“Ready to go,” she answered. “Though, to be completely honest with you, they’re not yet aware of where it is we’re going to.”
I tilted my head to the side. “How do you think they’ll react to the news?”
Turan had been one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Billy died there, and the rest of us came very close to joining him. When I left there, I didn’t care whether I lived or died, so long as I never had to go back.
Now I did.
“I don’t think I care how they’ll react,” Mina answered honestly but briskly. “This is their job, Mark. You know that better than anyone.”
“Of course, I do,” I nodded. “Doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to be hesitant. What we went through - “
“Was difficult,” Mina finished, nodding at me, “and not something I ever wanted to revisit, but we are where we are.” She sighed heavily. “It’s not like we’re not up for it. We made it out of there before.”
“Right, except it’s different this time.” Pointing to the rounded mass hanging around my necklace, I continued. “I’ve been granted access to the mission dossier. Annabelle downloaded updated maps and intel into this beautiful brain of mine a few minutes ago and - “
“Let me guess. They have one of those fancy frozen yogurt places there now?” She chuckled harshly.
“They have a concentration camp,” I finished, swallowing hard. “Anya played us.” I was speaking of the bug queen who coerced us into doing her bidding in exchange for a chance off that damn rock.
“What?” Mina narrowed her eyes at me.
“When we took out her competition, it left a power vacuum,” I explained. “She must have swooped in to fill it because, judging by this intel, she’s basically running a one-woman kingdom out there. Her former enemies are either dead, serving her, or locked up in one of those horrible labor camps.”
“Meaning what?” She leered at me like I wasn’t making any sense at all. “That we made things worse out there?” She shook her head. “Am I supposed to be surprised by that? Am I supposed to, I don’t know, feel bad for the murderous bastards or something? They’re Acburians, Mark. I’m not going to go rustling up a fundraiser for them.”
“I’m not saying you should,” I scoffed. “Far from it. Let the sons of bitches kill each other for all I care, but there’s a difference between caring and accepting the truth. We did what we had to in order to get out of that place, but we didn’t leave it in good condition. The moon we’re about to set foot on again is a scene of our own creation, whether we wanted it to be or not.”
I thought about that for a second, about unforeseen and unintended consequences. We went to get metal, and we left having toppled a regime. How would history record our actions, assuming they recorded it at all? Would we be heroes, villains, or just bumbling idiots who made everything worse regardless of where they went? It seemed a heavy and horrible thing to consider. More than that, it looked like it wouldn’t matter. Maybe none of it did.
“Whatever,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not what I came to you for.”
“Then what are you here for?” She ran her hand down my arm. “You looking for a repeat of the other night? Because I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”
“Neither would I,” I admitted. “It was a hell of a ride, but I just want to know you’ve got my back.”
Her hand dropped quickly, and she stared at me with more than a little hurt in her eyes. ”How can you even ask me that question? After all, we’ve been through.”
“Because, all we’ve been through, up to this point, was basically Alliance sanctioned.” I leaned closer to her, pressing the orb on my chest and asking Annabelle to turn on a linguistic field scrambler. With it, anyone outside of a ten-foot radius (including those with listening devices) would hear what we had to say as indecipherable gibberish. It was a new upgrade, one I had just bought in the few minutes since leaving the briefing, and something I hoped would come in handy right now.
“What the hell is that for?” Mina asked. I heard her twice, first as the gibberish and then as my mind processed it, again as her words.
“For privacy. I need to know we won’t be heard.”
“And why would that be? What have you gotten yourself into? Or should I say who have you gotten yourself into?” She rolled her eyes at me. “I saw the way you were looking at the doctor and, more importantly, the way she was looking at you. That wasn’t the first time you met her, was it?”
Oh, Mina was damn good.
“No,” I admitted. “We’ve met before. Della and I helped save her life, but it flew right in the face of our directive and - “
“Given the new hard ass in charge, you were afraid they’ll hang you for treason?”
“Something like that. Commissioner Reynolds says he wants us together again because of the job we did on Turan before.”
“But you don’t think that’s true?” It’s like she was reading my mind.
“Not sure. Something about him, something about all of this, doesn’t sit well with me. He’s been listening to me, listening to Della, and probably listening to you and the Artemis Squad as well.”
“Then his nights have been boring,” she chuckled as a satisfied smirk graced her face. “Well, except for one.”
Warmth ran up me. ”Be that as it may, I want to know that, if the chips are down, if I’m right and this isn’t what we think it is - “
“I’m with you.” She reached out and took my hand. “As long as you’re doing what’s right, I’m always with you.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” Deep down, I knew it had been stupid to ask Mina. I knew before she even said it that she was on my side.
“Good,” she answered before leaning in to whisper, “We have thirty minutes before our departure. What do you say we see what the words ‘Don’t stop’ and ‘Just like that’ sound like in this stupid language?”
I squeezed her hand, grinning like a kid in school who had just looked down his teacher’s shirt. ”Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
7
I marched onto the transport vehicle much like I had just a few months ago. Like then, I was headed for the bug moon of Turan. Unlike then, the once-secret bug base had been laid bare by the intel and samples the Artemis Squad, and I brought back from our first trip there.
What had once been a mysterious place whose dangers were very much undiscovered and certainly undocumented had now been charted and explored. In the short months since our expedition, the scanners that had been left behind in our stead had transmitted a virtual treasure trove of information about the moon back to the Alliance.
It was that information that told us Anya had taken over. That information spoke of the horrific concentration camps her overthrown rivals had been regulated to, and that information would also give us a pathway through what was now a quickly changing environment.
Like before, this was supposed to be a simple mission. Whereas we were sent to pick up resources before, this time our mission was to leave something behind; something that would hopefully prove deadly, not only to the bugs on Turan but the entire of the Acburian empire.
Differing from last time though, I wasn’t saddled with a bunch of grassfeds. On this mission, I had the best of the best. The Artemis Squad would be with me from the beginning, and I had learned enough from the last mission to know not to underestimate them in any regard.
Mina had handpicked a fantastic team to back her, something that was technically against regulations. Still, who would tell Mina John, heroine of the Alliance, no?
Lance Corporal Claire Forbes, the blonde tech expert, sat at the far end of the Bullet ship, turned to the side with her legs stretched out across the bench, taking up three spaces. Her hair was shorter than the last time I saw her, now only a few inches longer than the pixie cut gracing Mina’s head. As was Claire’s nature, she gave me a lingering, if disinterested, glance before turning back to what looked to be a communications device. She had the damn
thing opened, and even now, with less than two minutes before we were set to blast off back to the hell that was Turan, she was working on fixing it.
It took all I could do not to laugh. There was something about her that tickled me. Even after we’d shared a night when she confessed her lifelong admiration for me before having her way with me, even after we’d saved each other’s lives more times than I could count, she still maintained her distance. It would have almost been insulting if I didn’t understand that need so deeply myself.
“Mark Ryder!” a familiar voice said from the other side of the ship. Looking over, I saw the purple hair, eyes, and lips of the team’s medic, Sergeant Jill Rodman. Unlike Claire, Jill no problem getting close to people. During our first mission, it was she who was the first to befriend me, she who was the first to let me know how impressed she was with me, and she who made sure to stay close to me when all the shit hit the fan.
Now, she rushed toward me, colliding with me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, and planting a kiss square against my lips.
“It’s been too damn long, Lieutenant,” she said, as she pulled away and smiled at me. “I have missed the hell out of you.”
“That’s enough, Jill,” Mina said, glaring at the younger woman with her arms behind her back. Her voice dripped with frustration, but not the jealous kind. “Just because the mission has yet to officially begin doesn’t mean we get to act like insipid children.” She nodded at Jill. “You’re with me. You’re on the clock.”
Jill pulled away, disentangling herself from me and shooting me a mischievous look. “Yes ma’am,” she answered firmly.
“You,” Mina scolded quietly as soon as Jill was far enough away again not to hear us.
“What about me?” I looked over at her as I motioned for her to follow as we took our assigned slots in the embarkation chambers.
In seconds, as soon as the doors closed, the chambers would seal us off. Mina and the others would be fitted with their suits. The whole process was honestly unnecessary for me now that Annabelle was always with me. Still, I had a slot, and it was protocol, so I took it. I might have been a traitor under Commissioner Reynold’s strict guidelines, but that didn’t mean I wanted to throw everything out the window.
“You’re a bad influence,” Mina answered, climbing into her pod, situated next to mine.
I grinned back at her. “Is that right?”
“Yes, it is, and you wouldn’t be smiling like a cat in cream if you didn’t know it was the truth.” She shook her head. ”I swear, I never had more trouble keeping my subordinates in line than when they were with you.”
“I guess I bring that out in people.”
“You certainly do, though to be fair, I’m pretty sure we’d all have died last time if not for you.” She shrugged. “So, there’s that.” She glanced over at me again. “Where’s the doctor?”
“Rayne? She’s in the upper bay of the ship, in sedation.”
“Sedation?” Mina narrowed her eyes at me. “Why the hell would she need to be sedated for a Bullet ride?”
“She hasn’t had the best of luck with space travel.”
“Science types,” Mina scoffed. “They’re always so soft.”
“I guess we’ll see,” I answered as the pods closed on us. “See you on the other side.”
The Bullet ship blasted off as the pod closed, cutting off Mina’s reply to me in mid-sentence. In seconds, we would be back in Turan’s atmosphere, and seconds after that, we would be thrust out into the planet again.
“In and out,” I repeated to myself, nodding firmly at the idea that this, unlike the other mission, would go off without a hitch.
Then I felt a hard rumble from the back of the ship, throwing us off course. A loud booming sound and a red light filled the room.
So much for without a hitch.
8
This wasn’t good. We had either been hit by something while entering the space surrounding Turan or there had been a malfunction with the Bullet ship itself. Either way, this couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The red light shining down on us meant that the impact had caused the ship to go on lockdown. Standard controls would be locked out and all the doors sealed with the intention of containing a hull breach or other catastrophe to the affected section. The door separating us from the outer area where Rayne was laying wouldn’t open, meaning she was alone out there, leaving me to wonder how bad the damage was in that section of the ship.
What was more, since the pods had already closed, we were all stuck inside of them and given the fact our suits had yet to be deployed, we were without them as well.
Well ... all but one of us was.
Unlike Mina and the rest of the Artemis Squad, my power suit was with me all the time. She was right there, hanging around my neck. As such, the lockdown wouldn’t affect her. She was just waiting for me to speak the words.
“Annabelle,” I said, still staring at Mina trapped helpless inside of her pod, “something’s happened. I need to know what it is.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant Ryder,” Annabelle replied. “Initiating outward diagnostic scans as well as checking for infectious malware.”
That was smart. The idea of a hardware malfunction had crossed my mind, but the possibility of cyber intrusion hadn’t. While the bugs didn’t have the capacity (as far as we knew) to attack us in such a manner, that didn’t mean we were always safe.
While the bugs had caused most of humanity to band together and join as one in our efforts for survival, nothing could ever really make all of us act together. There were people, more than I cared to admit, who saw what we were doing to the bugs as something of a disservice. To them, we were the bad guys, unwilling to share our resources and open our borders. To them, the fact that these sons of bitches were trying to kill us was a direct result of the fact that we weren’t being open and giving enough. In short, they thought holding hands and singing songs would do more than fighting back.
In short, they were idiots, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know their way around a computer. If they had managed to work their way past the Alliance’s firewalls, then those self-loathing hippies would have access to our intel. They would know what Rayne had created. They would know what this mission was all about, and given the way they felt about what we were doing with the Acburians thus far, something told me genocide wouldn’t exactly be a Christmas present to them.
Still, I couldn’t dwell on that. Whatever the source of this, the fact was that I was the only one who was able to access my power suit, I was the best (and only) chance or getting us out of this.
“Annabelle, it’s time for your boy to suit up,” I said, my teeth grinding together.
Mina, for all her bravery, wasn’t trying to beat against the pods like Claire and Jill were. She knew better than that. The pods were built to withstand the impact of a crash landing. The brute force of a fist against it (even badasses like the Artemis Squad) wouldn’t do too much. Besides, she knew what I was up to. I could tell as much from the look on her face when we made eye contact.
I nodded at her as Annabelle thrust forth and encased me. It felt like I was at home like Iowa had stretched out in front of me and taken me up into its green fields and friendly people.
In the years that I had been an Infinity Marine, I had been asked more than once why I didn’t just retire, why I had yet to cash in on my good name and relative fame with an endorsement deal or a string of speaking engagements. I could make money. I could go home. The truth was right here, in the way I felt when this suit covered me, when her weapons and hardware meshed with my body.
Earth wasn’t home for me anymore. This was home. All Iowa was, all the Earth was really, a sweet memory and a reason to fight. The fight itself, that was the only place where I was ever really alive.
My armored shell came together around me, and I saw the world take on the glow it only ever did when I was at work, seeing the world through my suit’s HUD. I took a deep breath
and looked forward. If I was going to save everyone else from whatever was going on here, I was going to have to save myself. As such, the first order of business was to free myself from the pod I was currently trapped in.
“Annabelle, I need you to scan this glass for me when you get the chance.”
“I work at forty million times the speed of a human brain, Lieutenant Ryder,” she answered. “I always have the chance … and the glass you’re speaking of is actually a complex web of nanomachines. It’s built to resist any and all force forms of force, and if it were to actually be damaged, it would repair said damage nigh-immediately.”
I should have realized that. These pods had to be the ultimate in defense. We were traveling through deep space, surrounded by all the dangerous things the universe had to offer, and we were outfitted with expensive tech the Alliance already proved they valued more than us. It made sense that they would spare no expense to keep it safe.
The fact that they weren’t doing that job very well at the moment was something I didn’t have time to comment on.
“So how the hell am I supposed to get out of it?” I scanned through options in my head. Heat rays would only serve to turn this thing into an oven and cook me alive. Seismic vibrations would bounce back and turn my brain into grey scrambled eggs. Most forms of energy blast would reflect back and straight up slice me in half. I was against a rock and trapped in a hard place.
“Is that a rhetorical question, Lieutenant Ryder? Because, if not, the answer is, of course, you’re not.”
“Of course,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to be able to blast my way out of this glass coffin. If I was going to get out of here, I was going to have to, no pun intended, think outside of the box. And if I was going to do that, then there was only one way to look. Inward.
A thrashing sound, so loud that it echoed over the sounding alarm, went through the air. It sounded like it came from the front of the ship, the place where Rayne was now resting. My body tensed. I needed to move quickly, or all of this would be for nothing.
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