by Rick Partlow
“You must have one hell of a story, Wihtgar,” Logan said, fingers still clutching unconsciously, as if they longed for the butt of his gun, or the controls of his mech.
“Come on,” Osceola urged them. “Let’s get to the bridge and get this bucket moving at a reasonable acceleration.” He chuckled, leading them into the access hub. “Then we can all tell our stories.”
9
“Hold on just a damn minute.” Donner Osceola held up his left hand, his right still wrapped around the glass.
The ship’s doctor—well, medic, anyway, “doctor” being too prestigious a title for someone whose only medical experience was as a Navy corpsman—had warned him against drinking alcohol with the painkillers she’d given him for his ribs, but what the hell did she know? Besides, you didn’t greet guests with water or juice or any such kiddie shit. And you didn’t waste good vodka.
“You’re telling me you want us to pretend to be mercenaries?” His gaze darted back and forth between Lyta and this Jonathan Slaughter character. He was sure it was a fake name, and a fairly new one to the kid, since he seemed to take an extra half-second to respond to it. “And actually take jobs and fight, just so we can get through Starkad territory?”
“We’re not going to pretend,” Lyta corrected him, taking a sip from her own glass. She’d always appreciated a good vodka. It was one of the things he loved about her. “We’re going to take jobs and take money.” She cocked an eyebrow. “And the money, by the way, is one hundred percent yours, on top of what we’ll be paying you, which will not be inconsiderable.”
Osceola came up short at that, leaning heavily against the table they’d commandeered in the ship’s galley after they’d chased out the crew who’d been grabbing a bite between shifts. Kammy was weighing down a chair not nearly sturdy enough for his bulk at one gravity of acceleration, and his eyes lit up at the mention of the money.
“All of it?” he repeated, calculations running through his head of how much a mercenary company might make, gross, for a job. And it would be the gross, since all their expenses would be paid by Sparta.
“So,” Captain Osceola prompted, suspicion overcoming greed for a moment, “what’s the catch?”
“Besides the part where we all might get killed,” Kammy added with a casual wave of his hand, the one with the beer bottle in it. Wussy didn’t drink the hard stuff. “We’re kind of used to that, by now.”
“The catch is,” Lyta told them, using her empty glass as a pointer, “absolute and uncompromising secrecy. You can’t tell anyone who we really are, not in a drunken stupor on liberty, not baring your soul among other things to some local joy-girl.” She shrugged. “Or boy.”
“Lyta, baby,” Osceola insisted, not sure if he was actually hurt by the implication or simply acting hurt out of old habit, “would I ever…”
“Save it, Don,” she cut him off with a slash of her hand in the air. “If anyone talks, there will be consequences, and I don’t mean hurt feelings or a bruised ego.” She looked to the kid, as if reminding him he was in charge, and he nodded.
“We’re going to be out on the edge,” Slaughter told them, voice firm and commanding, if perhaps a bit self-conscious. The kid wasn’t a fuck-up, Osceola decided, he just had very little experience. “We’re not going to be able to count on any backup, any sort of support. If anyone gives us up, we’re all most likely dead.”
The fingers of the kid’s right hand flexed unconsciously, like he was working a control.
“Anyone who you think can’t keep their mouth shut, cut them loose now or we’ll find another ride. If it happens during the mission, we won’t have a trial, we won’t have a prison… we’ll just have an execution.”
Kammy whistled softly, face pinched and thoughtful, but Osceola tried not to let on it bothered him.
“I trust my people,” he declared, then downed the last of his vodka and set the glass on the table beside him. “I wouldn’t have hired them in the first place if I didn’t.”
“Even the Jeuta?”
Osceola glared at the kid, his own face taking the stubborn set usually a close precedent to the start of a fight.
“Wihtgar,” Lyta answered the question since he wasn’t about to, “was just a teenager when the crew found him out on the Periphery. His father and older brother were part of a raiding mission into Starkad territory and they brought him along to get ‘blooded.’ But it was a trap, and Starkad destroyed their ship.”
“Good.”
Well, he couldn’t blame the kid for his reaction. Jeuta raiders were the bane of most Periphery colonies, merciless and unrelenting, killing man, woman and child and burning human settlements to the ground wherever they found them.
“Wihtgar,” Lyta went on as if Slaughter hadn’t spoken, “was the last survivor. He’d been stuck into a life-pod by his father and some of the colonists found him.”
“That place was rough, dude,” Kammy put in, sympathy in his smooth baritone. “They put the boy in a cage and made him fight the local animals.”
Even Slaughter had to wince slightly, then. Osceola’s gut still roiled at the memory of the Jeuta youth covered in blood, much of it his own, his clothes shredded rags, his only bathroom a bucket at the corner of his cage.
“Wihtgar has never been anything but a loyal member of this crew,” he said, his tone flat and final. “He goes where we go.”
The kid shared a look with Lyta and she shrugged.
“All right, then,” young “Captain Slaughter” said, a sigh going out of him as if the load of making the decision had slipped off his shoulders. Something of the cocky mech jock returned, replacing the grave weight of command. “I guess that means you’re hired. How about showing me what I’m paying for?”
Osceola snorted without humor.
“Shit,” he drawled, “I don’t remember saying I wanted the job.”
“Don,” Lyta sighed, pressing her fingers together as if in a prayer, “for once in your life, do something smart.”
Somewhere in those dark eyes, Osceola made his choice.
“All right.” He pushed away from the table, and the cheap plastic creaked beneath him, threatening to break. “Guess I can give you the three-credit tour.”
He still wasn’t sure about this, but Lyta had never set him on the wrong course. When it came to her, he’d always been the one who had trouble navigating.
Logan drifted somewhere in the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, the warmth of bare skin against his, the feel of the smoothness beneath his right hand almost dreamlike. Katy’s breath teased at his chest hairs and he smiled.
“These sheets are scratchy,” she said, her tone playful.
“Really?” he mumbled. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He rolled over to face her, the highlights of her blond hair glinting in the pale glow of the chemical striplights along the floor. He couldn’t quite see her eyes, but he thought she was smiling when he kissed her. She purred somewhere in her chest as his lips traveled to her ear, then the juncture of her neck, and any thoughts of sleep were forgotten.
“I’ll have to bring my own for the mission,” she said, a bit breathlessly.
His head snapped upward, his eyes suddenly wide-open.
“What?” he blurted.
Now he could see her eyes, noticed a flash of irritation in them.
“I’m coming with you,” she said, in a tone she might have used with a slow child. “On the mission.” She shrugged. “You’re going to need a good assault shuttle pilot.” She cocked her head to the side, resting it on the heel of her hand. “Actually, you’ll probably need two, along with a couple heavy-lift lander drivers who can double as backup shuttle pilots.”
“Whoa, hold on,” he said, raising a palm to slow her down and sitting up in bed.
The bed was surprisingly big, as was the cabin. Navy ships were typically over-crewed and space was always at a premium. He supposed things were different when you had to pay everyone in the crew out of yo
ur profits instead of from the pockets of the taxpayers.
“Look, Katy, it was one thing to bring you along on a short run to Gateway to recruit Osceola, but there’s no way in hell I can get away with assigning you to the mission!”
Now he wished he couldn’t see her eyes very clearly, because there were storms brewing behind them.
“Are you saying,” she asked in a tone much like the warning rattle of a diamondback, “I am not qualified for this mission?”
“Of course you’re qualified!” he blurted. “But I’m the commander!” The word came out a squeak and he cursed himself. “What’s it going to look like if I abuse my position by bringing my…”
“Your what?” she interrupted. “Your girlfriend? Is that what I am, Logan? Your girlfriend?” He could feel warmth again, but this was a totally different kind, the sort where you needed protective gear if you didn’t want to get burned.
He spluttered helplessly but finally just decided to be honest.
“Well, yeah! I mean, aren’t you? Aren’t we… ?” He gestured wordlessly, even though he wasn’t sure she could see it.
“You’d better get your shit sorted, Mister!” she snapped, poking a finger into his chest. “Just because we’re… whatever we are…” She lost her train of thought, frowning deeply. “What the hell are we anyway? Am I some stray you decided to take in because you felt guilty? Some lost soul you thought you could fix?”
Logan’s head was spinning as what had previously been a very nice evening had somehow turned into his worst nightmare and he desperately tried to slug his brain into gear. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do anything but sit there grinding and smoking, so he spoke with his heart instead.
“You’re the woman I’m in love with,” he told her.
He thought, for one, endlessly long moment he’d said the wrong thing, because her mouth seemed frozen in mid-sentence, her eyes narrowed and suspicious. He was about to apologize because that was the only other thing he could think to do, but she grabbed him by the back of his head and kissed him fiercely. He hadn’t had time to take a breath, and the lack of oxygen along with the sudden rush of blood to other places in his body made him light-headed, but she came up for air a few seconds before the blackness closed in.
“Damn it, Logan,” she said softly, “just when I was getting a good mad going, you manage to get me all soft and gooey again.” She smiled. “I love you, too.” Then she arched an eyebrow and her face became stern for just a second. “But I’m going, and that’s final.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, thought hard for several seconds and finally managed to say something coherent.
“I have to be able to justify this to my father and General Constantine,” he said, what he thought was a well-reasoned point. “If they think I’m bringing along my girlfriend so I won’t get lonely, they’ll yank this thing out of my hands quicker than shit through a goose.”
“Where the hell did you hear that?” she asked him, laughing, a sound like water pouring over crystal.
“From Lyta.” He grinned. “I’ve known her since before she went to the Academy, back when she was an NCO. She was like my big sister when I was a kid.”
“Tell her you want me along,” Katy suggested. “If she’s known your father that long, she’ll know how to convince him.”
“All right,” he said, throwing up his hands in surrender. If he was being honest with himself, he was glad of it. Mithra alone knew how long they’d be gone, and he hadn’t been looking forward to saying goodbye, but he would have felt guilty asking her to come along. He wondered if she’d known that… “But if you come along, you have to promise me one thing.”
“You better not tell me I shouldn’t take any unnecessary risks,” she warned him. “Not the way you throw your ass around into every dangerous situation.”
“I’d like to,” he admitted, “but no. Though you do have to take my orders, whether or not you like them,” he cautioned her. “That’s not negotiable. We can’t make this work otherwise.”
“I understand,” she said, with what he knew was false meekness. “When we’re around anyone else, I will treat you as my commander and superior officer. But what was the one thing you wanted me to promise you?”
“You can’t call me ‘Logan’ anymore,” he insisted. “Not even in private. If anyone finds out who I really am, we are done. I’m ‘Captain Slaughter’ in public, and ‘Jonathan’ in private, no exceptions.”
“No exceptions?” She tilted her head and looked at him sidelong. “Even when I yell out your name?”
He ran his hand down her shoulder, smiling broadly.
“Especially then,” he teased. “You’re really loud and these bulkheads are pretty thin.”
She put a hand against his chest and pushed him backward. He went with the push and laid back against the pillow.
“Is that so?” she demanded, straddling his hips. “Why don’t we see how loudly you can make me shout ‘Jonathan,’ then?”
She leaned over and kissed him, her breath starting to come in short gasps.
“I don’t know.” His hands went to her hips, pulling her into him. “Maybe I can make you yell ‘Captain Slaughter’ instead.”
She paused in her motion to smack him lightly and playfully in the side of the head.
“Don’t make me break something I might have a use for later,” she warned him, laughing breathlessly. “Wholesale Slaughter my ass…”
10
“Man, where the hell have you been?” Marc Langella didn’t look up from folding his laundry, just threw a wadded-up sock at Logan as he stepped through the open door of the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters room. “You been MIA for three-fucking-weeks!”
Logan ducked the sock, letting it bounce off the wall out in the hallway behind him. Langella scowled, pausing in his chore to grab a slice of pizza from a plate perched perilously close to the edge of the bed.
“You could have caught the sock, at least,” he remonstrated around a mouthful.
“No thanks,” Logan said, pushing the door shut behind him. “I know where your feet have been.”
The BOQ at Laconia headquarters on Sparta had a biweekly cleaning service and Marc Langella made those poor bastards earn every credit of their pay.
“Seriously dude,” Langella got up from his bed, wiping his right hand on the front of his T-shirt before offering it to Logan to shake, “where the hell you been? You missed company training and I had to take your damned platoon!”
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, Marc.” Logan leaned against the dresser across from the bed, motioning for his friend to sit back down. He paused for a breath, trying to organize his thoughts. He’d been rehearsing this for days and it still sounded lame and unbelievable. “How would you like to have your own platoon permanently?”
“Well, of course I want my own platoon.” Langella shrugged, then caught the dish with the rest of the pizza before it could tumble off the bed and onto the carpeting. He set it on the nightstand instead. “Another six months in grade and I’ll be eligible…”
“I mean right now,” Logan clarified. “You could have your own platoon starting immediately, get an instant promotion to full Lieutenant. Be on the fast track to captain.”
Langella ran long fingers through tightly-curled dark hair and regarded Logan with what might have been a mix of skepticism and keen interest.
“Seriously? What’s the catch, Log?”
Logan winced. Marc Langella was the only one who he let get away with calling him “Log,” though he supposed it wouldn’t matter much longer.
“It’s a deep-cover operation, Marc. Indefinite duration, high risk.” He raised a hand palm-up to stop what he assumed was the younger man about to trip over himself to say yes. “Very high risk, Marc. No support, no backup. We’ll be on our own. And you won’t be able to tell your family, your friends where you’re going or when you’ll be back.” He didn’t bother to mention a girlfriend. Langella hadn’t been able
to keep a relationship going for more than a month since he’d known him and he didn’t think the last three weeks had changed that.
Langella stared at him, arms crossed, waiting.
“You done trying to scare me off?”
“I guess I am.” Logan rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He trusted Langella and wanted him along, but he also didn’t want to be the reason his friend got killed, and the cognitive dissonance was giving him a headache. “Did it work?”
Langella smirked all the way to his closet, grabbed a duffel bag and tossed it on the bed.
“When do we leave?”
“Langella’s coming along?” Lyta asked him.
He nearly had to jog to keep up with her pace, but at least it was keeping him warm. Winter was closing in on Argos, and while it wouldn’t ever be as cold here as it was on Ramman, he still had his jacket’s hood thrown up. The weather didn’t seem to bother Lyta Randell, but nothing ever did, not the dimly-lit streets, nor the vacant, foreboding towers of downtown looming over them in the midnight hours.
“Not just him,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the automated cargo truck rumbling by on the other side of the street, kicking up a spray of salt and melted ice. “The whole platoon. Marc’s going to work on the maintenance techs, too.” He picked up a step to catch up to her. “What about the Rangers?”
“One hundred percent participation.” She might have been reading off an official military report, but he thought he could hear just a hint of the pride she felt in her tightly-reined voice. “The whole company and support staff.”
“Nice.”
He was nodding even though she couldn’t see him under his hood. Keeping unit cohesion was going to be tricky in a mission like this, and recruiting them intact would make it easier. Now came the hard part, the part he’d been dreading since they’d arrived back on Sparta only forty hours ago.
