by S. E. Smith
“What? I’m going to write to her,” Lukas always told him.
Bang-Bang would chuff a satisfied gust of air out his nose and settle down to nap not by Lukas’s feet but on them, as if to make sure he would keep to his word. “Damn slave driver,” Lukas would mutter. “I never forget to write.”
But as the month went on, Carlynn’s replies had become shorter, sounding less like her. In recent days he had sensed something was “off”. She was light years distant physically and, now, emotionally, as well. But Lukas avoided making mention of any of that in his daily messages to her. He made a point of keeping it light, pretending all was well. He wrote about Bang-Bang’s latest antics or new training accomplishments—He now knows eight hundred unique words!—or the crazy trouble station personnel wound up in down on the surface. Normal daily life. The kind of things he and Carlynn used to talk about when they cuddled together in bed at the end of their day.
Then last night happened.
Goddamn. Lukas exhaled when, with a shudder, the Maelstrom dropped out of FTL and back to normal flight. “Standby for FTL reentry in ten minutes and thirty-six seconds,” the pilot said over the speaker.
Two of five.
He stifled a groan and tried to get comfortable on the troop seat for the short reprieve. No dice. All too soon they launched into another wormhole. As the Maelstrom hurtled through the folds of space, all he could think of was last night’s note. The note he sent to Carlynn. It had all started with him pouring a double scotch then emptying half a glass of that strictly self-rationed, expensive, hard-to-come-by scotch whiskey with one swallow. It was an excellent single malt, peaty and smooth, but it served as a weak antidote for his bad feeling that something irreversible had happened with him and Carlynn. Pushing that out of his mind, he had written instead about the colony’s obsession with bajha—a form of martial arts using long, blunt energized shock batons. It was the Trade Federation’s number-one sport. But the Baréshtis played a gritty street version ramped up with feverish betting. It’s like jousting while wearing blindfolds, he had messaged. Crazy to watch. The fight clubs are a kick. You’ll love it. How about we go when you come home?
Home…
He had paused to stare at the word—home—one small word that had come to symbolize so much, everything he had once lacked in his life and what he had ultimately found—with Carlynn.
It’s not home without you, he had almost typed next. I need you here with me for that.
I just need you. He had never come out and told her that. Not once. She must know. She had to know. He communicated it with his actions, and the way he made love to her. Or did he?
“I want all of you, Lukas, in bed and out of it.”
Shit. He had ended up closing out his message with his usual, Love L and pushed away from the computer…
The Maelstrom jolted, catapulting Lukas out of his thoughts of the night before. It catapulted Lukas out of his thoughts of the night before. Then, with a mild rumble, the troopship dropped back to sub-light speed. Lukas opened his eyes. The stars looked like stars again and his accordion body contracted back to normal. He dragged a hand over his face, exhaling a relieved breath. Already he dreaded the next jump. “Hey, Bang-Bang. You want something to be able to sleep through this?”
The dog’s tail twitched, but he made a growly grumble at the question.
“Yeah, didn’t think so. Me either. We’ll take it like Marines.” He glanced over at the people who were enviably out cold thanks to sleeping meds. No thanks. He would rather be up, his thoughts with Carlynn—how she was everything to him; how if he had not let her walk out of their quarters that day, had he not closed himself off to her and had just once stopped to consider another viewpoint besides his own, his own damn pride, she would not be in harm’s way now.
Or worse.
Dread sat in a hard ball of ice in his gut. But allowing it to distract him was why Colonel Duarte and Captain Lindscomb expressed reservations about allowing him to participate in the rescue of his own fiancée. Lukas assured them he would not let himself be distracted. He had to keep his word and stay the course. For his commanding officers, for himself. For Carlynn.
Yeah. For you, babe.
Lukas pushed out of the seat. He served himself a small paper cup of water from the aux galley dispenser, drank it down while avoiding looking out the porthole. He poured another for Bang-Bang, who knew the routine of using the K-9 pads on board if need be. T-minus twelve minutes until the next jump. What if she wants out? He crushed the cup in his hand. Not for two months, but for good? Those questions had consumed him last night while he sat at his workstation, guzzling his best scotch like it were lemonade while staring at the computer screen. Pretending everything was A-OK when it was not.
He could not even touch the possibility of losing her. Couldn’t go there. Life before Carlynn was a distant memory, and nothing he could fathom resuming. He had changed. On a fundamental level he was a new man. Before Carlynn, there was his quest for excellence in his profession, keeping in shape for missions, twice-weekly basketball with the guys and beers afterward. There was no shortage of interested females for a quick, mindless fuck, the only kind of encounter he sought out “B.C.”—Before Carlynn—but the idea repulsed him now. Carlynn had spoiled him for anyone else. She was the first person he had loved as an adult, and she was the first to love him back. As a boy and young teen he had cast out wildly and futilely for love in the foster care system, craving reciprocation that never came. But thanks to Carlynn, he knew what love was now—how to love and how to be loved.
Did he?
“I want all of you, Lukas…”
He threw the crumbled cup into the trash and returned to his seat to wait out the impending jump to FTL. Last night, after he had drained his glass of scotch, he found his way back to the cursor on the screen like a lost ship homing in on a lighthouse beacon in bad weather. Love, L, he had typed at the end of his unsent message. He had added another line. I miss you, babe. I miss you something fierce. He had stopped there, the cursor waiting like a held breath. His fingertips rested on the keyboard, the same fingertips that once glided over Carlynn’s skin, that smoothed back her hair, that touched her lips and felt the tickle of air when she whispered, “I love you, Blondie,” before she fell asleep.
Something clenched in his chest, and he had typed, I’m not ready to give up on us yet. Are you?
He ended up deleting the line and starting over. You said you thought time apart would be good for us. Maybe you really meant for me. That PTSD crap. Screw that, Carlynn. Yeah, I get flashbacks. Bad dreams. Who doesn’t? Life’s no fairy tale. I can tell you that firsthand. Thousands, even millions of people deal with bad memories. Every day!! And they function just fine. I handle a demanding job, a platoon of forty-one people. I can deal with the leftovers of Glenn-Musk. I have been dealing with it. Maybe it’s you who can’t. You said so yourself, if you recall. I do. You said you can’t stand seeing me suffer. Well, let me tell you, whatever you think I’m doing, it’s not suffering, babe. Not even close.
“At least they didn’t suffer…”
Sitting in the Maelstrom’s unforgiving troop seat, Lukas stiffened as a bad memory crashed into his consciousness like an armored vehicle through tempered glass. “At least they didn’t suffer.” Those were the trigger words, every time. The medic corpsman in sickbay only wanted to make him feel better after what happened on Glenn-Musk, but Lukas had lost it, shoving off the exam table, barely holding back from punching the guy, before medical staff wrestled him back down.
“They suffered,” he had snarled, struggling as they got him sedated. “They fucking suffered!”
Lukas shut his eyes against the memory. A cold wet nose pushed against the fist he had pressed to his thigh. I’m here, Bang-Bang seemed to say, sensing what was coming. Burying his hand in Bang-Bang’s coat like an anchor, Lukas squeezed his eyes shut as the nearly constant shrill sound in his ears soared, a medical condition called tinnitus that he ha
d put up with ever since rupturing his eardrums on Glenn-Musk Station during the explosive decompression. Despite Treatment, it persisted. The increase in volume of the whistling almost always accompanied his flashbacks, when his heart would race and he would start sweating like a pig. Then he would see the airlock blowing, the bodies being sucked out. Families. Kids. That little girl. She suffered. They all suffered.
Lukas hunched over, planting his elbows on his thighs and braced his head between his fists, waiting for the episode to subside. “I’ve got this,” he had insisted to Carlynn so many times.
Maybe I don’t.
Last night, with his heart still running double-time from yet another episode triggered by the word “suffer”, he had peered at the keyboard and read the sentences where he had lashed out at her. Jesus. He ended up hitting the BACK button and erased everything to, I miss you, babe, then added, I’ve been thinking lately, maybe I should try to figure out what’s going on with me. Let’s talk. Love, L, and sent it.
That was when he had noticed a buzzing coming from his chest pocket—not a bad memory this time, but the real thing. The dreaded pre-dawn call. “Lukas, report to my office,” Colonel Duarte had said. “It’s…urgent.”
Carlynn. Lukas knew right away the call was about her and that it was bad. With his gut as cold as ice, his mouth papery dry, his boots feeling like they were filled with lead, he had walked into the commander’s office expecting the worst, and got it. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant…”
Now here he was, on the Maelstrom with two platoons of space Marines, destined for the remote planet that had taken his Carlynn. I’m going to find you, babe. I’m going to get you back. No matter what.
“Worm hole entry in T-minus thirty seconds.”
The third jump.
Bang-Bang hopped up on the seat and slid a roughened paw over Lukas’s arm. The stomach-lurching, head-pulling sensations returned. Lukas fumbled for his chest pocket and found the photo of him and Carlynn. Looking down at their photo, he felt the grim line of his lips soften. They looked so happy—him laughing while holding her in his lap, his hand curved around her thigh. Her arms were slung around his neck, her eyes sparkling as the photo caught her mid-laugh. He was happy, spinning in a haze of nearly constant arousal and love. Yeah, love, after only one week with her. It had happened that fast. Crazy. The photo was taken in Nimbus, the station’s bar. Carlynn had printed a copy for each of them to keep. “The prerequisite couple photo,” she explained. “It makes us official.”
Us…
He laid the picture facedown on the center of his chest, his hand covering it, protecting it, the way he fell asleep every night protecting her, holding her close. Me and you, babe.
Yeah, us…
Lukas flattened his hand on the photo. He had never been an “us” before. The moment he laid eyes on Carlynn changed all that. Bang-Bang deserved all the credit; he had noticed her first. Ten months ago, Lukas was too busy getting used to his new position as platoon commander of Forward Operating Base Barésh to even think of hooking up with someone, let alone starting a relationship. His unit was the face of Earth on an alien world, placed in a position to write history every day they were there. There had never been an FOB on Barésh—or on any planet other than Earth. They were the first. Lukas, his commanders, and the entirety of Bezos Station were forced to learn on the fly, at times making up the rules because no one had written any yet for their situation.
He had his hands full. It didn’t help any that he also found himself adjusting to life as a newly minted second lieutenant after a dozen years as an enlisted man. The promotion came with his Medal of Valor but winding up as a junior commissioned officer after so long as a very senior non-comm felt like starting over. Of course, all this was far from the mind of a kid whose likely choices after high school were ending up in jail or dead. If not for a deep craving for purpose in his life that sent him into a Marine Corps recruiting office when he was only seventeen, one or the other, or both, would have done him in. The Corps became the family he never had. When the Marines expanded their responsibilities out to the stars a few years after he enlisted, he was among the first to volunteer. When they changed names to the Earth System and Frontier Interplanetary Marines eighteen months ago, he was there. Space. He loved it. Unimaginably vast, it was big enough to swallow him, and far enough away to start fresh.
Until the sucker punch of Glenn-Musk swung around and knocked the wind out of him.
But on that Friday evening ten months ago, Lukas had little reason to expect that getting out of the office to accompany his platoon sergeant on patrol would be anything other than routine. And then he met Carlynn…
Squish. Squish.
Slouched in his seat, Lukas blinked awake to the feel of a wet tongue swiping his jaw and ear. He must have slept—and hard. His head and stomach felt disconnected from his body. How many jumps did he sleep through? The last two? A freaking miracle. “Hey, quit it,” he grumbled at Bang-Bang. “I’m not in the mood. Go lie down.”
Bang-Bang made a familiar whine-growl that demanded attention. Lukas peeled open bleary eyes to see the K-9’s yellow orbs fixed on him. Must take action, they said.
Lukas groaned. “All right. What?” Then Bang-Bang used his nose to push a box containing an MRE toward him. Eat, those intense eyes urged.
Lucas did need to eat. He needed the energy for what lay ahead. Hopefully he could keep it down. He unwrapped some K-9 food for Bang-Bang, made a sandwich for himself with dry slices of bread and flimsy processed meat from the MRE, then grabbed a cup of coffee, loaded it up with cream and sugar, and walked into the cockpit. “How close are we?”
“A little less than two hours,” the command pilot, Rornn, said. The co-pilot was engrossed in entering data on a tablet computer.
Lindscomb handed Lukas a stack of images. “We got a temporary break in the weather. We’re in communication with the orbital probe. These are the latest visuals from Vuushon—the landing site.”
Jesus. Lukas swallowed hard. “It looks like they had a mud fight.” And the Starling had lost.
The Maelstrom set down near the damaged Starling after one last scan for threats. Two ramps crashed open, and Captain Lindscomb led Lukas and two heavily armed Marine platoons down to the surface, spreading out as briefed.
“Go,” Lukas said, sending his corporal and their fire team onward to the crippled Starling. At his direction, the rest of his platoon fanned out to look for clues left by the missing crew. The Maelstrom dispensed several all-terrain vehicles driven by the corpsmen before lifting back up to observe from above.
Lukas assessed the condition of the Starling as he loped toward it to set a perimeter. Inconceivably, the main entry hatch looked crumpled inward, as if something, something big, had kicked it open. A drone lay on its side in the dirt nearby, one fin in the air, like roadkill on a Texas highway. Lukas noted it all with a steely grip on his emotions. If he let in one particle of worry for Carlynn, it would blow his rigid self-control to hell. In this moment, he was a Marine. Not a lover, not a fiancé. A Marine.
Bang-Bang woofed softly in alarm, then nosed the ground, trotting all around the outline of a vaguely star-shaped hump of dried mud. Supple green grasses rippled in all directions as far as the eye could see, broken up by clumps of large flowers and more brownish humps and knolls no more than a few feet in height at their highest centers. Approximately one klick away, a blackish ridge cut through the grass like a fish spine. No animals to be seen, but he knew from the aerial sweep of the area that herds were on the way. It was clouding up quickly. The muggy air sat heavy, and it stank like something damp and rotted, reminding him of bad cheese. It was even worse than Barésh with all its pollution crammed under a dome.
“Delta two/three to Delta six. Nothing,” radioed the corporal leading the fire team inside the Starling. “It’s clean. No bodies.”
No Carlynn. A shudder of relief came with the news. He had been granted a reprieve.
“But, Skippe
r, it looks like a murder scene in here, except with streaks and splatters of mud, not blood.” The corporal’s voice rang in all their earpieces through the shared frequency. “There’s gear missing, though—their weapons, the survival kit, tools. A med kit. But the portable radio transmitter’s still here. Wouldn’t have done them any good—it’s busted.”
“I believe it, seeing what happened to the front door,” Sergeant Jones said at Lukas’s side, a shoulder-mounted flux-grenade launcher weighing him down.
“They’ve taken up shelter somewhere,” Lukas said and scanned the landscape around him. Whatever had damaged the ship had been deemed enough of an ongoing threat to warrant risking a hasty escape into uncharted territory.
What the hell would have compelled them to do that?
Carlynn, where are you, babe?
Bang-Bang growled low in his throat and darted to the right. Lukas followed, watching the dog trace the contours of yet another one of the brown knolls. Rocks, maybe, under a coating of cracked, drying mud. Lukas kicked at one. Flakes of dirt cracked off, revealing more dirt. Bang-Bang sniffed where Lukas had kicked, then blew a gust out of his nose.
“Come on,” Lukas urged him. “Let’s keep moving.” There was a lot of ground to cover, and rain was on the way.
Bang-Bang growled, low and deep, then made a small whine. He half jumped, half skipped sideways away from the knoll, as if something unseen had surprised him—something unseen to Lukas, that was. The hair on the back of Lukas’s neck prickled. “What’s got you riled up, boy?”
Bang-Bang let out a sharp, distressed yip as Lukas hooked him back on his lead. Something definitely had him bothered.
“Omega Actual to Delta Six, we found something,” Lindscomb radioed to Lukas.
Lukas’s insides turned to ice. He wheeled around to see part of the company gathered around a small mound. “Not her, Lukas,” Lindscomb quickly reassured him via the comm. “But you’ll want to come take a look.”
