by P. R. Adams
A hot breeze blew through the cabin, rustling Fontana’s hair. Finally, Rimes turned back to Meyers. “I saw a light?”
“There was an exposed cable,” Meyers said weakly. He pointed toward the shuttle tail. “It was like a third rail, the unshielded section of the ceiling there.”
Rimes saw it now. A black spot maybe two meters in diameter, barely visible in the shadows. He pulled his visor down and saw the details: bootprints in the still-hot, blackened plates.
“You discharged one of the capacitors?”
“It killed one of them. Knocked a couple others down. Mostly, I think it surprised them.”
“It broke the attack. We’d all be dead if you hadn’t done it.”
Meyers snorted. He wiped blood from his face. “They’ll figure it out and they’ll come again. In the heat of battle, it probably seemed like a grenade.”
Rimes took stock of the scene. There were ten of them left, eight of them mobile. They were slowly getting ahead in the struggle with their ammunition now that they had so few to actually fire the weapons. It was a grim thing to find consolation in.
“Get the radio working.” Rimes sighed heavily. “We need an extract or there won’t be anyone left to save.”
29
27 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
RIMES SQUEEZED in closer to the radio, pressing against Meyers in the cramped cockpit space. Sand scraped beneath boots; environment suits and armor creaked. The air was stuffy and thick with their breath and sweat. The sun was quickly heating the shuttle hull and the sand outside, its brightness obliterating any hope of hiding the bloody reminders of the earlier battle.
Meyers excitedly jabbed a forefinger at the radio. “There. You hear it?”
There had definitely been something a moment before, but Rimes couldn’t be sure what. He held his breath.
Again, he heard the sound—a strange, rhythmic pulse.
It didn’t sound like a transmission from the Valdez or from any other ship for that matter. It had more of a machine-like quality about it, but it was so weak he couldn’t be sure.
Meyers fidgeted with the radio controls. “We’re close. Ten minutes maybe. I just need to find where we’re losing power. It may be a short in the radio. Maybe we may have to rig a new antenna.”
Rimes barely managed a grunt in acknowledgement. He was running on stims and painkillers now, and he was all too aware of the limits and the cost of using them for too long. His body was holding up, but another day, two at best, and his mind would shut down. He crawled out of the cockpit and walked stiffly to the back of the craft.
Munoz lay behind a seat at the shuttle’s tail, head slowly rotating as he scanned the horizon. Theroux sat a meter inside the shuttle, eyes half-closed as he watched Shaw sleep.
Quiet as his body would allow him, Rimes made his way to Theroux and settled against the bulkhead beside him. “You gave a good accounting of yourself.”
“Adrenaline,” Theroux said after a moment. He didn’t move.
Rimes glanced at Shaw sleeping peacefully and wondered at the damage he’d suffered. Sleep’s release…it’s magical when it can free you from all that pain.
“I’ve been in a lot of sticky situations, Captain, close to death more than a few times. This is the worst I’ve seen. You and the giant…you’re something else.”
“Munoz?” Rimes watched Munoz for a moment. “I thought he might be a good match. He’s got their speed; he’s more than a match for their strength. Chemicals can do amazing things with the human body.”
“Like the stims you’re taking?”
Rimes looked at Theroux again. “Aren’t you?” The little man refused to look into Rimes’s eyes.
Finally, Theroux closed his eyes fully. “I’m not a Kimmy like Munoz, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve been at this going on thirty years. As an agent of the Cartel, I've trained since childhood to do exactly what we’re doing here. I’m damned good at what I do or my employers wouldn’t have sent me. It’s unfortunate you lost so many people, but you’re going against the best of the best right now. Losses are inevitable.”
“It makes decisions easier.” Rimes watched for a reaction.
“Your friend Shaw there, I’ve left people like him to die. You learn to see them as tools. They have a job—pilot me to the drop-off point, hack the system, extract a vital organ. Once that job is done, they’re completely expendable. You need to learn that.”
Rimes winced. The words, no matter how inhuman they sounded, were true. He’d never had to run a mission with such a complex objective that it required such an expendable person, but it was part of the training and it was understood that at some point, everyone was expendable.
“What’s your next move, Captain?”
“We should have the radio up in a few minutes. We’ll call for an evac. We just need to hold out until then.”
Theroux opened his eyes again. “And if they can’t spare a ship? Or if they’re gone?”
Destroyed, you mean. They’re up against the same threats we are. They could be just so much floating debris right now. Rimes looked at the bright sky and imagined the cold, dark space beyond it. “Then we’ll have to figure a way to hold out.”
“For months? There’s no food on this planet. What have we got beyond a couple dozen energy bars? Are you prepared to go cannibal?”
Rimes didn’t answer. “Munoz, anything?”
“Still outside our range, Sir.”
“You take a lot of risks.” Theroux finally looked at Rimes. “Saving lives, running off to destroy their ships, burying yourself in the sand beyond the perimeter. It’s even more noticeable in combat. I’ve never seen anyone throw themselves into it like you. But you’re not undisciplined.” Theroux’s eyes slitted. “I think you like the risk. Am I right? It’s a thrill for you?”
“No.” Rimes realized immediately he was lying. “I do what I do for my country. And now, with the stakes we’re up against, it’s all about saving our entire species.”
Theroux seemed to consider that for a moment, then he jerked his head toward the bound female genie a meter beyond Shaw. “What do you plan to do with your prisoner?”
Rimes looked at her. She was slumped, unconscious, face swollen, lower lip cracked. Wavy auburn hair framed battered but sharp, pretty features. Without her armor, she was an impressive specimen to behold, an excellent representation of the pinnacle of human evolution, so long as one considered it inevitable humans would lose their humanity.
“Take her back for trial.” Rimes’s voice was matter-of-fact, calm, but Kwon’s needs pulsed with each heartbeat. “Murder, grand larceny…whatever.”
Meyers called excitedly from the cockpit. “I’ve got it!”
Rimes traced his way back to the cockpit and crawled in next to Meyers.
Meyers sat on the opposite side of the radio, his bruised face glowing. “Go ahead, Valdez.”
Fingers shaking with excitement, Rimes reached for the radio, touching it as if to ensure it was real. He tuned his earpiece to the radio frequency. They were so close now.
“We read you, Sergeant Meyers. Go ahead.”
“Valdez, this is Captain Rimes. We have ten survivors down here, but we’ve sustained significant casualties following enemy engagement. Emergency beacon is running. We need an immediate evac.”
There was a pause then the line came to life again. “Captain Rimes, this is Captain Fripp.”
“Good to hear your voice, Sir. We sure could use a hand down here.”
“I’d love to send something your way, but we’ve got our hands full up here as well. We’re without a functional shuttle at the moment. The hangar deck is a wreck, although thanks to your Sergeant Gilbert, that’s the extent of the damage. His team eliminated a boarding party.”
Rimes closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Any other ships that might have a shuttle, Sir?”
“The damned genies have been hitting us non-stop. The
y haven’t done much damage since the first assault, but that was bad enough. We lost the Qingdao and Zhanjiang, and the Munich’s taken a real beating. They also managed to knock out the Tabar, so we’re having some real challenges with SIGINT while they effect repairs.”
Rimes couldn’t imagine trying to run a task force without signals intelligence. It was unlikely the genies had encryption the Tabar couldn’t crack. That was probably why they attacked it.
“How’re you holding up, Sir?”
“The worst of it’s their mind games. We’ve got everyone watching everyone else to make sure we’re in control of ourselves. At least we’ve given them a black eye. I’m surprised they haven’t lost their taste for the battle yet.” Fripp coughed quietly and lowered his voice. “How are you holding up, Captain?”
“Well, we’re down to ten, Sir, and two of them aren’t really mobile. They’ve hit us pretty hard.” Rimes heard his voice starting to crack. He stopped, swallowed. “We repelled an attack a few hours ago, but they killed most of the wounded then.”
“Do whatever it takes to survive.” Fripp’s voice was firm but gentle. “We just need a few more hours. They’re running out of ships. They have to be. We must have taken out seven or eight with our missiles alone. They’re fanatics to keep coming like they are.”
“We’ll do what we can, Sir. Rimes out.” Rimes disconnected and squeezed his eyes against tears that wouldn’t have threatened had he not been so overwhelmed with fatigue. He remembered holding Molly, whispering in her ear, afraid to wake the boys. He remembered chasing Jared through Midway Park, the two of them laughing as Calvin scowled. He remembered Calvin’s birth and the complications, the sleepless nights at home with Jared while Molly recovered in the hospital.
Those memories weren’t enough. He wanted to see Calvin walk. He wanted to see the boys grow into men. He wanted Molly; he so badly wanted to show her he was worthy of her love.
“Captain?”
Rimes looked up. Meyers had a strange look on his face. He was staring at the radio intently, excitedly. The Valdez wouldn’t have sent another message, not so soon.
Meyers pointed at the radio, transfixed. “It’s that signal again.”
Rimes reconnected. The signal was definitely there, stronger now that the radio was fully functional. There was a vaguely familiar pattern to it.
“It’s not the Valdez.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Rimes tried to block everything else out. The signal was definitely a pattern, a series of tones and beeps. “I’m sure of it.”
Meyers nodded. “I know.” His eyes defocused as he brought up a virtual interface to his earpiece. “There should be something on it in our signals database if we both recognize it.”
Hypnotized, Rimes listened to the rhythm that teased his memory while Meyers worked through the signals data. Meyers shared a workspace with Rimes and began eliminating possible sources.
Rimes caught the pattern, began humming it quietly. Natural background signals wouldn’t be so strong or so perfectly rhythmic. Automated signals would, but I can’t imagine anything that would generate an automatic signal on such a remote world. A probe?
Meyers stiffened suddenly. “You’re not going to believe this.” A data packet blinked in the shared workspace, then played.
“Civilian SOS?” Rimes squinted, concentrating on the playback. The sounds were almost identical, with any differences potentially explainable by atmospheric noise. “Can you get a bearing and distance?”
“Sure, but while I do that, you might want to look at this.” Meyers shared another data packet.
Rimes opened the data packet and flicked through the pages. The signal analysis in the packet was more thorough. It was definitely a civilian SOS, but not a standard one. The identifying tag indicated it originated from an ADMP communications system. “That’s proprietary. It should only ride on ADMP frequencies.”
Meyers smiled. “So look at the last page.”
Two flicks and Rimes found it. The frequency was restricted, but it wasn’t ADMP. It was military. Commandos. “What the hell?”
“Whoever set that up, they’ve got our gear—Commando gear.”
Rimes considered the implications. It can’t be the genies. Whatever equipment they had aboard those ships was damaged beyond use, and they pursued me. They didn’t even try to repair those ships. And there’s no chance they had any Commando gear in the first place. That leaves ADMP, maybe using Commando gear. Or the Commandos themselves.
“Did you get heading and distance yet?”
“Fifty-two point seven klicks, three-sixteen.” Meyers was visibly irritated. “I was trying to get a look at the area through the imagery data we had, but my earpiece glitched.”
“Really?” Rimes thought back to the way his earpiece had glitched while they were flying over the mountain range. He searched for the altimeter readings Shaw had forwarded him. “Try it again, but if it glitches, leave it alone. I’ll send you the real-time altimeter readings we were getting on the shuttle.”
Meyers accepted the altimeter readings then tried the imagery data again. “Same thing.” He shook his head and let the software cycle again. “I haven’t seen anything like that before. Let me run this against what you sent. There’s always a chance they…“ He smiled. “Yeah. That altimeter packet worked. That far out, it’s not as accurate, but there you go. Looks like a hill, maybe. Check it out.”
His curiosity slowly building, Rimes inspected the image Meyers sent. Contours painted the image of gently rolling hills and flat plains. Nothing about the hill stood out in the least.
“What would the Commandos be doing with an ADMP SOS?” Meyers seemed to be asking himself.
Rimes looked out the rear of the shuttle. Theroux was now lying flat, a half-meter to Munoz’s right. They seemed to be caught up in conversation, enjoying the heat of the sun. “I can’t make sense of that either.” Rimes said after several seconds. “What would you think if I pitched a crazy idea to you?”
“You mean like sending two shuttles over to inspect the Erikson while the rest of the fleet looks on?”
“Crazier. And that wasn’t my idea.”
Meyers scowled. “Okay. I’d think you were nuts.”
“Not helpful.”
“So pitch it.” Meyers look said he was worried Rimes seriously might be cracking under the stress.
“We stay here, we’re going to die. All of us. We’re outnumbered nearly two to one, and that’s counting wounded and non-combatants.”
Meyers’s mouth gaped. “You want to make a run for the transmission source?”
“We leave Shaw and Plauche with Sung. You rig those capacitors up again to fry anybody coming through the airlock. We set a surprise for anyone trying to come through this little hole in the hatch, and then we push hard for the SOS source. Maybe we find survivors. Maybe we find some better weapons. Or food and water.”
Meyers chewed his lip. “What about that pushing they do? If we take Fontana with us, won’t they just shut these guys down and slaughter them? Hell, won’t they simply track us the second we leave the shuttle and slaughter us?”
“Yeah, it’s possible. But I’ve been thinking about it. They’ve already shown they can’t go on forever. Some of them slept last night, but I think they kept the ones who could push—the telepaths—up. Why not do that, right? If they can feel an approaching mind or they know exactly where we are, it makes perfect sense. So what if, now that the sun is up and they’ve tried the attack, they’re letting the telepaths rest?”
Meyers nodded excitedly. “So we just have to slip out without them seeing us?”
“They’re beyond BAS range.” Rimes inspected the desert through the opening into the cockpit. “We can’t be anything more than blips to them right now. We start sneaking away from the wreck in twos and threes, coming back one or two at a time. Folks hide out in the cockpit until we’re all away. Sung flips the power. You rig it with a password only you, Fontana, and I know. No on
e gets in, even if they shut them down or try to get Sung to shut power off. Before we leave, we send the password and our destination to Valdez and tell them to rescue the wounded first.”
“And when the genies realize we’re gone?”
“We’ll have a lead on them and no wounded to slow us. Lay a couple of traps to bog them down, I think we’d have a decent chance.”
Meyers shook his head. “Munoz won’t be able to keep up. I don’t think Watanabe will, either.”
Rimes smiled ruefully. “Stims.” It wasn’t like Munoz wasn’t already shortening his life with the help of chemicals. Watanabe was already doing better than anyone had expected her to do. “We’ll keep a steady pace instead of worrying about speed. We’ll need him if we run into trouble. You’ve seen what he’s capable of.”
Meyers went silent for a minute, then pointed at Fontana. “You said earlier you think they rushed the cabin to get her. If you really think that, they’ll come after us. That gives the wounded a shot.”
It’s not great odds, but it’s better than nothing.
Meyers’s eyes turned to the prisoner. “What about her?”
“She comes with us. We can’t give them any further incentives to attack the shuttle. So you’re onboard?”
“I don’t have to like it to realize it’s a better shot than the alternative.” Meyers frowned. “Yeah, sounds great. Where do I sign?”
Rimes chuckled. “Okay, recharge the capacitors and run some cables. I’m going to see if they’ve got a sniper out there.”
“And how you do you plan to do that?”
Standing, Rimes pointed to the floor above them. “I need that belly camera. That’s going to be a target an ambitious sniper can’t pass up.”
“I’ll be ready to go in thirty minutes.”
“I’m going to send Watanabe and Kershaw to the cockpit once I’m sure they don’t have a sniper watching us.”
Meyers stared at the radio for a moment. “Let’s hope they don’t.”
If they do, this is over before it begins.
