The Hot Gate - [Troy Rising 03]

by John Ringo

  Del Papa leaned around the corner, then had to look up.

  “Ghezhosil?”

  “Yep,” the Rangora said. “Damn, you guys are short.”

  “Better to sneak up on your ass. So ... Ikk... whatever... ?”

  “Ixikaga. There’s this animal, an ixi. Legless lizard. Like one of your snakes. What hillbillies do is they take em and they...”

  * * * *

  EPILOGUE

  Rammer rolled over in his rack at the hammering on his door.

  “Go the fuck away!” he shouted. “I’m off watch!”

  Getting the situation in the fucking Therm rat maze under control had been a nightmare. The Rangora were perfectly willing to surrender. Most of them were about out of ammo and consumables. It was the fucking Pathans who had been the problem. They really didn’t get “negotiated surrender.” And then there was the problem of what to do with the Rangora. They were in as bad a shape as Earth, boats-wise. Finally, command had given up and just let them into the control areas, the very spot the Rangora had been trying to find and fight their way through to for a day and a half. After they’d had more negotiations, since command was only willing to let them through if they disarmed.

  Finally, they’d gotten the entire rat fuck put to bed, the Rangora settled in in the mall, of all places, and put under guard until they could be “repatriated.” And he’d been assigned some goat-smelling dead Pathans quarters and told he had six hours off.

  And now they were pounding on his fucking door again!

  “Rammer! Open this FUCKING HATCH!”

  His eyes flew open and he rolled out of the rack so fast the term “relativity” came to mind.

  “Comet?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  “Do you ever answer your God damned com?” Parker asked, tears in her eyes.

  “I thought...” Rammer said. “You were with the squadron...”

  “I was on another detail, dumbass,” she said, pushing him aside so she could enter the compartment. “I bothered to actually check the casualty lists.”

  “I... I couldn’t. I couldn’t even pick up your message ...” he said, lamely. “I thought it was...”

  “That is why you’re a Marine,” Dana said. “You’re not very bright.” She winced and shook her head. “Rammer, I’m sorry...”

  “No,” he said, reaching out and touching her hair to make sure she was really there. “You making Marine jokes means... Something important I can’t figure out right now. Like life goes on or something.” He paused again and took his hand away as her rank tabs registered.

  “I mean, ma’am, you making Marine jokes means... Lieutenant’? I mean, ma’am...”

  “Oh, don’t start,” she said, shaking her head. “I think this is temporary. There are surviving trained Marines. I’m about the only surviving trained and experienced Myrm pilot and engineer we’ve got left. The only one for a while in Eridani. At least with recovery experience. The admiral put these on me so the Krauts would listen to me. That’s it.”

  “Uh...” Ramage said. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I said don’t start,” Dana said, starting to pull off her blouse. “I’m fully aware of the regulations regarding this sort of thing and don’t really give a shit. So I’ll give you a direct order once. Start stripping, Sergeant, cause I’ve only got three hours off and I don’t intend to spend it crying.”

  * * * *

  Lieutenant Commander Carter “Booth” Bouthillier had had quite some time to contemplate the relative values of the hypercom system. Close to twenty-four hours. The reason he had had that time to simply sit and contemplate was that there was effectively nothing else to do on a lifeboat.

  He’d finally turned off the news, which was going simply apeshit. Not so much because there had been a battle in E Eridani. That sort of thing was just another day at the office. To a greater extent because for the first time in years the Earth had clearly gotten its ass kicked and in the process of “winning” had lost virtually its entire fleet, not to mention nearly losing a battlestation. And, of course, Thermopylae was seriously trashed and would take months to repair.

  The main reason that the news was going apeshit was because there were over twenty-seven thousand humans in his position. And every single one of them had communications back home through the hypercom network. And every single one of them had, at one point, called their families and friends to tell them they were “doing just fine.” And then about ninety percent, it seemed, ended up being interviewed on vidblogs, local newscasts and even major networks. The worst had been the interviews with people who were “Dutchmen.” The news services had quickly figured out that people simply could not handle listening to reasonably intelligent and articulate spacers slowly going mad as they waited, almost invariably in vain, for rescue.

  Every remaining ship in Wolf and Sol system was now involved in the rescue effort. Three problems.

  The survivors were scattered over, as had been repeatedly reported, seventy billion cubic kilometers of space. The newscasts trying to explain to grounders just how unbelievably big an area that was had been humorous. Especially since most of them clearly couldn’t grasp it.

  Second problem: “Every remaining ship” was less than a hundred. Earth’s fleet had been trashed, its primary rescue force—the small boat squadrons—totally eliminated and freighters were simply unsuited to picking up lifeboats. Not that there were many of those.

  The 144th, which only had half its boats and wasn’t scheduled to be activated for another two months, had been pressed into service. So had every Apollo ship capable of picking up survivors. Problem being that that was mostly Paw tugs which, while they had an air lock, had room for only five people.

  Third problem: There was nowhere to put them. E Eridani didn’t have any habitable planets. The biggest “habitat” was Thermopylae but there was no reasonable way into the Thermopylae. The main door was solidly shut and there were no large vehicle bypasses. Warships had only enough life support for their crews and a bit more. They couldn’t be used to transfer most of the survivors. They were picking up some from shuttles and transferring them to Therm but most of the survivors were having to be shuttled through the gate to Troy, then the boats would turn around and go back to E Eridani. All of which took time, especially with low acceleration Paws and Columbia shuttles.

  Which was why it was estimated to be five days before everyone was picked up.

  A “Rangora spokesperson” had finally let slip that they had the same problems and worse. They estimated they wouldn’t make the deadline for their boats running out of air since they had nearly a hundred thousand spacers drifting and were having to take them all back to Glalkod. At which point the President had stated that as soon as humans were all recovered Earth would get started on recovering Rangora. And repatriating them under the terms of the cease-fire. Which had started another firestorm.

  Except for occasionally checking the major updates and their own boat’s schedule for pick-up, which had been pushed back four times, Booth had spent most of his time playing Call of Duty XVII.

  His plant pinged with a priority call and he picked up.

  “Lifeboat 11053. If you’ve got the time we’ve got the dime.”

  “Closing on your position. Please have your personnel ready to exit. We have sufficient room for all your personnel but it’s going to be tight.”

  “Roger dodger,” Booth said. “People, we have a ride.”

  “A real ride or another “scheduled” ride, sir?” Machinist Mate Second Class Charlie Domino asked. As the next senior person on the boat Booth had designated him Chief of Lifeboat.

  “Closing for dock right now,” Booth said shaking the shoulder of the spaceman who’d been sitting next to him to wake him up. “Wake everybody up, get your helmets on and get ready to groove.”

  The lifeboat had room for twenty-six people and it was nearly full. Fortunately the Smiley had taken some time to come apart. Booth had stood by the opening to the lifeboat making su
re personnel got aboard until the corridor he’d been standing by had sheared away. At which point he realized it was time to leave.

  There was a sensation of movement, a skewing and yawing that was a pleasant change from freefall, then a “clank” as the ship made dock. The hatch cycled green and Booth commed Domino.

  “Lead out. I’ll ensure everyone gets clear.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Domino commed. He checked to make sure they were clear, then opened the hatch and pulled himself through. “Both doors open. It’s grav past the second door and... Uh... Hello.. .sir... All clear, Commander. ..Uh...”

  “Issues?” Booth commed.

  “No, sir,” Domino replied. “Everybody aboard who’s going aboard, sir.”

  “Roger. Everybody off, people. Shag it. There’s other people waiting for pick-up.”

  Most of the personnel assigned to the Carter had had limited experience with zero gravity. Like Booth, they’d had training but weren’t exactly experienced. So getting them out of the lifeboat wasn’t a quick job. But finally the last spacer, absent the lieutenant commander, was off and Booth pulled himself into the shuttle’s air lock, cycled it closed, grabbed the safety bar and pulled himself forward into... splendor.

  Space-suited bodies were sprawled on couches that looked like original antiques or on Persian carpets on the floor. The starboard bulkhead of the shuttle sported what Booth was pretty sure was Van Gogh’s original “Starry Night.” The port was clearly one entire viewscreen, which Booth realized he’d seen plenty of times, just from the outside. It was made of optical sapphire.

  “Tyler Vernon,” Tyler said, pulling him into the interior. The space-suited tycoon looked every day of his sixty-something years. “Your second held a chair for you. But if you could get seated, we’ve got a long run ahead of us.”

  Booth sat down in the tycoon’s personalized station chair and took off his helmet. He sort of recognized the classical piece playing in the boat but couldn’t quite identify it.

  “Sir... ? What’s the music?”

  “I’m not a big Stones fan,” Vernon said, closing the hatch and leaning against it. “But the only thing I could think of that was appropriate was ‘Gimme Shelter.’”

  * * * *

  Given the news from E Eridani, which had included stories about how many of the civilian construction crews had given their lives in last month’s battle, Cody Hardy was wondering if maybe he should have just joined the Navy instead of signing up for training with Apollo as an welder’s apprentice. But he really wasn’t into “three bags full” and not only was it top-notch training, it got him deferred from military service.

  Other than that, he had no idea what he was getting himself into.

  The instructor for “Introduction to Space Operations” wasn’t much to look at. Kinda old, maybe thirty, short, bald and wearing a bad suit. He had a kinda funny look in his eyes.

  “My name is James Allen,” Butch said in a gravelly voice. “You will address me, and all your instructors, as Mister or Missus and their last names. You will not call me James or Jim. It is Mister Allen. You may be wondering why I sound like a three-pack-a-day smoker...”