“Shhhh!” Jack listened as the handset fizzled again and the same transmission played for third time.
“I say again, this is the RAS Verdun to any remaining Alliance forces on Kensington. Please stand by to receive an encoded message.”
Jack laid down his handset. “It’s a recorded message. They must be transmitting from extreme long range.” The bunker’s radio would be far too weak to respond.
“This is the RAS Verdun. Transmitting coded message now.”
A series of high-pitched sounds played over the speakers, and Jack swiveled his chair to face the radio’s computer interface, which was processing the tones through its decryption algorithms.
Jack heard the thump of boots on concrete and turned to see Lieutenant Flores run into the room, her face alight with excitement, her black hair done into a bun behind her head. Without any equipment belt, helmet, or backpack, she looked oddly vulnerable.
“I heard… On the radio!” Flores pointed past Wilcox at the radio station, her words coming between breaths.
“We’re decrypting the message now,” Osterman replied.
Jack turned back to the screen, saw it flash green and display a typed message. Jack looked at Morden’s name at the bottom of the message and fought down the lump in his throat, letting his relief move through him. Wherever they were, they were alive — or at least they had been when they’d sent this message. Depending on their distance, that could have been hours ago.
“What does it say?” Jack heard Flores’ footsteps as she came to stand next to Osterman.
Jack cleared his throat and read the message slowly, trying to imagine the words in Morden’s voice.
“To any remaining Alliance personnel in or around Kensington Station: the RAS Verdun will be attacking the enemy warships in orbit of the planet in seventy-two hours. Upon destroying this force, we will commence bombardment of the fort unless we are able to confirm that it remains under Alliance control.”
Jack met Osterman’s eyes, saw the same mix of apprehension and excitement that he felt. The Verdun was coming. It was going to face battle, but, by God, it was coming. Jack returned his gaze to the message and continued reading.
“Any Alliance forces on the planet are to disengage from offensive operations, distance themselves from enemy positions, and take shelter where appropriate until the Verdun arrives. Further orders will be issued at that point. Signed Captain Kim E. Morden, commanding officer, RAS Verdun.”
Jack sat back in his chair, processing what he had just read. No more hikes. No more patrols. No more ambushes. It was all over. This mess was over. He wanted to smile, to laugh, to shout his relief.
“Well, I for one don’t mind if the Verdun cleans house for us.” Jack could hear the smile in Osterman’s voice.
“You lazy ass,” Flores scoffed, though Jack could tell that she was grinning, too. “You’re not the one who’s been hiking all over creation.”
As Osterman and Flores bantered with each other, Jack’s feeling of levity faded. There was no doubt that the fight ahead of the Verdun would be tough. Maybe impossible if the enemy controlled the fort’s missile defenses. Jack tried to ignore the image of the ship he knew so well falling from the sky in flames. Suddenly, he found himself wishing the Verdun wasn’t coming, even if it meant hiking up a hill with a full combat load for the next year.
He sighed, looked over at the radio handset on the table, and whispered the words he wished he could say to his friends. “Good hunting. Godspeed.”
But no one, not even Flores and Osterman, heard a word he said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You know what happens when you aren’t honest, Colonel.”
Tom watched as the Supervisor fluttered his hand dramatically over the activation switch of the truth device — that’s what the Supervisor was calling it, at least, a tangle of wires, electrodes, and vehicle batteries that one of the men had rigged up for him.
“I don’t remember, I don’t remember!” The colonel, his skin ashen, his face dripping with sweat, shook his head frantically, the electrodes attached to his head, chest, arms, and legs moving like odd, tentacle outgrowths of his body.
The Supervisor made a clucking noise. “This happens.”
He flipped the switch, and a low electric hum sounded. The officer, Neville, jerked against his restraints, his eyes bulging out of his head, all the muscles in his body tensing with the electricity, a long, low, animal groan escaping his mouth. Tom closed his eyes, pressed his arms around himself against the cold of the fort’s concrete interior, the painfully hard press of the pistol in the waistband of his trousers a distraction from the despicable scene.
Tom would do what he needed to do for the Legion, whatever would free his brothers and sisters, even if it meant doing something he hated. He’d seen the companies cheat, rob, intimidate, and even murder whoever got in their way for far too long to shy away from violence. But if there were any way to get the information without torture, he’d take it. He was a warrior, not a monster. The Supervisor, on the other hand, enjoyed this bullshit.
One of their patrols had pulled Neville in the day before, his uniform caked with dirt, his mouth spewing curses and threats. The Supervisor had fed him and let him clean up and get a good night’s sleep — then hauled him up to the infirmary early in the morning to start the questioning process, if you could call it that. For the first quarter hour, the Supervisor had contented himself with shocking Neville on and off without asking a single question. Tom found himself wondering again why Smith was part of the Legion. Did he really want to create a more just Alliance, or was he just the kind of man who jumped at the chance to be involved with violence?
The buzzing sound stopped, and Tom heard Neville’s sobs. He heard the scrape of wood on cement and opened his eyes to see the Supervisor pulling a chair across the floor. He sat down, put his hand on Neville’s knee.
“I know you’re tired of this, Colonel. I am, too.”
Somehow, Tom didn’t believe that.
“Let me help you. Help both of us. Give me your computer access codes, and this will all be over.” The Supervisor’s voice was soft, gentle, almost as if he were speaking to a child.
Neville didn’t respond, but kept sobbing softly. From the bits and pieces Tom had overheard from the rest of the captured fort garrison, Neville was considered an inept officer, a coward. The men who’d captured him said he’d been alone, was maybe trying to desert the other Alliance forces. Tom hadn’t expected him to last this long.
“You need to think about yourself.” The Supervisor sat back in his chair, brushing his hand near the switch. Neville watched the Supervisor’s movements through bloodshot eyes, his face the very image of terror.
“I a-am thinking of myself.” Neville’s voice was a hoarse, faltering whisper. “I… I know h-how this works. As soon as you don’t need me, I’m dead.”
“We’re not murderers.” The words came from Tom’s mouth before he could stop them. The Supervisor looked around at him, the pleasant mask on his face touched with a hint of annoyance. “Yes, you see? You have a friend here.” The Supervisor turned back to Neville. “We won’t kill you if you give us what we want.”
Neville said nothing, but his face told Tom he hadn’t believed a word they’d said.
“Fine.” The Supervisor flicked the switch. Neville jerked against the restraints, then relaxed as the Supervisor turned the device off again.
“I don’t understand you, Robert. Can I call you that?” The Supervisor reached into his pocket, pulled out what looked to be a small knife. “We’ve told you we won’t kill you. We’ve been nice enough to not do any lasting—” The Supervisor made a quick motion and cut a small gash along the top of Neville’s thigh. “—harm to your body.”
Neville made a small, terrified noise, looking at the blood seeping from the fresh cut on his leg.
“Maybe you have a hearing problem. Let me look at that for you.” The Supervisor leaned forward and sli
d the knife behind Neville’s right ear.
“No! No!” Neville’s hoarse cries echoed off of the low ceiling as he tried to squirm away. This had gone too far. Tom stepped forward to intervene, one hand going to his sidearm.
“No! Don’t! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”
The Supervisor hesitated, sat back down, the knife still in his hand, Neville’s ear unharmed and still attached. Tom pulled a small scrap of paper and a pencil from his pocket and wrote down the number that Neville rattled off.
“Very good, my friend. Now, on to the next question. Where are the enemy forces that keep attacking our patrols hiding?”
Neville blinked. “I-I don’t know. I left the others before we could reach them.”
“That is consistent with the way we found him” Tom was finished with this cramped room and the Supervisor’s love of pain. They had more important work to do anyway. Even with the code, it would take time to unlock the system, since they hadn’t been able to find the ID cards or the keys that initiated the system.
“But it’s not the right answer.” The Supervisor sighed, and flicked the switch, this time for much longer, Neville’s eyes rolled up into his head, and Tom could tell that he was losing consciousness. Tom felt his stomach turn. Without thinking flicked the switch off with one hand, pulled his pistol with the other, and then smashed the contraption’s control box with the sidearm’s butt.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” The Supervisor was on his feet in a second, his eyes almost popping out of his head, knife in hand. Tom took a step back. He had never seen the man react this way. Was this the real Smith, under all the smiles and false laughter?
“You forget yourself, Supervisor.” Tom pointed the muzzle of the pistol toward Smith. “We will not be a movement for evil.”
“Oh, please!” The Supervisor threw his hands up. “You weak little fool! Without people like me, you’d all still be hoisting protest signs, forming little committees, doing nothing! You want to see how you accomplish your goals?” The Supervisor stepped toward Neville’s unconscious body.
Tom raised the pistol, gripped it with both hands. “I think I know how.”
The Supervisor stopped in his tracks. A smile spread over his face, and he closed his knife, slid it back in his pocket. “Tom. Tom! Let’s not fight each other. We’re the glue that holds this place together.”
Tom kept his pistol on target. “Yes, we are. But don’t forget: I command our forces here, and I won’t let us stray from our ideals.”
The Supervisor nodded, though Tom could see rage burning in his eyes.
Tom turned to the door. “Mackenzie!”
The door opened, and Mackenzie and a couple other warriors came into the room, their rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Take the colonel down to the other prisoners. See to it he’s looked after.”
“Yes, Tom.”
He watched as they freed Neville from the smashed ‘truth device’ and hauled him out of the room.
“I’ll see you at the command center.” The Supervisor’s artificially cheerful voice had returned, and he strolled into the corridor with a smile on his face.
Tom took a deep breath, looked down at the detached electrodes. He supposed he ought to feel elated. They had the codes. They would be able to break the silo lockout in days, not weeks. Within a short time, Kensington would be as good as theirs.
His problems were solved, weren’t they?
Tom shook his head, listening to the Supervisor’s cheerful whistling, growing quieter as the man walked away down the hall.
“Steady as she goes, Mr. Stetler.” Kim watched as the green mask of the gas giant cleared from the holoports, fading into the diffuse, yellowish-brown cloud of the planet’s debris field.
“Course is plotted to Kensington, ma’am.” Lt. Urquhart was the only one who didn’t sound or look tense, as usual.
“Very good.” Kim looked over toward Chief Baudouin. “Chief, call all hands to general quarters.” It was a three-day journey to the planet at sublight, but Kim wasn’t going to risk running into any enemy reinforcements or patrol squadrons without being prepared.
“Aye, ma’am.”
Kim took a deep breath, listening to Baudouin’s voice call over the ship intercom.
“General quarters. General quarters. All hands, man your battle stations.”
The pulsing electronic klaxon sounded, broken occasionally as Isabelle’s voice repeated the command, her soft, feminine voice in contrast to the harsh alarm.
“General quarters, general quarters. Go up and forward on your starboard side, down and aft on your port side.”
Kim pulled her safety harness over herself, clicked it into place. She could hear the distant sound of hundreds of feet pounding along the corridors, fireproof, air-tight doors slamming shut, and she imagined the crew climbing into gun turrets, slipping into damage control suits, emptying weapon lockers.
There was something comforting about this, the certainty of thousands of people acting together, moving through a fixed sequence of events.
She heard a set of heavy footfalls behind her, glanced over her shoulder to see a pair of marines in full body armor taking station in the guardroom just beyond the bridge entryway.
“Fire control reports ready. All turrets armed and loaded.” Holsey’s voice was still raised as the klaxons fell silent.
“General quarters confirmed, all decks, all stations,” Baudouin added.
“What of the defensive systems?” Kim looked over at Holsey, whose face was under-lit by the glow from her control panel. Lieutenant Geonor had been working right up to the end on the magnetic ordnance deflector. With any luck, the last few hours had been productive.
“Ordnance deflectors show ready.” Holsey’s brow knotted. “We’ll have about eighty percent coverage. Some of the gaps were impossible to fix without time at dry dock.”
Kim nodded. Much better than she’d feared. “Chief Baudouin, pass along fighter launch confirmation.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kim faced forward, listening to Baudouin repeating her orders to Commander Frost and Lieutenant Blake over the intercom, and ran once again through the plan Holsey had worked out. The Verdun was to smash through the enemy armada, a task that was to be much easier now that the ship was approaching from space and was prepared for a fight. Once they’d disposed of the enemy fleet, they would bombard the fort from orbit, pounding it into submission, unless it was still in Alliance hands. With the fort reduced, the Verdun, which would stay in space this time for safety’s sake, would launch landing craft with marine reinforcements, and, if they were able to contact the shore party, the combined ground forces would proceed on foot with air cover to capture or dispatch any remaining enemy troops in the area.
According to Holsey’s calculations, a siege of the fort could take days, given the structure’s impressive defenses. But somehow, based on what they’d seen of the enemy force’s lackluster training during the fighting around the dockyards, Kim hoped that this would be over long before then. An unskilled garrison would not hold out for long under the crushing firepower of the Verdun’s main guns, and the enemy would be powerless to strike back. That was, of course, only if that the fort’s garrison had done what Holsey had assumed based on her studies of the fort’s schematics and operating procedures and locked out Kensington’s missile system.
If they hadn’t…
“Well,” Holsey had said, looking uncomfortable. “I have some ideas about how to deal with that, but it won’t be pretty.”
Kim craned her neck to look over at the portside holoports, saw the small dots of fighter craft flying away from the Verdun and taking up formation. Her mind was blank for a moment as she appreciated the obvious skill of the pilots, the grace of the crafts’ weightless movements. Each craft with a pilot, each pilot a member of her crew, each crewmember — all two thousand of them — living people with family, friends who had no idea their loved ones were in
such danger. Her shoulders tightened, a knot forming in her stomach.
She exhaled, trying to diffuse the growing tension in her body. She’d be writing many more condolence letters thanks to the people who had attacked them. Kim would see them brought to justice, whoever they were.
Yes, she told herself. This would be satisfying. This would be vengeance for everyone she’d lost already to this new enemy, for everyone she was about to lose. And if everything went as it should, she would have her satisfaction very soon. She should feel relieved.
Kim gazed ahead as the debris cloud cleared the holoports and the empty, studded blackness of space stared back at her, brushing aside the confident words she tried to tell herself with its blank, stark emptiness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Welcome back, you lard-asses!”
Christine rolled her eyes as Corporal Lazaar stood and called over to the line of rangers filing toward them up the hill. She could see Lieutenant Squires at the head of the group, looking tired but cheerful as always in the morning light. Ignoring her relief at seeing Third Platoon return without casualties, she reached out and smacked Lazaar hard across the shoulder.
“Ouch! What’s that for?” Lazaar turned and looked at her, incredulous.
“Has the fort been neutralized?” Christine stood out of the foxhole, placing her hands on her hips.
“No.”
“No, Lieutenant.” Christine repeated. Sometimes she had to remind people that she was an officer, not just another battle buddy. This was one of those times.
“No, Lieutenant.” Lazaar looked at the ground.
“Have the woods been completely cleared of enemy forces?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Have we magically been transported off Kensington to some kind of campground for people with guns?”
“No, Lieutenant.”
“Then noise and light discipline still applies. This ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Christine kept Lazaar under what she hoped was a withering stare for a moment longer before she walked down the hill to meet Squires. Third Platoon was the last group to return from patrols after Captain Morden’s new orders had come through, and by the looks of them, they’d had a long haul. The sun had barely been up an hour, and it was already unbearably hot.
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