Black Box

by Ivan Turner

  “Hammer in another relay, Lieutenant. Ten yards back.”

  The blips stopped moving and the one that was Bonamo moved back a distance that was almost imperceptible on his screen. He could magnify it, of course, but there was no reason for that at the moment. The party trudged on. After a few minutes, he ordered another relay and then, a short time later, another one. Based on the distance, and Rollins’ assessment, which had already proven uncharacteristically incorrect, Tedesco had equipped them with seven relay dishes. He hoped it would be enough.

  All of a sudden, Beckett’s ear was filled with whining static. Ripping out the piece, he looked at it, at the screens. Rollins was typing something on his keyboard, a series of numbers in a black panel on his monitor. Beckett didn’t bother to question him. One of the relays had gone dead, killing the communications. He quickly checked the satellite feed and saw the four blips moving in a loose formation. Tedesco had to have realized that the communications had gone out. Either she was unconcerned or didn’t feel that it merited turning back. In her place, Beckett couldn’t say that he would have acted differently. With the satellite feed, they could still be tracked. But that feed didn’t tell enough of a story for a captain of a ship to know that his crew was safe. The four of them could be dead and laying on the ground and the chips that sent the signal wouldn’t know the difference.

  Of course, they were all still moving.

  Beckett punched a number into the intercom. “MacDonald?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Choose a squad and prep the rumbler.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Rollins spared him a glance and then went back to his work.

  Ukpere chimed in over the network. “Don’t you think you’re being hasty, sir?”

  Beckett addressed the network at large. “The next person who implies that I’m overreacting is gonna get the shit kicked out of him.”

  At about three hundred yards from Walker’s landing site, the group stopped. Beckett leaned forward. For long moments, there was no movement on the screen. Rollins leaned close so that he could see and Tunsley started chattering over the network. Beckett cut him out.

  Then the blips split up. Tedesco and Bonamo moved slowly parallel to the landing site while Rodrigo and Cummings continued the approach.

  “They split up,” Boone said, his voice floating in over the channel from Control.

  “I can see that, Boone,” Beckett replied.

  “Why did they split up?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Beckett could feel himself losing his patience. He was losing patience with the mission, the expedition, and his officers. At the forefront, he was second guessing his decision to send Tedesco instead of Boone. As dumb as Boone could be, he was at least experienced. With Tedesco, he couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what her actions were or the impetus for those actions. There might be any number of reasonable rationales for dividing the expedition, but Beckett couldn’t think of one. At any sign of trouble, they should have made their way back to the Valor.

  And then, without any warning, all four blips disappeared.

  “What’s that?” came Applegate’s breathy voice. “What happened?”

  “The satellite feed was interrupted,” Tunsley answered impatiently.

  “How? What causes that?”

  Beckett knew. “Gunfire.” And not the lasers reported in Walker’s log. It took an explosive discharge to interfere with the chip transmissions. It was a stupid glitch that rendered the satellite chips useless in combat, but they weren’t meant for that anyway. He switched over to MacDonald. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes, sir,” the foot soldier said, just a bit too eagerly.

  “Bring ‘em back, MacDonald. We’re not here to fight a war.”

  There was no answer over the intercom, but the sensors came alive, reporting the hangar doors opening. Beneath their feet, they could feel the vibrations of the rumbler as it exited the ship.

  The seconds ticked slowly by as Beckett waited for the interference with the satellite feed to clear. In truth, there were any number of disturbances that could cause the blips that were his expedition to disappear. Environmental disturbances were the most common. But nothing was so abrupt as weapon discharge. With a thunderstorm or even an earthquake, the blips would blink, fade in and out as the computers connected and reconnected with the members’ chips. But gunfire wiped the signal clean in an instant. Depending on the type of weapon fired and whether or not the shooting was continuous, the signal could be lost for a considerable amount of time.

  Worrying, Beckett waited in silence.

  He didn’t have long to wait. Five interminable minutes after his last communication with MacDonald, the expedition’s blips came to life again. They were marching back in the direction of the Valor. Beckett immediately tried to contact the rumbler, but they were already out of communications range. Apparently, MacDonald had decided that it was more important to reach the first expedition rather than to stop and repair damaged relays. It was a decision for which Beckett could not fault him. He watched as the two sets of blips closed the gap between them. Tedesco was in the lead, a little way ahead of Bonamo and Cummings.

  From Rodrigo, there was no signal.

  History Repeats Itself

  MacDonald’s team consisted of six foot soldiers, including himself, and one Emergency Medical Technician. Driving the rumbler was Jennifer Massey. She was a rookie foot soldier, having gone out on only two missions previously. On both missions she had substituted for previously injured personnel. She had yet to see combat. A low key person with a technical mind, she had chosen infantry over a more technical specialty because she realized that combat would be her weakness. In a short time, MacDonald had come to trust her behind the controls like no one else. But that was all he trusted her for. Of the six under his command, she was the only one who hadn’t been preselected for this kind of an operation.

  “Time?”

  Yamata, sitting next to Massey in the pilot box, spared a glance at the clock. “We should reach their last known position in about six minutes.”

  MacDonald himself had chosen to sit in the passenger cabin. Though most expedition leaders chose the pilot box, MacDonald wanted the ability to leave the rumbler quickly if need be. For his two cents, he’d have preferred a gunner bucket, but that would have been foolish.

  So far the going was pretty easy. The tall trees were sparse enough for the rumbler to maneuver between them. Its tires splashed dirt and mud behind them while grinders placed underneath and toward the front of the vehicle chewed up the grass and weeds and sticks and rocks in their path. The squat plants with the large leaves were ripped up and tossed aside by mechanical hands. MacDonald had long wondered what would happen if a rumbler suddenly decided to run amok.

  “We’re heading out of communication range,” reported Yamata.

  MacDonald gave no reaction. In the bucket on his left, Knudson had one eye glued to the scope of a rifle. He moved it in a regular arc, keeping pace with the motion of the vehicle. On his right, Alraune did the same. Soames, the EMT, checked and rechecked her instruments to make sure she was properly equipped.

  At thirteen minutes out, MacDonald felt as if they had gained some time. “Infrared.”

  Yamata made an adjustment. After wading through all of the smaller wildlife, he reported, “There are three heat signatures a little over two hundred yards due west.”

  Three was not the right number. Not the distance, nor the size of the group. At that moment, the satellite feed came back to life and he saw what Beckett saw.

  “I have a signal, Mr. MacDonald.”

  “From Tedesco?”

  Yamata nodded, punching some buttons so that the feed could be sent to the receiver in the passenger cabin.

  “Lieutenant, this is MacDonald. We’re enroute, by rumbler, to your position. Are you in imminent danger?”

  “Unknown,” Tedesco’s garbled voice returned. “Maintain readiness.�
��

  After another few moments, the four of them came into sight. Tedesco was leading, a pistol in her right hand. Behind her was Bonamo and it was clear that he was bearing the weight of a man on his shoulders. Finally there was Rodrigo, covering their backs with her rifle.

  Massey pulled the rumbler to a halt in a position where it would be easy for them to board. MacDonald popped the hatch for the passenger cabin and leaped out ahead of Soames. Limping forward, Bonamo deposited Cummings just inside the cabin and leaned up against the rumbler, panting. Cummings was dead.

  “What happened?” MacDonald asked, looking at Cummings with a cross between bewilderment and frustration. The other members of the team also stared at Cummings. Some had known him. Others had not. Each put his or her own face onto the corpse. Though death was an all too common part of service in the Space Force, especially for infantry, it wasn’t something men and women came to accept or even believe in. MacDonald had known Cummings for years. He’d been a bright and curious man who could make you feel at ease with a simple turned up corner of the mouth. And now he was dead, his neck and the front of his armor splashed with blood.

  “We were ambushed,” Rodrigo answered, betraying no emotion whatsoever. “Cummings never knew what hit him.” There was blood on her neck as well and a piece of her shoulder armor had been blown away from her right side. That explained why it was her signal that had been lost rather than Cummings’. Soames had come over to Rodrigo and had begun inspecting her wound.

  Rodrigo spoke as she was examined, shaking away Soames’ attempt to look at her left hand. “They came straight out of the west so that’s where we’ll take our pursuit. Mr. MacDonald, are we well armed?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” He answered through gritted teeth.

  “Good.”

  Tedesco cut in. “We’re not going anywhere but back to the Valor.”

  “But we have to go,” Rodrigo cried in surprise. She seemed as if she were about to say something else, but her eyes found the rumbler and Massey at the controls…the other foot soldiers behind her. “We’ll lose the trail if we go back.” This last, she added more calmly.

  But Tedesco was unyielding. “It’s not the right time.”

  “What the hell do you know about the time?” Rodrigo seemed on the verge of hysterics now, her earlier apathy having dissipated like so much mist. “Cummings is dead.”

  “Mind your place, Sergeant.”

  Now blood filled Rodrigo’s face and she tore her arm away from a startled Soames. Marching right up to Tedesco, she placed both hands on the younger woman’s chest and shoved her right up against the rumbler. The left hand was blackened and covered in blood. It left a stain on the lieutenant’s uniform. At a complete loss, the others simply watched the spectacle.

  “Did you hear me, you heartless bitch? Cummings is dead and it’s your fault!”

  Tedesco was clearly ruffled by the sergeant’s attack. A brutal retort was just on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. “Rodrigo,” she said in a clipped tone, but the sergeant cut her off.

  “You’d better not say another fucking word, you bitch,” she said almost levelly.

  Tedesco searched for strength and resolve but found none. “We need to go back to the ship.”

  For just a moment, the lieutenant thought that Rodrigo would simply abandon them and set out on her own, but they both knew that would be foolish and quite probably jeopardize the mission. If nothing else, Rodrigo was a good soldier. So, without another word between them, she grabbed up her rifle and took a spot in one of the unoccupied gunner’s buckets. Though the tension in the air remained, the argument had been settled. Bonamo and Tedesco joined MacDonald and Soames in the passenger cabin. Once everyone was aboard, Massey brought the rumbler around, its great arms lifting it and swiveling it almost on the spot. As they moved down the fresh made path toward the Valor, Rodrigo couldn’t help but look back toward the battle site…

  …and curse the circumstances that had brought them to this.

  Walker Log 3

  At what point does man’s arrogance collide with his ignorance? Gil, Jude, and Danielle are all dead. For all of the tests we ran and all of the readings we took, our efforts were worthless. Which plants are poisonous? Which animals are dangerous? What does all of that mean when laser beams come slicing out of the trees and cut your friends to ribbons?

  LASER BEAMS!

  Danielle was first, which was ironic because she was the one who heard it, that first rumble nearby in the jungle. We had just started to relax again when she stopped, pricked up her ears and smiled her coy little smile, that little nervous turn of her lips. At first we thought it was an insect, a single hum that cut across the jungle. I smiled back and was still smiling when the top half of her head slid off of the bottom half.

  We were all so shocked. I mean, how could we expect this? Was this first contact? An ambush? We weren’t even armed! Before we could raise our arms in surrender, the enemy burned a hole the size of a golf ball into Gil’s chest. Jude panicked. How could he not? He took off and I took off after him. I knew I had to stay with him. I knew we needed to be together. But then there was a crack like a blast of thunder and he flew back into me, knocking me sideways and splattering me with his blood. Toppling into one of the giant ferns, I barely caught a glimpse of a lithe figure coming to inspect its kill. It seemed satisfied at having killed Jude and then turned to me. I tried to look at it, but it was bathed in shadows and my vision was spotted with tears and Jude’s blood. I could see that it was humanoid. By my standards, it was in better shape than anyone I knew. I thought sure it was the end of me, but it decided not to finish the job. Instead, it disappeared again into the foliage.

  I don’t know how long I lay there. I was frozen in shock. All I could think of was that my friends were dead and, just maybe it didn’t need to be that way. If we hadn’t ignored the first sound, it might have turned out differently. Maybe. Finally, I pulled myself from the ground, stumbled over to where Jude lay, and made sure that he was dead. Then I hoisted his stiff and sticky corpse onto my shoulder and carried him back to the ship.

  It’s dark now. So dark. At first light, I’ll go out. I’ll be taking Geoff Markakis and Roger Rhodes. I’ll be taking guns. We’ll go out and bring back Danielle and Gil. Then we’ll get the hell out of here. We’ll leave this horrible place behind.

  This perfect planet…

  Colonel Nicholas Walker

  March 27th, 2056

  Pieces From All Different Jigsaw Puzzles

  Tedesco’s report was uninspiring. Beckett hadn’t truly expected anything particularly insightful from the young officer, but her report was really, really bland. She reported their movements almost to the breath. Listening to it was agonizing. Truly. And most of it was worthless. Only at the time she split the two groups did it become relevant. According to her report, she gave the order on Sergeant Rodrigo’s recommendation. They had detected something moving through the jungle and determined that it was not an animal, at least not a small one and not something they had previously seen. Short minutes of following the sounds convinced Rodrigo that the movements were carefully planned and certainly not the movements of an animal. In an effort to flank whoever or whatever it was, Cummings and the sergeant moved left and were to come around at a wide angle while Tedesco and Bonamo pressed on ahead. If things had gone according to plan, they would have come upon their target simultaneously. But there were gunshots. Tedesco and Bonamo were forced to take cover until the shooting stopped, then rushed to Rodrigo’s position. Cummings was already dead. Rodrigo was sitting beside him, her rifle on the ground next to her.

  Beckett sat in the conference room with only Crew Chief Hardy as his company, the report droning on and on. He was tempted to forward through it, but that would have been unprofessional.

  Hardy yawned.

  There was one discrepancy between Tedesco’s report and Rodrigo’s. That was actually a pleasant surprise. In his tenure as captain, Beckett had
found that reports tended to wander through the facts like a game of telephone. Especially when one or more deaths was involved. Then you have people trying to cover themselves in case someone should be deemed responsible. Rodrigo failed to mention that it was her recommendation that the group split up. It may not have been, but Beckett guessed it was. Tedesco was not the lying type and Rodrigo leaving that out made for omission, not falsehood. Either way, he didn’t care. He had given Tedesco command of the expedition and, therefore, responsibility for all decisions.

  Rodrigo’s report was important because she had been with Cummings when he’d been killed. She was the only witness. Surprisingly, her report was concise. After years of serving with the sergeant, both as her subordinate and superior, he had listened to dozens of her reports in dozens of different circumstances. The common thread in Anabelle’s reports was always her side commentary. And the profanity. In fact, there wasn’t even one recorded report by Anabelle Rodrigo that wasn’t edited and annotated to mark the changes. Beckett had always found this amusing, largely because it pissed off the Admiralty. Especially Admiral James, who was too mean to even be called a bastard. This report, though, had none of that. Both Beckett and Hardy had expected to be entertained by a regaling of Tedesco’s inexperience and incompetence, but all they got were the facts. And it got worse after they split. Cummings had always been a favorite target of Rodrigo’s commentary. But now, maybe out of respect for the dead, she kept to the events as they happened.

  A laser blast had come from the trees, whizzed past her and taken Cummings full in the chest. He’d never had a chance. Rodrigo immediately dived for cover and was hit in the shoulder. She’d have been killed if she’d stayed put. Reacting with her usual instinct, the sergeant had unleashed a volley of fire into the trees. She did not panic. She did not fire wildly. After her first shots she moved for cover, listening for other signs of movement. She tried to approach the sniper’s position, but couldn’t be sure if she had found it. She fired again, two more volleys, just to let her enemy know that she was prepared, but there was no result. Whoever had killed Cummings had gotten away. When it was over, she had returned to him and waited for Bonamo and Tedesco to arrive.