by Rick Partlow
A wolf the size of a planet picked us up in his teeth and shook us like a femur, trying to crack his way down to the delicious marrow and if I thought my head hurt before, now it was cracking at the seams of my skull.
“Multiple particle cannon hits!” Davis strained the words out as if he were giving birth to them. “Drive field attenuation thirty percent!”
“Julie!” Olivera’s order sounded more like a desperate plea. “Get us out of their range!”
“We’re moving,” she shot back, almost treading over his words. “But it’s going to take a couple minutes for the field to repropagate.”
“Can we jump?”
The ship lurched and the faint crackle of frying eggs and an ozone smell filled the air, just a faint hint of smoke entering the air filtration system somewhere.
“Not now we can’t,” Julie said, biting the words off and spitting them out. “Drive field down to thirty percent.”
“The Truthseeker is jumping!” Davis said. I tried to follow his words on the tactical readout and couldn’t. The screen was full of enemy ships, on all sides of us. I couldn’t even find the spot where the Helta had been a moment before. Were there only nine of them? It sure as hell seemed like a lot more than nine.
“At least they’ll get away,” Olivera said, sagging in his chair, the strength and starch gone out of him along with the hope of survival. “Maybe they’ll warn Washington.”
I might not have been able to pick out where the Truthseeker had been before, but I could see her now. She coalesced into existence less than a hundred miles off our port side, a wall of silver metal in the view from the optical telescopes, her particle cannon flashing blue in the vacuum as matter and antimatter annihilated each other. She charged straight into the teeth of the enemy, taking the hits meant for us. They were visible even without the computer’s help, distortions of the light twisting around the silver wedge of her, surrounded by halos of blue, and then red and on into white.
“Julie, get us turned around,” Olivera said, leaning into the screen as if he could reach in and stop what was happening. “Davis, are weapons up?”
“The impulse gun can’t fire until the drive field is one hundred percent,” Davis told him. “Particle cannon uses the drive field, too. All we got are point-defense turrets and missiles, but neither one will touch the enemy cruisers through their shields.”
“Is our fucking drive field back up yet?” Olivera exploded, slapping his palms on the armrests of his chair, drawing shocked stares from the bridge crew.
“Ten seconds,” Julie replied, voice flat, as if she hadn’t noticed her superior’s outburst, had taken it as a standard question asked in the heat of combat. “Ten seconds until we can maneuver and fire the particle cannon. Another ten until we can jump. A full minute until we have enough field strength to fire the impulse gun.”
Olivera looked like he wanted to punch something and part of me wanted to watch his reaction, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the tactical display. The Truthseeker was firing its particle cannon every couple of seconds, but the enemy was staying clear of her impulse gun, if she could even have fired it. Her field had to be shrinking with every hit she took and I flinched at every flare of light from her shields, sharing the pain of the blows, wishing I could absorb some of the damage for them.
“Drive field is up,” Julie announced, and the view on the screen shifted as the Jambo spun on her axis. “Executing 180-degree turn into the enemy course.”
“Target the fuckers, Davis,” Olivera growled. “Get us back into this fight!”
I was staring straight at the Truthseeker when she imploded.
I’d known it was possible. It was part of the lecture the Helta had given us from day one, that if the drive field absorbed enough energy quickly enough, it could implode and take the ship inside with it. She was there, surrounded by a halo of white light, glowing like one of the archangels my father used to preach about from the pulpit, arms raised, eyes upturned as if he was looking at their glory in the heavens. And then she was gone, leaving behind plumes of superheated gas shooting in every direction.
And our only ally, my friend, Joon-Pah was gone along with her.
“Oh, God.”
I didn’t know who said it. I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t speak.
“Julie,” Olivera said, his voice a rasp like the words were dragging themselves over broken glass to leave his throat. “Jump to hyperspace. Take us home.”
The enemy was closing in on us, would be in particle cannon range in seconds.
They vanished, and the screen went black and took the universe with it.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I need a drink.” I rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands, filling my vision with stars and I didn’t stop because I didn’t want them to go away, didn’t want to have to deal with reality when I opened them. “You know, until I drank some of that Skrith shit during the conference, I hadn’t had any alcohol since my divorce. I stopped because I thought I was drinking to self-medicate and I didn’t want to find out the hard way that I was an alcoholic. But if you put a bottle of tequila in front of me right now, I think I’d down about half of it before I stopped.”
Julie pulled my hands away from my face and when I opened my eyes, I only saw her looking at me. She leaned in and kissed me, ignoring the others in the small conference room.
“You’re babbling, Andy,” she told me. “And it’s a dry ship.”
“Oh, he ain’t wrong,” Pops commented. He was leaning his chair back against the bulkhead, showing no deference at all to the various high-ranking officers in the compartment. “I could absolutely kill a fifth of gin about now.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Gin? Really? I’d expect that from Garcia, not you. Where the hell is Garcia, anyway?” I’d half-expected Mansur to be here with the brain trust as well, but then again, he was in intelligence, and we didn’t have any.
“In his compartment,” Pops said. “Not much politicking or negotiating to be done right now.” He shrugged. “I like gin.”
“If we survive this,” Dani Brooks promised, “I will take all of you out to the best dive bar in Columbus, Georgia and get you drunk on the cheapest booze they have.” She looked haggard and drawn and I thought the deaths of the engineering crewmembers had hit her as hard as it had hit me. “But for now, we have less than twenty-four hours in hyperspace before we arrive back at Earth, and God knows how close on our heels the Tevynians are going to be. There are still nine of them, nine cruisers that we know of, not counting any fighter carriers they might have coming with. We have this ship and maybe, if we’re lucky, the Delia Strawbridge is ready to go back home. And that is fucking it.” She spread her hands. “What the hell are we going to do?”
I stared at Michael Olivera. Hell, everyone was staring at Michael Olivera. And he was staring at the conference table like the answers to all the questions of life were written there. I’d known the man for nearly two years and I had never seen him looking as lost as he did at that moment.
“What happens if we even win?” Julie wondered. I looked at her, expecting despair from the words, but finding something else. Perhaps disappointment. “Joon-Pah is gone and the Helta probably won’t risk their Alliance to support us without him around.”
“One disaster at a time, Colonel Nieves,” Olivera said, his first words since he’d called this meeting two hours ago, once we’d jumped to hyperspace. He raised his head and met my eyes. There was intense sadness there behind that dark gaze, a terrible sense of responsibility. “It was my fault,” he said. “I got him killed. We should have just left, headed back to Earth.”
I didn’t want to argue with him. I’d been having the same thoughts myself during the battle. But I also didn’t want the commander of the only fucking ship we had feeling sorry for himself.
“Joon-Pah was our friend,” I told him. “He saved our lives because we saved his, because we saved his people. He owed us
a debt and he paid it. Let’s just take the gift he gave us and honor it.”
The words seemed empty to me, just so much smoke, the sort of thing I’d have said to the platoon when I was a second lieutenant just because I was supposed to, with no expectation that they’d buy it. Olivera seemed to appreciate them, though. He nodded, tried to smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“They’re not going to go after the planet,” he said, his voice firmer. “That’s a guess—a hope I suppose, that they won’t double-cross their new allies, the Chinese and Russians. So, they’ll come after us, and our shipyards. If we get there soon enough, we can warn the shipyards, maybe get the other ships to jump out of the system to preserve them just in case. ” He tilted his head to the side and cocked an eyebrow. “If they’ve even got the hyperdrives hooked up yet, or the reactors fueled. That’s going to have to wait until we get there.”
“Even assuming we have the Strawbridge, sir,” Julie interjected, “how do we fight nine of them?”
“We’ll have to take advantage of our greater experience micro-jumping,” Olivera declared. He held up a hand to forestall Julie’s objection. “Yes, I know, it’s going to break down the superstructure of the ship and burn out our power conduits, eventually. But what other choice do we have?” He looked around at each of us. “Seriously, if someone can come up with a better idea, tell me now. Everyone in this room has been here since the beginning and I’d be a huge idiot if I didn’t trust your judgment by now.”
“I’m a groundpounder by profession,” Brooks said, shrugging. “I don’t even get to joggle your elbow on the bridge like Andy here. But if you want to use my Rangers for boarding actions, we’re here for you. We’ll do whatever you need.”
Skepticism crawled up the back of my throat like a tickle I had to cough to expel.
“I don’t know if that’d work in this situation,” I said, trying hard to keep my voice neutral and not sound dismissive. “If we can knock out one of their ships to the point where we could board, it would probably be out of the fight for the duration anyway.”
“They really like that globular formation,” Julie mused, thumb tucked under her chin, forefinger tapping against her lips. “Maybe we could try a drive field intersect. If we micro-jumped in, hit one of them just right, we could pinball it into another.”
Olivera snorted dry amusement.
“And you were about to bust my balls for suggesting more micro-jumps.” He rubbed at five-o’clock shadow with his palm, the whiskers rasping against his skin. “I’ll consider it. Hell, at this point, I’d consider anything. We’re all expendable in this. I know you know that on an intellectual level, but what I’m telling you, and only you in this room because I do trust you, is that nine to two or, God forbid, nine to one odds aren’t survivable. I know what we’re going to have to do will destroy this ship and kill everyone on her. Which is why I’m going to launch all shuttles when we arrive in-system. Rangers, Delta, pilots, all non-essential personnel will be left in Earth orbit.”
“Now hold on a second!” I exploded, standing up. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“The hell with that, sir!” Brooks said, her exclamation walking over mine, her palms on the table, weight over her feet in case she had to jump up and support me. “We’re here to fight!”
“This isn’t up for debate,” Olivera said, not raising his voice, not moving in his chair, no give at all in his tone. “If we lose this battle, the US and the Coalition is going to need all the help they can get, and you are a valuable asset. I’m not going to let several hundred million dollars’ worth of Svalinn armor and dozens of trained soldiers….” He noticed my scowl and rolled his eyes. “…and one Marine go to waste getting blown up alongside the rest of us just so you all can feel better about yourselves. Grow up. You’re all government property. It’s part of the oath you all took to follow orders, and these are my orders. Is that clear?”
He glared at me and I knew it was a warning—I’d better follow orders this time.
“Yes, sir,” I said, falling back into my chair. I met Julie’s eyes and we shared a look of utter hopelessness.
She’d be staying on the ship, dying with it, while I abandoned her.
Olivera checked his watch.
“Brief your troops, do your preps, then get some sleep. You know that old saying about how the only easy day was yesterday? Well, today is that yesterday. Don’t waste it.”
***
“You should get some sleep,” Julie told me, teasing at my chest hair.
I glanced at the readout on my cabin’s bulkhead display, a muted, green glow in the darkness of the compartment. The time was meaningless in and of itself, just a number on a ship traveling between planets, a convenience for assigning shifts, but I knew the significance of this particular number. Twelve hours until we emerged from hyperspace. Ten hours until we would all have to report to our duty stations, Julie to the bridge, me to one of the shuttles.
Till I said goodbye to her forever.
“Do you think,” I asked her, staring at the overhead, afraid to look at her, “that I’m going to be able to sleep?”
She sighed, resting her forehead against mine.
“We always knew this might happen,” she insisted. “Either of us could have died a dozen times over these last couple years. And there’s no saying we would have been together when it happened.”
“I know.” Her sweat-matted hair was cool against my temple, her skin warm against my side, a sharp contrast to the chill of the air conditioning coming from the overhead vent, just enough heat that I didn’t feel the cold, didn’t want to pull the covers over us. “But this is different. This is a ticking clock.”
“We all live with a ticking clock.” She chuckled. “Well, we used to anyway. Now the clock is ticking a lot slower for some of us.”
Her finger pressed insistently against my cheek, turning my eyes toward hers.
“This sucks,” she admitted. “But we’re not kids. You and I have seen enough death to know we’re not immortal, no matter what the Helta docs did to our telomeres. We’re both fighting for something bigger than us.” Her expression softened. “Which reminds me. After…if there is an after, if we beat them and there’s anything left, and if you make it, I want you to go see my daughter.”
I grunted, the words a punch to my floating ribs, imagining how that conversation would go. I’d met the girl once and I didn’t think she liked me.
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue with her about it. I would have done anything she asked me.
“And if things don’t work out,” she went on, finally choking up, finally hitting something that broke through her tough, cool fighter pilot façade, “and if it all goes to shit….”
“If I can,” I promised, “if I have the opportunity, I will find her and make sure she’s okay.”
I just hoped Paul had listened to my warning and gotten Zack out of Austin. We all knew what could happen in a big city when things got bad. We’d seen it before, seen the chaos, and I didn’t even want to imagine Zack caught up in that.
“But if it goes to shit, I don’t know I’ll outlive you by all that long.” I shouldn’t have said it, I knew immediately, but the pain in my chest wanted to come out and I couldn’t keep it all pent up. “I don’t know that I want to.”
I thought she’d get angry with me for being fatalistic, but the look on her face was fond, instead, mildly amused.
“You wanted to get married,” she said, running a finger over my cheek, “and spend a couple hundred years together, and have ten kids. Because you’re a hopeless romantic. But sometimes even the heroes don’t get a happy ending. Or don’t you write those sorts of books?”
“Shit,” I denied, “I don’t even read that sort of books.”
“Well, that’s the difference between real life and your books. In real life, there are no happy endings. Every ending is sad, because the only real ending for any of us is death.”
I
frowned at her.
“That’s a damned dark way to look at things, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not.” She put a hand behind my neck and pulled me into a kiss. It stole my breath away, and when she let up, I was gasping for air and from the fire she’d stirred inside me. “All it means, my love, is that you shouldn’t be looking for a happy ending. You should enjoy every day like it’s your last, hold on to every second like it’s the most incredible experience you’ll ever have, like it’s the last memory anyone will ever have of you.”
“In that case,” I said, pulling her into my arms, crushing her against me, “I definitely don’t want to go to sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Hyperdimensional translation in sixty seconds.”
Julie’s voice was a distant buzz in my helmet earphones, like a whole world separated us rather than just the bulk of the Jambo. I was watching the view from the bridge displays in my HUD, not bothering with the dimly-lit interior of the shuttle. There was nothing to see inside the lander, nothing I wanted to see. Everything I wanted was on the bridge.
“It could be our last one together,” I said, interrupting the by the book recitation of status reports on the bridge. “Can’t we just call it ‘jumping out of hyperspace’ once?”
“No,” Julie snapped, the anger in her voice surprising me.
“Why not?”
She turned toward the video pickup, knowing where it was from previous conversations we’d had in this sort of situation. She was trying to keep her face angry, frowning, but the smile was working its way through against her will.
“Because hyperdimensional translation ain’t like dusting crops, boy.”
I expected General Olivera to chew us out, to insist we get serious and that I stop interfering with his bridge crew. Instead, he laughed. He laughed long and hard, and the entire bridge crew joined him, even the ones who probably didn’t even know what Julie was talking about. And I laughed, too, the smile on my face so broad it hurt. The joke was a gift. She was a gift, and every second I’d spent with her had been the greatest gift I could have been given.