Gregor’s brow did that I’m-faintly-puzzled furrow of his. “Because of its anesthetic properties? There are more appropriate pharmaceuticals in the first-aid kit. Shall I retrieve it for you?”
“No, I’d rather have alcohol. Don’t you ever feel the urge to imbibe? Especially after a stressful and harrowing experience?”
“I imbibe alcohol during social occasions when I’ve been informed it is appropriate.”
“Ah.” Val imagined countless colleagues of his over the years trying to get him smashed to see what he would be like drunk. She admitted some curiosity in that area herself. “And do you go to many social occasions?”
“I avoid them whenever possible. To relax after a harrowing experience, I work on my models.”
Models? Oh, the spaceships and airplanes hanging in his cabin. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have constructed them all from kits. That had to represent thousands of hours of work. Maybe his life was more stressful and harrowing than she had realized.
“I suppose you can work on a much bigger model this time.” Val pointed to the battered shuttle.
A bleak smile crossed his face. “Yes, but let’s check in and see if our services are required here first.”
“And see if they have a team of mechanics and some spare parts for us?”
“That too.”
A boom sounded somewhere overhead, and the ground shuddered. Someone must be dropping bombs on the mountain. Great. The other people in the hangar glanced toward the ceiling, but their faces were more long-suffering than alarmed. Val didn’t know whether to find that heartening or not. At least it should mean the ceiling wouldn’t come crashing down at any second.
Following Gregor, Val walked toward the group of people in the center of the hangar. The size of the crowd grew with every passing moment, but none of the men or women looked like soldiers or hardened warriors. They wore scruffy brown overalls; many had gray hair, and only a few carried weapons. The dozen-odd one-man sky fighters parked in the hangar were at least forty years old, and the dented green personnel shuttle might have come from another century altogether. A couple of other ships looked more appropriate for carrying ore than defending a continent.
“You’re the base commander?” Admiral Summers was asking when Val walked into earshot. He stood at the edge of the group, his fists propped against his hips.
“He’s already making friends, I see,” she murmured.
“Pardon?” Gregor asked.
“Nothing.” She might not like the admiral, but he might be these people’s best hope to survive the onslaught from their conquering neighbors. And, since Val was stuck down here for the moment, he might be her best hope too. An unpleasant thought.
“Yes, Admiral,” a woman responded. Her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was one of the people with a laser pistol holstered on her belt. She also wore an optical computer over one eye and carried a tablet clutched against her chest. “I’m Dora Anstrider.” Her voice was polite but had a hint of steel in it, as well.
The men and women surrounding her appeared interested in the admiral’s appearance, but they were also standing behind their leader.
“What’s your background?” Summers asked. “You’re a non-combatant, I assume.”
“I was a teacher before the war escalated.”
“A teacher. I see.” Summers eyed the other people. “Does anyone here have combat experience?”
“Admiral,” Anstrider said, “we all have experience killing and losing comrades in battle. We’ve been at war for years, and none of us remember a time when there weren’t hostilities of some sort between us and the Orenkans. You grew up here. You must remember what it’s like.”
Summers sighed and pushed a hand through his hair as he gazed around the cavern. “Yes, but I was told that there would be some forces at my disposal.”
“There are more people on the coasts, closer to the Orenkan strike zones. We’re mostly miners turned fighters here. We have a few pilots to help defend these mountains; this is one of the richest ore areas, and it’s also where we grow a lot of our food.”
Val blinked, looking around at the dim hangar and the half dozen tunnels leading deeper into the mountain. The bleak man-made passages featured corrugated metal and bare stone, not trees and gardens. Of course, there were ways to farm without sunlight—even Mandrake Company raised fruits and vegetables with aeroponics—but it was hard to imagine feeding a population off what one could grow underground.
“Miners and a few flyboys? That’s it?” Summers asked.
“We have a geologist too.” Anstrider’s humor and smile were bleak, but Val decided she liked the woman. More than she liked the admiral, anyway.
“Well, that’s special, isn’t it?” Summers shoved his hand through his hair again. “Get your top people together for a meeting. We need to get to work right away.” He waved to her tablet. “You have any way to communicate with your other bases, or has that been knocked out? We had satellites when I was a kid, I remember, but the Orenkans made a hobby out of shooting them down.”
“We have cables laid all throughout the tunnels, all the way across the continent. I can get you in touch with all of the other base commanders.”
“Yes, let’s do it.” Summers waved for her to lead him… who knew where? Apparently important staff meetings couldn’t be held in the middle of underground hangars.
Anstrider nodded but first stopped to speak to a woman in her forties or fifties. She pointed to Gregor and Val and said something, then headed away with the admiral and most of the crowd.
The woman looked more like a mechanic than an aide, with numerous tools sticking out of her coveralls. But maybe she was one of the pilots. She walked up to Val and Gregor—Gregor was gazing wistfully after the admiral. Apparently Summers wasn’t going to invite a grubby mercenary along, even though Gregor probably had more military experience than most of the people here. But then, Mandrake Company had done what was required of it, hadn’t it? Summers was here and alive. If there was more to their mission than dropping him off, Val hadn’t heard about it.
“I’m Theresa Zimmerman,” the woman told them. “I’m the squadron leader until Sam gets back from the coast. I fly the carver over there.” She waved to one of the winged air fighters. “And I keep the books. Most of us have multiple jobs.”
Maybe that meant she took care of doling out finances to mercenaries. At this point, getting that combat bonus wasn’t looming large in Val’s mind—escaping the planet without being killed had taken most of the space in there—and she assumed payments would go through the captain, anyway, but it would be nice to know if reparations might be made for the shuttle. And if parts were even available for purchase down here. If the sparse hangar was any indicator, these people might not have anything to spare.
“Commander Thatcher,” Gregor said, inclining his head slightly. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, not one to shake hands or use other physical greetings it seemed. “This is Cadet Calendula.”
“Cadet?” Theresa asked.
Yes, at thirty-three, Val was old to be starting over as a cadet somewhere, but what could she do? “I’m new to the outfit. This is a training run of sorts for me.”
Theresa’s graying brows rose, and she looked at the shuttle. “Ah.”
Yeah, that about summed it up.
“Is your shuttle as dead on the ice as it looks?” Theresa asked.
Val nodded at the same time as Gregor said, “A mechanic or engineer should examine it thoroughly before an assessment is made.”
Behind them, something clanked and fell to the deck inside the shuttle.
Theresa raised her brows again.
“It is likely it won’t be flying as is,” Gregor added.
“Your mission was just to drop off the admiral, wasn’t it?” Theresa asked. “While the rest of your people kept the other mercenary fleet busy? Have you been in touch with them? Are they going to be able to pick you up?”
>
“I have not contacted them since we landed,” Gregor said, not mentioning that he had tried to, but the Albatross hadn’t responded. “The company was distracted and clearly in a fight of its own during our last communication. I will attempt to report again shortly.”
“We can have a mechanic take a look, but we’re short on parts, and wouldn’t have any for a—what is that, an R7-660?”
“That’s correct.”
“Yeah, you’ll have to get the parts from your people, if it can even be made flightworthy again.” Zimmerman shrugged. “But I’ll find you some rooms and show you where to get food around here.”
“That’s acceptable,” Gregor said.
“Thank you,” Val added when Zimmerman frowned at his response.
Zimmerman led them toward a tunnel at the back of the hangar. “Who was flying on the way down?”
“I was,” Gregor said at the same time as Val jerked a thumb toward him. She had felt utterly useless on that trip, especially when Summers had taken the co-pilot’s seat. Granted, Gregor had still done all the flying, but if Val had shot at a few of the fighters vexing him, she might have felt less… superfluous. More, she worried that she hadn’t had a chance to prove her piloting skills yet. Her trial week would be up by the time they escaped this rock, and she hadn’t done much except poke around with virtual simulators and get thrown into freezers.
“We were watching you come in at the end,” Theresa said as they turned down a hallway with more flickering lights. The air smelled musty, though the hum of fans in the distance promised ventilation of some sort. “Some fancy flying, especially for a clunky shuttle.”
Gregor shook his head. “I almost crashed into an unanticipated vessel.”
“You mean the Cloaked Tiger? Nobody anticipates them. They don’t show up on sensors.”
“I compensated poorly when it came into visual range.”
Zimmerman glanced back and gave an I-tried-to-give-you-a-compliment-but-whatever shrug. Val didn’t think Gregor noticed; he truly seemed irritated by his performance out there, even though a lesser pilot wouldn’t have gotten them through that. She wouldn’t have gotten them through that.
“Across from each other work?” Theresa stopped in front of a metal door lined with rivets and bolts. It had an old-fashioned doorknob with a keyhole in it.
“What?” Val asked.
“Your rooms. I know commanders and cadets aren’t usually on the same deck, but we don’t have fancy lodgings here. We already passed the base commander’s room—” she waved to the closest door to the intersection, “— and there are some more rooms up those stairs, but everyone’s quarters are the same size.”
Val kept herself from giving Gregor any kind of significant look. She doubted he was thinking about how easy it would be to pop over for a visit with nothing but a blanket wrapped around him. She wasn’t sure why it popped into her mind. “Works for me. I’m surprised I won’t have to share a room.” Surprised and relieved. She would happily sleep in a musty mining cave if it meant she didn’t have to put up with her randy roommate—and her bed partners.
The expression Zimmerman gave her was so dark that Val stepped back, trying to figure out what she had said that could be offensive. “There are many empty rooms here,” Zimmerman said. “And in the other bases.”
The unspoken meaning of the woman’s words sank in. They must have lost many people in this war over the years.
Val thought about apologizing, but didn’t know what she could say that wouldn’t make the situation more uncomfortable. She sighed, walked into her room, and sat on the edge of a bed slightly nicer than a cot. It lacked sheets, a big shaggy white fur blanket folded at the bottom the only covering offered. The fur looked real, and she wondered what animal it had come from. Something big. Something that wandered around on the glaciers. The walls didn’t have a thermostat, nor were there any vents that suggested the room could be heated. Given that her breath fogged the air when she breathed, she hoped that fur was as warm as it looked.
She yawned. She had no idea what time it was back on the Albatross, but it felt like she had been up for days. The idea of crawling under the fur sounded delightful, sheets or not.
“Yes, sir,” came Gregor’s voice drifting in from the hallway.
Val stood up and poked her head through the doorway, expecting the admiral to have found him. Who else would Gregor be sir-ing down here? But he was pacing, with his hands clasped behind his back, and responding to his comm-patch.
“I have some limited engineering knowledge and will do my best to make a proper assessment, but Lieutenant Granger or one of the more skilled mechanics would be most welcome if you can get one of them down here. I’ve also been asked to help defend the base in one of their fighters while the admiral is here. The Orenkans are aware of his presence, yes.”
Gregor had been asked to help fly? By Zimmerman? Val thumped a fist softly against the cold stone doorjamb. Why hadn’t she been asked? Did they know she was a pilot? Wouldn’t Gregor have volunteered that information? Maybe he didn’t think her up to the task of flying one of the antiquated fighters. It would be outside of her realm of recent experience, but she had flown fighters in the academy; they hadn’t been the same model, but they should handle similarly. And, damn it, she needed her chance to prove that she could fly in combat situations.
With Gregor’s back to Val, she couldn’t hear the responses from the speaker on the other side, but she thought she recognized Captain Mandrake’s gruff voice.
“Yes, sir,” Gregor said again. “I understand that it’s not our war and that our task is done, but we’re in a tenuous position. If I don’t help defend the base, we may not survive long enough to get the shuttle fixed. Knowing Summers is here,the Orenkans are focusing more energy than usual on this facility.”
Even as he finished the sentence, a distant boom reverberated through the mountain, and the earth shuddered. Gregor turned to pace in the other direction. Feeling as if she had been eavesdropping, Val almost ducked back into her room, but they were talking about a fate she shared, not gossiping about lovers. She wanted to hear it.
“…send someone,” the captain was saying. “If it’s as bad as you say, they may need an escort to get in. Stay alive.”
“Yes, sir.” Gregor tapped his patch to end the transmission and looked up, meeting Val’s eyes.
“They’re sending help?” she asked.
“Yes, most likely when night falls on our half of the planet. The Albatross has taken damage, and the captain wanted to extricate the ship as soon as possible. Our employers have promised an added bonus of diamonds in addition to the electronic payment we’ve already received, if Mandrake Company remains another week, but it’s a quagmire of enemy activity out there currently. I think he’d prefer to leave while we can. He’s not optimistic that Summers alone will be able to turn this war around.”
From what little she had seen, Val wasn’t, either. “You’re sure they won’t leave us?” The thought of having to find some way to sneak off the planet on their own was a daunting one, especially if their shuttle couldn’t be repaired. Most of the craft in the hangar weren’t space worthy, so couldn’t get them to the moon base, nor would she want to entertain stealing a ship from people so desperately in need of what resources they had left.
“I am a valuable member of the ship’s crew,” Gregor said.
“Strange how that didn’t actually answer my question.”
“They will not leave us.”
“Because you’re invaluable.” Val didn’t mean to look and sound so dubious—or maybe that came out as sarcastic—but Gregor picked up on it.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “Even if I weren’t, shuttles are expensive. Even with the mission’s earnings for the last couple of days, the company would have a net loss for the week if the craft were not recovered.”
“Oh, good.”
Gregor’s brows twitched.
“I mean, I’m glad there are so many solid
reasons to believe that we won’t be abandoned here.”
“Yes.” Gregor looked past her. “Your room is adequate?”
“I think the nights are going to be cold, but I’m sure the situation could be worse.”
Another shudder coursed through the earth—someone was timing those bombings well. Or maybe it was just that there were so many of them now that they were guaranteed to punctuate most sentences.
“My bed has an extra blanket,” Gregor said. “You may visit me if you require further warmth.”
“From the blanket? Or from you?” Val sighed at herself. She had known what he was offering and should have simply given him a thank-you, but her devious tongue was always betraying her by responding to innuendos, even when they weren’t intended.
“Pardon?”
Should she explain or say never mind? The latter probably, but sometime in the last twenty-four hours, she had started finding that faintly puzzled expression of his endearing, and she wanted to explain, to make him understand people better, or maybe just to understand her quirky humor. Not that it should matter. Did commanding officers need to understand the humor of their subordinates? “I thought you might be suggesting we spend the night snuggling for warmth. So we won’t be in danger of freezing. Again.”
“Ah, I understand. I do not believe that will be required. The blankets are thick and the temperature is approximately seven degrees Celsius.”
“Good to know.”
With his brow still slightly crinkled, he gazed toward the bed, then toward her. Thoughtfully? Maybe he had figured out what she was suggesting.
However, when he spoke, all he said was, “Pilot Zimmerman has asked me to assist her in defending the compound. I will be leaving shortly to do so. These bombings are troublesome, as the defense grid can’t withstand them indefinitely, and the mountain itself will succumb if the shield generator goes down. I would like you to begin a preliminary assessment of the damage of the shuttle, in order to give it to the team that comes down from the Albatross.”
Val took a long breath, reining in her tongue before she could blurt—whine—that she wanted to help with the defenses too. “I can do that, sir.” She actually did have extensive experience with repairs—if not combat-related repairs—since she had flown alone so often and hadn’t had the luxury of calling a mechanic when a light on the control panel came on. “But I would appreciate it if you would let Zimmerman know that I could also be available to help with defenses if she has a fighter that needs a pilot.” There, a calm and reasonable statement. No whining.
Trial and Temptation (Mandrake Company) Page 12
