by Nick Webb
In truth, he had no idea. But the fact that they were still operating had to be a good sign, right? “They’ve been in there for two hours.”
“That’s good, I suppose. If things were beyond hope, they’d have stopped by now.”
He leaned his head onto the window and closed his eyes. “I lost Sara Batak. I didn’t realize how hard I’d fallen for her, and then when she died so suddenly, it just … I was just … completely floored. And now, saving Ace only to have her hit by a stray bullet….”
She grabbed his shoulders and twisted him to face her. “Zivic, listen to me. You’ve got to stop this. Look, I know you. We nearly got married, remember?”
He managed a half smile. “Yeah. What do you say … give it another shot?”
She held a finger up to his lips. “Shush. I’m not joking around. Just listen. You’ve got a … problem, Zivic. You’ve got this image of yourself as this knight in shining armor, riding in to the rescue to save the damsel in distress. Which is fine. Whatever motivates you to do your best in battle and complete the mission … whatever. But you’re taking it too far, Zivic. You saved Batak, you fell for her, and she died. You had me, Zivic. You had me right in front of your nose, and you couldn’t commit. It wasn’t until after I’d left that you realized what you’d lost.” She smacked her forehead. “Oh my god. I just realized.”
“What?”
“You. Your problem is that you only want what you can’t have. Once you saw you couldn’t have me, that’s when you went off the rails, trying to impress me or whatever you were trying to do with that stunt that killed your mom and stepdad—”
“Stop—”
“And then Batak. You rode in to the rescue. You started having a thing going, and then she was taken from you abruptly. Unfairly. And so you lionized her in your mind. Set her up on this angelic pedestal. You convinced yourself that it was a sure thing between the two of you, when the truth is you barely knew her. There was no basis for a relationship there. Saving the girl doesn’t get you the girl. You understand that, right?”
“Just stop—”
She didn’t let go of his shoulders. “And now, Ace. You’re just smitten with her, aren’t you? You saved the girl, and now she might die, and so you’re pining over her.”
“I am not.”
“You are. Admit it. Why else are you here?”
He felt his face getting red. “Because she’s a comrade. Pilots look out for each other.”
“Really? Then why aren’t you with Bucket? He got hit too. Didn’t you know that?”
“He did?”
“Yeah. He just got out of surgery. Took a bogey’s round right through his shoulder. Missed his aorta by an inch. But you didn’t notice because you’re hung up … over the girl.”
His mom, Spacechamp, always told him when he was a teenager that lies hurt. But the truth hurt much, much worse. And listening to Whitehorse made him cringe. Made him angry, because he recognized the truth in the accusations.
She somehow read his mind. “Look, I’m not saying this to accuse you, or hurt you, or even to stop you from pursuing her.”
He faked another half-smile. “Gee. Thanks?”
“I’m only saying this to help you, Zivic. I hate seeing you get hurt. Over and over and over again.”
“I’ll be fine.” He breathed deep and set his shoulders square. “Really. I’m fine, Jerusha. Maybe I do have a thing for her. Maybe not. And yes, I’ll go check in on Bucket in a second. But I just had to know how she was doing. I can’t keep losing people like this.” He smiled again, this time a little more genuine. “I’m fine.”
She let go of one shoulder, but squeezed his other, and smiled. “One more thing you should know, Zivic.”
“What?”
“Ace has a girlfriend.”
He couldn’t mask the expression creeping onto his face. “Wait, what?”
Whitehorse started to walk away. His expression had apparently told her enough. “You really know how to pick ‘em. Just a comrade, huh? Aw, shit, I shouldn’t have told you that—you only want what you can’t have, which means now you’re going to fall for Ace even harder.”
He scowled. Dammit! “Come on. Let’s go check on Bucket.”
“I’ll take a rain check,” she replied, backtracking through the door back into the main ward. “I’ve got to get back up to the bridge. Tell him hi for me.”
He watched her start to leave, and saw beyond the door that the main ward was full of wounded from the skirmish with the Dolmasi, and that Bucket, his fellow pilot, was indeed laying bed-ridden in the corner, an IV hanging above him.
“Wait, Jerusha. Do you know the stats? From the battle? How many did I get?”
She eyed him, then glanced down at her data pad that she kept with her at all times. “Lieutenant Ethan Batship Zivic. Confirmed kills…” she looks back up at him. “Eight.”
“So … not one hundred and one?”
“Not today, Batship. Maybe next time.” She turned and retreated back to the main ward.
He followed her out, and parked himself in a chair at Bucket’s bedside while Whitehorse left sickbay. “Maybe next time, Batshit,” he said to no one.
Chapter Twenty
Orbit over Mao Prime
ISS Independence
Shuttle Bay
The freighter looked new, and if Proctor didn’t know any better she might have thought it was actually an IDF supply ship, based on its aggressive angles and pockets that looked like they might have at one point housed weapons. If it was once a military ship, all identifying marks had been removed. She wondered what she’d find if she had a tech crew examine the transponder data files. Perhaps the ship was stolen from IDF and repurposed as a private cargo freighter.
The freighter’s hatch opened. Proctor waited in the shuttle bay’s anteroom, watching on the monitor as the freighter’s ramp descended and the squad of marines positioned themselves to greet the visitor. And, of course, check her for weapons, bombs—anything that would pose a threat to the admiral or the ship.
She stepped down the ramp—at least, Proctor assumed it was a she. The figure wore a mask, almost like a vacuum-rated flight suit. A corporal shouted some orders to her, and she raised her arms. The marine stepped forward and frisked her, checking her pockets, then waving a scanner over her body.
Several minutes later the marine turned to the camera and nodded. Proctor pressed on the comm. “Bring her in here, Corporal.”
The door to the anteroom slid open and Liu walked through, accompanied on either side by a marine, along with one ahead of her and two behind.
Proctor stood in the center of the room facing her, arms folded. When the guards finally paused, forcing Liu to stop several paces away, she noticed that not only was the other woman’s helmet still on, but the oxygen was flowing. That set alarm bells off in the back of her mind. Contingencies and possibilities started to play out in her mind’s eye—was the woman going to gas them all? Is that why she was still wearing her helmet?
No, the marines’s scan was thorough—they would have detected something like that. But, Proctor remembered, her dead nephew’s former girlfriend had worked several years as an IDF Intel field agent. If she was planning something, it was likely to be undetectable.
“You’re not dead,” said Proctor.
Liu, rather than respond, started fiddling with her helmet, releasing the clasps and thumbing the oxygen flow off. The marines nearby raised their weapons and swung them up towards her, making her freeze.
Proctor waved. “No, go ahead. Take it off.”
The helmet came off. And Proctor gasped.
Most of her face looked like it had melted. Her hair was gone. The only picture she’d seen of the woman was the one in her service file, essentially an unsmiling mug shot. The woman standing before her bore little similarity to that picture, except for the unsmiling part. In fact, Proctor wasn’t sure if it was the ghoulish effect from the melted skin, but it looked like Liu was either snar
ling, or grimacing.
“Oh my god,” said Proctor. “What happened? That looks recent … oh,” she added, the pieces suddenly falling into place.
Admiral Mullins had said Liu was dead. Killed in the blast at CENTCOM Bolivar that was supposedly meant for her—for Proctor.
But he was wrong. Or lying. Because clearly, the woman standing in front of her was not dead. Though it looked as if she may have been at one point.
“My apologies, Admiral. The helmet keeps the environment around my face at optimum temperature and humidity, and flows trace amounts of antiseptics and regrowth hormones across my skin. It’s a compromise—it allows me to be up and moving and not in a hospital bed.”
Proctor couldn’t help stare at the ruined face. “I can’t imagine any sane doctor would let you out like that. A month in the hospital, at least.”
“Like I said, compromise.”
“The doctor let you out?”
Liu’s glare was cold and hollow. “The doctor would have killed me, Hippocrates be damned. He was Mullins’s man, after all.”
“You work for Mullins,” said Proctor. It was a statement, not a question.
Her scowl darkened. “Worked,” clarified Liu.
Pieces of the puzzle shuffled in her mind. Proctor assembled them into one solution, then shook them up into another. But the problem was that she still lacked key pieces. “Mullins tried to kill you, not me.”
“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded if you’d died too. He claimed to like you, but as a field agent, I was trained, extensively, on how to tell when people are lying. And I’m pretty sure Mullins doesn’t like you in the slightest.”
Every one of her words looked like it pained her, like the act of speaking was pure torture. Proctor imagined stretching that ruined skin into speech, the bare muscles and tendons forming tortuous words, was pure hell.
“Why would Mullins want you dead?”
Liu finally smiled. In her mind, Proctor could almost hear the other woman’s skin crackle with the strained motion. “Because I know too much. I know far, far too much.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Orbit over Mao Prime
ISS Independence
Armory
Marine Number Two checked his assault rifle one final time, and then felt his vest to make sure he had the two extra magazines. He nodded to Marine Number One.
Marine Number Three and Number Four gave him the thumbs up. They were all ready.
They were nameless. Marine Number Two was his name now. He needed to be untraceable, without history. And no commanders—they were operating solo. At least, that was the story if they were, in the event that everything went tits-up, captured.
But the little pouch on his chest would be the insurance against that unhappy possibility. He tapped his own and nodded to Marine Number Two’s chest pocket. “We just received the go-ahead. You got your Goodnight Moon?”
“Ain’t Goodnight Moons. They’re Goodnight Sons. As in, goodnight, son, you’re dead.”
The gravity of the statement weighed on him, but he knew what he was getting into. He signed up for it. Danger was the name of the game in this line of work, and for his employer—well, death was a small price if they achieved what they came for.
Marine Number One nodded. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road. Four, get to Engineering. Three, Shuttle Bay. Two, with me.”
They could hear the other marines training through the wall. The training simulator had a firing range, and the rest of the men were lingering there, as usual. That’s where this group of marines tended to linger after their training session was done. Firing big guns was therapeutic after all, and they were at war—they deserved every bit of therapy they could get.
But it was show time. The signal indicated they needed to act quickly, and so they left the training simulator’s locker room, stalked out into the hall, and locked the door behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Orbit over Mao Prime
ISS Independence
Sickbay
Proctor had finally convinced the newcomer to go to sickbay, which Liu acquiesced to on the condition that the admiral accompany her, which was perfectly fine with Proctor, since the former IDF Intel agent seemed to be at the center of recent events.
“How is she, Doc?”
Patel had shooed Proctor out of the examination room when they’d first arrived, and now the doctor had finally emerged ten minutes later with a scowl covering his face.
“Really, Shelby? Doctor-patient confidentiality.” He snapped a glove off his hand and into the recycle receptacle.
“Cut the bullshit, Doc. Didn’t stop you from telling both Babu and Ballsy about my frickin’ tooth. Technically, she’s dead, according to IDF records, so legally you’re fine on a technicality. But even if you weren’t, I can invoke—”
He waved his still-gloved hand. “Oh, stop. You sound like a first year ensign, threatening to quote regulations at me. Your concern for her would be touching if I didn’t know that you’ve been avoiding me like the plague for the past two weeks.”
“Stop changing the subject. It’s a damn root canal—it can wait until after the apocalypse.” She sighed in exasperation. “Look, Patel, we’ve known each other a long time—”
Patel had finally snapped the other glove off and was washing his hands. “Yes, since I interned on the Chesapeake thirty years ago. And you were as stubborn then as you are now.” He turned the water off and flicked his hands mostly dry before wiping them on his scrubs. “And since I know how stubborn you are, I’ll save us the time.” He looked up toward the ceiling, as if about to talk through the comm. “Patient notes, Lieutenant Fiona Liu, preliminary examination. Patient displays extreme third degree burns over approximately fifty percent of her body, as well as lacerations and contusions consistent with a detonation or other explosive event. Rudimentary medical attention has already been administered, though at this late stage of recovery patient will likely require extensive skin grafts since scar tissue has already formed—”
Proctor held up a hand, “But Doc, what about her supposed death? I need to know if she’s telling the—”
While she spoke, the doctor glanced all around the room, turning every which way, without looking at Proctor. The message was clear: you’re not here.
“Must be ghosts in here…” he grumbled. “Continue patient notes for Fiona Liu. Patient also shows trace amounts of experimental compound HG dash one eight six two, suggesting that at one point she may have either intentionally or unintentionally slowed her heart rate down to approximately two beats per minute and entered a state of limited consciousness, for what reasons I can’t fathom. Other than the burns and the superficial tissue damage, patient is otherwise in excellent health, consistent with a normal twenty-eight year old woman. Recommended recovery regimen: skin regrowth hormones—probably Dermigen Five A, given patient’s youth, as well as Dicyclopropithol for inflammation. Acetemeniphene for pain management.”
Proctor nodded. “Thank you, Doc.”
He jolted and snapped around towards her. “How the hell did you get in here?”
She smiled and pat his arm as she opened the door to the examination room where Liu was waiting. “Nice, Patel. I promise you can rip this damn tooth out soon. You know, as soon as we save civilization. Again.” She pulled the door shut behind her.
“He’s … odd,” said Liu, once the door was closed.
“Yes,” agreed Proctor. “You have no idea.” She pulled a chair over and sat across from the former intel officer. Her dead nephew’s girlfriend. Former girlfriend? She realized she had no idea what exactly was the nature of their relationship, whether it had ended or was, in fact, progressing by the time Danny had died. “Ok. Talk.”
“What first?”
Trust verification first, she thought. Proctor realized she needed to give her a few questions that she already knew the answers to, just to make sure Liu was telling the truth. It was no guarantee agai
nst deception, but … it was something. “How did you escape? How did they think you were dead?”
Liu nodded. “When the blast hit I already suspected Mullins wanted to get rid of me. I had guessed too much about his plans, and that unnerved him. So when the blast hit—it knocked me out for several minutes, I think—but when I came to I swallowed a Goodnight Moon—”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
“A Goodnight Moon. It’s a little pill they used to give us in the service for … contingencies. Lowers your heart rate to almost nothing. Most of your cells go into temporary hibernation. But you actually stay partially awake—just enough to be aware of what’s going on around you, and enough where you can force yourself to snap out of it if you’re in danger. So basically when the ER doc on Bolivar looked at me, he pronounced me dead, and when no one was looking I bolted. Grabbed the first ship I could find and got the hell out of dodge.”
So, at least that checked out. Proctor had feigned ignorance on the Goodnight Moon pill, but she knew very well that its active ingredient was, as Doc Patel put it, compound HG-1862.
Proctor leaned forward. “Fiona, I understand you were … involved, with Danny Proctor. My nephew.”
Liu’s expression hardened. “I was.”
She asked the question she wasn’t really sure she wanted an answer to. “Tell me. Was he GPC? Was my nephew a terrorist?”
“Terrorist? Danny? Of course not. He was sweet. And kind. I—I’m ashamed to say it, but—” She grimaced. “Mullins … assigned me to infiltrate the GPC, and Danny was my way in. It started off that way, but after I got to know him, well, my training went out the window. I got involved. It was pretty steamy there for a few months before we decided to pull back a bit.”
“So, you used my nephew to infiltrate the GPC?”
She answered immediately, not a trace of shame on her face. “Yes.”
She was a professional, Proctor could give her that. “And? What did you learn?”
