by Marko Kloos
“I thought about it,” she says. “Briefly. Very briefly.”
“But no.”
“But no,” she confirms. “None of my guys want to stay here on Ice Station Bumfuck, and I’m not going to leave my troops. Besides, I’d run out of shit to do here really fucking fast.”
“The recreational opportunities are limited,” I agree.
“It has its good sides. Clean air, lovely scenery. Peace and quiet, if you’re into that sort of thing.” Her tone makes it clear that she isn’t into that sort of thing, as if I needed the clarification.
“You’ve not been on a spaceship when the Lankies are nearby,” I say. “Down here, you get to hold a rifle and shoot at them. Run, hide, fight. Up there, you have nothing. All you can do is hold on to the nearest handrail and hope that the people in command know what the hell they’re doing. Most scared I’ve ever been in my life, and that’s no lie.”
Sergeant Fallon says nothing for a few moments. We walk up to the ops center door, and she puts one hand on the door handle.
“You’re scared because you still have something to lose,” she says. “That’s the main difference between us. And I really hope that we make it back through again. So you get to marry your sweetheart and stop sticking your idealistic neck out for the greater good. You don’t want to keep doing this soldiering shit and then find one day that you’re not scared of dying anymore.”
“You got no fear of dying, you got nothing to live for, either,” I say.
She rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head. “Spare me the motivational-calendar quotes, Andrew. Every time I think you’ve learned a thing or two, you get all un-jaded on me again. You are such a babe.” She wrenches the ops center door open. “T-minus eight,” she says. “Pack your shit and enjoy that clean white snow one last time. I’ll see you at the airfield at 1800 Zulu.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “See you there.”
I walk up to Dr. Stewart’s office to find it an even bigger mess than usual. Janet is going through the drawer of her desk and tossing things into a pair of open shipping containers in the middle of the office floor. She looks up when I step into the open doorway.
“It’s the most intoxicated soldier in the world,” she says. “From a science point of view, I am surprised you are walking around.”
“With some difficulty,” I say. “Packing for something?”
She looks around at the mess all around her. “Four years of research in this place. You’d figure I would have had some time to get some sort of organization into place. It’s not like there are a lot of distractions around here.”
“Ever heard of digital storage?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m old-fashioned. I like to mark up my pages while drinking coffee. It’s how my brain works best. Most of it is scanned and in the data banks.”
“So I’m guessing you are evacuating with us tonight.”
“Damn right I am.” She pulls a small notebook out of a stack of loose printouts and tosses it into the nearest transport bin. The stack loses its cohesion, and papers slide onto the floor. Janet pushes them aside with her foot.
“I’ve been here for forty-seven months. I’ve not seen my family in well over a year. I don’t have any kids that were born here. My family’s back on Earth, in Pennsylvania. I’m already six months past my original contract commitment. You bet your ass I’m taking the last ride out of here. I don’t think there’ll be much need of astrophysics research here in the future.”
“They’re at Mars,” I say. “The Lankies. They’ve wiped out the colony. I saw it when we flew by. No telling when they’ll move on Earth, but they will.”
“Then that’s all the more reason to get home. I’d much rather die with my husband and my kids than out here by myself.” She picks up another small stack of notebooks and flings them into the bin next to her. “Piece of advice, Andrew. If you ever get married and have kids, and they offer you a job that will take you thirty fucking light-years away from home, tell them to smooch your taint. Even if they offer a hundred percent monthly bonus. You can’t read good-night stories to your bank account, or brush its hair, or teach it how to ride a bike for the first time.”
I don’t have anything to pack except for the set of battle armor I left in Constable Guest’s office. The tall chief constable is behind his desk when I walk in. Unlike Dr. Stewart’s environment, his is orderly and neat, and he is not in the process of packing up things.
“Staying here,” I say, not a question but a statement of fact.
“Of course I’m staying here,” he says. “This is my home.”
I don’t even consider trying to talk him out of his decision because I know I would get precisely nowhere. He has lived here for ten years by choice, both his daughters grew up here, and he’s an essential member of this community. If things are about to end for humanity, they will end right here in this place for him, and he is perfectly fine with that prospect.
“I don’t think we’ll see each other in a few weeks,” I say. “So I guess this time it’s a genuine farewell.”
“In the classic, literal sense,” he says. Then he gets out of his chair and extends his hand. “May you fare well, Sergeant Grayson. Not just for the trip, I mean. With whatever comes after for you.”
I shake his hand, which is about twice the size of mine.
“And you, Constable Guest.”
I gather my armor and leave the office. Constable Guest sits down again and returns to whatever paperwork he was working on when I walked in, steady and predictable as the sunrise.
I spend the rest of the day taking one last walk on the Ellipse and letting the chrono tick down to 1800 hours. On the Rocks is as busy as it was yesterday, but this time I give the place a wide berth. Just the sight of the little plastic tumblers they use to serve their drinks is making me feel queasy again.
In the midafternoon, I run out of places to walk. I’m anxious the way I always am before a really big event—shipping out for boot camp, or preparing for a combat drop. I put on my armor in the admin center and stroll out through the surface doors into the sunlit and snow-packed streets of New Longyearbyen. We fought a battle here against our own allies, a little over two months ago. I walk over to the corner where we had one of our autocannon emplacements set up. The concrete barriers we used for cover have long since been removed, but I can still remember exactly where I stood and what I did when the SI troopers tried to force a landing here in front of the admin center. On the thick walls of the building behind me, deep craters still bear witness to the strafing runs from the Midway’s Shrikes. On the other corner just to my left, we lost half a dozen HD troopers to that cannon fire. I’ve never been able to revisit a site where I fought a battle before, and it’s a strange, detached feeling. That building behind me is so solid that it will survive this generation, and the next one, and then the one after that. It will even survive a Lanky attack if they come and take this place. In a hundred years, those marks left by the armor-piercing grenades from the Shrikes will still be in that wall, long after everyone who has fought in this battle is dead and forgotten, and nobody knows about the little skirmish that took place here, a minor footnote in a very short chapter of colonial history.
We’re in one of New Svalbard’s perennial daylight phases, so when I get to the airfield for the last batch of pickup flights, it’s still bright and sunny outside. The cold is tolerable enough that I am not wearing my helmet. Overall, it feels a lot like the day I set foot onto this moon a few months ago when we arrived on Midway, before all the local trouble started.
There are fewer drop ships on the ground than when I arrived this morning. A flight of four Wasps is standing on the VSTOL pad in a single row, tail ramps down, with refueling probes in their fuel receptacles. I can still see the hastily repaired damage on the tarmac where the missiles from Midway’s Shrikes blew up the underground aviation fuel tank. The drop ships are refueling from mobile bowsers on t
ank-like treads.
There are maybe fifty civilians waiting in the nearby main building that houses the control tower. Some are families with children. All have luggage with them, standard cargo boxes and a motley assortment of personal bags and polyplast suitcases. Considering the civilian population of New Svalbard, which is somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand, I had expected more takers for the evacuation offer.
Standing in the group is Dr. Stewart, looking a little lost in her oversized cold-weather clothing. She has a wheeled tote next to her, and she is fidgeting with a PDP in her hands. Then she looks up and spots me, and I give her a smile and a nod that I hope to be reassuring. If I feel anxious at the prospect of running a Lanky blockade, I can’t imagine how these civilians must feel.
Outside, three of the colony’s large six-wheeled snow tractors pull up on the tarmac. The rear doors open, and a bunch of HD troopers come filing out, each with a rifle slung across the chest and carrying a personal kit duffle. I recognize a bunch of them from our earlier defense of the colony. This is Sergeant Fallon’s inner core of 330th AIB Spartans, the NCOs and pilots who had key positions during our little rebellion. Sure enough, the last people to disembark from the last tractor in the line are Sergeant Fallon herself and the CO of the battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Kemp. I walk over to the door and step outside to join them.
“Let’s get the hell out of this place,” Sergeant Fallon says when I walk up to her and the lieutenant colonel. “Let’s give these people their little moon back.”
“How many of ours are staying?”
“Thirty from the 309th,” Colonel Kemp says. “Eleven from the 330th.”
“We put them under the administrator and Constable Guest,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Camp Frostbite is keeping a garrison in place, too. One reinforced company of SI.”
“They know nobody’s going to relieve them again if things go to shit?”
“They do. Figure they’ll take the devil they know over the devil they don’t.”
“That’s it, then,” I say, and look across the windswept tarmac toward the waiting drop ships.
“That’s it,” Sergeant Fallon confirms. “Now let’s get those civvies strapped in and ready for dustoff. I never was a big fan of garrison duty. Too much idle time.”
We board the drop ships in mostly segregated fashion. The Homeworld Defense troopers claim one of the drop ships, and the crew chiefs load the civilians on the other three. Some of the smaller kids fuss and cry when they are led up the ramp of the forbidding-looking war machines, and it occurs to me that they are young enough never to have been on a spaceship despite being colony-born.
I get on the ship with the civvies just so they have someone else in battle armor on their ship other than the loadmaster if things go wobbly. Atmospheric flight in a drop ship can be alarmingly shaky even when you’re not on an ice moon with a volatile atmosphere, and my presence may give some reassurance.
We leave the ground at precisely 1800 hours Zulu time and begin our ascent. I don’t bother putting on my helmet and asking the flight deck for data-link permission for my usual external-view sightseeing. I’ve seen enough snow and ice down here to last me for a few years at least.
Good luck, Constable, I think. May you live a long and uneventful life with your family down there.
The flight deck on the Regulus is huge and very empty. Our four Wasps are the only drop ships on the deck when we depart New Svalbard orbit. There are three Shrikes parked on the other side of the flight deck, and a whole lot of bare deck in between. A Navigator-class carrier, built for housing a planetary-assault task force, usually has thirty-two drop ships, enough to launch two full battalions of Spaceborne Infantry, but Regulus was in the dock for refits when the Lankies arrived, and her usual complement of Shrikes and Dragonflies was either assigned to other ships or lost in the Mars battle. On the plus side, we have more than enough elbow room for the civilians and the almost three thousand troops of the 309th and 330th Autonomous Infantry Battalions who are already busy erecting makeshift privacy walls and rows of collapsible cots on the flight deck.
As a fleet NCO, I have the right to claim whatever open berthing space they have on this ship, but it wouldn’t feel right to run off and leave the HD troopers I’ve fought with against my own command, so I go and find Sergeant Fallon to stay close to her gang of rogues.
“We’re claiming those drop ships,” she says to me when I get to where the command section of the 330th is milling around and supervising the construction of their section of Tent City.
“Claiming them for what?” I ask.
“Command posts. One ship for the 309th, one for the 330th, one to store all the emergency rations so we can supervise the distribution. They’re taking up space on the deck anyway. Might as well use them for temporary berthing. They’re big enough inside.”
“Might as well,” I concur.
Overhead, the 1MC trills its ascending two-tone signal for the beginning of an all-ship announcement.
“Now hear this: All hands, prepare for departure. Repeat, all hands prepare for departure. Secure all docking collars.”
“Well,” Sergeant Fallon says after the end-of-announcement trill. “It’s all or nothing now. Earth or bust.”
“Earth or bust,” I agree, but without enthusiasm. I’ve seen too many times what it looks like when a warship in space goes bust.
CHAPTER 21
We decelerate for the transition point four days later in deep space way out in the Fomalhaut system, the strangest and most colorful task force I’ve ever been a part of.
We have three carriers: Regulus, Minsk, and Midway. Regulus is as large by displacement as the much older Minsk and Midway put together, but they are still three carriers in close formation, and I’ve never seen that many together in one spot. There are the two cruisers, Avenger and Long Beach. One destroyer—the Chinese Shen Yang—and three frigates. With the three SRA supply ships and our own Portsmouth fast fleet oiler, there are thirteen ships from two different navies and four separate nations in battle-group formation in front of the SRA transition point. Dmitry is undoubtedly back on Minsk with his marine comrades, and I imagine their flight deck is probably even more crowded than ours.
“Commencing resupply operation,” the refueling operator on Portsmouth says as Avenger comes alongside to take on reactor fuel.
I’m in the cargo hold of the Wasp drop ship serving as the command post for the 330th AIB. As a fairly junior NCO, I have no business in the carrier’s CIC, but I don’t want to stay out of the loop and stare at a flight deck ceiling while we are in the middle of combat ops. So I’ve used my data access as a combat controller to patch into the nonsensitive parts of Regulus’s shipboard tactical network. We liberated a holographic projector, and the forward bulkhead of the drop ship is serving as a display screen, showing the feed from the drop-ship computers that are talking to the tactical network. It’s a nonregulation setup, but the Regulus crew either haven’t discovered it yet or simply don’t care. I put the ship-to-ship channel on the overhead speakers, and the screen is showing the feed from multiple external cameras on the Regulus. All around the carrier, ships are coasting into and out of formations. We are refueling all the ships in the task force from the supply ships before accelerating through the Alcubierre node and into the solar system.
“God, what a shitload of steel,” Sergeant Fallon says from behind my left shoulder. She waves a half-eaten emergency ration bar at the screen. “You want to know why the welfare civvies are eating shit, there’s your answer. That’s where all the money went.” She takes another bite from the bar and makes a face. “Speaking of eating shit. This is awful. It tastes like a chunk of boot sole that someone marinated in sweat for a week. I thought the fleet ate better than the mudlegs.”
“Those are emergency rations,” I reply. “Once you’re down to those, you don’t care much about flavor. One thousand calories per bar.”
“Give me your unadulterated fleet-trained, c
ombat-experienced opinion, Andrew. How good is this battle plan they cooked up?”
I think about it for a moment—not that I haven’t played out the scenario in my head a hundred times since the briefing earlier today. I’m no longer invited to the all-brass conferences, but the COs of the HD battalions were, and they were courteous enough to brief their senior NCOs.
“It’s actually pretty damn smart,” I say. “The little Korean brigadier cooked it up. Sly son of a bitch. I’d hate to fight a battle against him.”
Indy will play scout again. They combed through all the data we brought back from our scouting run and came up with an algorithm for the predictable patrol pattern of the Lanky seed ships. In another forty-five minutes, Indy will accelerate and transition back to the solar system by herself, and if the algorithm is on the money, she will pop out of the node at a moment when the Lanky ships are at the far ends of their patrol ellipse. Seven minutes later, the now-empty supply ships will follow Indy and play bait before the rest of the task force comes through at maximum safe-transit velocity. The crews of Indy and the supply ships will be stripped to their bare minimum. The remaining crew members have all volunteered for what is dreadfully close to a suicide run. If all goes well, the Lankies will give chase to the empty supply ships and make way for the rest of the task force to come through the node seven minutes later.
“What if they mined the exit after you guys went through right between them?”
“Then the supply ships are going to be minesweepers,” I say. “Nonreusable ones.”
“Damn.” Sergeant Fallon wraps up her emergency ration bar again and sticks it into the chest pocket of her tunic. “Don’t ever let me say again that fleet deck moppers have no balls.”
We watch the resupply ballet as the smaller combatants take their turns on both sides of the Portsmouth. There’s nothing left on the supply ships but reactor fuel and drinking water. We used up the last of the packaged rations and New Svalbard bring-alongs yesterday, and now we’re down to emergency bars. They’ll keep us alive until we get back—if we get back—but they take all the fun out of chow time. Under normal circumstances, I would get bored watching frigates refueling from a fleet oiler, but right now I wouldn’t mind the whole process taking longer, because when it’s over, we are jumping back into the shark tank again. Everyone on this flight deck is nervous and anxious, and we’re all trying to pretend that we’re not.
