in the middle of nowhere, to be specific.”

“Nine ships,” Amelia replied, and sensing where he was going with it, continued, “But I only commanded the Mississippi. The disposition of our forces on the engagement on May 20th included my ship and eight Python-class missile destroyers from Squadron 9. I was not in command of Squadron 9 at the time. This was before Squadron 9 was expanded to twelve ships in the—”

“You were not in command at the time…” he said incredulously. “And who was in command of Squadron 9?”

“I was not briefed on that,” Amelia replied innocently. “You’ll have to ask the Terran Reconnaissance Office. All our coordination on that action went through the office.”

“The TRO! How convenient!” he snapped. “Which just happens to be… not under the jurisdiction of the Navy Oversight Committee.”

“I believe so, Senator,” Amelia added, keeping the smug out of her voice. Not very successfully.

“Well that doesn’t matter. Do you know how much taxpayer money you spent in one afternoon on your little destruction derby?”

“I’m not familiar with Navy or TRO budgetary matters. If you give me some time, I can get those figures to you at our next brief—”

He insisted. “Take a wild guess, Admiral.”

“Two hundred million credits?” she speculated.

“Try five, Admiral.”

Amelia smiled at him sweetly. “Five credits seem like a bargain for the destruction of the entire Datsot invasion fleet, Senator—”

“Five hundred million credits, Admiral! Do you always enjoy being this much of a wiseass?”

Senator Wald coughed into his microphone. “I’d like to remind Senator Eisson that the witness is a serving admiral of the Terran Republic Navy and that all witnesses should be treated with respect and dignity in front of this committee.”

“I’m telling the truth as it is, and I’ll treat the witness with the respect she deserves if she can tell me what her extrasolar task force is doing about the damn terrorists in the Red Zone. No? Didn’t think so. And so far… all that’s just the expenditure from one line item for one single battle outside Sol. And don’t forget the minesweeper. How much was that? Does anyone here know how much that brand new minesweeper we gave the damn aliens cost taxpayers? 1.8 billion credits. One. Point. Eight. Billion.”

He continued, spittle flying. “This is a warning to you Navy elites and everyone else on your gravy train in case you didn’t hear me the last time: this is the end of the line. This excessive spending on this alien war is going to stop until we can take care of the people of the Terran Republic first. And that means our actual needs, our actual threats — the terrorists in the damn Saturnian Resistance! We’re going to get some real oversight in here, and we’re going to look over every wasteful expenditure, item by item. I seek unanimous consent to enter the unredacted Navy operational budget for this month into the record. Let’s take a look at this line by line, starting with the alien officer training program…”