by Bobby Adair
“Send my adjutant that flight plan before you leave.”
Chapter 14
Twenty-four hours pass and I’m in a new—different, but fully functional—orange suit, walking around the ship with Brice, an inspection before we set out on our mission.
Something that feels like intuition makes me want to say I know something’s wrong, yet I can’t. Because I don’t know for sure. I only have a nagging sense that becomes incongruously stronger and more ambiguous the closer I am to the Rusty Turd.
Brice points out patches on the hull that look to have been welded by a kid on his first day in metal shop. Guessing at my apprehensive look, Brice explains, “They hold air.”
I shake my head. “I guess they don’t make the ship any uglier. What about the airlock?”
“It functions.”
I had a long list of requests for the ship when they went to work on it in the hangar. “Extra H tanks?”
“We’ve more than doubled our stores of hydrogen.” Brice pats the hull. “They salvaged some tanks from a Beijing-class ship that was never going to fly again. They’re mounted in one of the storerooms. And that’s about it, as far as repairs and improvements.”
I point to a new assault door in place where one was blown off in our first attack. “That’ll come in handy.”
“Yeah, the doors,” Brice nods. He steps quickly toward the aft section and points to a new radar dish embedded in the side of the hull.
I don’t like it. “We lose some protection. They had to cut out a grav plate that was mounted here to put this thing in.”
“The only way to install it,” Brice tells me, “or our ship’s grav fields would rip it off once we started pulling some heavy g’s.”
“How many dishes in all?”
“Six.”
I shake my head, despising Blair for pushing this on us. It tells me she doesn’t trust the information we’ll get from Phil’s grav scan of any base we survey. “Did Tarlow run his diagnostics to make sure it all functions?”
Brice nods. “I don’t like having him on board.”
“I suspect that’s one of Blair’s motivations for forcing him on us. Is his console set up on the bridge?”
“It looks as jury-rigged as the rest of the ship, but Tarlow seems satisfied.”
“Satisfied is probably as close to happiness as he’ll ever get. What about the flight plan?”
“You know,” says Brice, “if I’m going to be your XO, you could promote me.”
“I don’t know if I can or not. I’ll tell the Potato Queen once we get back. What do you want to be?”
“In the SDF, skipping ranks wasn’t something that was done.”
“Lieutenant, then?”
Brice grimaces. “I already don’t like it. Maybe I’ll stay a sergeant.”
“Up to you. What about the flight plan?”
“Penny and Phil put one together and sent it down to Blair.”
“Communications?”
“Another dish,” Brice glances up and points. “Up there. Mounted above the bridge.”
“We lost another grav plate?”
He nods. “Seven altogether.”
“My God. We’ll be defenseless soon.” Is that what Blair has in mind? To reduce the ship’s defenses by such a degree that we’ll be shredded by railgun fire in the next battle? “Does Jablonsky know how to configure the dish to send a signal back here?”
“Well, it’s mounted in the hull, so…”
“We have to adjust the orientation of the ship in space.”
“Mostly,” Brice explains. “The dish can be aimed using a set of controls on Jablonsky’s terminal. So as long as we orient the ship with the antenna pointed in the general direction of the Potato, he can make the final adjustment and home it in before he sends.”
“And he can do that?”
Brice shrugs. “He says he can.”
“And receiving?”
“He says he’s got that covered as well.”
“So we could aim it at earth, and send and receive from there?”
“I suppose.” Brice reaches up to scratch his chin, only to realize the helmet is in the way. “I don’t know what kind of range we have for communications. Jablonsky has the details. You can quiz him on that once we’re underway.”
I nod. I’ll do that. “Is everyone on board?”
“Penny, Phil, Jablonsky, and now Tarlow on the bridge.” Brice looks toward the platoon cabin. “Lenox, Silva, and Peterson, of course. And the rest of the survivors of the platoon we came up with. Seven more in all.”
“So, a squad.”
“Blair wouldn’t spare any replacements for us. I’d say we were lucky she let us bring along any grunts since she sees this as purely a recon mission. I argued with the squirrelly prick of an adjutant for nearly an hour to get permission to take the remnants of our platoon. We’re in a war zone. You never know when you’re going to run into trouble.”
“Or opportunity,” I tell him, reaching out to pat the Rusty Turd’s steel hull. “You have to remember, we’re the orcas in an ocean of whales.”
“Or we’re the sharks in an ocean of orcas. The Trog cruisers bite back.”
Yeah. So he’s right about that. I switch back to logistics. “Do we have enough H and C packs for everyone?”
“Enough to last for months. And none of that nasty Trog shit. We don’t want to run short on our cal packs again.”
I laugh, thinking back to our recent adventure on the wayward asteroid. “How about ammunition?”
“Everyone has a full load, but not much more. Blair doesn’t want us marauding across the solar system and never coming home, I guess.”
Brice and I both laugh at that.
“Let’s board up and fly.”
Brice opens the door to access the bridge, and I climb in.
Chapter 15
After a short burn and an hour-long, efficient coast, during which I spent most of the time listening to Blair’s adjutant reiterating our orders, I’m thankful I’m able to cut the radio conversation short. Penny announces to the crew that we’re starting our first jump. I feel the drive array surge as our inertial bubble glows bright.
We’re riding a wave past the speed of light.
It’s good to be away from the Potato, away from Blair’s overbearing management, and away from all those Free Army troops. Even though we share the same dream, I don’t feel like I fit in.
Still, something undefinable nags at me.
I glance around the bridge. Penny and Phil are attentive to their consoles, though there isn’t much to do now that we’re in bubble jump except wait until we exit. Then their work starts again with determining exactly where we are with respect to where we hoped we’d be. Jablonsky is leaning back in his chair, having a conversation with someone, one of the soldiers strapped in the seats up front in the crew compartment. Tarlow is engaged with his computer screens, going through their functions and explaining to Brice how his system is supposed to work for acquiring and filtering information to provide us with a three-dimensional picture of the space around the Turd. In the midst of a bubble jump, the screens show nothing.
I stand up and announce, “I’m going forward to see how the troops are doing.” I exit the bridge and enter the central hall. The hinky feeling is stronger. Is it intuition? Is there something about the bug in my head that allows me to sense the future?
I open the storeroom and see the large H tanks that were hurriedly installed. I look at them and concentrate, trying to imagine how I’ll navigate the path to honing this sensation into something specific. I step inside and lay my hands on the nearest tank, thinking the feeling is slightly less pronounced.
Good. That’s progress.
I step away front the tank and back into the doorway. The sensation’s intensity, if it could be called that, notches back up a click or two.
Maybe, across the hall in the captain’s quarters. I
turn and nearly jump out of my skin.
Phil is standing in the hall, just a few feet away.
“Jesus Christ, Phil. You scared the crap out of me.”
“What are you doing?”
I don’t have a vocabulary for what I’m feeling. Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d share.
Phil says, “I thought you were going forward to talk to the squad.”
“Are you checking up on me?”
“No.” Phil steps back and looks around nervously. “Nothing like that. I was… I was coming forward, too.”
“Why?”
Phil hesitates. “I was—”
I raise a hand to stop him. He’s lying, though I have no clue why.
I step across the hall and reach for the handle on the door to the captain’s chamber.
“Were you going to see Silva?”
Mention of her name puts me on the defensive from an unexpected flank. “I… what?”
“Silva? You like her, don’t you?”
I step back. “I never said anything about that.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve known you forever.”
“And that doesn’t make you mad? You know, considering everything?”
Phil pulls a face and shrugs dramatically. “She’s seventeen and a half but—”
And a half.
Any girl who has to add that suffix to her age is too young.
“Only six months from eighteen.” Phil seems to approve. “That eighteen thing… that’s for old pre-siege prudes, right? Half the girls are married by then these days. Half of those already have a kid. It’s like in the olden days when people used to be married by the time they were sixteen.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Phil?”
“I just don’t think you should let the age thing stop you two. Everybody can see it. You like each other.”
“I can barely begin to list the things wrong with it. For starters, I’m her superior officer.”
“We’re not in the SDF anymore.” Phil steps forward, seemingly to herd me up the hall toward the airlock leading to the platoon compartment.
I don’t budge.
Phil nods forward. “You should go talk to her.”
I tap my helmet. “I can talk to her from here.”
“You know you’d rather see her, right? She is pretty.” Phil steps forward again and bumps me.
I push him back with two hands on his chest. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I scrutinize his face. He’s hiding something. “Do you feel it?”
Phil’s face looks theatrically innocent, all but proof of the falseness.
“You feel it.”
“What?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t. I know if I can feel it, you can, too. And whatever it is is stronger out here than up on the bridge.”
“The inertial bubble field,” Phil explains. “They took out those plates. Now the field isn’t even.” He taps his helmet with a finger. “The non-uniform grav field causes the bug to feel discomfort.
I nod my head to agree, but stop. “That’s not true. Our plates were damaged in the battle over Arizona. I’ve been through much worse fluctuating fields than this.”
“It’s the subtle change that—”
I stop him with a raised hand. The feeling is getting stronger. I reach down quickly and fling the captain’s quarters’ door open.
Phil gasps.
I step into unexpectedly bright light, as he babbles something to slow me down.
The feeling is stronger in here.
Phil puts a restraining hand on my arm, says something I ignore, and I step into the room, following the feeling like a Geiger counter.
Further, deeper, toward the corner.
Movement.
Small, gray, startling.
“Goddammit!” I spin on Phil with rage bursting red on my face. “You smuggled Nick the Tick onboard?”
Chapter 16
Seething, I turn to Phil. “You have some explaining to do.”
“It’s not what you think.”
I emphatically turn to look at the little gargoyle. “I think there’s a Gray on my ship.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Phil pushes past me and walks across the room to get closer to Nick.
“You’re not explaining.”
“For starters, you need to calm down.”
“Always good advice,” I huff. “I’m not ready to give up on being pissed just yet.”
“Why?” Phil is defiant. “What good will it do? Are you going to punch me? Shoot me? Yell at me?”
Sure, he’s right. What good will the anger do, except make me dumber the madder I get?
“You want to have a toddler tantrum.” Phil looks down his nose at me as he crosses his arms and puts his body between me and the Gray. “Go ahead. I’ll wait for you to grow up and then I’ll explain.”
Putting a tremendous effort into keeping my words even and measured, I say, “We’ll get to the why in a minute. First, how?”
“The answers to the why and how are intertwined.”
I labor through a sigh.
“He’d have died if I’d left him.”
“That’s the why question, Phil.”
“You have to understand, I couldn’t let him die.”
“Or just go a little crazy until we got back.”
Phil shakes his head in disgust. “Nick is not a monster.”
I disagree, but don’t have to voice it. Phil can read it easily enough from the shining neon thoughts I make no effort to conceal. “How did you get it out?”
Phil’s eyes start to wander. His arms uncross, and his hands busy themselves grasping one another.
“Tell me.”
Phil stops fidgeting, and he looks at me. “I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t freak out.”
I laugh meanly and point at the Gray. “You brought that on the ship. You’re endangering us all. So say I’m freaking out if you want, but I think you were a lot closer with the word ‘tantrum.’”
“Grays, when they get together, have a way of amplifying their mental abilities.”
“They network. I get that. So, BFD.”
Phil shakes his head. “You don’t get it. What I’m saying isn’t that collectively the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
“That sounds like manager nothing-talk. Say what you’re trying to say.”
“We don’t have a way to measure mental power,” says Phil. “When we were down in the reservoir, Nick was able to project his emotional influence to a distance of forty feet. Do you remember?”
“That was yesterday, Phil. Of course, I remember.”
“Two Grays linked together can project more than forty feet.”
“So what, like forty plus forty? Eighty?”
“No.” Phil’s excited by my guess. “Twice that, at least.”
“What, did it tell you that?”
Phil nods and then shakes his head. “At first. And then he showed me how. We linked and did it together.”
“You projected emotions onto a bug-head, what, a hundred and sixty feet away?”
“At least that far, and not a bug-head, a normal person.”
My anger gives way to concern. No, a whole list of concerns. “Tell me you’re still in charge, here.”
“You asked about that when we were in the reservoir.”
“And?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Phil looks back at the Tick who’s still squatting in the corner, trying to stay out of my line of sight.
I am worried about it.
“With Nick’s help, I manipulated the guards. I made them afraid of something in the dark, way down the corridor where it opens up to the mine shafts.” Phil looks proud. “They went down together to investigate, leaving the door to the reservoir unguarded. Nick and I walked out.�
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“And nobody noticed.”
Phil shakes his head.
“And what? You did that with everyone you came across all the way up until you boarded this ship?”
“Some,” Phil admits. “Mostly, we were able to sense them in nearby hallways, and we just avoided them.”
“It was that easy? You walked out of the base avoiding people?”
Phil nods.
“That’s bullshit.”
“You say that because you’re mad again.” Phil pauses and then says, “You think because you can’t do it, I must be lying.”
“No.” I am struggling with how to put my feelings into words. “That kind of shit worries me.”
“You’re worried about the influence,” Phil guesses. “You shouldn’t. You know what to look for. We’d never be able to pull that off with you.”
I’m not sure I believe that. “What I don’t believe is that you made your way off the base without Blair’s people in the control room seeing you on one of their cameras. A Gray wandering the halls is the kind of thing that catches someone’s attention.”
“We avoided areas covered by cameras.”
“More bullshit.”
“You know nearly half the surveillance cameras don’t work.”
“Yet you don’t know which ones are out. Fess up, Phil. Stop bullshitting me. Give me the whole truth or I’m tossing the Tick out into space as soon as we finish this jump.”
Phil looks at the floor.
“Tell me.”
Phil looks around.
“Dammit, Phil. Spit it out.”
“Tarlow.”
“What about him?”
“Tarlow mapped out all of the cameras for me.”
“You and Tarlow plotted this?”
Phil turns squirrelly again.
“You did. Both of you, together.” My anger is boiling again.
Chapter 17
“You have to understand,” says Phil, “Tarlow helped because he was afraid of Blair.”
