by Jay Posey
“We’re going to finish this,” Lincoln said. “Whether you have the courage to do it or not.”
“Go, or don’t. I don’t know what you think you’ll find. Or why you would think it would matter. It would be an aside, a footnote, an entry in your diary. Nothing more. I don’t know why you believe it’d be worth risking the lives of your fellow soldiers for that.”
Lincoln didn’t know what more to say.
“I’m not evil, captain,” Self said. “Just experienced. I’ll do you the courtesy of pretending I have no idea what you’re planning to do. But I strongly urge you to make certain that whatever it is, doesn’t end up kicking off the very war you’re trying so desperately to prevent.”
Mr Self closed the connection then, leaving Lincoln to wrestle alone with his thoughts. What was he after, really? Truth? Justice? Some sort of redemption? Or was it just his need to see a job through to the end?
In the end, he came to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter what his motivation was. Maybe Self was right, and the machine was too big to control. But as long as Lincoln was alive, he would do his part to serve the nation he’d sworn to protect. An enemy was out there, an enemy he had the knowledge of and means to confront. And confront her, he would.
TWENTY-FIVE
“BECAUSE IT’S RIGHT in the middle of the Martian People’s Collective Republic,” Wright said. “I thought we were trying to prevent war with the Martians. I can’t think of a better way to guarantee one than to go invading the Collective.”
“We can’t just leave her there,” Lincoln said. “You’ve read the file. She’s a planner. There’s no way this would be the end for her. She lost her ship, lost a team, sure. Who knows what else she has going on.”
“I’m with the cap’n on this,” Sahil said. “Sorry, mas’sarnt.”
“I’m in too,” Thumper said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, knowing we had a chance at her and we let it get away. Gotta do the good we can, right?”
“The thing I don’t know about,” Lincoln said. “Is how we’re going to get there, and out again.”
“If you jokers are dead set on it,” Wright said. “Then we can do it.”
“You gonna fly us in yourself, Mir?” Sahil asked.
“No,” she said. “But I know a guy.”
* * *
THE HOP where they met wasn’t in quite as bad a shape as Flashtown, but it wasn’t exactly the most well-kept station Lincoln had ever seen. The passageways all had a strange yellow tint that seemed to be less decorative and more a sign that the air recyclers were in dire need of maintenance. It was just an outpost, intended for not much more than a refueling point or place for quick repairs. For some reason, though, it appeared that it’d become something of a party town, or a place where extralegal activities were, if not invited, at least unremarked upon.
“Wright,” Lincoln said. “Please tell me these guys aren’t pirates.”
“I definitely wouldn’t say that to them,” Wright answered. “They work in salvage. I wouldn’t ask too many questions about that, though.”
Wright had made Sahil and Thumper wait in dock, still aboard the shuttle that brought them in. It wasn’t clear if it was because she didn’t want too many people talking business, or because she wanted to make sure they could get out fast if they needed to. Both, maybe.
“And how do you know these people again?”
“I don’t think the history of my romantic life is any of your concern, captain,” she said, answering the question without answering it. “Here we go.” She pointed to a bar. Even the front door was greasy. “They’ll probably offer you a chair, but I recommend you stand. And do not drink anything in here.”
They stepped inside, and the thick haze made Lincoln want to immediately step right back out. Wright marched with purpose, though, and Lincoln didn’t dare let her get too far away. The place was packed, music was loud, and nobody seemed to pay any attention to them passing through. Not even enough to avoid bumping into them, which several patrons did, repeatedly.
There were three people sitting at a corner table near the back, about as far away from the music as they could get, without straying too far from the bar. One man and two women. The man and one of the women stood up when they saw Wright approaching, both with welcoming smiles. The other woman, small and leathery faced, kept her seat and stared at them hard, with eyes like a rodent’s.
“Hey hey hey,” the man said. “Little Meer-meer. How you livin’, girly?” He held out his arms as if he was expecting Wright to give him a greeting hug. He was disappointed.
“Same as ever, Uncle H,” she answered. “Good livin’, every day.”
“That’s what I like to hear! Who’s the pretty boy?”
“Just some guy,” Wright said.
“Oh… all right then. Well, welcome, some guy. Grab a seat, get comfortable.”
“I’ll stand,” Lincoln said. “Thanks.”
“Oh. All right,” Uncle H replied, and he sat back down. “Drinks?”
“We’re good,” Wright said. And then she turned to Lincoln and pointed to each person in turn. “This is Uncle H, Baby Vegas, and this here,” she said, pointing at the little woman, “is Mad Ethel.”
Baby Vegas was taller than Uncle H, and she stretched a long arm across the table and shook Lincoln’s hand. Mad Ethel just sat there.
“When H said you’d called,” Baby Vegas said to Wright, “I thought he was kidding around. I didn’t know you still knew where to find us.”
“Yeah, I know it’s been a while,” Wright said. “I’ve been uh… been pretty busy.”
“Always are,” Baby Vegas said, and she smiled, but there seemed to be some sadness there.
“YEHH!” the little woman screamed, without warning or obvious provocation. Uncle H punched her in the shoulder.
“Settle down, Ethel!” he yelled. “Sorry, don’t mind Ethel. She just does that to people she likes. Well, cut to the chase, Mir. I assume you ain’t just here for chats.”
“I need a ride, H,” she said. “Probably a bumpy one.”
“Huh. Business or pleasure?”
“Business. But unofficial.”
“Huh. How unofficial?”
“I’m talking to you, Uncle H.”
“Ahhh, yeah. Got it. Where we headed?”
Wright looked at Lincoln. He gave her a nod.
“Rocknest.”
“Rocknest?” Uncle H said. “The Collective?”
Wright nodded. His expression changed, and he flashed a look at Baby Vegas. Baby Vegas held up a hand, waggled it back and forth.
“Definitely bumpy,” Baby Vegas said. “What’s the cargo?”
“Passengers, mostly,” Wright answered. “Four on the way in. Between four and five on the way out, depending on how it goes.”
“Better be four or five,” Baby Vegas replied. “With people, I don’t do halfsies.”
“Gear?” Uncle H said.
“We packed light,” Wright said. “But what we packed is heavy.”
“You’re not gonna get my ship shot up, are you Mir?” he asked.
“I’m not, H. I’m hoping you won’t either.”
“Yeah, well. You caught us at a good time. Been thinking about cruising the Martian scene a bit anyway. I don’t think we can do it for free, though.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Wright said. “What’s your price?”
Uncle H made a show of thinking about it, then flashed a toothy grin. “Couple of dates with me?”
“Too steep,” Wright said.
“I’ll run the numbers,” Baby Vegas said. “And get back to you. But I’ll give you the friend discount.”
“But you’ll do it?”
“You don’t want to know the cost first?”
“It’s gotta be done,” Wright answered.
“We’ll do it, Mir,” Uncle H said. “But we got a business to run. Out and back, nothing funny in the middle.”
“That’s all w
e need, H.”
“How soon did you want to get underway?” Baby Vegas asked.
“You busy now?” said Wright.
Uncle H chuckled, and looked at Baby Vegas.
“Hangar 17,” Baby Vegas said. “We can be out in three hours.”
Two and a half hours later, they were loading the last of their gear onto Uncle H’s ship, The Lightfinger.
“A bit on the nose there, don’t you think?” Lincoln said to Wright, pointing at the name. She nudged him with her elbow, as Uncle H was only a few feet away.
“Hey, you hear about Flashtown?” Uncle H said.
“No,” Wright answered. “What now?”
“Got raided by some feds.”
Wright snorted. “Whose feds?”
“Don’t know. Some think Eastern Coalition, some UAF, some CMA. Doesn’t really matter. Couple hundred dudes showed up, made a big mess, confiscated some gear. Mayor Jon’s in a bad way.”
“Sounds like Mayor Jon decided to clean house and blame it on outsiders.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Uncle H said with a shrug. “Still though. Probably gonna steer clear of there for a bit.”
“That’s probably good practice no matter what, H.”
“Yeah, but… the place has style, you know? And there’s this one noodle bar on deck 34 that’s worth shooting your way to.”
“What about on the way back out?” Lincoln asked.
Uncle H looked at him and smiled. “If you didn’t make it back out, it’d still be worth it.”
“We’re cleared to go,” Baby Vegas called from the front. “Get yourselves comfortable, and if anybody stops us to ask questions, keep your mouths shut!”
* * *
THE TEAM SPENT the entire trip in jump seats back in one of the cargo holds. It wasn’t luxurious, but actually wasn’t that much more uncomfortable than most of the military transports Lincoln had been on. Not quite comfortable enough to sleep, but he was at least able to doze.
They’d already been over the schematics, laid out the plan as best they could. It was amazing how much information they had access to, once they knew what questions to ask. Between Thumper’s work and ample support from 23rd, they’d tracked Amanda Flood, or whoever she was now, down to a compound in Rocknest. From there, it was just a matter of pointing a few satellites in the right direction, and they had enough to work with to plan the assault.
But now, on the way in, he couldn’t stop thinking about Mike. Mike was fine. Alive and well. Just back home, instead of on mission with his teammates. But somehow, that didn’t matter. Not as much as it should have, or as much as Lincoln wanted it to. The fact remained that Mike had been killed in action, under Lincoln’s command. As strange as it may have seemed, as hard as it would have been to explain to anyone else, the fact remained that Lincoln now faced an entirely new burden of leadership. It was bad enough to lose one of his people. But now, he faced the very real possibility of losing his people more than once. And that thought nearly crushed him. How many times would he see Mike die? How many memories would he accumulate of his friends, killed in action, over and over again?
Undoubtedly the four-stars back home had thought this was a tremendous breakthrough, an unmitigated triumph over death and loss of warfighting capability. To Lincoln, as a team leader, it seemed something much closer to hell.
“Sure could use Mikey on this,” Sahil said, from across the bay.
“You’ll do just fine,” Wright said.
“Yeah, I know. But I always feel better when he’s on the long gun.”
Apparently Lincoln wasn’t the only one thinking about their missing teammate. And he was missed, sorely. Lincoln hadn’t really noticed how much the team needed Mike’s easy nature to round them out. And, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t really noticed when he’d started considering himself such a part of the team, either.
Baby Vegas came in over internal comms.
“We’re coming up on a CMA check,” she said. “Then we’ll be headed down-planet. We’ll let you know when we’re on approach.”
“Thanks, BV,” Wright answered.
“Almost go time,” Lincoln said.
“Sure could use Mikey on this,” Sahil said again.
* * *
“TWO HOSTILES,” Sahil said. “North side, three hundred meters.”
“Copy that, I see them,” Lincoln answered. “Thumper, you good?”
“Got a smoker,” she replied. “Trying to wait until he goes back inside.”
“How much time do you need at the box?”
“Depends on what I find when I get there,” Thumper said. “Thirty seconds at least. Couple minutes at most.”
“Sahil, you have a good line to her?”
“Yeah.”
“Wright and I are moving up.”
“Roger,” Thumper said.
Lincoln led the way on the approach, with Wright close behind, just off his left shoulder. The compound was isolated, built on an outcropping thrust out in an artificial lake, and surrounded by a wall, three meters high. The main gate didn’t have any guards posted outside, but their early reconnaissance had mapped out several vantage points from the central house that had clear lines of sight to the entrance. There was too much courtyard to cross between the gate and the nearest building. They’d decided the infiltration team would go over the wall; that meant Lincoln and Wright.
“All right,” Thumper said. “Smoker just left. Sahil, am I good to move?”
“You’re good,” Sahil answered.
“Thumper, moving up.”
Lincoln reached the wall of the compound and dropped to a crouch. Wright slid in behind him, covering the opposite direction. The darkness of the Martian night and the limited lighting around the wall probably made their reactive camo unnecessary, but they were both running it anyway. Judging from what they’d seen earlier, their suits gave them an overwhelming advantage, but when it came to this kind of work, Lincoln never wanted to go into a fair fight. He’d take any and every advantage he could get.
“On the box now,” Thumper reported.
“We’re at the wall,” Lincoln answered. “Holding for you.”
“Sixty seconds,” she said.
“Prepping ascenders,” Wright said. She released a pair of palm-sized drones, which lofted silently upward, each spooling out a thin cable as they went.
While the ascenders attached themselves at the top, Lincoln pulled a device off his harness and affixed it to the wall next to him. A guard house was on the opposite side. The device was a penetrating scanner, and once it had identified human signatures, it would track them and continuously update the team’s threat matrix without requiring anyone on the team to maintain visual contact. When it came online, the scanner showed five figures manning the guard station. That was two more than they’d seen throughout the day. Five was a lot to deal with.
The guard house posed the first big risk; that was where the most immediate response would come from. Thumper was working on the automated security system, but there were redundancies built in. For Lincoln and Wright to breach the guard house undetected, Thumper had to bring the system down from an external source. But once she took it offline, Lincoln and Wright only had a few seconds to get in and disable the system from the inside, to prevent the whole thing from going off.
And with five hostiles inside, that was going to be tricky work.
“Thirty seconds,” Thumper said.
Lincoln and Wright hooked in to the ascenders, activated the retractors, and climbed the wall. They held just below the top.
“Sahil, are we good to top the wall?” Lincoln asked.
“Negative, stay put,” he answered. “Fella on the balcony, main house.”
They held position, feet against the wall, waiting for the all-clear. Even though he knew the chances that anyone could see them were remote, Lincoln still felt exposed and mostly helpless, suspended there.
“Ten seconds,” Thumper said.
<
br /> “Lincoln, you’re clear to top,” Sahil said. “Thump, you got two hostiles headed around your way.”
“We’re going over,” Lincoln said. He switched to direct channel with Wright, and counted it off. “One, two, three.”
On three, they simultaneously completed the ascent, clambered over the wall, and reset on the opposite side. From there, Wright descended just far enough to where she could kick off the wall and reach the balcony on the second floor of the guard house. Lincoln continued all the way to the ground level.
“Box is tapped,” Thumper said. “I’m pulling back.”
Lincoln unhooked from the ascender, drew in close against the back wall of the guard house. Above him, Wright slid silently over the balcony rail and into position.
“Wright, in position.”
“Lincoln, in position.”
“Thumper, good to go.”
“Sahil,” Lincoln said. “I’m gonna need your help downstairs.”
“Roger, Link, I got you. Two hostiles front room. One in the back.”
Lincoln pulled his short-barreled rifle in tight, slid up next to the rear door, let his suit scan the lock and spoof the credentials.
“Wright, you have good marks?”
“Roger, good marks,” she said.
Lincoln activated the lock on the rear door, grasped the handle and turned it, keeping his weapon shouldered with one hand.
“Go on Thumper’s count. Thumper… on you.”
“Stand by…” Thumper said. And then, “All right, security shut down in five, four, three, two, one. Go, execute, execute, execute.”
Before she’d finished saying her first “execute”, Lincoln was already in motion. The rear door swung smoothly open, and before the man inside could even turn at the sound, Lincoln had felled him with three quick shots. One of the men in the front room cried out in surprise, but in the next moment, Lincoln was there, dispatching him before he could sound any alarm. The second man in the front room was already down, taken by Sahil’s long range shot.
