Outpost

by W. P. Brothers

  Neville took careful steps backward, afraid to turn away and make noise. He would find his way back to the trail, flat ground be damned! His heel lowered over a branch, which snapped loudly as he put his weight on it.

  The peeing man looked over his shoulder, did a double take. He shouted, turning around as he zipped up the front of his coveralls. Neville didn’t think twice, but ran as hard as he could back the way he had come. Gunshots broke the air, and he heard shouts and footsteps following him. He glanced to his left, saw another group of enemies running toward him from across the road, rifles in hand.

  Neville paused, not sure what to do. His pistol? He’d emptied it in the fort. A chunk of bark exploded off the side of a nearby tree as more shots reverberated off the rocky slopes above. He bolted up the hillside, fighting against the stitch in his side to climb the steep slope. He slipped, fell onto his face, but was back on his feet in a second.

  “Grab him!” A voice shouted from behind him.

  Neville glanced over his shoulder, saw the peeing man running up the hill at him on skinny, wiry legs. Neville fought with everything he had to go faster, to push his legs as fast as they could go, but lead weights seemed to be attached to his waist, and he felt his pace slowing.

  Then something struck him hard in the side and he hit the ground, struggling against the peeing man, who had tackled him. Neville rolled, kicked blindly at the man, connected with something. But then others were around him. Neville felt himself being dragged upward by his collar, saw a tall, thickly built woman raising her fist, and then stars burst across his vision. He tried to raise his hands to protect his head, but then another impact jarred him, and everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kim raced up the stairwell, savoring the burn in her legs, the feeling of motion. The metal grating of the stairs clanged beneath her athletic shoes as she reached the landing for deck four, turned, and continued up, her pulse pounding in her ears. A small group of men saluted briskly as they clattered past her in the other direction, their white PT shirts stained with sweat. Kim had just enough time to recognize them as she returned the salute without breaking her stride. Lieutenant Hillman in front, trailed by Trusso and Hardin — both of them marines — and Sergeant Kilwalski. It was good to see Hillman and the others keeping busy, and it was even better that Kilwalski was active again. The tough marine sergeant had nearly died facing the Frontin leader at Kim’s side. By the looks of him, he had recovered well.

  The stairwells were always popular in the mornings and at night with the more fitness-conscious members of the crew. While the Verdun had a small weight room and fitness center, it was necessary to take to the corridors and stairways when they were deserted in order to get a good run. In the years since Kim had come aboard the Verdun, she had come to look forward to seeing the familiar faces of her fellow morning runners, the brotherhood of the corridors. Now that Lieutenant Urquhart and Commander Holsey had joined the fitness crowd, she anticipated running into them both at least once every morning.

  Kim reached the landing for deck three, took a left, and ran out into the corridor, the flat flooring feeling strange beneath her feet after the grueling staircase. She tried to clear her thoughts of the past few days, focus only on her breathing, but found herself running through the same scenarios again and again.

  The engines are repaired. The Verdun leaves to get help, returns with an armada, and finds the shore party dead. The engines are ruined and the Verdun tries to attack the armada at Kensington, but goes down in flames. None of her scenarios seemed to end well, and the past couple days since her conversation with Holsey had given her lots of time to mull them over.

  The enemy convoys into the solar system had stopped more than twenty-four hours ago, no doubt meaning that whoever was sending the ships was aware that their reinforcements weren’t getting through. Without the distraction of easy prey, the crew had become measurably more apprehensive. Kim had hoped that the bustle of the ongoing repairs would keep them occupied, but she could sense their mounting tension, their growing desire to know.

  What next?

  Kim rounded a corner, saw the slender shape of Lieutenant Urquhart up ahead. If running weren’t going to clear her head, maybe Callista’s bubbly optimism would do the trick. Kim accelerated to join the younger woman, her calf muscles burning in protest.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

  Urquhart looked over at Kim, jumped slightly, and yanked her headphones off her ears. “Good morning, Captain. Sorry I didn’t hear you. I was…”

  “No need to apologize.” Kim did her best to control her breathing, to keep up with Urquhart’s pace.

  “You don’t, uh…” Urquhart pointed to her headphones as they reached a straight stretch of corridor.

  Kim felt her brow furrow, then realized Urquhart was referring to music. “No, they just fall out of my ears.”

  “Oh.” They rounded another corner. “I couldn’t run without music. You should try different headphones maybe.”

  “Maybe.” Kim bit her lip as they reached another staircase, entered the landing, and then ran down the stairs.

  Talking about running tunes wasn’t exactly chasing her demons away. Kim looked sideways at Urquhart, taking in how young she looked, wishing for just a moment she could be a decade younger and have half the responsibility, to be like Urquhart, a member of the crew and not its leader. In times like this, when a tough decision lay ahead of her, Kim always felt so separated from the men and women under her. She secretly wished she could stand in front of them all and simply talk to them, ask them for their ideas, explain herself, seek their absolution.

  It was a stupid idea. She was here to lead, not run a democracy or a therapy session. Still… She looked over at Urquhart again, an idea coming into her head.

  “Lieutenant,” Kim began, raising her voice over the clatter of their shoes on the stairs. “You spend a fair amount of time with the other junior officers?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “With the enlisted ranks?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Urquhart looked over at Kim, curiosity written on her face.

  They reached Deck Five, turned left and out into another corridor. Kim suppressed her sigh of relief to be off the stairs again.

  “What…” Kim found it hard to form words, feeling suddenly exposed. She swallowed, started again, speaking between breaths. “What is the feeling… among the crew? What is everyone… hoping our next move will be?”

  “I…” Urquhart was clearly caught off guard by the question. “I think we trust you, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant, you can be frank with me.”

  Urquhart slowed her pace, and Kim followed suit. “Well, I think we’d all like the shore party back. We wonder when we’ll hear from our friends.” Urquhart was looking down at her feet as they kept jogging.

  “Are you afraid?” Kim blurted out the question before she could think twice about it.

  “No.” Urquhart looked up, smiled.

  “No.” Kim shook her head, repeating Urquhart’s single word as if she had never heard it before. She had expected Urquhart to say yes, to share with her the common experience of fear, of worry, and find relief from the sharing.

  “No,” Urquhart repeated.

  They kept jogging in silence, their pace slowing gradually as they started to cool down their run. The main shift would start soon. Kim drifted back to her own thoughts, her lists of things to do, her plans to keep harassing Geonor about repairs, the meetings she’d planned with Lieutenant Voth about—

  “My stepfather used to say something.” Urquhart’s voice cut through Kim’s thoughts.

  Kim looked over at Urquhart, could see her smiling, though there was some other, sharper emotion in her eyes as well.

  “He said that, when we serve, our lives don’t belong to us, so we have no business worrying about them.” Urquhart met Kim’s eyes. “I’ve always found that very comforting.”

  Kim considered the star
k simplicity of the statement, felt a sort of calm enter her, save for one nagging worry. “If your lives don’t belong to you, who do they belong to?”

  Urquhart was opening her mouth to answer when a chime played over the loudspeakers, followed by the voice of the night shift radio operator.

  “Captain Morden, Captain Morden. Lieutenant Geonor and Commander Holsey are calling you to the staff lounge immediately.”

  A surge of worry filled the space behind Kim’s breastbone. Lieutenant Geonor wanting to see her in person meant a repair report, and a bad one at that. She’d been in the Navy long enough to know that a good report was usually forwarded via computer. Only bad reports caused engineers to set up meetings, no doubt so they could explain themselves.

  Kim slowed to a halt. “I’ll catch you later, Lieutenant.”

  “See you in a bit.” Obviously too young to know the dire omen of meetings with engineers, Urquhart continued off down the hallway, pushing her headphones back into her ears.

  Kim turned and jogged back up the stairs, then expended herself in one sustained burn to Deck Two. A minute later, she walked, breathless, into the staff meeting room. Holsey stood beside Lieutenant Geonor on the opposite side of the big rectangular table.

  “Good morning,” Kim said, sensing the tension hanging in the room and mingling with the odors of grease, oil, and metal.

  “Good morning,” Geonor wiped his grime-covered hands on the front of his dark blue work coveralls.

  “We’ve uploaded the latest repair report, Captain. We think you should see.” Holsey’s hands were crossed in front of her chest, dark circles under her eyes. She’d made it her personal mission to keep the repairs on task during the past few days, and Kim doubted if she’d slept much.

  That makes two of us.

  Kim stepped forward and sat down at the closest computer terminal, opening its screen and waiting while it started up.

  Geonor stepped to the large display panel on the wall, his hands leaving black smudges on the white buttons as he punched in a series of commands. “I’m sending the report to your terminal now.”

  Kim drummed her fingers on her desk, keeping her posture straight, her breathing even. Whatever the news was, she wouldn’t let anyone see her react.

  The screen flickered white, then blue, then faded into the familiar layout of an engineering report, with columns of text separated by diagrams of ship systems with red arrows on them, explaining the problem. Her eyes rested on the words “irreparable damage.”

  She looked up, met Geonor’s gaze. “The summary, please.”

  “Our engines were already in a bad way after our encounter with the Frontin.” Geonor wiped sweat off his forehead, leaving a black streak to join the splotches on his cheeks and chin. “This latest damage is beyond what I can repair without landing again. Even then, I think I could only get it to half our normal cruising speed. We’ll need a dry dock overhaul to be back to normal. Three weeks at best. Six is more likely, given the number of repairs to other systems I’ve got to make.”

  Kim looked down at her screen, avoiding making eye contact with Holsey, putting off the decision for just a moment longer. “And the communications system?”

  Geonor’s facial expression morphed from pained worry to glowing pride in an instant. “I have good news for you there, ma’am.”

  “You fixed it?” Kim looked up at Geonor again, her eyebrow raising.

  “Aye. We’ve managed to rig an antenna using some spare parts. We had to get a little creative with the wrecked circuitry. The signal will be fuzzy, but the system will be operational in a few hours or so.”

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I got a fair experience with long-range radio equipment in the last war. Our ship got hit right smack in the communications array. We were adrift, and we had to get a signal out, or run out of supplies and die. Our engineer put some odds and ends together and — presto! — we got the radio working and were picked up.”

  Kim tuned out Geonor’s anecdote, meeting Holsey’s eye.

  “What are your orders?” Holsey uncrossed her arms.

  There was only one choice.

  “Mr. Geonor, finish the communications system and then turn your priorities to any remaining repairs of the defensive and offensive systems. I want this ship ready for combat immediately.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Geonor saluted, pressed a few buttons on the computer panel again to close the report, and walked from the room.

  “Commander.” Kim looked at Holsey again. “Begin drawing up a plan to attack Kensington. I want all factors accounted for. Use whichever officers you need.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Holsey held Kim’s gaze for a moment before following Geonor out to the corridor.

  Kim sank down into her chair, turning to the now blank computer screen in front of her. How long had she sat in her room, in front of a computer just like this, writing reports after their last battle? Kim sighed, fighting the sinking dread in her chest.

  She’d already had to write five more condolence letters on this mission and another action report for the ambush at the docks. Now they were headed toward another battle. Somehow, a captain could never know if she was making the right choice before it had been paid for with blood. She wished she could reach into the future and grab the answers to her questions. How many crewmembers would she lose? Had she considered all the options? Was she leading her ship into another massacre?

  “If your lives don’t belong to you, who do they belong to?”

  No one answered, but Kim saw her own reflection on the computer’s polished glass screen. She stared back at herself for a second.

  Then she reached out and eased the screen shut.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jack leaned against one of the empty, steel-framed medical beds, just outside the light thrown by the wire-caged bulbs on the infirmary’s ceiling, watching as Sergeant Curry, one of the marine medics, finished bandaging the prisoner’s wounded leg. The young man’s face scrunched together with each layer of gauze being wrapped around his calf, his limbs pulling tightly against the restraints. Jack pushed aside any sense of pity, concentrating instead on the questions he was going to ask, his mental strategy for the interrogation.

  Jack had never questioned a captive before. Normally, that job fell to trained intelligence personnel, not line officers. But the situation on Kensington was anything but normal, and Jack was tired of fighting an enemy he knew nothing about. Why would humans attack other humans? Why had they attacked Kensington, of all places? Why were people under Jack’s command dying on this backwater dump?

  “He’s ready for you, sir.” Curry turned around and faced Jack as he tucked his medical kit back into his khaki musette bag, his thin face thrown into relief by the play of deep shadows and harsh light from the light bulb above him. “I’ve held off giving him any pain suppressors for the moment like you asked.”

  “It was an order, Sergeant, not a request.”

  “Regardless, that wound is going to hurt terribly without medication.”

  Jack ignored the note of disapproval in Curry’s voice. They weren’t going to waste any more of their dwindling medical supplies than they needed to, not when they may be waiting weeks before a rescue. Besides, while Jack wasn’t about to violate the Alliance’s ban on the torture of advanced, humanoid species, he wasn’t going to fall over himself making the prisoner comfortable.

  “Thank you, Mr. Curry. Dismissed, and shut the door behind you.”

  Curry padded past Jack toward the door. Jack took a step toward the prisoner, but stopped when he heard Major Osterman’s voice behind him.

  “Hold the door. Thank you, Sergeant.”

  The tension in Jack’s shoulders eased a bit. At least he wouldn’t have to do this alone. He turned to face Osterman, who looked strangely small without his helmet or body armor. “What’s the latest?”

  “Everyone’s bedded down, and ammunition is being distributed.” Osterman ran a hand throu
gh his short, blonde hair, the drops of sweat on his forehead gleaming slightly in the yellow light. “We’re getting down to the end of our supplies, but each platoon should have enough ammo for another patrol cycle. Two if they can scavenge a lot off the enemy.”

  “Good work, thank you.” Jack knew Osterman was a professional, but the major’s efficient operation of the bunker over the past week — keeping its defenses ready, re-supplying ranger platoons as they came in from their ambushes — had been truly impressive. If it weren’t for the lack of ammunition and ordnance, Jack had no doubt the major could keep them running indefinitely.

  Jack saw Osterman’s eyes look past him, reminding him of the task at hand.

  “Have a seat, Major.” Jack turned around and looked over at the man tied to the medical bed, who had given up pulling on his restraints and was looking around him with wide eyes. He couldn’t be much past his early twenties, though the grey color of his skin and the hollows of his cheeks made him look much older. Judging by the worn coveralls he wore and his slight, wiry frame, he had been some kind of worker, though not a well-fed one.

  “I’m Lt. Commander Jack Wilcox of the Alliance ship Verdun,” Jack moved to stand beside the medical bed. “What is your name?”

  “Are you going to kill me?” The fear in the man’s voice was palpable.

  Jack ignored the question and his conscience. The man’s fear would be a useful tool.

  “What’s your name?” Jack repeated.

  The man looked up at him, anger and terror mixing in his green eyes.

  “I don’t think you’re giving away any military secrets if you tell us your name, kid.” Osterman’s voice sounded from somewhere behind Jack.

  “Steven.” His voice was almost a whisper.

  “Okay… Steven. Why don’t you tell us a bit more about yourself? How old you are, what you do for a living, where you’re from, and most importantly, why you have attacked us.” Jack walked around the medical bed as he spoke, coming to stand on the other side.