Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [47]
"We have no further information," the guard said. "Captain McCammon is meeting with the Chairman right now." Then he added with a glimmer of genuine respect, "I think we caught it in time, Majesty. Your reaction and decisiveness may have saved us all."
25
GENERAL KURT LANYAN
Unlike "Stay-at-Home" Stromo, General Lanyan preferred to be doing something. He was a real soldier, not a stuffed-shirt military commander or, worse, a politician. And a genuine crisis wasn't meant to be viewed from a distance. He needed to be in the thick of things.
Rushing from the ill-advised "party" thrown by Maureen Fitzpatrick, Lanyan seized his chance. Time to cause some damage, not just fill out stupid paperwork and wear ceremonial uniforms.
As soon as he reached the nearest satellite EDF office, he demanded a classified update. As he paced the pastel-painted chambers of a minor military functionary whose office he had commandeered, Lanyan listened as message after message came in from green priests. The violent uprising was occurring in all ten battle groups.
Contact had been completely lost with Admiral Stromo's Manta and four other grid flagships. Admirals Eolus, Wu-Lin, and Willis were engaged in furious firefights. At the main fabrication facility near the Palace District, Soldier compies were rising up, barely held off by a massive concentration of silver berets. Scattered reports described widespread Earth-side incidents as individual robots went berserk.
Lanyan scanned the reports again, disbelieving, but the breakdowns and summaries didn't change. "Gone to hell in a handbasket--in the official EDF-issue hell-carrying handbasket."
Time to stop this nonsense. He thought about immediately reassigning Patrick Fitzpatrick, even if the kid did have a stick up his butt since spending time with the Roamers. Lanyan needed all the decent men he could stuff into positions of responsibility--but he didn't have the time right now.
"Call the fastest in-system ship here. Pronto. I've got to get to the Mars base, and by the time I arrive I'll probably want to head somewhere else."
The functionary was flustered. "The nearest landing field is fifty kilometers east of here, General."
"Bullshit! Who needs a landing field? You've got a roof, don't you?"
The bulk of the Grid 0 fleet remained at the resupply and maintenance yards in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The battle group was just sitting there, vulnerable, plums ripe for the picking--Mantas, Thunderhead weapons platforms, and the Juggernaut Goliath. And thanks to the shortage of personnel, those ships were full of Soldier compies as surrogate crewmembers. Goddamned ticking time bombs!
Lanyan was afraid that even a light-speed transmission wouldn't get there in time. He sent an urgent warning for all commanders in spacedock to isolate the compies and await additional instructions.
Too late.
He had nearly reached the Mars base by the time the signal made its round trip from the asteroid belt. "General, the compies have already damaged one ship and killed eight maintenance workers in the resupply yard!" The speaker was one of the managers of the maintenance facility. "Then they started seizing control of the Grid 0 vessels. It was all so . . . so damned coordinated!"
If he'd been a deskbound commanding officer, Lanyan might have waited for clarification, considered further reports, and requested additional information. (Stromo certainly would have.) In times like these, hesitation was tantamount to suicide. "Try to hold them off. I'm on my way," he said.
Stuck on a training base, with all the decent battleships deployed elsewhere, Lanyan had to use whatever soldiers he could scrounge at a moment's notice. In other words, kleebs--greenhorn trainees. He didn't have a choice.
The recruits at the Mars base thought it was just another drill when