Final impact

Julia nodded slowly. Quick movements sent spasms of pain down her neck into her back. She was safely strapped into a chair in the old satellite warfare bay. She wasn’t allowed to shoot any video images in the CIC, and anyway the SS death squad back in the Ardennes had taken her flexipad and Sonycam. So for now she’d gone back to basics, writing shorthand notes with pen and paper. Halabi had promised her access to Fleetnet later on to file a report.

It was hard to believe she was watching this happen.

The eight linked flat panels of the main display were still largely given over to theaterwide coverage of the European battlespace, which now reached as far east as the Ukraine. But one screen was devoted to tracking the progress of the B-52 flight out of New Mexico. That was a hell of a shock right there, the idea of those monsters climbing back into the air again. In a way it was almost reassuring. They were such a part of her life back up in twenty-one that it was like hearing of an old friend from the future who’d suddenly popped into existence in the next room. Granted, there were only six planes, and she wondered how many of them were carrying atomic weapons. Perhaps all of them, perhaps only one. That information had not yet been released. But it was great to know they were back. They’d saved her ass more than once back home, and now, who knew? Maybe they were going to save the world.

Not much was happening at the moment, however. Dozens of tags indicated the presence of long-range fighter escorts. Sabers, according to Halabi. They were scheduled to top up their tanks in forty minutes, the last time they’d refuel before reaching Germany.

Julia had already filled pages of her notebook with color detail of the ship, the crew, the mix of ’temps and uptimers who were standing watch over this epochal moment. Both she and Halabi had lived long enough in the next century to see two Western cities reduced to atomic slag heaps, but she found herself anxious and increasingly restless as the moment drew near in this reality.

“Any misgivings?” she asked Halabi.

“Are you going to quote me?”

“Only if you want me to.”

The captain of the Trident stared at the big screen for a moment. The business of war went on without pause. Sysops constantly scanned the threat bubble around the destroyer’s battle group. Intelligence officers analyzed the vast flow of data from ship sensors, drones, Nemesis arrays, and ’temp assets. Junior officers came and went, whispering urgent messages into the ears of their masters before carrying off replies whence they had come. On the battlespace display flashing black tags tracked the lead elements of the Soviet air assault into southern France, and the progress of Free French and U.S. armor rushing down to “link up” with them-in reality, to block them from any further encroachment. Many more data hacks crept over the western reaches of Germany as Patton and Montgomery raced each other toward Berlin. Three screens were entirely concerned with monitoring the stalled Russian advance on the Eastern Front, one of them showing new and ever more gruesome video coverage of the chemical warfare raging there.

It was all so horribly enthralling that Julia was a little surprised when Halabi spoke up again. She’d been lost in her own thoughts. She raised her pen inquiringly, and the commander of the Trident nodded.

“I have been fighting for nearly twenty years,” said Halabi. “And I have taken many lives. I have burned men alive in their aircraft. I have drowned them by sinking their boats and ships. Some I have crushed at the bottom of the sea. Others have been atomized by the weapons I fired at them. I never once hesitated to take their lives, whether they wore a uniform or not. If they intended harm toward my crew, my ship, or the realm we protect, their lives were forfeit…”

Julia had some trouble keeping up with her. It had been a long time since she’d been forced to take shorthand, and she wasn’t very comfortable in her bandages and strapping. Halabi seemed to sense her struggling and paused for a moment. Some of the men and women nearby were looking on, trying not to be too obvious about it, but failing. Karen Halabi waited until the reporter had stopped scribbling and then spoke again.