One of the platoon leaders, a big beefy guy I hadn’t met yet, snorted. “These are Cappans. There’s no way it’s peaceful.”
“We don’t know that,” said Tanaka. “They’re scientists. And that’s why we’re landing outside their main living area. So they have plenty of time to get used to the idea that we’re coming. I don’t want to get into a firefight by accident.”
“They’re fucking Cappans, sir.” Beefy guy glanced at me, but I didn’t hold eye contact. He was probably a staunch supporter of what I’d done on Cappa. He was probably also an asshole. But if it came to him or Larsson, I’d take him. Better an asshole who liked me than somebody who might shoot me. Still, I didn’t need to encourage him.
Tanaka snapped at him. “Do you understand the order, Jurcovik?”
“Yes, sir,” said Beefy.
“Good. When we approach the main settlement, here,” he lit up an icon in green. “Three platoons will provide cover from these positions.” Three ovals lit up. “Myself, Colonel Butler, and first platoon will engage with the Cappans and attempt to negotiate a peaceful transfer of the required data. Once we’ve validated that we have the right information . . . a task that will take about thirty-five minutes due to broadcast delays . . . our unit will exfiltrate first, followed by the support-by-fire platoons. The pickup site is here.” He indicated another spot, about five kilometers away from the target. I read that to mean that he expected the departure to be smoother than the landing. Or more likely, he didn’t know about the landing. By the time we got ready to leave the planet, we’d know one way or the other what the Cappans thought. If we got into a fight, we’d readjust on the fly and find whatever pickup zone worked.
“The rest of the information, including alternate landing sites, contingency plans, and whatever else you might need is in your device. Any questions?”
I didn’t have a data pad, so the others had me at a disadvantage. But unlike the others, to whom “any questions” was rhetorical, I could actually ask one. “What sort of fire support do we have? Air cover, fire from orbit, that sort of thing.”
“We’ve got a two-ship of fast attack birds, sir,” said Tanaka. “The ship we’re on has missiles, but nothing we’d want to use in close. We’re mostly on our own. On the ground we’ve got the standard rockets-in-a-box and shoulder-launched stuff.”
I nodded. It didn’t change my thoughts on the mission, but I always liked to know what we had in case things went to shit. Because things usually went to shit. Tanaka didn’t specify what types of missiles, but something in how he said that we wouldn’t want to use them in close caught my attention. I made a mental note to check what the ship had for armament. Being a non-government ship, it shouldn’t have had anything. But then being a non-government ship, it shouldn’t have had a hundred and sixty armed-to-the-teeth attack troops, either.
I pulled Tanaka aside after the briefing broke up. “I didn’t want to ask any more questions in front of the troops, but I’ve got one big one. What happens if they don’t give us the data? We can’t shoot it out of them.”
“We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that, but we’ve got two data-retrieval specialists as part of the crew. Larsson is one, the other is an enlisted guy asleep in the back.”
“Larsson does data retrieval?”
“One of the best,” he said. “Why’s that a surprise?”
“She didn’t strike me as the type. Plus she’s the exec. She’s got another mission.”
“We’re all cross-trained,” he said. He must have seen something on my face, because he frowned for a second before recovering himself. “Come on, sir. Bar is open. I’ll buy you a drink on Omicron’s dime.”
“I really could get used to this corporate mercenary life,” I said.
If only I hadn’t been abducted into it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I waited until they took the troops out of storage before I started snooping. The extra people moving throughout the ship offered me at least a little cover from the prying eyes of Larsson, who had made me her personal project. I made my route seem random, walking through the enlisted bay, shaking hands and taking pictures with soldiers who swarmed around me once they knew who I was. The XO could stare all she liked at that, but what could she do? If it came down to a choice between her and me, I liked my chances with the grunts. And she couldn’t have the grunts resent her for denying them this (seemingly) innocent opportunity with a bona fide celebrity. If nothing else, having lots of pictures of me in existence would at least make it harder for Omicron to cover up my death, assuming that’s what they had planned.
I found Matua after a bit, hunched over a meal and shoveling food into his face at a terrifying rate. “Hungry?”
“Hey, sir! Yeah. For whatever reason, stasis makes me want to stuff myself afterward.”
“It hits me that way too,” I said.
“I hope there are no hard feelings about the way things went down back at the facility,” he said. I did harbor a bit of a grudge, but that wasn’t really fair since he couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.
“We’re good,” I said. “Just make sure the next time somebody comes at me that you treat them like that piece of meat on your plate.”
He laughed and the crumbs of a biscuit sputtered from his mouth. “You got it, sir.”
I continued my trek around the enlisted area, taking the chance to ask each soldier something personal: where they lived, if they were married, their favorite sports team. I made a special point to ask each one what they did on the mission, making note of those who were staying spaceside—I had questions about the ship, and nobody knew their equipment better than the soldiers who ran it. The troops going down to the planet would be physically closer to me, but the people staying spaceside would have the more critical aspects of the mission.
After speaking to about fifteen troops in the landing party I finally found one who worked in ship operations. Lopez had her black hair done in a buzz cut, a scar just under her left ear. “Must be nice, being on something as advanced as this,” I said.
She shrugged. “It’s okay, sir. It’s almost too pretty, you know?”
“I’ll deal with too pretty for the awesome showers,” I said.
“You got that right, sir.”
“You said you work the targeting system?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know a bit about targeting.” I smiled, almost allowing myself a chuckle.
She laughed. “Yes, sir. I guess you do.”
“What are we packing?”
“XM-25s, sir. Four of them.”
“Holy shit.” It slipped out. XM-25s were high-powered fusion weapons. Planet busters. The same things I’d fired at Cappa. “I wouldn’t expect a civilian ship to have something like that.”
“It’s an Omicron ship, sir. Who do you think makes them?”
Shit. I’d never thought about that, but Omicron did make the XM-25. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that we had them on this ship, which meant somebody thought they had a purpose here. They didn’t load them by accident. A chill ran through me. I wondered if we planned to use them as a last resort or if they constituted the primary plan. Given the small area of the island where the Cappans lived, four XM-25s could lay waste to it with no survivors, if targeted properly.
Lopez was staring at me, and I realized I’d been quiet for too long. “Well let’s hope that we don’t have to use them.”
“Yes, sir. Let’s hope.”
I excused myself as Lieutenant Danner walked by us. He stood eight or ten centimeters taller than anybody else and had exceptionally dark skin. More important, he was the Operations officer and he’d have control of the ship once we headed planetside. Until Tanaka and his XO made it back spaceside, Danner would hold the trigger on those XM-25s.
“Hey Danner, did you do non-com time in the regular army?” I asked. He looked a bit old for a lieutenant, so it was an educated guess.
“I did, sir. I was a forward
air controller.”
“I always loved my FACs,” I said. “Probably the most important guy on a mission.”
He smiled. “I did a couple tours where I—”
“Colonel Butler?” Larsson inserted herself almost between us as she interrupted. “It’s time to suit up.”
Which meant my time to ingratiate myself with the crew was up.
I had more than enough time to prepare myself for the trip planetside, thanks to Larsson wanting to keep me away from Danner. By the time we loaded, I’d checked my ammunition three times and gone to the bathroom twice. I never pass up an opportunity at my age. I strapped myself into the drop ship, my back against the front bulkhead, next to Tanaka. In front of us, first platoon sat in four rows of ten, each row facing another across one of the two aisles. Matua sat close by and looked in my direction, making sure I’d managed to secure myself correctly into my seat. I didn’t say anything. I’d never suggest to somebody covering my ass that maybe they should take the job less seriously.
The mission smelled as bad as a barracks with a broken shower. Every time I’d tried to corner Tanaka about contingency plans in case our primary went to crap, Larsson had materialized with some matter that needed his immediate attention. I’d played it off, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. We were dropping in to an area filled with ambush sites while packing very little fire support. The plan hinged on hoping for cooperation from Cappans who had no reason to give it. A wise man once told me that hope is not a great planning tool.
With Larsson securely ensconced on another ship and Tanaka buckling in, I finally had him where he couldn’t escape. “What are the XM-25s for?” I asked.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“The planet busters. Why do we have them?”
He hesitated a half second too long. “Contingencies, sir. That’s all.”
Liar. If they got the data and destroyed the Cappans, there’d be nobody left to come after it. There’d be nobody left to tell any story other than the official Omicron version. Nobody but me.
Shit.
I’d suspected it before, but the way Tanaka said it, I’d just become certain. I was going to die on this planet. I knew too much. They couldn’t kill me back in civilization. Too many questions. They’d learned that lesson with Gylika, and I’d bring ten times the scrutiny he did. But if I died out here, they could spin it any way they wanted. They could even blame me for the XM-25s. Personally I’d go with “Maverick Colonel Couldn’t Stay Away from Combat, and It Finally Caught Up to Him.” People would buy that. Shit, I’d buy it about almost any colonel I’d ever met. The pull was strong. I don’t think I understood quite how powerful it was until I got the chance to go back. Your whole life you do big, important things. You speak and people listen. Then suddenly that’s over, and you’re wasting your life doing some bullshit job that doesn’t matter, where nobody cares what you do as long as you show up for the company functions.
Yeah, I’d buy that story. Because even knowing everything I did, sitting in a ship headed to a potential combat zone and my likely demise, I had to admit I was a little excited.
I almost asked Tanaka how it was going to happen—how he was going to kill me—but I held my tongue. I knew what he was going to do, but there was a chance he didn’t know that I knew. No need to give him that advantage. I didn’t have much, but I had that. I had that, and I had my civilian high-speed version of a Bitch, complete with a dozen magazines of ammunition. That was something.
“You think I can get the pilot’s feed?” I pointed to my helmet. “I don’t like to fly without knowing what’s going on. Habit.”
“Sure.” Tanaka keyed something in his helmet, which opened the feed in mine. “All set. Sir, I want you to know something, between you and me.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I know you’re not stupid. I know how this whole thing has to look. But I don’t care what the mission is. I intend to bring you back with us. Alive.”
A chill hit me. It was like he read my mind. I considered his words for a moment before speaking. “You know that could put you in a bind with your employer.”
“I know. I don’t care.”
“You’re a good man, Tanaka. I appreciate it. I’m not sure your exec feels the same way, though.”
“She’ll follow my orders, sir.”
I put my helmet on and closed my eyes, pretending to doze until takeoff. He could have been lying, but I’m a pretty good judge of people, and something told me he wasn’t. I might have actually nodded off for a moment—that kind of half sleep where you don’t realize you’re out—because I jerked when the pilot spoke through my earpiece. She had a husky voice, like she’d inhaled too much smoke at some point. “Fifteen seconds until takeoff.”
I counted it down in my head out of habit. The ship began to vibrate, and then the movement pushed me into my belts. After half a minute or so the ride smoothed and we settled into the comfortable flight of open space.
“Six minutes to atmosphere, twenty-three minutes until destination,” said the pilot. Nobody else spoke on the comm. I took that as a good sign. Professional units don’t chatter on the command net; they keep it to private channels. A few of the soldiers checked their kit. A few more slept. Veterans. I took the opportunity to open a private channel to Matua.
“I don’t want to make this weird,” I said, “but if shit starts to go sideways and it’s my time to go, don’t put yourself in the way of it.”
“What are you talking about, sir?”
“Look, I don’t know what you already know, and definitely don’t share this with anybody else. I’m not likely to come back from this. It’s in your employer’s best interest that I don’t. So if you see that start to go down, get out of the way.”
The net stayed silent for several seconds. “Fuck that, sir. My mission is to keep you safe. They want you, they go through me.”
I smiled to myself. Despite the shitty situation, soldiers were soldiers, and Tanaka and Matua were good ones. Maybe I had a chance.
The ship jumped as we hit the atmosphere, and everything shook. If I made a thousand of these trips, I’d still never get used to the teeth-rattling vibration of reentry. Or entry, in this case.
“All systems normal,” said the pilot. “The shake should calm down in a minute.”
We approached the planet several hundred kilometers from our destination, hitting the atmosphere at a precise angle, calculated to multiple decimal places by the ship’s computer. That’s what they told me, at least. Sitting in the back with no windows, I didn’t have any way to check. I’d never blown up on entry before, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
“Approaching landing. Two minutes out. Weather looks . . . shit! What was that?”
“Look out!” A different voice. The copilot, probably. The ship jerked to the right, then back to the left in a roll. My body strained against the side of my belts as the ship’s motion tried to shove me into Tanaka. Outside, a crack of thunder, followed by a closer, distinctive popping sound.
We’d launched anti-missile countermeasures. People had tried to shoot me down before, and it wasn’t a sound I’d forget. Our ship had launched flares and chaff to confuse enemy weapons.
“Four is hit!” said the pilot, a bit of panic seeping into her voice. Not thunder. An explosion.
“What’s happening?” Tanaka asked, as the ship leveled off. No answer. He raised his voice. “What’s happening?”
I put my hand on his arm to get his attention, and opened a private channel. “Let the pilots fight the fight. There’s nothing you can do from back here, and answering you will distract them.”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. He knew that, but I had a feeling he’d been out of the fight longer than he’d care to admit.
It would come back quick, though—it always did.
The ship jerked again, punctuated by another pop of chaff releasing. An earsplitting explosion made me flinch, and the ship lurched sideways in a way
that things that fly aren’t supposed to move. One of the soldiers vomited between his boots. Luckily we were out of zero gravity. That would have sucked.
Shit. None of the intelligence showed anti-air weapons. I should have known better than to trust what the intel said about Cappans. Even if we made it down, we needed a new plan. “We’re out of the upper atmosphere. See if you can raise fourth platoon,” I told Tanaka.
He nodded. The ships had comms systems, but we had our own built into our helmets, and it would work now that we’d cleared the interference of the upper atmosphere. Tanaka toggled his frequency and spoke words I couldn’t hear. In front of me, soldiers darted their heads back and forth. They stayed off the ship’s frequency so I couldn’t hear them, but they were chattering now. Panic. The fear of not knowing what the fuck is going on. It’s universal. They’d expected an easy mission, and it had become startlingly clear that they wouldn’t get it. I hoped that my earlier assessment about veterans held true now that everything had taken a right turn toward shit town.
Tanaka looked at me and shook his head. Bad news.
“Okay. What’s the plan? Pull out?” I asked, keeping to our private channel.
He glanced out at his soldiers. “I’ve got to get the team calmed down.”
“You do. But first you need to tell the pilot which way to go.” I gestured to the soldiers with my head. “These ones will wait. That won’t.”
He nodded. “Yes, sir. Pilot, can we still reach the landing area?”
“Roger. The fire seems to have subsided. It was a single salvo of missiles. There could be more, though, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time flying around in circles.”
“I’m with you on that. Any word on what happened to Ship Four?”
“It didn’t look good. I don’t see any ejects,” said the pilot.
No ejects. No survivors. Tanaka’s head dipped and he stared down at the floor. I knew the feeling, and I empathized with him. His intelligence failed him and people died. The trick is learning that you can never predict everything, and that people die, and you need to move past it quickly so that other people don’t die. It takes a long time to learn. I’m still hoping to get there one day. But it’s easier to see when it’s somebody else. I nudged him, and gestured to the rest of the team. Not everybody stared at us, but enough did to make a difference.
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