By Other Means (3 page)

“I’ve been keeping to myself.” Sorilla answered, honestly enough. She didn’t want to get into the story, certainly not then and there and preferably not at all.

“I suppose with
them
out there,” Kim said, eyes drifting to the observation ports where the alien ship was floating, “The army must want you close by.”

Sorilla managed to politely bury the snort that threaten to come up at the idea that she was remotely that important, and merely shook her head.

“I’m on leave,” She said, “I just didn’t feel like going home.”

“Well, still,” Kim said, “a lot of the others will be glad to know that you’re close by.”

Sorilla mumbled something as polite as she could manage, not really wanting to go down that line of thinking at the moment. She’d received more than her fair share of notoriety from the Hayden colonists, a situation that she wasn’t really familiar with to be honest. Most missions she had performed in the past were far lower key, generally resulting in her making a few friends, training a few soldiers, and generally fading into the background of the area’s history.

On Hayden things hadn’t followed that familiar and comforting pattern, not even slightly. First, with her team gone from the start, she had to be the one in charge. Normally her CO, a SF Major named Barnes, was the face of the team. He’s been an ass, but then most special forces people she knew qualified for that particular title she supposed. You had to fit in with the sort of people who were looking to cause some significant mayhem, manners and political correctness weren’t prerequisites for the most part.

Without him, however, she’d been stretched to the limit. Not only training, but also planning missions, conducting surveillance, and fifteen hundred other little jobs that required that she be everywhere at once. Sorilla supposed that it was little wonder that she was the face of the Hayden military movement now, such as it was. She’d slept maybe two hours a night during those weeks, stealing catnaps whenever she could to compensate, but to the Haydenites she knew that she had to have appeared as something just short of superhuman.

In truth, she’d been abusing both medical and electronic stimulants toward the end, but the only Haydenite who knew that was Tara. The Military knew, of course, with her implants tattling on her there was no way they couldn’t know, but they didn’t care as long as it remained an isolated incident. If she show a pattern of such behavior, or continued to boost while off duty, well then that would be a different story.

“… I really don’t know what the Solarian Organization is thinking, letting them park a ship out there,” Kim was speaking, but Sorilla missed the first part. She shook her head sharply, refocusing her attention back to the present.

“Don’t you agree?”

Sorilla had to tap her implants to pick up some of the context of the question, but that only took a second in a compressed feed. She masked it by looking pensive, then shrugged as the other woman’s words sank in.

“Diplomacy is better than shooting at each other, Kim,” Sorilla said, “Especially when the enemy has weapons that destroy
planets
.”

“But that’s what I mean, how could they let one of them this close to Hayden?”

“That’s a Parithalian cruiser,” Sorilla said, eyes flitting out to the ship floating in orbit just beyond the station. “We called them Deltas during the war, they’ve never used weapons of mass destruction against non-military targets and have shown no evidence of having the gravity valves used by the Alphas… Sorry, the Ros.”

Kim looked less than satisfied by that, but sighed and nodded, “Well if you say so.”

Sorilla made her excuses then and escaped from the other woman, not wanting to continue a conversation that she herself didn’t have certain feelings concerning. The aliens had to be talked to, that was a certainty, and she supposed that there were significant advantages to conducting the meetings near populated areas, but she felt strongly about Hayden herself now. Her team had died here, she’d given everything she had, as had many other people, all to preserve the security and liberty of Hayden’s World.

It seemed wrong to have the enemy this close, casting a shadow over the world so many died for.

Still, Sorilla was a realist. Better the shadow of truce than the fog of war.

She left the observation lounge, heading for Tara’s medical bay, but found herself dragging her feet. It was an unusual feeling for Sorilla, one she didn’t like, but she found herself feeling more and more hesitant with every step.

Tara, she knew, would want to talk. Talking was, in all honesty, the last thing Sorilla wanted to do just then. It was the last thing she’d wanted to do for a long time, in fact, ever since Alexi had broken the news to her about the loss of Valkyrie.

She’d heard the whispers not long after that, some from her own men, but most from the civilian crew of the Socrates. The idea that she as a Jonah, someone who doomed whoever she travelled with, didn’t take long to gather steam. Oh, most people didn’t buy into it fully, but spacers weren’t that far removed from their sailing ancestors and the idea itself was insidious.

Even she couldn’t quite shake it, and if she wondered about her survival in the face of so much death, how much must other people?

No, Sorilla didn’t want to talk.

The last thing she wanted was to hear someone who didn’t know telling her how it wasn’t her fault. Hell, she knew that. Even if she’d been with Valkyrie, what the hell could she have done? She was a combat trainer, not a space combat specialist. Valkyrie had the best of those that Sol could give them, and it didn’t do them much good in the end, so what could a hopped up Special Forces Sergeant have done anyway?

No, she knew that it wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d lost two whole task groups she’d been assigned to. Hell, she was the only survivor of the first, and one of precious few of the second.

Once was an accident. Twice, that was coincidence.

Deep down, though, Sorilla was afraid. She was terrified even, she didn’t want to see coincidence turn to pattern.

Sorilla doubted that she could survive that kind of pattern.

*****

The core doors around the outside loop of the station empty, the rapid her heels echoing as she walked to where the Socrates was docked. Sorilla hadn’t been back on board ship, and a ship, since the Socrates itself delivered her to Hayden. She’d been planet side a few times, spending days and sometimes weeks in the Hayden jungle, but most of her time spent on station.

She could feel it now, however, the old urge, deep down in her gut. She was being drawn out again, pulled back from the civilized existence she’d been living. Sorilla knew she’d have to head down well again soon, spend some time in the rough, or she’d probably get fidgety enough to hurt someone.

For the moment, however, she had to speak with Alexi.

She felt her lip twitch a bit as she thought about him, a certain self satisfied feeling flowing through her. He wasn’t really her type, if she were to categorize herself, but then she was pretty damn sure that she wasn’t his either. She didn’t know where they were going, as far as the whole couple thing went, but that wasn’t a surprise.

Ask her to field strip a rifle, or teach a course on guerilla tactics, and she’d have no troubles. Ask her about affairs of the
heart
? Well, she’d never been one of those girls. She’d gone a different path from the mainstream every step of her life and saw no reason to start marching to the expected beat anytime soon.

Besides, Alexi was fun and he challenged her in a way that she’d not experienced before. He wasn’t hard like most men she dealt with, despite being almost as fitness obsessed as she was. He didn’t think violence solved anything, and militantly stood his ground on that opinion, much to her amusement. She’d always believed that violence was the ultimate solution, a solution so effective that it had to be employed judiciously for fear of making an irreversible error.

Some problems didn’t need to be solved, they needed to be
eliminated
. That was where violence came into the game.

Still, he was a strong man with strong opinions that he kept to.

She liked that.

“Major.”

Sorilla didn’t look back as the voice spoke up, she could tell by the soft footfalls that it was a Navy man approaching from behind her. Something about space duty gave men and women a lithe step, probably all the time spent changing gravity. You either learned some grace or you spent a lot of time on your face.

She queried his implants with her RIF gear automatically, and quickly reviewed the top sheet of his file.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” She asked finally, not breaking stride.

“Admiral Ruger and General Codwell would like some of your time, Ma’am.”

That broke her stride. She didn’t know Ruger, but Codwell was well known enough, even though she’d never met the man. He had a bit of a hardass reputation, came up the ranks through the Rangers before joining SOLCOM. She’d been under the impression that he didn’t like her a whole lot.

Sorilla turned to look the slightly puffing Navy man, boy really, in the face.

“They bother to tell you why?”

“No Ma’am.”

“Order chit?” She asked, extending her hand.

There weren’t many reasons they’d send a person rather than just shoot an order over the network, and most of them were classified. A hard coded order chit would have the intel she needed.

“None ma’am, just a quiet face to face.”

Sorilla just stared at the man for a long moment, thinking furiously.

She couldn’t think of any reason they’d want to see her in person without any electronic signature.

Well, only one way I’m going to find out.

“Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

“Aye Ma’am.”

*****

Sorilla stepped into the conference room, barely noting the lower level of the lights. Her implants automatically adjusted to compensate anyway, so if the intent of the lowered lighting was some form of intimidation, they’d clearly not read her file.

She came to a stop in front of the table, standing to attention and saluted.

“Major Aida, reporting as ordered Sirs!”

“Stand at ease, Major.” General Codwell said from where he was seated. “In fact, take a seat. This may take a while.”

Sorilla paused, halfway to standing at ease, then awkwardly shifted to sit down.

“Do you know Admiral Ruger,” The General asked, gesturing to the man in Fleet Whites.

“No Sir.”

“The Admiral has been in charge of gathering intel on enemy movements, political stances, and the general mess associated with a foreign government,” Codwell said, “You know the drill.”

She nodded, “Yes sir.”

She did too, it was the first step before any sort of action. You learned as much as you could about the government you were dealing with, because you couldn’t determine what kind of action… if any… was required without doing just that.

“The Admiral just came back with the Diplo team, his report is in front of you.”

Sorilla’s eyes dipped, noting the flimsy on the table, but she made no motion toward it.

“You’re cleared, Major,” The General said with a very slight lift of his lips.

“Yes Sir.”

Sorilla picked up the flimsy, not bothering to turn it on. Instead she just downloaded the intel straight to her processor and had the intel summarized. It only took her a few moments to hit the highlights, and she basically ignored much of the in depth information available. She’d have time to read it later, if the situation required it.

“You’re going back,” She said after a few moments, looking to the Admiral. “Advisor slot?”

Ruger nodded, half smiling, “Very good Major.”

“Not hard to figure out,” Sorilla said, frowning, “This isn’t my usual assignment, Sir. Normally by the time I’m sent in, diplomacy isn’t a huge factor. I assume I won’t be in uniform for this…”

“You assume wrong, Major. We’ll put you into the Diplo-protection detail,” Ruger said, “That will get you into most places an ambassador can go, and a few they wouldn’t. You’ll keep your uniform and if you step on some toes, well that’s what ambassadors are for.”

Sorilla stared at him for a moment, her mind parsing that statement a few times. She licked her lips, trying very seriously to figure out the proper way to ask an Admiral if she was actually supposed to be a bullet stop for some jerk off politician.

Shit.

Yeah, there wasn’t a proper way she could ask that.

From the look on the Admiral’s face, she strongly suspected that he knew full well what she was thinking and had no intention of offering any help on the subject. Sorilla put the question aside finally, there was no answer to it that she’d like anyway.

“What are my orders and priorities?” She asked instead.

“Look for any holes in the alien system that we could wedge a little wider,” Ruger said, “anything that keeps them distracted, particularly the Ross, is a good thing for SOL. Don’t initiate anything without consulting with me… I don’t know if that’s likely to be even possible, but it should be said just in case.”

Sorilla tipped her head, acknowledging the order. He was right, on both counts, it was unlikely to be an issue, not with the limited resources she’d have available, but better to be clear on the subject.

“Don’t make the Ambassador’s job any harder than it has to be,” Ruger continued, “but don’t be afraid of moving either.  We’ll be walking a tightrope, there’s no question about that. We don’t want another war, not now, we can’t afford it. We’ve come close to exhausting the useable asteroids in the belt already, and nowhere else in SOLCOM has the manufacturing facilities to build Terra class ships. We’re working on changing that, but for the immediate future we
cannot
fight another war.”

“Understood, Admiral.” Sorilla said.

She did understand, too. This was what she’d be trained for, albeit playing out on a larger field of battle than she was used to. Her job would be what it had been a dozen or more times in the past. Determine the most cost efficient want to destabilize a potentially dangerous regime, nurture home grown rebels, and generally make someone’s life miserable with as little involvement of SOLCOM as possible.