by P. R. Adams
“Do we know why?”
“I’m not a mechanic, but if I had to guess, I’d say the engine finally gave out.”
“Do you have a casualty list?”
Gadreau handed a command tablet to her. She scrolled through the names. Fero was injured but alive. Kohn and Parkinson weren’t on the list.
She looked up. “Is this current?”
“We don’t have all the ID tags fully registered yet. I manually entered some based on who was in—” He nodded toward a dimly glowing chunk of metal on the cliff wall.
The cargo container. It must’ve broken apart higher up on the wall. Would the old vehicle have survived in any way?
Benson hopped toward the wall. “Do we have any optics gear?”
The Marine captain pulled a case from his backpack. “Binoculars.” The way he cradled the case when he passed it to her, like a treasure…it spoke volumes about what had been lost.
She hobbled away from the shuttle and put her back to the luminescence coming from the various light sources. With the binoculars, she could pick out various glowing sources that must have been the cargo container. There were several larger pieces, and among those larger pieces, she could make out the crumpled chassis of the vehicle that had been inside. Or at least a large part of it.
After scanning the wall on that side of the crater, Benson made her way back and returned the binoculars. “Have one of your Marines find Petty Officer Kohn. There’s enough of the other vehicle up there that it might offer salvage.”
Gadreau looked at her as if she were mad. “It fell from at least twenty kilometers—”
“And it’s still largely in one piece. This is a moon. The gravity’s probably half what we’re used to. If our shuttle could survive crashing like it did, maybe whatever’s broke on the intact vehicle survived in the burned-out one.”
“We should gather my team now and make a run for the ruins. We could be there in less than an hour.”
“Maybe you could, Captain. But you’re wasting time arguing with me.”
The beefy man frowned, then curled a finger at one of the nearby Marines. “Sergeant Carruth! I’ve got an assignment for you.”
Benson waved for Stiles to follow her to the next closest of the intact shuttles. “Lieutenant, you’ve seen what survived. How do you want to approach this?”
The GSA officer bowed her head. “Captain Gadreau—”
“Wants to go into that rift at a jog and see if he can make it. I know.”
“You don’t believe we could get there and back?”
Benson stopped beside the second shuttle—Pulsar S2—and leaned against the hull. It seemed to be in as good a shape as the one Gadreau had apparently intended as his own command center, but this one hadn’t been emptied. A squint revealed markings: explosives. There were technicians at the rear, busily tearing equipment apart, and there were wounded in the space that had been cleared by taking out seats.
Durall was among them, arms wrapped over his gut. He shivered but was aware enough to connect to her. “Remember…what we talked…about.”
She turned away. “You’re going to make it, Lieutenant.”
“I sure as hell…intend to try.”
Stiles glanced into the shuttle, then bowed her head. “Your pilot?”
Benson nodded. “Okay, here’s the problem with Gadreau’s plan. We blew up a couple Azoren spacecraft up there, then we came down with a couple fireballs. They have to know we’re here.”
“Are you thinking abort the mission?”
“We can’t. But if we can get that Badger going, we still have a chance. Two operational shuttles, and this one looks like it could be fixed. When you get into place, we launch one to pick you up.”
“One shuttle won’t be enough to carry everyone else out.”
Benson caught a glimpse of dead piled nearby. “If they don’t get this running, I’ll be looking for volunteers to stay behind with me. Assuming we have that luxury. Gadreau is rigging those explosives. I can always detonate them remotely. At least he’s good for that.”
Stiles straightened her back. “Are you asking me who I want to take with me?”
“Gadreau is always going to be a threat to pull rank.”
“His Marines are the most able-bodied.”
“Can you handle him?”
“It all comes down to that vehicle, doesn’t it, ma’am?”
Benson smiled. “It does. I’ll leave that decision to you, but I advise against it. What about Kohn?”
“What about him?”
“If he gets the Badger running, you’re going to need him to tag along to keep it operational. Can you deal with that?”
“I can.”
“It’s your command, Lieutenant.”
The young woman squared her shoulders. “Permission to speak openly, ma’am.”
“Of course.”
“Are you questioning my ability to command?”
“I see more hesitation and discomfort than expertise in Colonel McLeod.”
“No offense to the colonel, but I’m not him.”
“No, you aren’t. Is this something GSA trains for?”
“Is this about what I did aboard the Pandora?”
“Using your looks to manipulate my crew? Letting those Azoren Marines kill us? How am I supposed to feel about that?”
“I’m more than appearances, Commander. I do what the mission requires.”
“You certainly do.”
“Are you sure it’s fair to evaluate someone else based on the good fortune of their DNA?”
Benson forced a smile at that. “Perhaps I’m being imprecise in my observations.”
“Perhaps you are. Is there anything else, ma’am?”
“No.”
The younger woman headed off to find the mechanic she’d taken advantage of, leaving Benson with a bitter taste in her mouth. What demanded the commander’s focus now was getting the defenses up. She located Major Fero leaning against the cargo container that had held the surviving Badger.
Benson slowly worked through the debris and dead until she’d reached the older woman’s side. Inside the container, support personnel were laying out tools, lights, and components from whatever systems they were trying to salvage.
The major’s arm was in a sling that seemed fashioned in the same way as Benson’s improvised brace. The older woman looked up from her own command tablet. “Commander Benson. I thought you might be dead.”
“Not yet. How’re you doing?”
“Broken ankle, broken elbow—I’ve had better days.”
Benson finally saw the tape around the other woman’s lower leg. “You’ve got twenty-two Marines. That’s something. Where are they?”
“They’ve been unloading the dead and checking for weapons.”
Flexible and agile. That was what Halliwell had emphasized, and he was right. “That Azoren facility is to the south. We have to assume they’ll be here before too long. If we have any sensors, I think it’d be a good idea to get them up on that crater wall. In fact, if we can have enough for a full circuit around the wall about halfway up, that would be perfect. Lower, if necessary.”
“Sensors? I thought the mines were lost?”
“The mines were, but we still have a lot of the sensors. At least that’s what Captain Gadreau said.”
“He did?” Fero seemed more confused than angry. She turned slightly to study the nearer side of the crater. “It looks awfully slick.”
“Do you have any climbers?”
“Trudeau, I guess. And Watley. Maybe Nguyen.” The major scuffed at the rook with a booted toe. “But it’s icy.”
“I’d suggest using the built-in crampons and getting them on this now.”
The older woman’s eyes narrowed behind her rebreather mask. “What good’s a sensor without a mine? You planning to rig some of those explosives up?”
“We don’t have enough detonators, right?” Benson pointed to the black crater walls. “How far do you think
you can see?”
“Fifty meters, maybe.”
“And with these lights off? Because we’ll have to power all the lights off soon.”
“Power the lights off?”
“All except ones we want to set up as decoys.”
“Decoys?”
“Same as we’ll have to do with the dead.”
“The dead, Commander?”
When had Fero last served in combat? “Set them in poor cover, make it appear as if they’re on guard. It’s what we have to do with no idea how many we’re up against. Unless you want to give the Azoren easy shots at us?”
“Without those lights—”
“Most of us will be blind. You can have your people harvest infrared attachments from the fallen, but for the most part we need to rely on early detection. And that’s what those sensors are going to give us.”
Fero’s lips twisted into a frown. “You really think they’ll come out here?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
The major grunted, then limped off toward a small clump of forms that had just laid out some more gear on the ground inside a circle of lights.
Benson didn’t wait for an update. She would follow up in a bit, but there was still one thing she needed to do.
She pulled her communicator out and connected to Halliwell. “Clive?”
No answer.
The connection was good, but he hadn’t replied.
“Clive? It’s me.” She slowly spun, looking for what would probably be a fairly distinctive silhouette. Even among Marines, Halliwell stood out.
And then his voice was there. Strained. “What is it?”
“We need to talk. Where are you?”
“I’m with Toni—Corporal Grier. Over by the shuttle that snapped.”
The shuttle that snapped. That sounded worse than theirs. Benson thought she might have seen it. “We lost our anti-aircraft system.”
“I heard.”
“Wasn’t there a heavy machine gun? One for the vehicles that wouldn’t fit?”
“It’s a turret system.”
There was so much anger in his voice. And pain. Did he resent her bringing him along? Or was he still stinging over her rejection of him? “Did it survive?”
“I can give it a look.”
She saw him then. He was a tall, broad-shouldered sliver of gray at the edge of a couple lights. And right close by, a shorter, almost equally broad-shouldered form with a more feminine profile. They were digging through a pile of things.
Weapons. Magazines. Grenades.
Taking stock.
Benson wrestled with whether to intrude on them. They were so close to each other. Like best friends.
No. Like lovers.
Was she willing to surrender Halliwell to the other woman? Did war mean giving up on any hope of future happiness?
Another step wouldn’t hurt—
“Commander Benson?” It was Stiles.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“You might want to come see this. Just above the bottom of the crater south wall, almost dead center. I’m waving my light. Can you see me?”
A dim light arced near the base of the south wall. “I see you. I’m on my way.”
“You might want to hurry, if you can. This could be important.”
There was only so much speed to be had with such a banged-up leg, an aching back, and the potential of slipping on the black glass bottom, but Benson did what she could. The lieutenant’s voice made it sound even more urgent than her words, and that said something given their existing predicament.
Benson wasn’t sure she was ready for another problem, but they just seemed to keep piling up.
15
Lieutenant Stiles tapped her pistol barrel against the chunk of metal. It was dull in spots but shiny where something had scraped away the outer layer. In the infrared view of her goggles, the surface uniformly matched the ambient temperature: a cold blue that drifted to black. It couldn’t be from the cargo container—those pieces that were visible were a dull yellow, still cooling in the intense cold.
And then there was the feel of it—heavy, lopsided. It was like the old tech they’d dredged up from the Tamos ship graveyard, but…missing. As if something had been hollowed out of it.
She turned at the sound of someone’s boots squeaking against the slick midnight stones, a clumsy noise that barely rose over the occasional whistling breeze. It had to be Benson. “Lieutenant?”
Stiles waved her light over her head. “Over here, Commander.”
The commander was a tall, shuffling form caught at the very edge of the lights coming from the crater interior. “What’s the matter?”
Stiles held the thing up. “This.”
Benson scuffed her boots across the black rock. “A chunk of debris?”
“But not our debris.” She handed the object across.
“Heavy.”
“That’s what I noticed, too. That and the strange shape of it. It’s not a piece of ammunition or ordnance.”
“No.” The commander put the thing under Stiles’s light. “Metal. Chipped and scratched. It looks old.”
“Feels old, too.”
“Are these interface sockets?”
“Not like anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Chief Parkinson would probably know what they are.”
Stiles tried not to let her annoyance show. “He probably could.”
Benson’s eyes came up behind her scraped-up rebreather mask. “You haven’t talked to him about what happened?”
“There’s not much to tell him, ma’am.”
“He’s a human. He deserves to know that he was being used.”
Except it wasn’t using someone if they were being put to the service of the greater good. “I’ll talk to him.”
“That sounds a lot like a ‘later’ got dropped.”
“We have a bigger problem.” Stiles nodded toward the approaching forms of a couple men. It would be Kohn and Gadreau’s sergeant—Carruth. “They’re ready to search the debris up on the wall.”
Benson twisted around stiffly. “You talk to Petty Officer Kohn yet?”
“Not yet.”
The tall woman’s shoulders slumped. “Is this part of your training: avoidance?”
“My training is about focusing on the mission, ma’am.”
“The mission involves people. Right now, you’re burning bridges by exploiting people and dumping them. Men have feelings, too. You think they don’t get heartbroken? You remember the first time someone dumped you?”
Stiles looked away. That was always tough to lie about. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Just tell him you did what you had to do. That should take the worst of the sting off.”
“Is that what you told Sergeant Halliwell?”
The commander’s eyes widened for an instant, then she seemed to regain her composure. She handed the metal chunk back. “It’s different between us.”
“I see. I’m sorry if I offended.”
But Benson’s face registered a sting that hadn’t been intended and didn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon. “I’ll call Chief Parkinson over.”
Kohn stepped aside to make room for the commander on the narrow path that led down from where she’d met with Stiles. The young man seemed torn between heading up and saying something. He settled for an awkward wave, then resumed his ascent up the side of the crater.
There had been real pain in his eyes. Stiles wondered what he had heard and what he had put together on his own. They would never know the full truth, of course. Not even she would know that. She wasn’t even sure there was such a thing.
But did she owe him something more than acknowledging that awkward wave?
His light tracked up the crater side, close behind the Marine sergeant. Was Kohn acting fearless again to impress her?
She caught Benson’s distinctive limping figure returning. That almost certainly meant Parkinson was close behind. Stiles wasn’t quite sur
e how she felt about apologizing to him. He’d been a terrible lover—self-absorbed, manipulative, and jealous. And he’d hinted at threatening her when he’d found out about her and Kohn.
There were no parameters on her undercover work. Abuse would have to have been tolerated until there was no further need for the subject.
I’m not apologizing. Not for the manipulation. Not for his injuries.
Benson stopped a little farther back this time, and Parkinson’s shorter form crept from behind her. He seemed almost to cower, and Stiles could imagine him sniveling.
The commander leaned back, watching the lights on the crater wall. “I’ll be back by Pulsar S2.”
She watched for a second longer, then awkwardly strode back to the center of the crater.
Parkinson waited until she was gone, then seemed to straighten. “You have something you need me to look at?”
Stiles handed the thing to him. “A chunk of machinery. We can’t figure out what.”
The engineer pulled a maintenance lamp from a hook on his belt. “These interfaces—”
Stiles tapped the one she’d seen. “There’s at least one more.”
He rolled the device around in his palm. “Okay, yeah. Device interfaces.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“Not a machine piece.” He handed it back to her. “Not like you’re thinking.”
“Oh? What am I thinking, Will?”
“What you’re not thinking is what matters.” He flashed the smile he seemed to think would knock the panties off any woman. “Robot.”
“Robot?” She hadn’t been thinking that.
He took her hand that held the machinery piece and turned her wrist so that the light touched the interface she’d spotted. “This? It’s a standard throughput bus. Nothing special about it. But this?” He tilted her wrist again. “Processor module interfaces. That’s a very specialized bus. High speed.”
“What—?”
“Uh-uh!” He wagged a finger at her. “I’m the engineer, remember? You’re just—” He tilted his head, and a wicked grin twisted his features. “A whore?”
The word had a sting to it, more than she would have expected. “That’s a strange way to pronounce ‘intelligence operative.’ But why don’t you explain to me how this is a robot.”
He shrugged, apparently content with the insult. “That’s an old Mega-Bus.”
