She didn’t seem to mind though. After all, the impropriety between us went both ways, considering the secret mission she’d sent me on before this most recent deployment to save a woman she had irresponsibly stranded on an alien planet. It was pretty damn improper by Alliance regulations to even ask me to go on that trip, and it was something that command could never know about. It was our secret, it was safe with me, and that’s the sort of thing that defined our professional relationship. Trust.
“You almost got him killed,” I continued, my jaw tightening as I thought of Corporal Rex and the way he was holding his hand out to me back in that cave, waiting to be saved. I almost didn’t save him, and if I hadn’t, it would have been because of the woman standing before me.
“Who?” she asked, her eyes still focused on the papers in from of her. That was when I realized just how much Della was like the others. She didn’t know who I was even talking about. Corporal Rex was nothing to her, less important even than the papers on her desk.
“Are you fucking serious right now, Della?”
Hearing the no-fucks-to-give tone in my voice, she sighed and looked up at me. “The kid.” Seeing the answer in my eyes, she sighed again and nodded. “He knew the risks.”
“This isn’t about the risks, Della.” I placed a fist down firmly on her desk. “This is about a kid who almost died because of you.”
She chuckled a little, a hint of aggravation in her voice. “Is that really a road you want to go down with me, Mark?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know the facts, Mark. There’s always a risk with every choice we make. We make decisions in the moment. We do what we think is best, and we don’t apologize for it.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we’re not right, and sometimes we are, but that’s the nature of war. Those in command have to make decisions that could get people killed, and it’s the way war has been since man picked up his first rock or a pointy stick.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what kind of decision is it to sacrifice one soldier when you could have saved them both? You know, like I actually did.”
“That was no guarantee.” She pursed her lips at me. “The fact is, Mark, that you did the impossible, well, more like the highly improbable. You bucked what our intelligence said and was able to get the hell out of that cave without his weight pulling you down and getting both of you killed. Even with the lost seconds your stunt caused, you somehow managed to evade those fliers, Mark. They were still out there too.”
I sighed heavily but didn’t say anything.
“You see what I’m saying, Mark. I had to make the choice that ensured the one-hundred-percent return of Mark Ryder over the slim chance that I could get both you and some grassfed who can barely point a rifle straight.”
No, I wasn’t going to give in. I’d given in like this countless times, fallen in line with the typical philosophies of the top brass and followed orders like a good Marine. There were too many Billy’s for me to do that anymore.
“Your intelligence has been wrong before, enough times that you should have known that I would save him.” I straightened up and clenched my fists. “You should have given him his fair chance to live instead of me taking it from you.”
“He had a chance to live,” she countered. “They all have a chance, just like you, just like me. We all had our chances, and we either took them or we didn’t. There was another Marine out there with you too, Mark. I don’t see you banging the drum talking about how wrongful his death was.”
“That’s different.”
It wasn’t a defensive front of mine either. It had been different because there had been no chance for me to save him. I couldn’t whine about every lost Marine, that much was true, but I could kick, scream, and resist their choice to try to leave behind a man or woman I could have snatched from death’s door.
“Why?” She snorted. “Because you weren’t as close to him when he was in trouble, or because you think you can blame someone else for it?” She shook her head. “Either one is ridiculous.”
A shock of anger and resentment ran through me. Was this really what she thought of me? After all these years, did Della really see me as still some kid trying to pass the buck or lose myself in some misplaced sense of grief? If so, she was about to see things very differently.
“This is about right and wrong, and you know it.” My entire being tensed with anger. ”This is about saving a goddamn human life. You remember that, right? You remember what the entire freaking war is about in the first place?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Or have you been just as tainted as all the other greedy fuckers around here?”
Della’s face hardened. Gone was the friendly woman whose had crawled into my bed when things were good and whose had cried on my shoulder when things were bad. She was Major Conroy now, and she was about to make sure I understood the distinction.
“You are dancing on the head of a very dangerous needle, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said, using my official title to drive home the point. “If I were you and I was talking to me this way, I’d be very careful about what I was about to say next.”
“It’s the suit, isn’t it?” I shook my head and ignored both her tone and the actual words of her warning. “You pulled me back because of this damn suit.”
I touched the rounded circle on my neck, where the compressed suit now sat. It was strange, having the thing with me all the time. Before my upgrade, I (like all Infantry personnel) kept my suit in a holding bay between missions. That was familiar to me. It was the way of it.
Now though, it remained with me, fused to a necklace that hung over my heart at all times and was connected to me on a genetic level. It couldn’t get further than twenty feet from my person at any given time without a failsafe system kicking into place which sent it flying back to me. It also meant that should I wish it, I could have Annabelle in my head all the time now. Though, honestly, who wanted that?
“That damn suit cost the same time and resources as a thousand standard Marine power suits, not to mention untold amounts of Ellebruim,” Della replied as if to confirm what I suspected without saying as much.
“And a person isn’t worth near that much, right?” I shot back, shaking my head in disgust.
“Don’t make this about something it isn’t, and don’t pretend you didn’t know what you were signing up for when you took that damn thing.” She rounded her desk, settling in front of me, arms crossed over her ample breasts.
“You think they gave that suit to you as a reward? You think it’s a gold watch and a pat on the back? It isn’t. It’s a test. You’re a test. That suit is a weapon, it might be the most effective weapon we’ve ever had or ever will have against the bug menace, but it’s not cheap. It requires a lot of people working a lot of hours with expensive materials to make even one. If we want to convince backers, both governmental and in the private sector, that it’s in their best interest to continue investing in this, I have to produce results.” She cleared her throat. “Which means you have to produce results. If you get yourself killed on your first mission out with this thing, what the hell am I supposed to say? You could have accomplished as much in a tin can.”
“You say we’re not suits, Della,” I said, trying to put my argument into measured tones. “You say that people, even some stupid kid who should have known better than to join up with us in the first place, are worth more than the things that wrap around them. You tell them their parents are worth more than that.” I pointed my finger at her accusingly, and that measured tone was thrown out the window. “And then you tell me that any son of a bitch who thinks differently isn’t fit to wear the suit they’re so damn worried about in the first place!”
I was almost growling out each word as I finished. “You ask me, that’s the most hypocritical bullshit I have ever heard.”
“Are you done?” Della barked.
“I am.”
“Good,” she said, pointing at my extended hand, noticeably at the glowing wris
tband attached to it, “because it looks like you’ve got a mission.”
I looked down at the message on my wrist, the one telling me I was to report for my briefing. ”You know what this is?”
“I do.” Her answer didn’t surprise me. She was in charge of information, after all. Her mouth tightened, and her eyes grew heavy. Instantly I knew that, whatever this was, wasn’t something she took lightly. “I wish I didn’t though. God knows I wish I didn’t.”
3
“Tell me.”
I glared at Della with widening eyes. Whatever else I had to say about her, she was seasoned. She might have been more office-bound now, but I remembered the woman who helped me make it through the minefields on Fenal, the person who laid in a foxhole with me all night, fighting off ground bugs until an extraction was made possible. I had seen her shoot her way through nests filled with things that would have killed lesser Marines. I watched her break a flier’s neck with her bare hands and rip a bug’s throat out with her teeth. Her hair might be done now, and her clothes might be crisp and clean, but that didn’t betray who she really was; not underneath.
If whatever was happening now, whatever this mission I was about to be faced with, shook her, I knew it was epically bad news.
“Della.” I swallowed hard before I repeated myself. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Can’t do that,” she said flatly. “As you know, sharing mission specifics outside of regulated and approved channels is expressly forbidden by Alliance mandates.”
“What?” I twisted my mouth downward distastefully. “Are you being serious right now?”
Della made sure our gazes were locked before lifting her hand, pointing her finger upward. Instantly, I knew what it meant. We were being listened to, something I should have realized when I was reading her the riot act earlier. After all, it was standard Alliance protocol to monitor everything at all times in the Halls to prevent sabotage, enemy infiltration, and, well, treasonous dissent.
There were times I forgot that while I was a living legend among the corps, at the end of the day, I was still a Marine like any other and so was Della. I had basically come in there screaming, berating her for her actions. If she hadn’t have responded the way she did, it would have called her fitness to be a leader into question and possibly gotten her slapped with a court-martial, just like sharing any details of the upcoming mission would do now.
“Of course, I’m being serious, Lieutenant Ryder,” she said in a tone I now recognized as being a show for our eavesdroppers. “You’ve been an Infinity Marine long enough to know the importance of protocol.” She grabbed a pen and scribbled something on one of the many sheets of paper sprawled across her desk, still talking. “If you want to know what you’re being called to do, then I suggest you head to the briefing room, same as any other Marine.”
She slid the note over to me, glaring at me as I looked down to read it.
Meet me in the clean room in seventy seconds.
“Fair enough,” I said, nodding at her to let her know I understood and agreed. “Sorry to have bothered you, Della.”
“Major Conroy,” she corrected me. The light smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth told me that the show she was putting on was something she kind of enjoyed. It also made her look a bit younger in the light, a little more like the carefree girl who’d given me some of the best nights of my life.
“Right.” I blinked at her and smiled a little myself. “Major Conroy.”
I made my way out of Della’s office and turned not to the briefing room, but to the clean room as Della suggested. Seventy seconds might have seemed like an arbitrary amount of time, but it was a third of how long I had to get to the briefing room before my band reacted, alerting the Alliance to my exact whereabouts. Seventy seconds would be just long enough for me to get to the clean room, another seventy for Della to presumably tell me what the hell was going on, and then a final seventy for me to make my way to the briefing room before the Alliance found out about my secret meeting.
Turning into the clean room, I felt the intense gust of wind shoot down on me as I entered. This place, completely white and free of anything containing artificial colors or outside energy signatures was meant to rid Marines of any sort of biological abnormalities they might have picked up from alien worlds. The idea of an alien virus outbreak on a contained space station wasn’t a great one. This room was the solution for that.
That made it uniquely private. This was maybe the one place in the Alliance Halls that couldn’t be tracked. We could talk here without the risk of being spied on, without having to worry about being overheard, at least until the next batch of returning Marines showed up to get cleaned.
I turned, sighing and crossing my arms over my chest as Della entered, the gust of wind blowing her hair as the door sealed closed behind her.
“Okay, what the hell is going on?” I asked. “Look, I know I came on strong there, but it’s something I’ve done a dozen times, and you never cared, monitoring or not. You’re the Major in charge of all Alliance intelligence and – “
“I know what my title is, Mark,” she interrupted with a huff, “and it’s not about that. In fact, that’s what makes this so bad.”
“What?” I walked toward her. “Della, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“It’s not just me.” She ran hands through her windswept hair. “I did this to you too. Don’t you get it? That’s why this is so bad, because of who I am, because of what I’m connected to. I did something wrong, Mark. I did something very wrong, and I involved you in it.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to piece together what she meant. “Rayne? Are you talking about Rayne Garmin?”
Memories of that secret mission, of Rayne, flashed through my mind. Blonde, tall, bespectacled with black rimmed glasses and light pink lipstick. The last time I saw her, I was dropping her off at a working biodome research center on an outpost planet, safe and sound. In fact, it was that very mission that I realized had brought on my outburst. She had been more than willing to risk me, a couple of ships, and my suit to save one person before, after all.
Despite those risks, the mission had been a rousing success, especially if you take into consideration the ‘reward’ Rayne gave me before I dropped her off. Let’s just say her lipstick tasted as good as it looked. Of course, if something had gone wrong, if the wrong ears had been listening as Della had set the whole thing up …
Della’s words broke through my thoughts. “She’s here, Mark, in the Alliance Halls. I don’t know why or even how long she’s been here, which should tell you how serious this is.” She shook her head. “If I’m unaware something is happening, it’s because the higher-ups have worked damn hard to ensure I don’t know. The only reason I can think why would be – “
“That they know what we did,” I murmured.
“What I forced you to do,” she added.
I shook my head. “No, you didn’t force me to do anything. You asked me to do you a favor, and I did. I’d do it again, simple as that.”
“I’m your superior officer. I gave you an order, and you followed it. As far as anyone is concerned, that’s all that happened.”
What she was getting at was obvious. “You’re trying to clear me of this. I’m not letting you take the fall for - “
“She’s been questioned all day, Mark,” Della interrupted me, fresh panic coloring her eyes. “You know their tactics. If they want the information from her, they’ll find a way to get it.”
“So, let them get it,” I scoffed, even as the extent of the danger dawned in my mind. “I’m not ashamed of what I did. I saved a woman. I did my job.”
“You committed treason, Mark,” Della laid out in the starkest of terms. “We both did and a year ago, that would have been bad enough. We would have been discharged from our duties, publicly shamed.” She shook her head. “But this isn’t a year ago. There have been changes in things recently, a tightening of the reins, as it were. You’
ve heard about Commissioner Reynolds?”
“The new Alliance leader?” I arched an eyebrow. “I’ve never met the guy, but he has served both on the front lines and in the command his entire life. He seems like a good man.”
“He is, in a way,” Della shrugged. “But he’s also old school, and very by the book. He’s been working to bring back a more iron-fisted way of running things.” She took a deep breath. “Including capital punishment for court martials.”
“What?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat. “Are you saying that - “
“If Rayne has told them what we did, as I expect, then this call isn’t for a mission at all.” She swallowed hard and held her own wrist up, letting me know she received the same message I had. “It’s for our execution.”
4
Those seventy seconds had gone by quicker than I would have liked.
We were both out in the open now, and the spy eyes would be on us again. I kept my trap shut. I was curious, not stupid, but that didn’t stop the questions from pouring into my mind. Capital punishment was a barbaric and outdated concept that hadn’t been enacted since the first century of this seemingly unending war.
Back then, when the hysteria over the bugs was at its fever pitch, the idea of anyone deserting the military, or worse betraying it, seemed unimaginable. The United Nations, as it existed back then, was more than happy to put into place a planetwide set of laws dictating that anyone found to be in desertion of his post or in violation of the laws that governed the Infinity Marines would be condemned to death.
It was insanity to me. I mean, why kill soldiers who could be convinced (or even forced) to rejoin the fight? Weren’t the bugs doing enough killing for everyone these days? My thought process hadn’t been shared with the people of Earth back then though, and apparently, that horrible tradition had been brought back by this new and more conservative leader.
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