Fifteen minutes later, Mova earns her pay. The doors let loose with a deep pop and throaty hiss of displacing air.
“First rank, you are made of magic,” I say.
“Thank you, sergeant,” Mova says, blushing slightly.
The doors shudder and squeal as they slide open. Afternoon sunlight pours in through the widening gap.
My grandfather once told me about a big TV special he saw when he was younger, hosted by that reporter Geraldo Mustachio or whatever his name is. Someone had discovered what was believed to be a hidden vault owned by Al Capone, and they opened it on live television, expecting to find it chock full of money, liquor hoarded away during Prohibition, weapons, contraband, all kinds of way cool stuff. Instead, they found an empty room. Millions of people sat glued to their TVs for an hour just to behold a whole lot of nothing.
Stepping into the depository to find a big expanse of empty space is about as anti-climactic, but I’m not ready to breathe a sigh of relief quite yet.
“Spread out,” I say. “Check every corner of this building.”
“What are we looking for, sergeant?” Johr asks.
“Damned if I know.”
“Ah. Well, thank you for the clarification.”
“Search now, snark later. We know they stored weapons here once. We need to figure out what kind of weapons and how long ago they were removed.”
I send out a beam of light and scan the floor for the tiniest of clues. The concrete slab floor is covered by a thin, uniform layer of dust. There are no footprints or vehicle tracks, no imprints left behind by racks or stands or shelving that’s since been removed, but that’s not exactly compelling evidence one way or the other. If anyone had been in here, the dust could have resettled long ago. Or maybe the depository really was abandoned and there was never anything to take.
I’m about to write this off as a dead end when Zqurrl calls out, “Carrie! Uh, sergeant! Ma’am!”
I cross the depository at a jog. “What’ve you got?”
Zqurrl kneels down and points out a small section of the floor that glitters with a rich, honeylike hue. “Amber round residue, I think.”
Johr appears over my shoulder. “Could be,” she says. “If they were storing warheads here and one of them sprung a slow leak...”
“Wouldn’t the stuff just solidify around the missile instead of falling to the floor?” I say.
“The amber compound starts out as a dense gas. When an amber round detonates, the warhead uses a strong electrical charge to crystallize the compound instantly. Without that charge, it crystallizes at a much slower rate. Look here.”
I follow Johr’s finger as she points out the center of the twinkling amber patch, which rises to a peak. It’s like a miniature topographical map of a mountain rendered in rock candy.
“That would be from the gas hitting the floor, spreading out, and solidifying over the course of hours,” Johr says. “That peak indicates the origin of the leak.”
“All right, that’s smoking gun the first; we have proof they had amber rounds here,” I say. “Is there any way to determine when they were here?”
“Possibly. The amber breaks down at an extremely slow rate but it does break down. If we could get a sample for analysis, we could determine how long it’s been since crystallization.”
Amber is resistant to energy, so burning a chunk off isn’t an option. Using vibration could reduce everything to powder. Let’s try good old-fashioned brute force, shall we? I stand up and get a running start for a driving heel kick to the summit of Amber Mountain. A shock runs up my leg, but I succeed in snapping loose a pebble of amber from the very tip of the residue pile.
“Will that do?” I say.
“It should,” Johr says.
“Awesome. Let’s go do some science.”
EIGHTEEN
And when the science comes in, it makes an already terrible situation even worse. Thanks, science.
We took the sample right back to Kyros Prime for analysis. The verdict: the amber had been decaying for two years, three months, three days, seventeen hours, and forty-one minutes. It was analyzed at the atomic level, so there’s no question as to the test’s accuracy.
Except there is as far as the Olkos Secondus global enclave is concerned. They challenged the results, arguing that the analysis was conducted by Kyros Alliance scientists at a Kyros Alliance lab without a Olkosian representative present to observe the process to ensure its integrity; therefore, the analysis could have easily been botched, doctored, or outright fabricated to provide the Alliance with damning evidence against Olkos Secondus.
And that was just the opening number in a lively production I call Righteous Indignation! – The Musical. In the three days since our visit to Olkos Secondus, the global enclave has not only accused the Alliance of evidence tampering, it’s thrown several fits over the fact the Vanguard conducted an “unauthorized search of a Olkosian military facility” (never mind that we technically did have authorization) and vehemently denied ever housing amber rounds at the Island Southwest Quartus depository, much less within the past three-ish years. The enclave insists that when it was last used, the depository served as an all-purpose storage facility for a variety of planetary defense ordnance, none of which violated the Festran Accords. That residue we found? The enclave claimed they had no idea how it could have gotten there, then turned around and accused the Alliance of planting it — an accusation that burns me personally, seeing as it was my unit that discovered it.
(Mind-blowing side note: General Gretch, of all people, stepped up to defend me. He said my integrity as a Vanguardian was “beyond reproach.” I highly doubt he honestly believes that, but since he sees this turn of events as a golden opportunity to turn up the heat on Olkos Secondus, he’d tell the global enclave I could charm birds out of the trees with the sound of my voice like Snow White if it would give the Alliance a shred of added leverage.)
The marginally good news here is that this latest mess is being handled by the Alliance’s diplomats and ambassadors, not the Vanguard. Not our circus, not our monkeys, as the saying goes.
The bad news: the slaughter of Sgt. Vex Bar’s unit is very much our circus. As Commander Do and I feared, Vex Bar and his people had all been stripped of their astrarma. When Commander Do presented this discovery to the Council of Generals, they had no choice but to admit that the attack on Kyros Prime was indeed a jailbreak, and that Galt is back with the Black End.
Now when I say the generals admitted this, what I mean is the generals released this information to a very small, select number of Vanguardians — that extremely short list consisting of Sergeants Carrie “Fargirl” Hauser, Erisia Pwamee, and Daaf Gaartiin.
And how did we get so lucky as to be let in on this explosive secret? Funny story...
***
“Thank you for coming,” Commander Do says as a rather empty courtesy; we were ordered to attend this meeting with her and my favorite person in this corner of the galaxy, General Gretch.
“Of course, commander,” I say.
“There’s no way to broach this delicately,” Gretch says. Yeah, like he’s normally Mr. Tact. “The Black End assault on Kyros Prime was not intended to decimate our forces or cripple our command, or as a simple act of terrorism. It was a distraction to draw our forces away from our prison facility on Kalausz Island. While the Vanguard was engaged with enemy forces at higher-value targets, a smaller Black End tactical team broke into the prison and freed Galt.”
Thank you Erisia and Gaartiin for your stunned silence. It saves me the trouble of acting surprised.
“At the time, we were removing from Galt’s body the astrarma he stole. As you know, this is a slow, painstaking process that —”
“Excuse the interruption, general, but is that a relevant point?” Gaartiin asks.
“It may be. Commander Do presented us with a compelling theory,” Gretch says with a glance her way, “that Galt was priming himself to act as a living bomb and at so
me point intended to strike at a high-value target, perhaps Kyros Prime itself.”
“That theory is supported by what happened to Sergeant Vex Bar and his people,” Commander Do says. “Every member of the unit was stripped of their astrarma.”
“The Black End is rearming Galt,” Erisia says.
“We believe so, yes.”
“Sergeant Hauser,” Gretch says with a fakey smile. “You’ve been unusually quiet. Have you nothing to say? For once?”
“I’ve been quiet because I have a bad feeling this is going somewhere I’m not going to like,” I say. “You’re not sharing all this for funsies, so what say we get to the point already?”
“Ah, there’s the brash girl I know. Very well. We have a plan for drawing out the Black End, perhaps Galt himself. It involves you.” Gretch tucks his hands behind his back and paces around the edge of our little private meeting room. “In light of what we found on Olkos Secondus, we’re activating our Jurr Protocols. We’ll be establishing outposts on a handful of select nonmember worlds for monitoring purposes. Your units will be stationed on Han-Yu Seven. It’s technically a declared neutral world but its world senate has expressed Black End sympathies in the past.”
“You’re sending us to a hostile world and setting us out as bait for the Black End?”
“We’re sending you specifically, sergeant,” Gretch says. His smile isn’t so fakey this time. “We plan to be, shall we say, strategically indiscreet in our regular communications with you so the Black End knows exactly who is on Han-Yu Seven. Our hope is that Galt’s grudge against you will prove too tempting and he’ll want to take you out personally.”
Erisia seethes. “With all due respect, general,” hye says through gritted teeth.
“I know what that means, sergeant; you’re about to be disrespectful toward me. I advise against it. We’re sending you and Sergeant Gaartiin and your units along to act as Sergeant Hauser’s backup. I could very easily change your assignment and send someone else.”
Erisia swallows audibly, as if hye’s literally swallowing hyer pride. “Yes, general. My apologies.”
“Very good. We’ve already dispatched civilian support teams to set up your encampments. Your units will move out tomorrow, eight hours round. You’ll remain on Han-Yu Seven until further notice. Understood?”
“Yes, general,” we mumble as one.
“Commander Do, brief them on their duties,” Gretch says. He heads for the door.
“General,” Commander Do says.
I should keep my mouth shut. Spouting off will only make things worse. I know this from bitter experience. I have a well-established reputation (on more than one world now) of being too outspoken for my own good.
Reinforcing that reputation in three, two...
“Some plan you cooked up, general,” I say. “Either we take out the Black End’s biggest gun or you get rid of me. You win either way.”
“I didn’t cook up this plan, sergeant,” Gretch says without a hint of anger or annoyance. “You can thank Commander Do for that.”
“Commander?” I say, my mouth suddenly bone-dry.
To her credit, she doesn’t turn away. She looks me straight in the eye when she says, “The Black End struck a devastating blow against the heart of the Alliance and reclaimed an extremely dangerous asset. We need to respond accordingly but we can’t do that until we get a solid lead on their whereabouts. If we can capture a Black End operative, or perhaps even reacquire Galt —”
“I get it,” I say, and I do. I honestly do. Things are escalating fast, and we need to push back before it’s too late. If Commander Do thinks putting me out there as a human target and daring the Black End to take a shot stands a snowball’s chance of turning the tide, so be it. She’s making the tough call. That’s what leaders do, and I respect her for that.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
NINETEEN
“Good morning, Kyros Prime. This is Sergeant Carrie Hauser reporting in from outpost one on Han-Yu Seven. This is day...oh, what day is it? Day forty. Day forty? Jeez. Where does the time go? Anyway, this is day forty of our mission and things are status normal. We’re preparing for our regular inspection by World Security Convention reps today, so that’ll be fun. Wing Sergeant Zqurrl and his team made a goodwill public appearance yesterday in the Dan Bo Gon Province and conducted informal interviews with — sorry, I should say he attempted to conduct informal interviews with civilians but, as has been the case since our arrival, the locals aren’t keen on talking to us. Still no open hostility against us but they’re not hiding their contempt, either.
“On the plus side, we’ve neither seen nor heard any evidence of a Black End presence, so yay, and morale is holding steady. My unit’s a little bored but they’re in good spirits. We’re good on supplies for now but I’ll be calling in for some things next week. That minor issue with the water reclamation system’s been fixed, kudos to our support team. Um...yeah, I think that’s it. I’ll file my end of day report at twenty hours round and my next morning report tomorrow at nine hours round. Sergeant Hauser, signing off.”
It’s all downhill from here.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but life on Han-Yu Seven has been a crashing bore since day one. I file my kinda-sorta confidential not-that-encrypted encrypted twice-daily reports with Kyros Prime; I assign teams to conduct routine tasks like public outreach, which involves going into population centers and making nice with the locals; I conduct drills to keep us sharp; I manage the encampment and the civilian support team that maintains it; once a week I welcome Lt. Maasuur, who inspects the encampment and conducts a purely symbolic debriefing; every five days a team from the World Security Convention stops in to make sure we’re not up to anything untoward; and every rare once in a while I investigate highly dubious rumors of Black End activity which, without fail, prove baseless. It’s tedious as hell, but I refuse to let myself or my people get complacent. The last time we let our guard down...well, we all know how that ended. Fortunately, my unit is well aware of the stakes, so I rarely need to give anyone a wake-up kick in the butt.
That’s right, they know why we’re really here. I told them everything, against very strict orders to keep our real purpose to myself. These people are putting their lives on the line, and they deserved to know exactly what they were getting into. Every last one of them vowed to stand by me, no matter what. Have to admit, I choked up a little.
Okay, I choked up a lot. Give me my dignity, will you?
Erisia and Gaartiin, who are stationed elsewhere for maximum planetary coverage, told their people, too. I asked them not to, for their sake. If I got called to the carpet for violating a direct order and sharing highly classified intel with my unit, I didn’t want them going down with me, but they couldn’t let me be all noble and sacrificing, could they? Nooooo. They just had to out-noble me. Jerks. Wonderful, loyal jerks.
Speaking of which, my favorite noble, wonderful, loyal jerk is calling now. Erisia’s smiling face pops up on my terminal, and hye raises hyer dammas mug in greeting.
“Sergeant Hauser,” Erisia says with an affected air of officer-class decorum.
“Sergeant Pwamee,” I say. “How’re things at outpost two this morning?”
“Oh, delightful. Just got our water reclamation system back online, so that’s exciting.”
“Faulty connection between the solar cell array and primary pump motor?”
“Yep. You too?”
“Uh-huh. Second time it’s happened.”
“Third time for us.”
“Mm.”
“Yeah.” Hye sighs and takes a swig of dammas. “So, when do we officially write this mission off as a huge waste of time?”
“Don’t ask me, I just work here,” I say, “but to be fair, it’s likely we’d be doing this anyway.”
“I suppose. I’m trying not to wish for something to happen because I know I’d regret it.”
“Oh, no doubt.” I take a sip of dammas and s
ay, for no real reason, “I had a birthday recently.”
“What?”
“Is that not a thing among your people? Celebrating birthdays?”
“Not really. I mean, we’re aware of when we were born but we’ve never thought it was worth commemorating.”
“It’s kind of a big deal for humans. I don’t know why, really, but it is. Anyway, I had trouble sleeping a few nights ago and my mind started wandering, and I got to wondering how long I’ve been away from home. I tried to do the math but math and I have never been on good terms so I gave up pretty quickly, but not before I figured out I’ve been here long enough to see my seventeenth birthday come and go.”
“It that a particularly significant one? Seventeen?”
“Not so much. I’m starting to run out of event-level birthdays. The next biggie is eighteen. That’s when I’m considered an adult. I’ll be old enough to vote and buy cigarettes and join the military.”
“Oh, I bet you can’t wait to do that,” Erisia laughs. “Why eighteen? Sounds arbitrary.”
“It is, but there you go. After that it’s twenty-one, when I’ll be old enough to drink legally. After that?” I shrug. “I think your auto insurance rates go down when you hit twenty-five.”
“You should celebrate,” Erisia says quite firmly, as if issuing an edict. “Whatever your people do, you should do it.”
It’s a nice thought, throwing together a small party and having a little fun, but what’s the point? None of my friends would be here. As much as I love Erisia and Mells and Zqurrl and Johr and yeah, even Grun, it wouldn’t be the same without Sara, Matt, Stuart, and Missy. It’d feel wrong. It’d feel incomplete.
Action Figures - Issue Seven: The Black End War Page 16
