Gabriel’s neuretics caught a faint trace of a burst from Sabra to Lamber, so short he had no chance to intercept it. Again with the two of them, he thought. He ordered his snoop program to maintain a passive watch on their bursts; maybe he could pick up what they’re talking about.
“Your combat gear and all personal weapons are stowed in the hold,” Gesselli continued as she walked up to Gabriel. She held the code-locked plasteel case she had brought from Toronto, the lid now opened. “And Commander, I’m uploading an additional secure command file, please open a channel.”
Gabriel opened a secure neuretics file storage, and he watched as a compressed file flashed from her case through his system, too quick to even get a whiff of its contents. “Locked?” he asked.
“It will autoflash to you at a predetermined time in the mission. Please be prepared to receive it,” she replied drily.
She snapped the case shut and turned on her heel and faced the rest of the team. “Good luck to all of you. Admiral MacFarland sends his best wishes,” she said, ignoring an anonymous snicker. She strode to the transport without another word.
“Well,” said Sowers. “That was a pleasant sendoff. No kisses?”
“Saddle up,” said Brevik in a low voice. “Sir,” he said to Gabriel, almost apologetically.
“Absolutely Lieutenant, let’s get this show on the road. Haze gray and underway.” Gabriel stepped onto the metal steps and climbed towards the hatch. The rest of the team followed as the Rolls Royce jets spooled up in the background.
Santander woke up in a fantastic mood, but not entirely sure why. He rose from his bed, stretched, and looked out his picture window across the city and over Pavonis Plain. He slept alone last night; that couldn’t have been it. Oh right, the plant. Satisfying.
Dust devils were just starting to form outside the dome in the morning light. No cars on the street, barely any windows lit in the prefab condos. Far below he could see the local coffee vendor cranking open his stall’s awning.
He walked around the bed and had his neuretics flick on the holowall to catch last night’s baseball feeds from Earth. No sports on Mars, another nail in the coffin. Not even a decent golf course, just some broken-down arcade with a three hole putt-putt course down the block. Didn’t even sell beer. What’s the point of golfing without a beer? he wondered, not for the first time.
He dropped his shorts near the bed and was just about to step into the air shower when his neuretics signaled an incoming call relayed from Earth. As he was about to dismiss it, the ID popped up and he paused. Dredge MacFarland, Christ. He shut off the shower and put on a robe, went back into the parlor, and opened his balcony doors. The neuretics signaled again. He sat on a wicker chair and wished again he wasn’t here…ten floors up, but no oceanview. No damned ocean at all. He sighed and took the transmission.
It was delayed, of course. Mars’s current position put Earth at one of its closest approaches, but it was still a six minute lag each direction. He took the transmission in Mindseye.
An avatar of MacFarland popped up in his vision, appearing to float on the edge of the balcony railing. “Santander, it’s MacFarland. This is a Blue Four encryption, we’re secure. I’ve got a new mission for you. I know you’re on delay, so just listen and send me an acknowledgement when it’s done.”
Santander sat back in his chair and wondered where this was going. He did feel a slight sense of optimism about the “mission” that was mentioned.
“Here’s the deal,” the avatar continued. “I’m sending you a ship. It’ll be there in three days. I need you and five of your best men on it, no questions asked. You’re going off-world on a possible cleanup run.”
After playing with a new railgun toy and hearing the words “off-world,” Santander’s spirits hadn’t been this high in weeks. He walked back into the parlor as the transmission continued and ordered the espresso machine to pour a double, extra black. He pulled a bottle from a cabinet above the machine and popped the cork, sniffing the scotch inside. He took a swig right from the bottle, savored the warmth, and swallowed. The espresso machine beeped. He poured a few ounces of the booze into the steaming cup, and went back out onto the balcony to enjoy his morning coffee.
“The ship is the Yongsheng out of China,” the avatar went on. “Don’t worry about registry, she’s ours. She’ll be fully loaded with all the gear you’ll need…”
Santander leaned back and propped his bare feet on the railing, holding a saucer delicately in one hand while sipping his espresso from the other. Yes, things are looking up. I’m getting out of this hellhole, perhaps once and for all. The avatar’s voice went on, a sing-song melody he enjoyed more and more.
Chapter 7
The team settled into the soft seats. Jimenez was right, Gabriel thought. Very plush. And very unlike most missions where he sat in webbing on a cargo shuttle, or maybe lay on a gurney in the back of a medevac jumper.
The spaceplane reminded him of a luxury suborbital passenger plane, and he half-expected a flight attendant to begin speaking on an intercom about how to fasten a seat belt. The craft had a capacity of 64 passengers arranged in sixteen rows of four wide seats with an aisle down the middle. Rows of cargo compartments lined the walls between the fuselage and outer seats, making a window seat only a suggestion - if it actually had windows. As Gabriel had seen from the outside, the only viewports were in the cockpit; otherwise the plane was completely sealed. Shame, he thought. On some orbital transfers he’d been on with Aerospace Force pukes, he’d had some spectacular views. This cabin only offered a wallscreen at the front and small individual screens mounted on each armrest.
Heading for an aisle seat about halfway back in the spacious cabin, he saw that Lamber and Sabra sat together near the back and had begun playing cards right away. St. Laurent was several rows away, face buried in her flexscreen, reminding Gabriel of Gesselli for a brief second. Across the aisle from her sat Jimenez, who plucked at the strings on his battered guitar. Now that it was completely out of the carry bag, the guitar appeared to be an original from a nineteenth-century western movie.
Sowers sat in the very front row, bouncing the basketball off the bulkhead wall, and whistled some off-key show tune loudly. Brevik was opposite him, and having raised the armrest between the two seats on his side of the aisle, seemed to be as comfortable as Gabriel had seen him so far.
He looked around for the final member of the team to no avail. He turned towards the back just as the door to the head opened, and Takahashi emerged, wiping his mouth with a tissue.
“Cripes, Keven, already?” Sowers had turned and spotted him at the same time.
“Just getting it out of the way, Petty Officer Second Class,” Takahashi replied with an emphasis toward Sowers’s subordinate rank.
“Yes sir, of course sir!” Sowers replied, smiling and returning to his basketball toss.
Gabriel settled into his seat and booted the armrest screen. After idly flipping through the day’s news for a few moments, listening to the monotone thuds of Sowers’ basketball, he heard the intercom call, “Two minutes to launch, buckle up.”
He heard a few clicks of seat belts snap into place and he fastened his own. The spaceplane’s jets whined a bit louder and the craft began to taxi.
“Ready to ride the Panther, sir?” Jimenez called to him.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, Mister Jimenez,” Gabriel replied. He blanked his screen and sat back in his seat.
The whine grew louder and the spaceplane turned, apparently at the end of the runway. The whine turned into a throaty growl, and with a thump the brakes released and the spaceplane accelerated as if shot out of a cannon.
Gabriel felt his body press into the seat, which flowed around him automatically. The active cushioning gave crucial areas of his spine and neck extra support, pressing against his side and thighs to prevent blood from pooling. The pressure was intense, far more than he had ever experienced in normal flights. The spaceplane jounced down the runway, ra
ttling his teeth. Just as he thought he might black out, the plane’s nose tipped up and he was pressed down into the bottom of the seat, the active cushioning shifting its focus and allowing his upper body to flex a bit. The graying of his eyes faded and the ride became a little easier on his body. Except for the violent shaking.
“Woo hoo!” yelled Sowers from the front row, his basketball long since pinned to the aft bulkhead by the acceleration. Gabriel felt the plane angle near vertical and heard the pitch change as the ramjets switched to scram, and distant memories of rocket launches popped into his head as his weight shifted to the middle of his back. All around him the fuselage creaked and popped as the scramjets roared their fury behind him.
Gabriel leaned over to shout to Takahashi, who had taken the seat across the aisle from him before takeoff. “Ensign, is this normal? It feels like we’re going to disintegrate.”
“Perfectly normal for a Panther, sir,” he replied, holding an airsickness bag in his right hand.
“How many times have you flown on a Panther?” he asked.
“Uh, three sir, all on the Travolta II.”
“What happened to the Travolta I?” Gabriel asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he replied. He leaned over sideways into his airsickness bag, ending that line of conversation.
“Fantastic.” Gabriel returned his eyes forward, where the wallscreen was showing the forward camera view of the atmosphere disappearing. A deep indigo sky awaited them, stars twinkling in the distance. “Three minutes to orbit,” the intercom called. Gabriel closed his eyes, tried to ignore Takahaski’s groaning, and held down his lunch as best he could.
“Admiral MacFarland?” the comm unit on the mahogany desk called.
MacFarland raised an eyebrow, but didn’t shift his gaze from the foggy floor-to-ceiling window he stared out. Lake Ontario was only now beginning to ice over, later and later every year, he noted. Even the best efforts of Earth’s scientists, recycling, electric vehicles, and fusion power plants couldn’t fully stop global warming, and combined with the lingering climatic effects of the Dark Days, the landscape had changed forever. Now even this far north in late December, when lakes and rivers should be frozen over, only a rime of ice along the shoreline could be seen.
His office within the North American Federation Department of Defense’s massive stone and steel building, nicknamed the Cube, afforded him an excellent view of Humber Bay out the southeastern-facing window, and High Park out the northeastern one. A corner office, fortieth floor, as befitting a man of his stature. Admiral MacFarland was the Director of Naval Intelligence for the NAF, having risen quickly through the convoluted ranks to hold an esteemed post as a mere Vice Admiral. Some said he lied, cheated, and stole his way to the top. He’d never deny it.
The comm unit buzzed again. Annoyed, he ordered his neuretics to disable the system. He glanced down at his cigar, ash nearly up to his gnarled fingers. Bringing it to his lips, he took one last puff, then sent it flying into a corner wastebasket. A snap from the automatic system extinguished the smoldering remnant.
“Ah hell,” he said aloud, countermanding his earlier neuretics directive and activating the comm unit. He walked over to his desk and sat down in the high-backed synthvelour, then sent a command to the chair to begin lower back stimulation. Satisfied with the massage, he took the call.
“Yes, Mariela,” he said tiredly, leaning back and putting both feet up on the desk, scattering a few data printouts and causing his bobblehead Maple Leafs figure to bounce wildly. He kicked at it and sent it clattering to the floor.
“Admiral, I have an Ignacio Cáceres for you.“ She properly emphasized the first syllable of the last name. “He says it’s urgent, and won’t be put off.”
Mariela sounded harried, MacFarland thought. Maybe she could use some permanent time off. He was getting tired of her constant stories of her poor family back in Nicaragua, over and over again. Maybe I’ll have her sent back, get her out of my hair. What’s left of it, he thought wryly, running his hand through his sparse red stubble. “Go ahead, Mariela, put it through to my wall.”
He stood up and straightened his uniform jacket. He faced the side wall as it came to life with a ten-foot high 2D image of a thin, dark-skinned Latino with a bushy mustache and jet black hair.
“Nacho, mi amigo, como estas?” MacFarland boomed.
After a brief delay the image smiled slightly. “Hola, Admiral, I am well, gracias.” The smile disappeared instantly. “You are not returning my messages?”
MacFarland coughed, and took a few steps to his liquor cabinet, never fully turning his back to the image, but not exactly being completely respectful. He picked up a glass and poured two fingers of a clear liquid.
“Señor Cáceres,” he said more formally as he turned back to face the image. “I’ve been very busy with not only your project, but in keeping Toronto running. I don’t have much free time to, with all due respect, constantly keep you updated on my progress.”
The image frowned. “Admiral, our project is of the utmost importance, entiendes? You have ambitions, we have ambitions, si?”
“Si, claro que si,” MacFarland replied, butchering a Spanish accent. He swirled the obscenely-expensive Icelandic vodka, taking in a deep breath of its powerful aroma through his nose. “But you must understand, I cannot overcommit to this project, or it will raise suspicions. Not only here in Toronto, but there in Buenos Aires. And you wouldn’t want your government to catch wind of this, verdad?” He sipped the vodka and savored the burning feeling in his throat. Nothing like that Argentinian firewater Nacho brought to their last meeting - aguardiente he called it? More like jet fuel.
“Yes, of course. But we have many men who have invested millions upon millions of your dollars into this enterprise, and I am their first point of contact. Surely you understand I must keep them apprised of where we stand.”
MacFarland sighed. “Nacho, you know we’re on schedule, and you know I’m the right man for the job. Your masters will get what they are asking for, and I will get what I’m asking for from them, and we’ll all be happy, si? By this time next month, you will be a rich man, sitting in a huge position of power in La Republica de Sudamérica, as Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers. I believe that is what you said you’ve been promised?” He finished off the vodka in a quick gulp. “Sounds like a wonderful job. Your wife and kids in Lambaré will be eternally grateful to you.”
Cáceres blinked. “What do you mean, Lambaré?”
MacFarland set the glass down on his desk. “Your family, in Lambaré, Paraguay, si? I believe you are Paraguayan by birth, and you only live and work in Argentina for the SAR for convenience?” He turned his back to the image, looking back out his window. “No worries, my friend. No one else needs to know this, and I know you have both of our best interests at heart. I just wanted you to know I have my best people watching out for your family. You know, in case anything happens to either of us. Your daughter is a lovely girl. Her very special fifteenth birthday dance is coming up, yes? I understand that’s an important occasion. And your son is an excellent futbol player for his small size, is he not?”
Cáceres struggled to keep his composure. “Admiral, we are both friends here, working towards the same goal. The people I represent are more than willing to fund your project in exchange for what we’ve all agreed on, and yes, this will give both of us great positions of power. But leave my family out of this.”
“Claro, Nacho. Claro. As I said, everything is on schedule, and you will hear from me when we need to take the next step. The plans are already in motion, it will only be a matter of days before the first part is complete, entiendes?”
With that, MacFarland cut the connection and walked closer to the window. He reached out with a finger and touched the glass, tracing an image of a face in the condensation. Circle, two eyes, nose, mouth, and a scribbled mustache. Smiling, he took his palm and wiped the image away.
Chapter 8
The spacep
lane’s journey from low orbit to the station was scheduled to take just over six hours, during which time Gabriel tried to grab some quick shuteye. It had been a while since he had been in zero-G and his body wasn’t fully acclimated to the weightless feeling, especially when attempting to shut down and get some sleep, so he had his neuretics send a half-CC of somnatin from internal storage to the proper neuroreceptors. Within minutes he was fitfully dozing. His automatic watch program monitored his surroundings, which were nothing more than seven other men and women attempting to take the same nap.
The school burned around him. He stood in what remained of the gymnasium, a steel basketball rim all that was left of the court, pieces of the interlocking bleachers sitting smoldering against a stone wall. His leg screamed at him, the last of his pain meds having been used up earlier in the assault. The Geltex dripped from his combat armor down his leg and sizzled onto the floor, still not completely extinguished. Gabriel grimaced in pain at his injury, and at the feeling of loss at Tamander’s death. The kid was barely out of high school, and gave his life to protect Gabriel as the fiery explosive fell around them. He had taken the full brunt of the Geltex attack, which the cowardly terrorists had ignited like ancient boiling oil as they fled. He could still hear Tamander’s screams, a sound he’d never forget.
He was down to two men, Martorano and Freestone. Both were wounded, Freestone probably mortally so. Dammit to hell, he thought. Nine dead, nine good men and women he had known almost since their entry into Naval SpecFor. And for what?
“Lieutenant!” a voice yelled over the crackling flames. “Sir, Freestone’s gone!”
Gabriel looked back at the two men, one cradled in the arms of the other. Renaldo Freestone’s lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling as Lonnie Martorano gently lowered his body to the gym floor. The flames grew in intensity, and a section of the ceiling fell with a crash behind the men. Gabriel hesitated for a second as an iron fist punched him in the gut with the loss of another member of his team. Too many good men lost.
Gabriel's Redemption Page 6