“Commandant Fabron,” I called out, knowing my words were being fed through the wire into the Dodo’s cabin. “Please open the side door and come out, without your weapons. We are all friends here.” Then I clarified, to be more accurate. “We are all on the same side,” I added, tapping the UNEF patch on my uniform.
There was no immediate response from the Dodo. Through my earpiece, I could hear harsh whispering going on, the people in the cabin must have been arguing about what to do.
“Fabron?” I decided to offer an inducement to him. “In this year’s World Cup, the French team was in the Group of Death but they reached the semifinals, before losing to Argentina. We have video of the entire tournament.”
A brief hesitation, then Fabron asked “What was the score?”
“Three to two.”
“Ah,” he grunted. “No doubted Argentina cheated. I am coming out.”
“If it makes you feel any better, the Argies lost two to nothing to Germany in the final,” I offered, as the side door popped inward and began sliding aside. Despite my relaxed stance, I was tense. If Fabron came out shooting, there could be trouble. Under my uniform, I was wearing a thin layer of reactive body armor, but that didn’t protect my head or my legs. Bullets could do a lot of damage, and grenades would be devastating. Nagatha should have been able to give me a couple seconds of warning if she detected a weapon in the Dodo’s airlock, and I was betting my life on her abilities.
Fabron was smart and acted to assure no harm came to his people. The first thing I saw was his bare outstretched hands, he had removed the skinsuit gloves. Then I saw him, without a helmet. He had slightly shaggy blonde hair, and a light stubbly beard that many special operators grew. At first glance he looked like any other guy you might see, except for his eyes. They were intense, watchful, determined. He stepped out onto the deck, automatically noting the position of Kapoor’s team, who were doing so good a job at acting relaxed, it was clear they were not relaxed at all. If the French paratrooper saw any of us as an immediate threat, he didn’t react.
Reaching the deck, he looked around, saw me and his eyebrows lifted slightly. “It is you,” he stared at me.
Tapping my chest, I confirmed “Like I said, not dead.”
Fabron’s response was to come to attention and snap a crisp salute to me. I returned the gesture with a smile. “At ease, Commandant.”
“I do not think I can ever be at ease here,” he looked around the docking bay. We had deliberately parked a Maxolhx Panther dropship in the other cradle. “This is your ship? Humans fly this starship?”
“We stole it from the Thuranin, yeah.”
“I do not recognize that configuration,” he pointed at the Panther.
“We call it a Panther,” I explained. “We stole that from the Maxolhx.”
“From the Max-” Now he was openly gaping at me.
“Ah, that’s nothing,” I waved a hand. “It was a package deal. We got a bunch of Panthers when we stole a battlecruiser from the Maxolhx. You heard about the ghost ship that has been kicking ass across the galaxy?” He nodded stiffly, as if his neck muscles were incapable of movement. I kind of felt sorry for the guy, we had to be blowing his mind. “That’s our battlecruiser. We call our ship the ‘Valkyrie’. I’d like to give you a tour, but for now, this,” I gestured down at the deck, “is the Flying Dutchman. It was a Thuranin star carrier before we pimped it.”
“Pimped?”
I forgot he was French. “We modified it.”
The guy stood there, stunned. “I have missed a lot, Non?”
“It’s a lot to process, I know. If it makes you feel any better, the last time I met people from Paradise, they had trouble believing it also. Those guys were-”
Fabron sucked in a breath. “We are not the first people from Paradise you have met? You have been back to Paradise?”
“Uh, yeah. Remember when those buried maser cannons blasted a Kristang battlegroup out of the sky? That was us, too.”
“You went back to Paradise?”
“Yes, um,” I had to think. “We landed there, uh, twice. Plus we were in-system a third time, that’s when we picked up a group of Keeper fanatics.”
“Keepers,” he spat. Then he added with surprise. “In-system? You did not land? The Keepers were not on Paradise?”
“No. They were in a pair of lizard dropships, headed for Paradise. They had been infected with a bioweapon. We intercepted them before they could do any damage.”
Probably without thinking, he touched his left shoulder, where the vaccine had been injected. “That was you?”
“That was us. We call our outfit the Merry Band of Pirates,” I said with pride.
“You have been busy,” he stated. His expression had changed from bewildered wonderment to something more typical of special operators: admiration. The Merry Band of Pirates had been kicking ass, and he wanted a piece of the action. I mean, he wanted a piece of the action. No way was an operator like Fabron going to miss out on whatever we did next.
“Idle hands are the Devil’s playground, you know,” I don’t know if he understood the humor.
“Colonel, if you have accomplished,” he waved a hand to encompass the docking bay, and the ship beyond. “So much, then why do you need my team? Why not get,” he peered behind me to Smythe, who still wore an SAS emblem in addition to the STAR team unit symbol. “More Special Air Services? Or paras from France?”
“Because, right now, the Maxolhx are blockading the wormhole we use to get back and forth to Earth. Earth is fine, it’s good,” I hastened to assure him. “The lizards there are dead.” That statement was true, except for the frozen lizards. Assuming they were still frozen, and that UNEF hadn’t shot them into the Sun. “We need you because we have a short-term problem, and we need to act fast. The lizards kidnapped a group of human civilians, including children, from Earth. That was back while UNEF was deploying. Some of those people are still alive, but the lizards plan to sell them to the Thuranin, for use in medical experiments. The little green MFers,” it occurred to me that the French might have a different derisive nickname for our least favorite cyborgs. “The Thuranin, want to develop another bioweapon, to use against Paradise. The Alien Legion has got them scared. They want to exterminate humans, and kill the whole Legion concept, before it gets out of control.”
His shoulders slumped. “Merde.”
“It’s complicated. Fabron, I would not have commandeered your team if I had a choice. Those people, those children, are being starved and abused. They will be tortured and killed unless we rescue them. Colonel Smythe,” I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder, “will explain the details.”
“One more question, please, Colonel Bishop?”
“Sure. Shoot,” as I said that, I reminded myself that a French soldier might not understand my slang.
Fabron understood well enough. “Will this operation involve killing lizards?”
“Oh,” behind me, Smythe laughed. I turned to see a broad, predatory grin spread across his face. “There will be much killing of lizards and other nasties, I can promise that.”
“Then,” Fabron had a matching smile. “You can count me in. The reason I signed up for the Legion was to get, as you Americans say, payback. I think payback can be better achieved with a Maxolhx battlecruiser,” he shook his head in amazement.
“That was what we thought, too.” Skippy was whispering in my ear. I pressed a finger over that ear, and gestured for Fabron to wait a moment. “Commandant? I told you Earth is fine. That includes your wife Celeste and your son Paul.”
His eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. “You know this?”
“Yes. We have records of everyone we left on Paradise, and their families back on Earth. Gabriel,” I said softly, breaking protocol by using his first name. “The aliens don’t know humans have a starship; our existence out here is a secret. When this mission is over, you and your team can’t go back to Paradise, you understand? Hopefully, you will all be going h
ome.”
“Home,” he whispered. The guy’s knees bent a little.
Technically, that was me giving a promise that I didn’t have the authority to make. Assuming Skippy could get the Backstop wormhole moved to Earth, and opened properly, we could go home. That also assumed we were, you know, still alive at that point. UNEF would likely not be happy about the idea of people from Paradise landing on Earth, meeting their families and talking about everything they had seen and everything they knew. When we left Earth, the Keepers we captured were still confined to Johnston Atoll, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Keepers had not been allowed to talk to anyone, their very existence was a secret. UNEF would probably want to keep Fabron’s team isolated also.
You know what?
Screw UNEF.
I was done taking shit from a bunch of bureaucrats who had never been out here. Never had their boots, as the expression goes, on the ground. If Fabron’s team survived to get back home, I was not requesting permission to bring them dirtside. The way I felt right then, I wanted to land a damned dropship in front of the Eiffel Tower and announce to the French people that some of their soldiers had, at long last, come home from Paradise.
Besides, if we did get home, we would be announcing that Earth needed to be evacuated. Having a group of people from Paradise confirming how dangerous the galaxy was would, I think, be helpful.
Well, it would be helpful to the thousands of people who could be evaced before the Maxolhx arrived. The billions of other people would not be much comforted by knowing how greatly the odds were against the survival of our species.
Crap. I had gotten Fabron’s hopes up. When he learned the whole truth, that Earth was ultimately doomed, that was going to be a slap in the face. He wouldn’t be looking at me so admiringly then.
I really had not thought this whole thing through.
Yanking my thoughts back to the present, I repeated what Fabron had said. “Home. Before we left Earth the last time, we downloaded practically the whole internet. Whatever you want to know about what’s been going on back home, you should be able to find it.”
“My family?” He asked with heartbreaking anticipation.
“If they have been posting on FaceTwit,” I flashed a smile, “you should find it. Oh, hey,” snapping my fingers, I remembered something. “Most people back home who have family and friends on Paradise, they wrote letters and stuff, for us to deliver if we ever got there. I’ll check if your wife wrote anything,” I added as Skippy whispered in my ear that Fabron’s wife had written many letters. Not as many recently, but that was to be expected, I guess.
Smythe took that as a cue to step forward and take over. Fabron snapped a salute to our STAR team leader and they had a brief chat, operator to operator. Then Fabron gestured to the Dodo and his team began coming out, one at a time.
“Uh, hey, Joe,” Skippy spoke in my ear. “We might have three kinds of trouble.”
Before responding, I walked a few steps away. When I heard ‘trouble’, my greatest fear was some idiot with a grenade who didn’t believe my story and wanted to be a hero. “Like what?”
“To start, there is a Ruhar officer hiding in the rear of the Dodo’s cabin. She let Fabron take the lead, but she is very unhappy and intends to make trouble.”
“Is she armed?”
“She has been demanding a rifle or pistol, so far the Commandos have been holding her back.”
“Ok, tell Smythe and Kapoor about her. We knew they had a hamster liaison officer, Skippy. Is the second bit of trouble the other hamster?”
“Um, no. The second issue is that the observer pilot is not a hamster. He is a Jeraptha.”
“What the f-” People, including Fabron, turned to look at me. I forced a grin onto my face and strode across the bay, farther away. “What the hell is a beetle doing aboard that Dodo?”
“I do not know, Joe.”
“How am I just hearing about this now?” I demanded.
“Nagatha didn’t know, the Dutchman’s sensors couldn’t penetrate the shielding around the Dodo’s cabin. I didn’t find out until you jumped back here. Does it matter anyway? You had already disabled the Dodo, you weren’t going to leave them out there in a dead spacecraft, right?”
“No.” Damn it, I was pissed and I wanted someone to be pissed at. “Oh, hell, we’ll deal with this somehow. Can you make food for Jeraptha?”
“It won’t be yummy, but he will survive.”
“Great. We planned to kidnap a Ruhar, now we’re making enemies of the beetles also. I am afraid to ask, what is the third bit of trouble?”
“That is- Well, here he is now. See for yourself.”
I did see, but at first I didn’t see what the trouble could be. Stepping out of the Dodo, holding his hands away from his sides in a gesture that was unthreatening but not quite a surrender, was a tall black man. A tall black Marine. Skinsuits could be featureless, or they could employ chameleonware to blend in with their surroundings. Or they could be adjusted to display unit and rank and any other symbol requested by the user. This guy had symbols designating him as a gunnery sergeant, and the distinctive red circle patch of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force, in addition to the UNEF and Alien Legion symbols all of Fabron’s team had on their skinsuits. His name tag read ‘GREENE’, with an extra ‘E’ on the end. Ok, so he was a Marine, that was not unusual. Why did Skippy think this Greene guy was trouble? His haircut was high and tight, he wasn’t armed as far as I could tell, and he-
“Margaret?” The guy said loudly. “What are-”
“Lamar?” Adams gasped, and right then, I understood the problem.
The guy I now knew as Lamar Greene strode forward, almost past Smythe before giving our STAR team leader a perfunctory salute. Lamar never took his eyes off Adams. “We all- I thought you were dead.”
“I didn’t think I would ever see you-” She cringed, a tear rolling down her cheek. Impulsively, she stepped forward and they embraced. No kissing, just hugs but not the back-slapping hug your give to a team member. This was a full-body hug. Like, her pressing her face into his neck, and him running a hand along her back and them whispering something to each other.
“Shiiiiiit,” I whispered to myself.
“Um, they have a history, Joe,” Skippy explained.
“Ya think?” I shot back bitterly, and immediately regretted it. “Sorry. Not your fault.”
“They were stationed at Pendleton together, then he transferred to Third MEF,” he pronounced it ‘Meff’. “In Okinawa. Margaret requested a transfer, but then Columbus Day happened, and you know. Air transport was limited, the internet went down and then wasn’t reliable. They both shipped out to Paradise, but on separate ships. When they landed, they kept in touch by zPhone, um, hmm. Would telling you about their conversations be an invasion of their privacy?”
“Damn it. Yes. Me even asking about their personal conversations would be an abuse of power, so don’t do it.”
“Could I tell you that, while he was stuck on Okinawa after Columbus Day, Sergeant Greene had a relationship with a civilian?”
“That bastard,” I glared at the guy, feeling bad for Margaret.
“Hey, Adams hasn’t exactly been celibate, you know? She requested a transfer to Okinawa, but I can tell you she had second thoughts about it.”
“Was she having second thoughts about him?”
“Um, answering that question may run into a privacy issue.”
“Then don’t answer,” I sighed. My life sucks.
“Joe, they haven’t seen each other in a long time. He thought she was dead. Margaret did go visit his parents in El Paso once, after we returned from Newark. Would it violate her privacy to say that she has not mentioned Lamar Greene more than a half dozen times since I’ve known her?”
“You already mentioned it, so privacy is kind of moot.”
“What I’m trying to say is, Margaret has not been pining away for him. She hasn’t seen him for a long time, it’s na
tural that they are happy to meet again.”
Part of me wanted to go break up the party. They were no longer hugging, but they were standing very close and talking softly. He touched the nametag on her chest and his hand lingered there, she wasn’t objecting. My intervention wasn’t necessary, and wouldn’t have been appropriate anyway. Fabron called Greene into formation, the Commando team was lining up in front of the Dodo. And right then, the Ruhar observer came out of the dropship, making demands and I had to deal with that right away. Plus I knew there was a Jeraptha we hadn’t counted on, and a whole host of other issues that occupied my time and attention.
CHAPTER THIRTY
That was a rough day for me, and I’m not even talking about the wonderful news I got about Lamar freakin’ Greene. The Ruhar we captured was a Klasta-rank officer named Kattah Robbenon, she was outraged and rightfully so. I told her she was right to be outraged, and I listened to her complaints. And I explained that we needed the Commando team to prevent a dire threat to Paradise, to the entire concept of the Alien Legion.
It was just my luck that Klasta Robbenon was a barracks lawyer. She railed at me, citing interstellar law that I wasn’t familiar with and didn’t care about. She told me I was stupid, that I was crazy for kidnapping a Ruhar soldier. Damn, when she got wound up, there was no stopping her. Humans needed the Ruhar to protect them in the cold, harsh Universe. The threat to Paradise was a threat only to the humans on Paradise, so it was our problem. She didn’t even like the Alien Legion, she thought the whole idea of allowing primitive alien humans to fight was a distraction, and that giving weapons to the Verd-Kris was pure insanity. She- Well, blah blah blah, you get the idea. No way was she ever going to cooperate. Reluctantly, I ordered Kapoor to have two of his people escort our ‘guest’ to her new quarters. The cabin we locked her in was larger than usual, though I don’t think she noticed or cared. Maybe after a couple weeks she would calm down, I wasn’t counting on it. She was a prisoner of war, and sugar-coating it wouldn’t change the reality of the situation.
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 45
