“A thousand klicks,” Parello rolled the idea around on his tongue, decent enough to spare her the inquisition of the chunk of her soul she’d just heaved up on the Ionian surface.
She couldn’t speak yet, but she could kiss the man for his decency of ignoring her outburst.
“That gets us almost ninety degrees to the northwest of the corridor. Our suits aren’t rated for two days at the radiation levels at that crash site. And we couldn’t cobble together a shelter at the Stinger, in case the bad guys come looking.”
“Dead on.” Nothing wrong with Parello’s brain either.
“At fifteen percent gravity, that’s like a hundred and fifty kilometer hike in two days with a double-load pack.”
Christine waited for it. Nothing a grunt hated worse than long hikes. They did it. But a pair of seventy-five klick hikes back to back over unknown terrain was brutal no matter how you cut it.
“Guess the rumors were true, Captain.”
“Which ones?”
“The ones about you being a hard-ass, sir. I like that in a commander. Fits me down to my toes.” He settled into that steady ground-eating lope that a trained soldier learned, or fell by the wayside. He adjusted his rhythm to Io’s gravity about as fast as she did, and she was left to follow along and contemplate his cute ass.
3
They switched off the lead every hour after a five-minute break. Their long march slowly shifted Jupiter, from its fixed position almost directly over the crash site, down toward the horizon behind them. They followed slowly lengthening shadows—for Jupiter was far brighter than the sun on Io’s surface—as they trudged northwest from the crash site. The farther they walked, the deeper and darker the shadows became on the far side of anything that rose above the plain. Helmet lights were often needed, despite the drain on batteries, to make sure there were no pits or jagged edges lurking within the pitch dark of a hill’s shade.
It was relaxing to be able to simply follow and let someone else scout the best path through the nightmare landscape for an hour at a time.
Volcanic peaks towered above them, over a thousand volcanoes shredded the moon’s surface, and a lot of them were active. They had to cut north to avoid a plume spewing sulfur oxides into the sky. About half of the ejecta fell back to the surface, but the other half achieved escape velocity and added to the sulfur belt that Io was leaving in its path.
Their suits slowly yellowed with the accumulation of dust.
Parello made jokes about never having wanted to kiss Halberson, let alone share his recycler.
Christine answered his questions about her service. He asked about her mother too, but was smart enough not to ask about the rebellion’s leader.
General “The Sword” Moore had been respectable once, a top commander who’d made his name back in the Colony Wars. Then, after peace had finally been built over five long years, he turned terrorist. There was no other word for it. His rhetoric against the Richards Monarchy had been vitriolic. When Richards was voted in by all of the remaining colonies, the decision had stuck in his craw.
“Only the military finished the Colony Wars. Only the military understands how to keep the solar system running.”
His rebellion had been put down, and put down hard. He’d escaped out past the asteroid belt with a small cadre of hard-liners and too much equipment. The “Hero of the War” had become the “Terrorist of the Monarchy.”
Special Operations Forces had been sent out after him and the Night Stalkers flew them there.
They were squeezing “The Sword” hard; they’d driven him out of the asteroid belt rock by bloody rock and flanked him to take back Saturn. The Jovian system was the last of his strongholds. But he wasn’t done yet. With sixty-seven moons and four rings, the terrorists had dug in deep. And Europa, with its water oceans comprising the best reaction mass in the outer system, was so heavily fortified that it was impregnable—at least so far.
Parello had apparently been born the day he joined the Army. It took her until late in the second day of the hike, when they were both moving far too slowly, before she figured it out. Her thoughts had been on the blisters that she couldn’t treat, couldn’t even massage inside her boots.
So, she’d forced her thoughts to something more pleasant. Last night she and Parello had sat side by side on the ash surface, a tri-layer aluminized sheet laid over them for radiation protection, blocking any view of the stars or Jupiter.
It had been cozy.
Neither of them much interested in sleep, they’d actually shifted until they were shoulder to shoulder. Even through the heavy suits it had been nice to feel another human being. They leaned against a rock outcropping, because there was no real way to lie down comfortably in a full field suit, even at fifteen percent gravity.
They’d talked of relationships and friends. Parello clearly had his fair share of both.
“Looking the way you do, how can you not have had more men than that?” Parello had been shocked.
“Officer. Hello. Don’t fraternize with the troops or it makes it harder to give and take orders, even if it is accepted now. And being…” she couldn’t say it directly. “…the daughter of who I am, I found it easier to keep to myself.”
Parello was easy to talk to. It was as comfortable as she’d been with anyone since her mother’s death. More than once they’d clunked their helmets together so that she could hear his deep laugh through conduction rather than the radio. They’d finally slept tipped together.
Christine considered asking Parello about his real past. He’d been subtle about it, yet candid about everything since joining the Army. Criminal? Didn’t get you into Special Operations. Not that a record kept you out, but it took a kind of determination and grit to make the grade that didn’t come easy. Enjoying hard work wasn’t why a man typically turned criminal.
But she couldn’t ask.
They were in “The Grind” now, far past talking. They’d covered over a thousand kilometers. It was a landscape from hell. Jupiter irradiating them from behind, they each had a silver foil blanket draped over their packs as extra protection. Before them lay the yellow-gray sulfurous plains. They had to climb old lava flows while avoiding two hotspots more heated than the face of Mercury. They’d been forced north by the active Girru Patera, then forced south by the Heiseb Patera flow. The sun appeared as a blinding spot the size of a fingertip held at arm’s length. It made travel easier for a while as it lit the shadows, but was soon gone as Io followed his day-and-a-half orbit around Jupiter.
In the heart of the grind, a soldier just folds into herself. A space where the body was past agony and it was now a contest of wills.
No way on this moon was Christine going to be beat by a lousy walk. She’d survived nearly a decade of service, and her father’s shock troops were not going to end her. If she had to take the battle to him personally, so be it. No way were they getting past her.
Still, it was easier due to Parello’s silent company. His early complaining had all been perfunctory and expected. He’d made it funny. For a while he counted each hundred-and-eighty-eight strides as an Allen, “a buddy’s height in centimeters.” While funny at first, he’d given it up when, even with making up numbers, they’d easily crossed several hundred Allens. Then he’d begun counting it out in marathon lengths, but that became even more depressing.
There was a shared closeness to their trudge across the Ionian plains. A shared hardship, but also a shared determination.
She was in point position when they finally reached the “neck,” a surface material change rather than an elevation change. She stopped. Parello stumbled up beside her and also inspected the change.
The surface material had been predominantly yellow-gray and brown for the entire day. Now they stood on the edge of a brighter yellow lava flow, long since solidified. They were on a slight rise that had forced the flow, originating to
the south, to narrow here, before spreading wide across the northern plains. The “neck” was narrow enough, barely five kilometers across, that they could see the darker plains beyond. Had they lost their way, they wouldn’t be able to see across the width of the flow.
Numb, they stood side by side for a long moment looking down at the goal they’d been chasing for two long days.
“We made it,” Parello’s voice was soft with disbelief.
All she could do was nod, despite knowing he couldn’t see her do so inside her helmet.
Then Parello folded her weary body into his arms and just held her. If she could have kissed him, she would. She fought with hundreds, served with thousands, but this man was the sort she’d always want beside her no matter how sticky the situation.
“Christine the Fighting Machine,” his voice little more than a warm caress on her ears.
Together they sunk to their knees and just leaned against each other while their bodies went through the shakes. Pain, so long ignored, pounded up her legs. Muscles cramped, but with nowhere to go and no way to massage them, she just rode it out. Rode it out until at long last they were just holding each other.
Neither spoke before collapsing into exhaustion.
There was no need.
4
The radio crackle inside Christine’s helmet was like an alarm clock. She sat bolt upright, dragging herself from the gentle clasp of Parello’s suited arms. She’d curse at her stiff and sore muscles later.
“Captain Christine Merrill here.” Cursing her slow brain, she swung her chin far right and brought up the tactical display on the inside of her helmet. A single Stinger ship was cruising toward them, low from the north. Even as she spotted it, it dropped lower and banked in her direction.
Either it was trying to stay below an enemy’s radar sweep or—
“Shit!” She silenced her comm, punched the Off switch mounted on Parello’s cuff for his comm, then shook him. Shook him hard. Deep sleeper.
She rested her helmet against his and shouted, “Soldier!”
“Huh? What?” He grabbed for his cross-slung rifle, but they were so close, he actually grabbed her chest. Through their visors, she could actually see him blush. It was pretty cute, but she didn’t have time for cute.
“Incoming craft,” she spoke loudly enough that he’d hear through the helmet-to-helmet conduction. “Don’t think it’s one of ours.”
“Why?”
“An itch.”
He nodded. He clearly knew a soldier stayed alive by trusting that itch.
“Comm on, but handsign only. Roger?”
“Roger, Captain.” Then he leaned forward and kissed the inside of his visor. Close as you could come to the real thing in a suit.
What the hell? Be interesting to find out just what it was like to kiss Parello. Really interesting. She returned the gesture, feeling both touched and ridiculous.
She rolled away, restored comm, and, for the first time since the crash, fully powered up her suit. Her heads-up display showed her weapons status; both the pair of launchers built into her pack and the SCAR rifle she’d now pulled free and taken into her hands.
The situational map pinpointed Parello ducking below the rock behind her. From his extra gear he’d grabbed a Demon, a nasty little ground-to-ship handheld missile with a seriously bad-ass attitude. He’d hold that in reserve as a weapon of last resort. If they killed this ship, they might have no way at all off this rock.
She unslung her forty-millimeter rocket tube and tossed it to him. She’d take the meet-and-greet and be ready for forward fire if needed. He’d be the hammer behind, covering her as long as she stayed off to one side.
The Stinger came down, kicking a rolling wall of sulfur that settled quickly enough in the thin atmosphere.
Two troopers dropped to the surface, but rather than approaching, they moved to guard positions on either side of the airlock.
The man who stepped out next made her freeze.
No matter how much training you get, there are some things that you just can’t prepare for. She was still frozen, knew she was directly in Parello’s line of fire, but she couldn’t do a thing about it as the figure strode up to her and stopped just two paces off.
“Hi Chrissy. Haven’t seen you in a long, long time.”
“Dad.”
5
Christine made it clear she wasn’t going with him.
She stood there on the yellow soil and told the old bastard that she’d rather die than go with the murderer of her own, loyal troops.
When he said he’d already killed off the rescue ship, she informed him of her rank and serial number, then told “The Sword” Moore that she’d rather rot on Io than climb aboard his ship.
She called him a murderer; the worst possible insult to any soldier.
The angrier he grew, the less she cared. Her thoughts drifted to Parello. They were going to die here. Perhaps they were going to die now. It was a pity, a real pity. Before her stood the traitor to the human race, behind her squatted the best man she’d ever known, and there wasn’t a chance in hell for them. In Hell. There was the joke. Of the whole solar system, Io was about the closest there was. Fire and brimstone, literally.
Fine.
This is where she and Parello would make their final stand, in Hell.
“No, you are not my father, Generalissimo Traitor Moore. I will fight you until my last breath. I will fight you until this soldier can no longer stand. You will not fly this space without the danger of meeting me as I hunt you down and kill you like a dog.”
Peripherally, she was aware of the two guards by the airlock galvanized into action, swinging their rifles up and in her direction.
Her father’s eyes widened as four rounds flew close by, two to either side of her helmet—close enough that her visor’s audible threat warning system screamed, even though the shots came from behind her.
Parello’s rounds punched out the visors of the two guards before they could react.
Even as the guards crumpled, she swung up her SCAR.
Her father did the same.
She was faster to the trigger. She didn’t realize that she’d flipped it on full auto until she was emptying the whole load into him.
Still she had the trigger down and the muzzle tracking “The Sword” as he drifted slowly to the ground long after the magazine ran dry.
When Parello came up and gently took the weapon from her hands, she finally came to. Shook her head. Her mind kept trying to think, feel, wonder, be ashamed, be afraid… She shook her head again.
“Tactical?” Some thin thread of her training held her together and asked the key question. It gave her a rope to climb back from where she’d just gone, what she’d just done. Back into the present away from the volcanic anger of the past. Back to the present where she and Parello stood side by side on the Ionian plain of the Shakuru Patera.
“Just the three of them. No additional pilot.”
“Did I martyr him?” Would the body of “The Sword” become a rallying icon across the system?
“No.” Parello sounded so sure. “No, I will make sure it is known far and wide that you defeated him. That his daughter defeated him as he prepared to murder her.”
“Known far and wide?”
He stood in front of her, finally breaking her gaze from the lifeless body crumpled before her. The body of a man she no longer knew. Instead, she looked up into those wonderful dark eyes of Parello.
“You can do that?”
“I can.” There was no questioning his confidence.
She nodded once, twice, tapped their helmets together for a moment in thanks, then buckled down and did what had to be done. Though she let Parello load “The Sword’s” body into the cargo hold on his own. They flew back to the crash site in the captured ship and retrieved the other bodi
es. Then took off from Hell to spread the word of victory.
The snake wasn’t dead yet, but they had certainly cut off its head.
6
“Told you I’d spread the word far and wide.”
Christine couldn’t argue with that. “Parello” had been true to his word; the length and breadth of the whole system knew who she was and what she’d done. Prince Phillip Allen Richards had indeed been uniquely placed to do so.
The royal heir had served anonymously as so many of England’s royalty had done over the centuries. Parello was a play on the “parallels” in his life: serving as his ancestors had, both before and during the Colony Wars, also serving in the Armed forces against the terrorists to defend his own future throne.
Christine was glad that he hadn’t told her his true identity until after they’d decided they were totally crazy about each other; a sentiment he also shared and demonstrated delightfully at every opportunity in the two years since the Victory at Io.
And, while she wasn’t serving forward military anymore, now that the last of the rebels had finally given up, it was hard to argue with her new title: Major in charge of flying the armored Stinger for the Royal Family.
Including herself and their yet-to-be-born daughter.
They’d already decided to name her Parella after her father.
And when she was grown, and done flying with the Night Stalkers, she would, as her mother now did, wear the infamous Sword of Io.
Once again held by an officer as it should be.
Once again a symbol of honor and country.
About the Author
M. L. Buchman has over 25 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and Booklist “Top 10 of the Year.” In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction. In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world. He is now making his living full-time as a writer, living on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing at www.mlbuchman.com.
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