Without warning Stitch snatched his hands into a sudden joined fist and brought them slamming down to the table. The wolf leaped, knees drawn to furry chest like a kid on a high dive. It crashed down in a blur of descending claws and fangs, crushing the lizard into the floor. The wafer-thin speakers did remarkable justice to the sound of a snapping neck. A flashing orange beacon confirmed the game's obvious outcome.
Merlin cursed as he shoved back from the table as the lycanthrope spun through a victory dance in a puddle of red blood and green scales. "How the hell do you do that?"
The medic's face remained expressionless as he stood up from the table and peeled away the sensor-studded gloves. Angular datashades slid down the equally straight bridge of his nose. Stitch turned and peered over the lenses at Ridgeway with dark, piercing eyes. Only then did a smile creep across the medic's face. "Sorry Major, you may be CO, but cash is king."
The comment drew an explosion of laughter from Monster and Darcy. Feeling all-too-much like a well-played mark, Ridgeway fished the military dog tag from beneath his shirt and slid a gumstick-sized plastic strip from it's sleeve on the back. Tapping the end of the wafer with his thumb, he cycled past his identifile and medical history to financial management. He keyed up a pair of transactions and brushed his strip against identical ones held out by Darcy and Monster. Five credits soundlessly transferred with each contact.
Winnings in hand, Darcy turned and strutted off with an exaggerated swagger and a lilt in her voice. "Like candy from a baby."
Stitch and Merlin had already fallen into post-game analysis and they too wandered away from the table. "You watch, you smug SOB," Merlin blustered, "I'll figure out that damn cannonball trick yet. And then it'll be your ass." Stitch only laughed as his lanky frame ambled across the room.
Ridgeway felt a presence loom on his right and turned with theatrical deliberation to acknowledge Monster's barely restrained gloat. An unrelenting smile gleamed beneath the ebony dome of Monster's cleanly-shaven head.
"Looks like I haven't been keeping up on the scoreboard." Ridgeway muttered.
The right side of Monster's brow arched up as he dipped his head in a slow nod. "Oh yeah, Stitch has that damn cannonball maneuver down."
"Nice of you to share that bit of analysis."
"Sorry Major. It's my job to know everything these marines think, see and do," Monster placed his hand over his heart as he recited the sergeant's role with feigned earnesty, "but that was ‘need to know' information and since you were putting up the money--"
"Yeah, yeah," Ridgeway cut in, an accusing smirk spread across his face, "I didn't need to know."
Monster's grin broadened through another several degrees of arc and a deep laugh resonated within his chest.
Ridgeway shook his head in chagrin, caring little of either the game or the loss of ten credits. All that mattered was that his marines were healthy and, at least for the moment, enjoying a well-deserved bit of relaxation. With less than 36 hours before the rapidly decelerating transport reached it's rendezvous point, the window for meaningless diversion would evaporate all too quickly.
Ridgeway's gaze swept mechanically across the storage bay. As he did, his mind ticked through a silent checklist of people and equipment.
Amid the numerous containers made of high-impact thermoform, one olive drab footlocker caught his attention. The name ‘Caslin' was stenciled carefully along the container's long side. In their rushed departure, there had been no time to remove the designation.
"We doing all right?" Ridgeway asked the question in a flat, detached voice.
"Everyone above room temperature is just fine."
Ridgeway blinked twice, momentarily caught off-guard by Monster's irreverent response. Caslin had been with the squad for twenty-three months of Waking Time and his death on Euripides had taken a toll on everybody. But Ridgeway just as quickly recognized the cold reality in Monster's comment.
Killing and dying were all part of marine business and dealing with loss was a necessary skill. Caslin's frozen remains had been shipped home with his personal effects, leaving only his name on an mottled green container that had served as his mobile workplace. Ridgeway knew that the oversized footlocker would get cycled back to carry another name. They always did.
"Armor good?"
"Five by five," Monster reported crisply. "Weapons too."
It came as no surprise that the sergeant had already checked on the status of their battle gear, and Ridgeway nodded in silent affirmation. The next item proved to be the surprise.
"The Ordinance Fairy came by while we were on ice." The big man shrugged toward a flat, green container covered with orange warning labels that bore the innocuous legend "Danger:HEDM".
Ridgeway walked to the reinforced box and opened the lid. Nestled in dense foam lay two rows of saucer-sized disks, each a little more than three inches thick. An uneasy feeling coiled in his gut as he read the designation M54 stenciled in bold black letters across each dull grey device.
"Not much to look at." Monster snorted dismissively.
Ridgeway shook his head and exhaled as he folded arms across his chest. "Head-em," he said with slow emphasis, "high energy-density material. You're looking at Detonex, thirty-five, maybe forty times the punch of conventional MIL-spec plastic explosive. Shaped charge like that'll punch a fist-sized hole through five meters of steel. Maybe more."
A muttered "damn" slipped from Monster's lips.
The discovery chafed at Ridgeway's mind as he shifted his weight and drew another deep breath. While the possible implications numbered too many to count, the first course of action was clear.
"Accelerate the prep cycle. I want the armor in pre-fight as soon as we transfer. Head-to-toe diagnostics." Ridgeway's voice became increasingly businesslike as he snapped from one point to the next.
"Full weaps check, double-down on the commo. Max all loadouts for firepower, that goes for Stitch as well."
"I'm on it." Monster said sharply, but his gaze seemed to linger on the Detonex. The baritone softened as he added, "Where the hell are they sending us?"
"I don't know," Ridgeway admitted softly, suppressing his own concern as he closed the lid. "But if this is the package, you can bet it won't be pretty."
Monster shrugged as he turned toward Ridgeway, an unexpected wink only highlighting the gleam in his eyes. "If it was pretty, they wouldn't be sending us."
"Damn straight." Ridgeway broke into a grin, easily drawn into Monster's esprit de corps. The Major raised fist to chest and banged knuckles with the ham-sized fist that mirrored the gesture. Beneath the stretched fabric of Monster's sleeve, Ridgeway could make out the lower half of the familiar initials. DTO.
With a final grunt that doubled for hello and goodbye, Monster turned and strode purposefully toward the rows of armor.
The Detonex weighed heavy on Ridgeway's mind as he cut between two stacks of strapped-down containers and paused at the improvised mess area. The kitchen-in-a-box consisted of little more than a power supply, a microwave oven, and a coffee pot. The lower compartment was crammed full of vacu-sealed plastic packets of every shape and description.
Not exactly the Ritz, Ridgeway conceded, but with a bit of water they could produce a decent facsimile of coffee or scrambled eggs, topped off with strips of compressed protein that tasted vaguely of bacon. After six or seven trips in remote storage with nothing but MREs, the RATs had taken it upon themselves to improvise a minor concession to creature comfort.
The thermoform container marked "Spare Parts" had been an innocuous part of their caravan for the last eight Waking Years. While a clear breach of Marine regs and most quarantine protocols, Ridgeway secured the modest luxuries for his team with neither recrimination or concern. Few benefits came from serving as a very secret unit, but at least nobody looked through your luggage. The boost to morale was immeasurable.
Hell, what do they expect anyway, Ridgeway reasoned as he poured the strong black liquid, they trained us to impr
ovise and overcome. This is just an occupational hazard.
His state of mind improved greatly as the aroma of steaming coffee flooded his nostrils. With aluminum mug in hand, Ridgeway angled across the bay to his own footlocker. Rounding the well-worn box he eased himself down onto one of the cots that had been spot-welded to the floor.
Ridgeway took another long sip before he opened the lid. The case, three feet long and two feet deep, was the only permanent home Ridgeway could remember since taking command of the RAT Squad. As a highly mobile force, the marines were called upon to move from ship to ship at a moment's notice. Everything that represented Ridgeway's private life existed within the case.
Even by military standards, his locker was spartan. Aside from a small collection of casual clothes, such as the sweats he now wore, the footlocker contained only his toiletries, a first aid kit and a personal computer. That, Ridgeway thought as his attention shifted to the inside of the open lid, and the Three Moments.
As always he thought of Grissom when he looked at the three artifacts taped conspicuously to the inside of the lid. Saul "Grizzly" Grissom had been his first battlefield commander and grew to be both friend and mentor. A decorated veteran who possessed a profoundly sage view of life, Grissom taught Ridgeway that a man should never forget three moments in life; his first, his finest, and his darkest.
"Your first moment reminds you of where you came from," Ridgeway softly recited. The photograph was old and tattered along one edge. Still, he could not help but smile at the image of the blonde-haired boy who beamed from the cockpit of a mottled green military hovercraft. Although his feet couldn't reach the pedals at that age, young Danny dreamed of being a marine pilot just like his father. The senior Ridgeway had been killed in a tragically mundane accident just two years after the photo had been taken.
"Your finest moment reminds you of what you can achieve." The laminated copy of the magazine cover had been reduced to half it's original size, but the bold headline was no less readable. The single word ‘Unstoppable' appeared in all-caps above the image of black and gold-jerseyed players holding the Tri-World Hyperball Championship trophy high overhead. Ridgeway was just to the left of center, hoisted to shoulder-height by Monster's powerful arm. The faces caught in that dizzying instant had just handed the reigning champions a stunning defeat in an upset that nobody believed possible. At that instant they were immortals, warrior-kings, and as the headline proclaimed, unstoppable.
He paused, very much wanting to break tradition before invoking the final memory. He didn't need to look to know what hung there, or to remember what it meant.
"Your darkest moment," he muttered beneath his breath, "reminds you of what can happen when you least expect it."
A discipline ingrained through repetition dragged his focus away from the magazine cover and brought it to rest on the medal that hung unceremoniously on the right. The points of a platinum-colored star peeked out from behind the globe and laurels of the Corps, suspended beneath a quilted ribbon of royal blue. The Medal of Valor, the second highest honor awarded by the United Systems Marines.
Saving a platoon of besieged fellow marines may have been meritorious service, he thought grimly, but not if you ask the women and children of Cygnus Prime. He swallowed, the coffee soured in his mouth. If there were any of them left to ask.
Ridgeway stared at the medal awarded to him after the Pelton's Bluff engagement, a medal he had never worn since. Some of his peers took the decision as some aberrant gesture of humility from the young officer, as though he had chosen not to take on airs from such a high honor. They couldn't have been more wrong.
Only a few even suspected the truth. Grissom knew, but then again he knew everything in Ridgeway's heart. The Grizzly tried repeatedly to convince Ridgeway that his first duty was to support the encircled Marines, an assertion that provided little comfort.
Trust me, the airlifters are coming. Ridgeway remembered the words with a cold detachment that held no hint of the confidence with which they were first uttered. He had urged the Cygnus leaders to stay put, speaking through a frightened translator. "Wait here. I'll be back. I promise."
Well they waited all right, Ridgeway thought dismally, waited while I charged off to slog it out with a column of Rimmer tanks that had backed a platoon of Seventh Marines against a steep bluff. They waited while Rimmer airpower claimed the sky, driving the poorly-armed airlifters away like leaves in the wind. They waited, still expecting rescue when dark, bat-like shapes dove from the clouds. Not until the dandelion-puffs of ordnance bristled from sky-grey underbellies would the truth have become obvious. Then the waiting ended.
Ridgeway had been a mere three clicks away, his small force staging a series of hit-and-run strikes against the flank of the column throughout the night. By dawn, seven tanks lay in smoking ruin across a field strewn with Rimmer corpses.
He remembered the dull pink glimmer as the first of Cygnus' two suns broke the horizon, and the streaking roar as U.S. air support finally arrived. A swarm of stubby A-63s pounded the fractured side of the broken Rimmer arc straight to hell. Trapped between Ridgeway's team and the very pissed-off Seventh Marines, the Rimmer's unsupported left flank disintegrated.
The images in his mind were blurred by fatigue, but he could not forget staggering dead-tired and hurt across three clicks of shell-blasted jungle to the smoking remains of Cygnus Prime.
Frightened screams had long since faded, the only moan now came from the wind that crawled through the skeletized buildings. Airburst thermalite had carbonized them, along with vehicles and bodies, into an inseparable crust of black ash. Over four hundred people who had trusted Ridgeway to return, gone.
He couldn't remember how long he knelt on that blackened street as he watched the ash swirl about him like flakes of dead snow.
Closing the lid to his footlocker, Ridgeway pushed the memory aside for the thousandth time, knowing that his Darkest Moment would wait quietly for his return. It would wait forever, just like the civilians of Cygnus Prime waited-- the way a part of him would always remain, waiting for a second chance on the blackened hillside.
He turned his mind from dark memories to the unknown mission ahead, to the marines whose survival would be in his hands.
A furrow creased Ridgeway's brow. Some things never changed.
CHAPTER 2
"Oh man, it sucks to be me." Almost two thousand meters below the planet's surface, Private David Jenner's muttered lament was lost in the persistent noise of the tunnel. He paused at the four-way junction, looking down nearly identical corridors that angled off in different directions.
Left and then right, or was it another left?
Jenner smoothed the crumpled yellow dispatch, trying to make some sense of the hand-scrawled map on the back of the last page. Moisture had already transformed one leg of his route into an illegible smear of blue ink.
He held the paper aloft to better catch the meager overhead light. Rotating the dubious map on end, Jenner struggled to align some part of it to his surroundings. Nothing matched.
With a forlorn sigh Jenner dropped his arms and opted for a mental coin-toss. With no sense of confidence he turned right and plodded past a stained aluminum sign bearing the words ‘CONTAINMENT AREA.'
Jenner's boots sloshed through an unbroken chain of puddles. Moisture leeched incessantly from the slabs of reinforced concrete that made up the tunnel walls, leaving mineral streaks of chalky white amidst the burnt-copper hues of rusted iron. A film of green mold spread web-like across the walls, fanning out from every crack and crevice. Here and there, dark wet clumps of fungus hung from the walls like rotting grapes.
The air was thick with dank smells; corroding metal, musty ozone from electrical arcs, the acrid stench of fluids that bled from old machinery. Miners with pale, stained skin told him of even fouler smells that seeped from collapsed tunnels even further below, the putrid reek of bodies crushed into paste beneath countless tons of stone.
A shiver ran along J
enner's spine and he picked up his pace, nervously shifting the pack on his shoulders. The private muttered without conviction as he shuffled along the narrow pathway, "They're just screwing with your head, that's all."
Lighting functioned properly back in the main cavern, but here in the secondary tunnels things were hardly up to par. Entire sections of corridor stretched out in tomblike darkness, broken only by brief pools of sputtering white light.
In those twilight borders where light wrestled with shadow, the snarl of pipes that lined the walls took on an ominous, serpentine appearance. Cables resonated with the hum of high voltage. Water dripped from heavy steel tubes that groaned from internal pressure. Behind it all, the deep bass thrum of the massive reactor pulsed through the floors and walls like an giant heartbeat.
With every plodding step Jenner's feet squished miserably against wet socks. "Waterproof my ass," he snarled, glaring at the cheap codura boots. His toes buzzed with the nagging itch of pruned skin and he scuffed his steps fitfully, but the tingle persisted.
"Man, I am not cut out for this underground shit."
In the brief time since Jenner unwittingly threw himself into the Outer Rim Alliance, things had gone from bad to worse. Life on the filthy streets of the Los Diablos colony had been no picnic, but at least there a dull reddish sunlight almost constantly suffused the atmospheric dome. The darkest basement in LD was brighter than the crypt-like gloom of this subterranean hell. That world seemed a lifetime away.
Slogging through the frigid cold in wet army boots, Jenner could scarcely believe that only a few months ago he was sitting behind the wheel of a sleek, silver-grey Vendetta, driving the one and only Eddie DelMonico down the back streets of Los Diablos. The stainless steel attaché in Eddie's lap contained four kilos of lab-quality Rage. All Jenner had to do was get Eddie to the deal and back in one piece and life would have been fine.
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