Kovac reached out a hesitant hand and gently shook the trooper’s shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?” Kovac asked.
Whatever was inside the cream-colored armor stirred and gave a faint groan. The trooper lifted his arms up a short distance and held them there, trembling. Kovac bent lower, scooped up the Dominion trooper in a single swoop, and cradled him like an oversized doll in his massive arms. Kovac looked over at me, then nodded.
I tapped on my helmet to raise the transport. “Lopez, Rand—come in.”
“Present and accounted for,” said Rand.
“The three of us are en route, so make sure the engine’s fired up and ready to go,” I said.
Then, looking sideways at Stanton, I said, “And have another medipack ready—we’ve got an injured passenger to take back to HQ with us.”
Stanton shook his head slightly, turned toward the direction of the transport, and started jogging. Kovac and I soon caught up with him, and in just a couple of minutes, we were back on the street where our transport was parked.
We were relieved to hear the low grumble of an engine and doubled our pace over the last dozen meters. I gave the back doors two long knocks, followed by two short ones and one more long one. The double doors opened and Rand greeted us with a thin smile, which almost immediately transformed into a scowl when he realized what Kovac was carrying.
“I trust there’s a rational explanation for this,” he said as his mustache twitched.
“There most certainly is not,” Stanton replied as he shoved past Rand and headed for his injured comrades. “We now have further proof that that pigheaded sergeant of yours cares more about spectacle than he does about his fellow soldiers. Mark my words—this act of provocation against the Dominion will be the end of us all.”
I was about to tell Stanton to piss off, but caught myself. Was he really that far out of line? I hadn’t been able to save most of the squadron assigned to this mission, but here I was, risking the lives of a lieutenant, a sergeant, and our strongest soldier to save a single Dominion trooper. Maybe Stanton was right—the fallen soldiers deserved to be honored for their sacrifice. And if the Dominion found out we had taken one of theirs alive, they were sure to come out in full force to eliminate this threat. What was I doing trying to save one of the very people who, until minutes ago, was killing us?
Rand knitted his brow, but helped Kovac lift the injured trooper into the transport anyway. I searched the surrounding area for signs of anything hostile, but the best I could find were a couple of streetlights, which were flickering angrily. Once everyone was on board, I ignored my burning muscles to climb in and pulled the doors shut with a loud clang, which was almost as loud as my growling stomach. Just behind me was the Dominion trooper, laid out on the bench to my right with Kovac sitting by his head. On the other side were the two injured soldiers, both slumped against the gray steel of the transport.
Stanton was adjusting their head bandages and paused just long enough to glare at me. I felt my chest tighten and shuffled past them, finally falling onto the empty stretch of bench next to Kovac. I reached behind the seat’s padding and pulled out my stash of food, fished around for a crinkling wrapper, and was soon pouring a stream of crimson and gold sparkling cylinders into my mouth. I chewed them ravenously—and, okay, a little loudly—and felt my strength beginning to return.
“Oh my God, Walker!” Lopez yelled from the driver’s seat. “Can you stop with the disgusting mouth noises for one minute?!”
Beside Lopez at the front of the transport, Rand was crouching like a gremlin in front of the exposed entrails of the front console, his hands wrist-deep in wires.
“Just get us out of here,” I said through a half-chewed mouthful of sugar.
She glared at me, but the grumble of the transport’s engine deepened and we lurched forward.
“Hey, Rand—what’s with all those wires?” I asked.
Rand paused just long enough to sigh, then said, “I may have short-circuited our long-range comm when I was in the act of repairing the engine.”
“So, we don’t have any idea where the other Peacekeepers are,” I said as I rubbed my face. “Or where all the other weres and vamps ran off to?”
I paused, hoping my new nicknames for the creatures would land. Just when I thought it was going to catch on, Lopez broke the silence and said, “‘Weres’ and ‘vamps’? What are you—a secondary school cheerleader?”
I laughed nervously. “Yeah, Stanton,” I said, looking down the bench. “Those were really stupid names.”
Stanton just shook his head and kept treating his teammate’s head wound.
“If you’ll bear with me for just one moment,” Rand said, pulling my attention back to the front of the transport. There was a bright flash from the bundle of wires in his hands, and the sound of static suddenly grew to a crackling for a moment, and then, a scratchy-sounding voice sounded from a speaker. “—there? Come in, Delta squadron.”
Stanton’s already stiff posture stiffened even more. “That’s Captain Patel,” he said. “Put me through to her.”
Rand fumbled with the pile of electrical equipment in front of him until he found a green button and cradled it in his hand. When he pressed it, the comm went silent, and he nodded to Stanton.
“Captain, this is Lieutenant Stanton of Delta squadron.”
“Thank the gods,” Patel’s crackling voice responded. “Please tell me you eliminated the four hostiles I sent you after.”
I swallowed quickly and cleared my throat. “Captain, I can explain—”
Stanton cut me off. “We eliminated one of the troopers, but the monsters escaped and I believe were on a trajectory toward downtown. Oh—and instead of eliminating the remaining trooper, our resident hero decided to adopt it. The enemy is currently receiving first aid in our transport.” He gave me a razor-sharp glare, and continued, “That’s what happened, Captain.”
There was silence on the other end of the comm, which I was pretty sure was worse than yelling for Captain Patel. In an eerily calm voice, she said, “Head back to HQ. I need to see Lieutenant Stanton and Sergeant Walker on the double.”
Uh, oh. My entire team was alive and mostly uninjured, and Stanton’s team mostly dead or crippled. This wasn’t going to look good.
“Don’t you dare even take a piss before reporting to the briefing room,” Patel said. “I want you there the moment you return to base. We need to talk.”
11
“LET ME GET this straight,” Captain Patel said in a low voice, her tight black bun practically trembling near the top of her head. “Of Lieutenant Stanton’s seven soldiers, five are dead, and two are badly injured.”
She looked up slowly from the conference room table’s dark, polished surface. Her thick brows were relaxed, but her lips pressed together tightly. Then, “Sergeant Walker, how many of your team are dead or injured?”
I swallowed hard—which was more difficult than usual, because I’d just downed a jumbo pack of Super Sugary Saturn’s Rings treats as I’d hurried to the conference room.
“None of my team is dead or injured, Captain. But,” I touched my stomach and winced. “I did get kicked pretty hard by a werewolf. It’s way worse than you’d expect.”
Patel’s face burned a stark red against the deep brown of her fatigues. “Once again, your behavior has wreaked havoc—not on the enemy, but on our own soldiers. This is exactly the sort of reckless behavior I would expect from a rank-climbing soldier.”
She jabbed a long, slender finger at me as she spoke. “You are a liability to the United Federation of Sol and a disgrace to the Peacekeepers.”
“B-but Captain,” I stuttered. “Stanton’s team wouldn’t listen to me, so I was left with only my own crew to manage. After seeing the enemy in action, I had an even better handle on how to approach the weres and vamps—”
I stopped myself and tried again. “I had a better idea of how the enemy creatures were working. Maybe if I’d been in charge of coordinatin
g our entire group, everyone would still be in one piece.”
Stanton shot forward in his chair. “How dare you blame your failure on the defenseless dead?”
I sunk back into my chair and lowered my eyes to the tabletop.
“I know exactly what you did,” Patel said. “You tried jumping rank and taking over the operation from a lieutenant. And now we have a situation.”
Captain Patel was not my biggest fan. I was pretty sure it was because I’d been promoted to sergeant so quickly, while it had taken her nearly a decade to get that far. True, she had finally been promoted to captain after defending a massive Dominion attack on Charon. But if I kept rising through the ranks at this speed, I would definitely serve as a constant reminder to her that life wasn’t fair.
Patel shook her head, then continued. “Because of your inability to contain the situation, monsters are loose, killing and kidnapping.”
Her red face cooled to its normal caramel color. “However, we think we have them pinned down, so I’m mobilizing Theta squadron and putting Lieutenant Stanton in charge. We’ll hold a briefing here in five minutes.”
Stanton gave a quick nod. Well, that could have been worse. At least I was still going to be part of the next operation.
Unfortunately, Patel kept talking. “Walker, you will leave this room immediately—you are to take no part in the strategy session or the on-the-ground operation. Your team will be restricted to base until further notice.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, then said in a firm voice, “Dismissed.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but snapped it shut. There was absolutely no way I was going to win this. Patel had all the power here. She’d given us terrible odds in the first place, and now we were being punished for it. Welcome to Shaming 101.
I pulled myself from my seat and drifted out into the hallway. I was stunned—I thought I’d finally found my calling in life once I’d gained extraordinary abilities and saved Pluto and its moons from an enemy invasion. But during my very first engagement with the same enemy near Neptune, I’d been handicapped by a single captain—a handi-captain? Anyway, a true hero should be able to pull off doing something awesome, even in the face of a conceited commanding officer.
But what if I wasn’t really a hero, after all? What if all those haters were right—what if my victories around Pluto were all flukes?
I was so preoccupied that I didn’t notice Kovac’s giant frame leaning against the wall outside the conference room.
“What’d she do, Walker?” Kovac rumbled. “Put us on ice?”
I met his watery blue eyes slowly, struggling to care. “It’s all my fault,” I said flatly. “I thought I was a hero. I’m not. I’m just a kid who’s barely grown up and has had a bunch of powers dumped into his lap. Now all I have is a cold and soggy lap.”
Kovac cocked an eyebrow.
I rubbed the back of my head, then said, “I can barely keep a team of four alive, let alone ten, or a hundred. Patel doesn’t want me messing up their plans—and they certainly don’t want to hear any of my silly explanations of fantastic creatures and how to fight them.”
“Stanton was an ass,” Kovac said as he put a meaty hand on my shoulder. “You did your best.”
I exhaled loudly. “I know…it just wasn’t good enough. And now Patel won’t listen to anything I say—not even if it’s about vampires and werewolves.”
Kovac nodded his thick head. “Everyone needs to change.” He squeezed my shoulder firmly. “So, you have problems. Learn to change yourself.”
He took his hand off my shoulder and said, “It’s a hero’s journey. Try changing a little. I’m sure you can.”
My heart felt instantly lighter. Maybe Kovac was right—maybe I was looking at it all wrong. If becoming a hero was like a journey, then I shouldn’t expect to become a hero overnight. I needed to take a longer view. So what if one pissed off captain thought I messed up a single mission? I’d just have to prove her wrong the next time. That is, if there was a next time.
“Um . . . if you two are finished having a moment,” Lopez said as she stepped out from behind Kovac, “I just want to make sure that I heard right—we’re getting paid vacation?”
I stiffened suddenly. Kovac was so large that I hadn’t seen her on the other side of my massive friend. If I’d known she was there, I wouldn’t have shared my self-doubt with Kovac. I was sure that Lopez would take that information, sharpen it to a point, and wait to stab me with it until the most humiliating moment possible.
But she didn’t say anything. Instead, her head bent as she raised a data pad and went back to her perpetual swiping.
Had she heard? Was she bluffing? There was no way to know with Lopez. Damn her and her impregnable mask of apathy!
“Yes, Lopez,” I said, with no hint of having just bared my soul. “We’re on paid vacation. That is, if your idea of exotic cuisine is barely warmed, reconstituted mystery meat.”
I continued, “But don’t get too comfortable—I’m going to try contacting Colonel Vaiega and see if there’s anything he can do. It’s a long shot, but it might work.”
A grunt of frustration came from somewhere behind Kovac. I peered around his literally barrel-sized chest to see what else had been blocked from my view, and saw Rand jabbing angrily on his mini data pad. Damn—the seemingly infinite space behind Kovac was the equivalent of a twentieth-century clown car. Only, it wasn’t being driven by people in creepy makeup who haunted the dreams of children.
I shook my head, trying to get the image of a leering, overweight man in a large, red nose and cracking face paint out of my head. “In the meantime,” I said, “We should act as if we were still joining the operation to find the Dominion’s latest batch of monsters.”
My stomach growled. “Speaking of exotic cuisine, I’m dying to get something to eat.” I started walking briskly down the hallway and, after hearing a few groans behind me, I soon heard the rapid footfall of my companions as they caught up to me.
“So,” Lopez said flatly, “What does our fearless leader wish us to do?”
I wasn’t sure if she was alluding to my conversation with Kovac about being afraid I wasn’t cut out to be a hero, or if this was just her typical deadpan mockery.
“Lopez—you’ll need to take a five minute break from comparing celebrity outfits and try to access the vid footage from Delta squadron’s helmet cams. I want to see if there’s anything else we can learn about these paranormal bastards.”
Lopez gave a dramatic sigh. “Fine,” she said dully.
“In the mean time,” I said to Kovac, “I’ll have Rand put you to work with a little project. Hey, Rand—”
“Dammit!” Rand slapped his small data pad with his opposite hand. “I’m confident the government has engineered this process to drive enterprising inventors insane.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “How about you take a minute and try figuring out how to make silver slugs that will work with all of our plasma weaponry? Kovac can run the printer for you.”
Rand’s mustache began to move slowly from side to side, a clear sign that he was already hard at work.
“Oh,” I continued. “And if you have the time, make me a silver knife, will you?”
Just then, a voice blared over the intercom. “Sergeant Walker—”
“What now?!” I yelled at the nearest speaker. A small soldier at the end of the hallway snapped her head up and glared at me. I smiled sheepishly and pointed at the speaker.
“—contact Captain Patel at the nearest video terminal.” Then the hallway went silent.
I exhaled loudly and looked to my team. “Go ahead and start eating without me—hopefully I can catch up before I finally starve to death.”
My team hurried off to eat, while I jogged back down the hallway to a wall-mounted console unit with a large screen. I entered my security information, scrolled to find Patel’s name, and placed a call.
An instant later, the screen was filled with Patel’s f
ace. The inside of her thick eyebrows sloped downward and her lips pursed together. “I’ll need you to join me immediately,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to be involved with your strategy session,” I said, failing miserably to suppress any sarcasm.
“You’re not,” Patel said forcefully. “I’m in the medical wing. Your beloved trooper has just revived, and she says she has sensitive information.”
She?
“That’s . . . great news,” I said, hoping to hide my surprise—not just at the revelation that the trooper was actually female, but at the fact that Patel needed something from me. “So . . . what’s the problem?”
Patel exhaled loudly through her nose. “The problem is,” Patel shook her head. “She refuses to talk to anyone but you.”
12
TWO HEAVILY-ARMED soldiers stood outside the entrance to the medical wing, plasma rifles held tightly to their chests. I saluted the guards before the door whooshed open to reveal a world of white, interrupted by rows of powder blue beds and the occasional tower of shiny metal equipment. One group of medics swarmed around a pair of beds near the front of the room, while another group attended to the only other occupied bed, which was at the other end of the room.
Interrupting the flow of medics at the far end, a handful of soldiers in infantry fatigues stood in a semi-circle around the bed with their plasma pistols drawn, completely blocking my view. Patel and Stanton were positioned just behind the line of soldiers, looking intently at the patient.
Medics were busy working on a variety of blocky machines with dangling hoses at the injured trooper’s bedside. I paused near the entrance for a few minutes, in part waiting for the medics to wind down, but mostly hoping to catch a glimpse of the Dominion trooper we’d saved. Er, I mean, the enemy combatant we’d captured. I’d only ever seen one female from the other universe—a disturbingly attractive evil sorceress straight out of a He-Man vid who looked like she was wearing a sorority-grade Halloween costume. Would this one be more of the same?
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