She was amused that his career suited his personality and talent so perfectly. A job without new experiences or mysteries would have bored him to distraction.
She selected a small low-res beamer and a handful of its power beads as the stealthiest option and slipped them into her pack. At her suggestion, she and Luka tried pulling out a couple of the exosuit comms to see if they could serve as a makeshift comm net for the team. Unfortunately, they required the suit’s power to work, and wearing clumsy exosuits would make them easy targets.
Jerzi volunteered to take first watch again that night. Haberville declared that she’d be useless for a watch shift and exempted herself. Mairwen was glad Luka didn’t fight it. Haberville was still coughing, and Mairwen wouldn’t put it past her to be deliberately incompetent just to prove her point.
Mairwen didn’t bother creating a sling for herself; she simply went straight to Luka’s tarp. She needed the rest, and she wanted it to be with Luka. If Haberville wanted to comment on the sleeping arrangements, Mairwen would deal with her later.
She crawled into the tarp and arranged the netting, then rolled aside to make room for Luka as he slid in. She put her head on his chest and draped her arm and leg across him.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. His breathing was rhythmic and his heartbeat was strong and steady, and she felt sublimely content in those few dozen seconds.
Despite her exhaustion, Mairwen the tracker wanted to ghost into the night and check the installation, but Mairwen the woman wanted to stay with Luka and memorize every contour of his body with hers, and steep herself in his warmth while she had the chance. The feel of him next to her was addictive. It would be hard to give up. Even assuming they made it back to civilization, she didn’t know what the future would hold once their normal routine was restored.
Resolving to quit worrying and just live for the moment, she allowed herself to be lulled to sleep by the quiet syncopation of his heart and breath.
She came awake to a new sound in the deep dark of the night. She was alone, but she knew Luka couldn’t have gone far. She sat upright and turned up her senses to nearly full-tracker mode.
She heard and scented Luka on the corner of the tarp where it attached to the anchoring line around the tree. It was pitch black, except for the faint indicator light on a powerpack for the beamer he’d selected. The slow-motion time of tracker mode made it surreal.
“Mairwen?” he said very quietly, though to her, it seemed like he was shouting. He’d probably felt the tarp move and heard her movements. She turned down her senses to a more manageable level.
She kept her voice barely above a whisper so as not to wake the others. “Flitter, probably a high-low. Coming this way from the northeast. About ten or fifteen minutes out.” She looked up at the tree canopy, where only a few slivers of weak moonlight leaked through. She slid carefully across the tarp toward him. “Spectrum and bioscans won’t see us at night, but if they deep-scan for tech, they might find us if they get close enough. If we’re lucky, they’ll think it’s bleedover from the base’s security perimeter. I think that’s the low buzz I’ve been hearing.”
“It’s at least five hours until dawn,” he said. “Nothing we can do right now without killing ourselves.” He eased off his perch and down into the tarp. She slid back to the center, and he followed. Still sitting, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her lightly, then whispered in her ear. “Can you see in the dark?”
The banked fire of her desire started to flare, and she nuzzled his neck to fill her nose with his complex, exotic scent. Her softer chest, with a life of its own, arched into the hard wall of his. It took effort to remember what he’d asked. “No, but I don’t need as much light. I’ll scout about thirty minutes before sunrise.”
She felt him nod. He kissed her lightly, then with more heat. She responded, and her heart rate increased along with his. She strained to prevent herself from moaning in pleasure. He broke off the kiss with a ragged sigh.
“I'm on duty,” he whispered. He blew out a long breath. “I wouldn't notice a battalion of mech-suited Jumpers if we keep doing this.”
She caressed his beard-roughened jawline. “Neither would I.”
“Are you…” He hesitated, then began again. “This is probably indelicate of me to ask, but do you have a birth control and cycle implant?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Menses and reproduction would have impaired my effectiveness. But just to be sure, they harvested all my ova before the full alteration procedure.”
“Harvested, not destroyed?”
“Yes. Rumor said it was for a reproduction program, trying to make more of us.”
Luka was silent for a long moment. “Does it bother you?”
“No, it’s done.” The past was past. “Does it bother you?”
“That you can’t reproduce? No. That they treated you like an exotic pet to be bred? Fökk, yes.”
There was nothing more to say. She settled for nestling into him while they waited and listened. She could easily hear Jerzi and Haberville breathing, and even Luka could hear Eve’s occasional coughs.
Eleven minutes later, the preternatural quiet of the forest allowed him to finally hear the flitter engine, too. To her ears, it got closer, changed pitch and echo, then went silent.
“I think it landed on the airfield,” she whispered.
She felt him shift. “Will you go back to sleep until then?” He slid his hand up and around to her face and neck and stroked her jaw with his thumb. “You’ve been running yourself ragged for us. You need the rest.” His tenderness flushed some of the tension out of her, and she turned herself more fully into him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“If it pleases you,” she said softly, smiling even though she knew he couldn’t see it.
“It does, hjarta mitt.” He gently laid her back down and adjusted his legs so her head rested on his thigh as he sat cross-legged. He stroked her hair. “You do.”
She drifted into sleep, only waking when he nudged her for her turn for third watch. He stretched out next to her where she sat and was soon asleep. She was glad that somewhere in his career, despite his civilian occupation, he’d learned the skill of sleeping at will. She admired him for the variety of things he’d learned and could put to practical use. She resisted the temptation to stroke his hair, not wanting to wake him, and not trusting herself to stop there.
She used her time in the dark as a tracker should, monitoring their environment and evaluating various scenarios with the flitter at the installation and how to use them to achieve her goal of keeping them safe until they could be rescued.
In the best-case scenario, they could neutralize any installation defenses, avoid getting killed by whoever was in the flitter or the ship, and dig in until help arrived. She had to assume at least one of their distress calls had gotten through to La Plata, and that they’d be bringing firepower. In a discussion earlier that day, Luka and Haberville had thought it likely that Zheer would call in Concordance Command as the best option for countering a pharma company with big secrets and deep pockets for multiple squads of mercs. The question was how quickly Zheer could get Space Div to respond.
Non-tracker thoughts kept intruding every time Luka stirred in his sleep or she became aware of the sound of his breathing or his scent.
It was going to be difficult to go back to Etonver, seeing him only when he needed a personal security detail. Assuming she’d be allowed to continue in that capacity once they heard Haberville’s accusations of a jack crew background. While the last two weeks may have been unusual for Luka, he’d be able to pick up where he left off as a top investigator for La Plata, and would do even better since he was doggedly regaining control of his talent.
But her life had changed forever. There would be no more anonymity of the night shift, no more camouflage of the dull and ordinary, no more safe solitude. It terrified her, but the thought of never seeing Luka again terrified her even
more, even though she knew the CPS would destroy him if they ever discovered her.
She was used to planning everything, and the unknowns made her uneasy. Her carefully mapped, invisible life had become a puzzle to which she had only some of the pieces, and only the vaguest notion of what the whole might look like.
CHAPTER 18
* Planet: Insche 255C * GDAT 3237.044 *
Dawn finally approached. Mairwen shouldered the lightened pack she’d prepared the night before, drank the nasty-tasting but nutritional protein drink, then tugged on Luka’s booted foot to awaken him. He stretched and groaned softly, then lifted the netting and sat up. His thick hair looked even more wavy and disarrayed than usual, and they all desperately needed basic hygiene and clean clothes. She’d do anything for a clean pair of socks.
She touched his shoulder and spoke softly. “When it’s light enough, eat and break camp. If you think I’ve been gone too long, don’t come after me unless you take at least Jerzi as your security detail.”
“How long is ‘too long’?”
She shrugged, then remembered it was still too dark for him to see. “I don’t know. Two hours at least.”
“Okay.” He found her hand and kissed the back of it. “Try not to get killed.”
She slid her hand to his face and cupped his jaw, enjoying the unexpected texture of the soft stubble of his beard. “Stay safe.”
She swung down to the forest floor and started a fast walk toward the installation. The closer she got to the security perimeter, the more annoying the low humming became, until she finally had to shut down her awareness of it, at the cost of some sensitivity to sounds beyond it.
The field fence would have been a lot quieter if one of its ground points, about ninety meters to the west, hadn’t been downed by a recently fallen tree. The leaking acidic sap made a feedback loop with every power pulse. It only took a careful walk along the tree trunk to breach the fence.
About two hundred meters beyond, she found the landing field and nearby large, flat building, which someone had helpfully lit up like a holiday display. The interstellar ship Luka had seen before the Berjalan had crashed was still parked on the landing field.
Although nearby trees had been clear-cut when the installation was built, it looked like no one had bothered since then to keep the undergrowth from encroaching. Mairwen dropped into half-tracker mode as she circled the irregularly shaped one-story building. She had plenty of time to hide behind a thicket when a uniformed man carrying a beam rifle rounded the corner. He might have discovered her if he’d been wearing his night-vision lenses in front of his eyes instead of on top of his head, but his attitude said he believed guard duty was a waste of good sack time.
She spent another forty-two minutes oozing her way through the rapidly fading shadows, listening, scenting, and gathering intelligence. The unnatural quietness of the area made it easy to hear conversations among the mercs, and their inattentiveness made it easy to avoid them as she scouted the building, ships, and perimeter. Just outside the building’s oversized cargo bay doors, she lucked into an unattended stack of supplies, which she raided for useful items, the grand prize being a full case of variable frequency communication earwires and a booster. Now their small team would be able to communicate, and the mercs would have to rely on voice if they had no other earwires.
She slipped away into the forest and across the fence via the fallen tree. She took a quick reading with the compass, then made a beeline back to where she’d left the others. Luka smiled when he saw her. She wondered if she’d ever get used to the relief she felt when she saw he was alive and well.
The gear was organized into four packs and the weapons were ready. Haberville and Jerzi sat on the forest floor, tying knots of mono line around leaves. It took her a moment to realize they were making a sniper’s camouflage cloak. She handed out the liberated earwires, then told them what she’d found as Luka dug out and triggered a self-heating meal for her.
“The landing field has a light-drive ship, twice as big and three or four levels taller than the Berjalan, and a heavy high-low flitter that seats twelve and is outfitted with beamers. No identifying marks. The building is one level with living quarters, lab, and storage. It hasn’t been occupied for a while except the last few days.”
“Prophet Ayeleh’s tears,” muttered Haberville. “So much for taking the base quietly.”
Mairwen used a stick to draw a rough map of the installation, pointing out doors and windows, and describing what little she’d gleaned about the interior. She paused to eat several quick bites of what purported to be meat.
“There are fifteen mercs wearing blue uniforms with a starburst and lightning logo. They speak a mix of English and Spanish. From what I overheard, some of them spent yesterday afternoon transferring cases of samples from the base’s cold storage onto the ship. They’re preparing to destroy the installation, but are waiting for a laboratory specialist to identify things worth saving. They expect her and another squad tomorrow with more samples to transfer to the ship. They have four more bases to empty and destroy on this continent, and will move the flitter and the ship to each. There are other ships on the planet of unknown type and quantity.”
“Shit,” said Jerzi. “They’re sparking out.”
“For now,” said Luka. “I’d lay odds that Loyduk Pharma, or whoever, won’t kill the planet. They’ll just vacate it and hope they can come back in a few years after everyone has forgotten about it.”
Haberville nodded. “Besides, killing a planet is expensive. If the government wants the planet poisoned, let them pay for it.” She snorted, but it turned into a cough. “Your taxes at work.”
Haberville stood and brushed the dirt off the back of her pants, a largely wasted effort considering how filthy they all were. Even their flexin armor was stained and streaked.
“That light-drive ship... Is there any way we can take it from a whole squad of company mercs?”
Luka ran his fingers through his hair, but his expression was determined. “Mairwen, any recommendations?”
Mairwen hated the pressure of sharp scrutiny from Haberville, but she knew Luka didn’t really have better options than to use Mairwen’s expertise. Haberville already thought she was a jacker, so Mairwen wouldn’t be exposing much that Haberville didn’t already suspect. Haberville had little gunnin ground force experience; Jerzi was a specialist, not a tactician; and Luka had already told her his combat experience was limited to abbreviated military basic training for civilians from fourteen years ago. She’d been trained to act alone and in stealth, but at least she had plenty of experience in planning infiltrations and assaults.
“Our options are narrowing by the hour. They’re planning to send five mercs in the flitter to investigate the Berjalan later today. They weren’t expecting it.” She organized her thoughts as she drank half a cup of chemically filtered water, an improvement over the taste of the meat sauce. Before Luka’s continued bad influence, she hadn’t paid attention to her preferences in the tastes of foods.
“The installation has two dormant ship killers, and two mercs are working to get them and the surface-to-orbit scanners back online. If we want to neutralize them, the best time is now while they’re still bottled up and distracted. They believe nothing could have survived the crash and won’t expect us.”
“What kind of ship killers?” asked Luka.
When Mairwen described them in more detail, he nodded. “Üler Mark Twenties, I think. They’ll be cabled with compulsator power. Ammo is loose but racked for autofeed. The targeting gimbal is comp controlled.” Mairwen gave him a brief smile to tell him how much she liked that he knew things like that.
“If Lord Buddha loves us, we can take the light-drive ship, which gives us a whole lot of other options,” said Haberville. “Did you see any gunports on the ship?”
“No,” said Mairwen. “It looks like a transport. The flitter’s two beamers are amped large-array. The mercs have rifles, sidearms, and military-g
rade wilderness gear. More weapons may be stored in the ship or in the building. They plan to use thermobarics to destroy the facility.”
She finished the last of her meal and folded the container for packing as she talked. “We should neutralize their pilots and the ship-killers first. We can’t stop them from calling for help, but based on conversations I overheard, I think it would be several hours in coming. Maybe we can get away in the flitter or the light-drive ship long enough to buy us time to be rescued.”
Luka looked directly at her, then at them all. “That’s what we’ll do, then.” Jerzi and Haberville nodded. They all looked at Mairwen expectantly.
“Our team is too small to give Jerzi a spotter. He’ll have to find his own vantage points. He’ll be needed to protect the rest of us and to take out the two merc pilots, if he can.”
“Agreed,” said Luka.
Mairwen described to Jerzi the two men she’d seen during her reconnaissance.
“Copy,” Jerzi said, as he strapped an extra railgun ammo pack around his waist. Mairwen noticed his normally amiable expression had been replaced by the detached look she’d seen in people who had experience delivering death. It probably looked a lot like hers.
Mairwen fingered the low-res beamer in her pocket. “I’ll run point and take down targets or identify them for you. Luka, you and Haberville will be the followup attack force, taking out as many as you can.”
Luka looked grim but resolute as he handed the projectile rifle and its ammunition to Haberville. She checked the magazine and safety, then slung its strap across her right shoulder and stuffed the magazines in her pockets. Jerzi distributed the unclaimed energy weapons among the packs.
Mairwen would have liked to ask them all to disable instead of kill, because Luka didn’t need to feel responsible for any more deaths, but with such an asymmetric assault force, mercy was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Haberville surprised Mairwen by pulling her aside. “You’re jack crew or worse, and I don’t trust you. You only care about Luka, but it’s kept the rest of us alive. Get me that ship, and I’ll get your lover boy and the rest of us off this Godforsaken mudball.”
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