The Bonds of Orion

by Owen R. O’Neill

  Wojakowski guided the shuttle into a rocky clearing they selected as a landing zone. From there, Sutton would give them a bearing and they’d move out, the fireteams scouting ahead on either flank. He’d already identified a location he thought likely to be their camp: a heavily forested, boulder-strewn hill near a cave complex they’d used in the early days, roughly a two-hour hike from their landing zone. It was dusk now, meaning they’d arrive in the vicinity after dark as dark as it ever got on Amu Daria. The spectacular trail of stars that ornamented Amu Daria’s night sky, the arm of local cluster, shed almost as much light as the full moon did on Earth.

  Leaving Wojakowski and Donnerkill to keep the shuttle engines warm and maintain contact with Artemisia, they set off through the deepening violet dusk, Yu close behind Sutton and Kris with Huron some tens of meters back. Sutton negotiated the broken ground with dogged perseverance, determined not to hold them back. But soon their going slowed as they had to pick their way in the uncertain light and the need for stealth overcame the need to move quickly. At intervals, they’d pause and Yu would go on ahead, moving with an ungainly jog. Yet, a few meters into the trees he’d disappear entirely, as smoke vanishes, suddenly and silently, to reappear, wraithlike, some minutes later. A brief hushed conference would follow and they’d move a hundred meters or so farther on.

  The land steepened sharply, making it even more difficult to choose a path that would not signal their approach as plainly as if they’d marched in with band music, and Yu went up a scarp whose face was set with boulders like crooked giant’s teeth. No sooner had he left, it seemed, then he was back, showing four raised fingers and pointing ahead and to his left. They followed his directions, creeping along low to the ground, to take cover in a dip beyond the scarp’s ridge where the trees grew thickly.

  Tapping Sutton on the shoulder, he pointed to a huge outcropping that was sharp rocks at the base. To a deep-shadowed cleft between two of the rocks. The major nodded and stole a few meters farther on, merging with the shadow of a broken log.

  For half a minute, he knelt there, concentrating. Then:

  “Fitz?” Shadow whispering to shadow in the fractured light.

  The farther shadow moved; brought a rifle to bear and whispered back in tones of amazed disbelief. “That you, Major?”

  Sutton stood up from his crouch slowly. “It’s me, Fitz.” He took a sliding step forward.

  The shadow spoke more distinctly now. “We thought you was dead.”

  “Not quite. Still got some kicks left, Fitz.” Another cautious step.

  The gun barrel twitched. “Would you mind not doing that, Major?”

  He froze, more still than a graven image. “It’s okay, Fitz.”

  “Now I would really like to believe that, Major,” the shadow replied. “But when somebody comes back from the dead, well . . . it gives a fella some doubt.”

  “Check me out, Fitz.”

  A long minute, in which each second jacked up the tension until the silence seemed to sing with it. Finally, they heard him exhale.

  “What the damn hell, Major? You was gone. What happened?”

  “I’ve been gone, Fitz. Now we’ve come to take you home. You and everyone. I need to see the Colonel.”

  The gun barrel did not waver. “Begging your pardon, Major. But who’s this we?”

  Sutton beckoned with his hand. Huron and Yu moved out from behind the concealing boulders.

  Huron spoke, soft but clear in velvet darkness. “I’m Commander Raphael Huron, OTC for Covert Action Team 5. This is Sergeant Major Fyodor Tal Yu of the 101st Marine Special Operations Brigade. Will you permit me to approach and present my credentials?”

  “Fuck me.” With a hoarse release of hoarded breath, FitzAlan lowered his rifle and walked into the clearing, where the silver light angled across him. “I don’t reckon you gotta do that, sir. I know who you both are.” Then he turned and called to the darkness behind. “Watts! Roy! Stumpy! Come on down now.”

  Without taking his eyes off FitzAlan or the other three men who appeared from the rocks above, Yu called out, “Master Sergeant Burdette! Your team may break cover now. Corporal Vasquez! Are you there?”

  Burdette’s fireteam emerged from their left, and Vasquez answered, her voice coming behind FitzAlan and the other men. “Here, sir!”

  “You may stand down, Corporal.”

  Vasquez stepped out. From that position, she could easily have killed them all. “Yes, sir.”

  Fitz looked at her, his mouth clamped in a hard, distraught line. “Fuck me for a duck. The Colonel’s gonna put my ass in a sling for this.”

  One of the others, probably Stumpy from his build, laughed, teeth flashing as he emerged into the starlight. “Y’wish, Póit. That’ll just to be her warm-up routine.”

  Clearly revving up a retort, Fitz swung his head toward Stumpy.

  “Where is the Colonel, Fitz?” Sutton interrupted.

  Letting go a single indistinct word whose intent was nonetheless clear, Fitz turned back to Sutton. “She ain’t here, Major. She went with Riley and Cole went to . . . ah ”

  “Dig it up?”

  Fitz moved uncomfortably.

  “What does she mean to do with it?”

  Slinging his rifle with a resigned grunt, Fitz jogged his head once. “Well . . . same as you, Major. She went out and bought us a ride home.”

  The camp Fitz led them to introductions revealed him to be PFC Joshua FitzAlan and confirmed their deduction about Stumpy proved to be a surprise. Situated in a shallow dell on the hilltop, it offered a fine prospect of the surrounding countryside but seemed altogether too exposed, especially from the air, despite being well-camouflaged. The camp’s two dozen occupants were also unusually well-equipped, even to the point of mounting four 20-mm chain guns in concealed positions. In no way did they appear to be the bunch of ragtag castaways they’d expected.

  The answer to how they’d gotten themselves and so much gear to such a gawd-forsaken location this far north only served to deepen the bigger mystery. In a clearing not far down the hill’s western slope, a rugged tilt-rotor and smaller VTOL aircraft sheltered under a large camouflage net spread from trees. Both were Halith models, common in their ground forces. Their presence confused Sutton as much as the rest of them.

  However, enlightenment swiftly appeared in the person of Ebenezer Hitch, the senior officer present, accompanied by Sergeant Russ. Rasping his hand through a new beard, though his scalp remained bald as an egg, Hitch listened to Sutton’s account of their arrival while those not on watch openly eavesdropped, and then invited them to what he factiously called his ‘quarters’, a field shelter barely big enough for the six of them. Perched cheek by jowl on campstools around a thermal unit, Hitch explained all that had transpired while Sergeant Russ looked on, apparently solely in the character of a witness, for he said nothing at all.

  Hitch dealt briskly with the taking of the capital and the liberation of the POWs from Bishan Island, after the remaining Doms retreated to bases in the south. The key point, he stressed, was that they’d armed the POWs with captured Halith weaponry, and this force, nine-thousand strong, was in possession of the starport. The relationship between them and separatists occupying the capital was polite enough, but no one thought it could stand any very great strain. The force Yeager now commanded rivaled all but the largest separatist groups, and the existing goodwill hinged on the colonel’s promise that she wanted nothing more than to get her people home. The separatists were waiting impatiently for that promise to be fulfilled and were increasingly willing to express it.

  But the real concern was the Doms. They showed every sign of being in disarray, but that could not last. They would attempt to retake the capital as soon as they got their shit together, and unfortunately the surveillance assets they’d managed to restore in the wake to the battle for the capital were subpar. No one could be exactly sure what the Doms were up to down south. Their overhead surveillance assets showed some kind of activity
there they’d caught glimpses of an amphibious force being assembled at the Doms’ main base but the separatists were still feeling cocky over their victory and, being more interested in dividing the spoils than preparing for the Dom counterattack, couldn’t be made to appreciate the urgency. They’d gotten the capital’s automated defenses operational that and their valor would do for the time being. So now, everything depended on getting their people off-planet as soon as possible.

  How exactly they planned to accomplish this was where Hitch grew vague. He also declined to elaborate on precisely why they were revisiting in this area. Everyone could tell things were a trifle tense between CAT 5 and Yeager’s people, and Sutton his prophesy that they might be a little slow to believe in their good fortune proving correct was reluctant to press the issue. Despite the press of time, especially now that they knew the full dimensions of the problem facing them, there was nothing to do but wait until the AM, when Colonel Yeager would return.

  The meeting broke up in an air of guarded cordiality, and Yu broached the issue of where CAT 5 might bivouac. He hoped Hitch would not take it amiss if he kept them to themselves and set his own watch. The warrant officer replied he thought that the better arrangement. With all proper acknowledgements, Yu left to see to it. Huron and Kris went with him.

  The watch set and CAT 5 preparing to bed down, Sutton appeared and asked for a private word with Huron and Yu. He did not object to Huron’s suggestion that they include Kris. Speaking unnaturally low, he revealed what he knew, as her XO, Colonel Yeager had come for. They he team, he clarified, hesitant a little in his speech had been supplied with a small fortune in authenticated bearer’s certificates. These certificates, wholly untraceable, were intended to allow them to purchase supplies, buy goodwill or pay bribes wherever they managed to escape to after the raid on Haslar. Landing on Amu Daria, and seeing how things stood with the locals, they hadn’t been able to use them, there being nothing worthwhile here to spend them on. During those first harrowing months where every day risked death or capture, they’d buried the certificates in the caves nearby for safekeeping. The colonel had gone personally to retrieve this “buried treasure” to pay for their transportation off planet.

  The treasure’s existence was known to the officers and senior NCOs but only he, Hitch, and the colonel originally knew the exact whereabouts. He imagined his disappearance and sudden reappearance at this particular time had caused a deal of consternation. The people, he said, only trusted him now because he was in the company of Huron and Yu, their characters being well-known and unimpeachable. That his reappearance, he meant, pausing again was the cause of all the uneasiness. They shouldn’t take it personally.

  Neither Huron nor Yu would ever have thought to take it personally, but they could see how the prospect of meeting Colonel Yeager again was exercising the major’s mind. Sutton made this plain with his next words.

  “The people this long in a . . . situation like this they key off the colonel. Can’t help it. Just comes natural, y’understand. And things being what they are . . .”

  “She might be a little touchy?” Huron said when Sutton failed to finish the thought.

  “Yeah, that’s what I'm gettin’ at.” Sutton looked down at his folded hands. “Probably more than a little. These days. Thought you oughta know.”

  “We’ll see in the AM,” Huron offered diplomatically.

  “Yeah,” the major repeated, scrubbing his palms together. “We sure as hell will.”

  * * *

  The first golden light of Amu Daria’s primary teased Kris from a deep sleep, for once untroubled by any dreams. She lay still, eyes closed, feeling the soft illumination on her cheek through the camouflage canopy; a new day, as yet wholly innocent of grim realities, and it was too soon to let the moment go.

  But realities there were; not grim ones, but still insistent, and when they won out, she opened her eyes and sat up, swearing half-heartedly under her breath. The canopy’s fabric was transparent from the inside, and it showed her a clear cerulean sky above the boughs of the immense trees. The primary, not yet free of the horizon, sent its light slantwise through the trunks, which cast long, deep, cool shadows across the ground. Had she pitched her canopy a few meters farther to the right, she would be within one of those shadows and still peaceably sleeping, like everyone else seemed to be. With a fresh string of curses, she strapped on her side arm and slid out from under the canopy’s edge to stand erect in the dappled light. Cold nipped her exposed nose and ears, routing the last vestiges of sleep, and rubbing her cheeks, she condemned the realities that had dragged her from bed at this hour one last time, the breath she used to do it freezing into a cloud that lingered, there being a not hint of breeze to disperse it.

  Trudging north through still air, the crunch of her boots unnaturally loud in the stillness, she spotted PFC Rachel Cates, CAT 5’s sniper/scout and medic, and another old friend from the Rephidim raid, on sentry near the crest of a large outcropping of granitic rock. True, she probably wouldn’t have spotted Cates if the private had not seen her first and moved. When she was close enough to see Cates’ smile, she stopped and raised a hand in greeting.

  Cates returned an off-hand salute from her concealing niche in the rocks. “Up bright and early, Commander?” She had the unmistakable accent, along with the ghostly pale skin and loose, long-limbed build of a Belter. Short wisps of silvery white hair escaped from under the edge of her combat helmet.

  “Seems so,” Kris answered. “How’s things?”

  “All’s well on a bright and frosty AM.” She smiled a touch wider. “You might try that way” pointing. “I wouldn’t wander too far, though, ma’am. This terrain’s bloody awkward to maintain a proper perimeter.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember that.” With a parting gesture, she set off in the direction Cates indicated.

  It was a bright and frosty morning. The pure air was sweet and bracing in her lungs as she made her way down the gentle slope; the light of the primary, now well up, warmed her skin despite the chill and the snowdrifts here and there brought back fond memories of her hike with Mariwen. Dealing with the pressing realities helped, too, and she head back the base camp with a lifted spirit and lighter step.

  Pausing to take her bearings (the memory of her escapade on Pohjola still quite fresh, and she couldn’t bear the mortification of being rescued again) something change in the dead-still air, the faint scrape of a boot over bare earth, a whiff of scent made the fine hair on the back of her neck grate against her collar. Instantly, she dropped and spun, reaching for her sidearm.

  A confused impression of spun-gold hair, flaring out with the brilliant sunlight behind, eyes like flint, narrow and cold, and murderous kick aimed at her head. She blocked and rolled; kicked for the braced knee. The woman avoided the blow, but just barely, wrecking her balance for an instant. Kris exploited the opening, scissoring her legs to bring the woman down. She twisted as she fell, going for a corkscrew elbow drop. Kris caught her with a raised knee to the midsection, and they grappled, exchanging punishing short-armed blows as they rolled together down the incline.

  Using the roll’s momentum, Kris lifted the woman and slammed down on her with all her weight. A breathy grunt, the woman’s grip slipped, and Kris got behind her, jamming her arm into a hammer lock while she wrapped a fist in the long hair and trapped her lower body with her legs. The woman writhed like a shark. Kris hung on with all her strength until they came skidding to a stop in an icy drift.

  “Now who the fuck are you?” Kris let her assailant’s face up from where she’d been grinding it in the snow. The woman gasped as her mouth came clear.

  “Yeager, Christina. Colonel CEF Marine Corps. IJX-17839.”

  “Ah shit!” Keeping a firm grip the pinned wrist, Kris pressed her knee hard into Yeager’s back and unholstered her sidearm. “Listen, Colonel. I’m gonna let you up. But I want your word you won’t go monkey shit on me again.”

  “What’s my word to you?” A low, sa
vage snarl.

  “Nothin’.” Kris eased off the pressure and prepared to get up. “But if you break it, I’ll blow your fuck’n’ head off.”

  There was no doubting the tone. Yeager exhaled, the feral tension draining from her taut muscles. “Alright. You have my word I’ll stand down. Lemme up.”

  Kris let her up, her sidearm poised. The tall woman rubbed her neck and watched Kris with wary but curbed hostility. “Now tell me who the fuck you are.”

  “Kennakris, Loralynn. Lieutenant commander, SRF. XVR-13069.”

  “What is this bullshit?” Fresh anger sparked in her hard eyes. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “What’dya think? Came after you.”

  “After almost three years?! Who sends a flight officer on an extraction op?”

  “You can take that up with Commander Huron. He’s over the hill with Sergeant Major Yu.” Then she heard the rapidly approaching footsteps and looked up to see the figures jogging down the slope. “Ah no, he ain’t. That’d be them now.”

  The four of them toiled up the slope, Huron leading, Yu following and Kris and Colonel Yeager breathing hard for the first hundred meters or so. When they had their breath back, the colonel looked sidelong at Kris.

  “You’re kinda young for a lieutenant commander.”

  “I got a head start in life.”

  “When I was your age, I would’ve kicked your ass back there.”

  Kris shot back a pointed glare. “I am my age, and I did kick your ass back there.”

  Unexpectedly, Colonel Yeager laughed. “Okay. I’ll cop to that. What do they call you anyway? You don’t sound much like a Loralynn to me.”

  “Kris.”

  “Of course.” With that laugh again. Somehow, it reminded Kris of Min, with all the gaiety bleached out. “I’ll give you winner’s dibs on that. For the time being.”